Description
Book SynopsisThis book is a comprehensive account of how the Jews became a diaspora people. The term ''diaspora'' was first applied exclusively to the early history of the Jews as they began settling in scattered colonies outside of Israel-Judea during the time of the Babylonian exile; it has come to express the characteristic uniqueness of the Jewish historical experience. Zeitlin retraces the history of the Jewish diaspora from the ancient world to the present, beginning with expulsion from their ancestral homeland and concluding with the Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In mapping this process, Zeitlin argues that the Jews'' religious self-understanding was crucial in enabling them to cope with the serious and recurring challenges they have had to face throughout their history. He analyses the varied reactions the Jews encountered from their so-called ''host peoples'', paying special attention to the attitudes of famous thinkers such as Luther, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wa
Trade Review
"Zeitlin successfully sums up extensive and detailed historical data while keeping them within a framework of the ideas he seeks to get across."
Insight Turkey
"Of Jewish histories there is no shortage. But this remarkable book offers history from the critical perspective of sociology - itself critically examined in the light of history. In short, an intellectual feast."
Norman Miller, Trinity College, Hartford
"This comprehensive study provides a profound discourse on the meanings and boundaries of 'Diaspora' as a central dimension of Jewish history. The author launches his historical tour of diverse Jewish religious, social, geographical, political and cultural communities with a probing "genealogy" of the very concept of Diaspora, including contemporary theories."
Frederick M. Denny, University of Colorado at Boulder
"A prominent sociologist employs the concepts of his discipline to write diaspora Jewish history, as the story of national-religious Jewish peoplehood. Zeitlin shows that separate accounts of Jews living in different nations often miss the real connections in Jewish history."
Jacques Kornberg, University of Toronto
Table of ContentsPreface
Chapter One
"Diaspora" on the Genealogy of a Concept
The Relation of Theory to History and the Role of the Ideal Type
Global Diasporas by Robin Cohen
Ethnic Immigration in the Early Eras of American History
Diasporas by Stéphane Dufux
Static Thinking About Dispersion
Powers of Diaspora by Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin
The Socratic Inversion of Values
The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness by Paul Gilroy
Children of Israel or Children of the Pharaohs
Black Culture and Ineffable Terror
Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century by James Clifford
Chapter Two
Varieties of Jewish Religious Experience
Resting, however, on Unifying Jewish Religious Principles
Moshe Rosman's Rethinking European Jewish History
Cultures of the Jews
Syncretism in Jewish History
Polytheism and Monotheism
The Nature of Polytheism
Chapter Three
Max Weber's Ancient Judaism
The Hebrew Prophets: The Setting
The Prophetic Ethic
Chapter Four
The Babylonian Empire
The Revolt and the Destruction of the First Temple
The Emigration to Egypt
Chapter Five
The Babylonian Exile and the Persian Supremacy (586-332BCE)
The Diaspora in Babylon and Persia
Chapter Six
Alexander the Great and the new Hegemony of the West
Chapter Seven
The World Diaspora
The Beginnings of the European Diaspora: Greece and Rome
Chapter Eight
The Diaspora in the 1st Century CE
Judaism's Proselytism
Chapter Nine
The Jews in the Roman Near East
Chapter Ten
The Jews Move to Poland
The Chmelnitzky Uprising of 1648-1649
Chapter Eleven
Sabbatai Zevi
Chapter Twelve
Gershom Scholem's Error
Dubnow on the Sabbatian Movement
Chapter Thirteen
The Rise of Hasidism and the Baal-Shem-Tob
Enter the Man, Israel, Who Became the Baal-Shem-Tob (abbreviated the Besht)
The Fundamental Principles of the Besht's Teachings
The Growth of Tzaddikism
Hasidism, Rabbinism and the Forerunners of the Enlightenment
Chapter Fourteen
The Jews of Spain
The Inquisition
The Jews, the Spanish and the "Conversos Problem"
The Aftermath of the Pogroms
Jewish Mysticism: The Kabbalah in Spanish-Jewish Life
Chapter Fifteen
The Expulsion of the Jews from Spain
The Conquest of Granada
Chapter Sixteen
The Enlightenment and the Jews
The English Deists
Varieties of Enlightenment Views on Religion
Voltaire
Rousseau
Rousseau on Judaism and the Jews
Chapter Seventeen
The Germanies
The Emerging German National Mind
Luther
Luther's Attitude toward the Jews
Hegel
Hegel on Jews and Judaism
Chapter Eighteen
The Left Hegelians and the "So-Called" Jewish Question
Bruno Bauer on the "Jewish Question"
Marx
Marx's Use of the Terms "Jew" and "Judaism"
Weber vs. Sombart on the Spirit of Capitalism
Chapter Nineteen
From Religion to Race
Afro-American Ð Jewish Parallels
Arthur de Gobineau
Chapter Twenty
From Gobineau and H. Stewart Chamberlain to Wagner
Nietzsche, the Jews, and Judaism
Nietzsche's Legacy
Chapter Twenty One
The Rise of Nazism
The Versailles Treaty
The Origins of the Nazi Party
After the Putsch
Chapter Twenty Two
The Early Nazi Regime and the Jews as Perceived by Non-Jewish Contemporaries
Chapter Twenty Three
The First World War, the Collapse of the Old Regimes and the Rise of Totalitarianism
More on Nazi Ideology, Internal Factions and Foreign-Policy Aims
The Turning Point: The Attack on Poland
Chapter Twenty Four
Max Weber on Bureaucracy and its Relevance for an Analysis of the Shoah (Holocaust)
Bureaucracy
German Ideology and Bureaucracy
Weber's Serious Error
Chapter Twenty Five
Charisma, Bureaucracy and the "Final Solution"
Raul Hilberg's, The Destruction of the European Jews
The Administration of the Destructive Process
The Reich-Protektorat Area
The Creation of a Centralized authority in Ghettoized Jewish Communities
The Polish Jews under the Nazis
The Jewish Councils (Judenräte)
Nazi Food Controls
Mobile Killing Operations
The Role of the Other Ethnic Groups
Definition of "Jew" Again, and Himmler
Ian Kershaw's Recent Re-Examination of the Issues
Chapter Twenty Six
Leon Poliakov's Complementary Analysis of the Shoah
Hitler's Euthanasia Program
Auschwitz
The "Death's Head" Formations (SS Totenkopf)
Back to the Question of a Distinctive German National Character
Significant Political Differences Between Eastern and Western Europe
The Role of the Christian Churches
Postscript
Chapter Twenty Seven
The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto
A Reflection on Jewish Resistance
Chapter Twenty Eight
Zionism, Israel and the Palestinians
Theodore Herzl
The Historical Jewish Presence in the Arab World
The Peace Conference of 1919
"The Unseen Question"
Arab Rebellion
Works Cited
