Description
Book Synopsis Highlighting the seminal role of German Jewish intellectuals and ideologues in forming and transforming the modern Jewish world, this volume analyzes the political roads taken by German Jewish thinkers; the impact of the Holocaust on the Central and East European Jewish intelligentsia; and the conundrum of modern Jewish identity. Several of German Jewry’s most outstanding figures such as Scholem, Strauss, and Kohn are discussed. Inspired by Steven E. Aschheim’s work, several contributors focus on the fraught relationship between German and East European Jews (the so-called Ostjuden) and between German Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors. More generally, this book examines how Central European Jewish thinkers reacted to the terrible crises of the twentieth century—to war, genocide, and the existential threat to the very existence of the Jewish people. It is essential reading for those interested in the triumphs and tragedies of modern European Jewry.
Trade Review “…a stellar anthology that belongs not only in every university library but also in the libraries of Jewish institutions serving serious readers.” · Jewish Book World
“[T]he essays are well-written, clear, and interesting…the collection reads well and is informed by a high level of scholarship and expertise and has a diversity that should appeal to many readers.” · Michael L. Morgan, Chancellor’s Professor, Emeritus, Indiana University
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
Editors’ Note
Chapter 1. Reading Steven Aschheim
Ezra Mendelsohn
Part I. Strauss, Scholem, Arendt, Benjamin
Chapter 2. A Zionist Critique of Jewish Politics: The Early Thought of Leo Strauss
Jerry Z. Muller
Chapter 3. Leo Strauss Reading Karl Marx during the Cold War
Adi Armon
Chapter 4. Gershom Scholem, Einst und Jetzt: Zionist Politics and Kabbalistic Historiography
David Biale
Chapter 5. Death or Birth? Scholem and Secularization
Zohar Maor
Chapter 6. Fragments from a Correspondence(Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem) – A Poem
Zvi Jagendorf
Part II. Political Positioning in Hard Times
Chapter 7. In Heidegger’s Shadow: Ernst Cassirer, Emmanuel Levinas, and the Question of the Political
Jeffrey Andrew Barash
Chapter 8. Walter Rathenau’s Dilemma: Modernity and the Human Soul
Shulamit Volkov
Chapter 9. “Nothing but a Disillusioned Love”?: Hans Kohn’s Break with the Zionist Movement
Adi Gordon
Chapter 10. Historicism and the Event
Martin Jay
Part III. Brothers and Strangers: The Issue of Identity
Chapter 11. Asiatic Brothers, European Strangers: Eugen Hoeflich and Pan-Asian Zionism in Vienna
Hanan Harif
Chapter 12. “Brothers and Strangers”: The American Example
Pierre Birnbaum
Chapter 13. “Mann Kann Verjuden”: Paradoxes of Exemplarity
Vivian Liska
Part IV. In the Shadow of the Holocaust
Chapter 14. A “Usable Past” and the Crisis of European Jews: Popular Jewish Historiography in Germany, France, and Hungary in the 1930s
Guy Miron
Chapter 15. Three Jewish Émigrés at Nuremberg: Jacob Robinson, Hersch Lauterpacht, and Raphael Lemkin
Michael R. Marrus
Chapter 16. The Frankfurt School and the ‘Jewish Question,’ 1940-1970
Anson Rabinbach
Chapter 17. Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: Challenges, Limitations, and Opportunities
Christopher R. Browning
Select Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
