Description
Book SynopsisFor a Jew, describing a place as 'home' conveys connotations of heritage as well as of residence. Additionally, feeling 'at home' suggests a sense of comfort in one's social surroundings. The questions at the heart of this volume are: what things make a home 'Jewish', materially and emotionally, and what is it that makes Jews feel 'at home' in their environment? The material dimensions are explored through a study of the symbolic and ritual objects that convey Jewishness and a consideration of other items that may be used to express Jewish identity in the home-something that the introduction identifies as 'living-room Judaism'. The discussion is geographically and ethnically wide-ranging, and the transformation of meaning attached to different objects in different environments is contextualized, as, for example, in Shalom Sabar's study of {h.}amsa amulets in Morocco and Israel. For diasporic Jewish culture, the question of feeling at home is an emotional issue that frequently emerges in literature, folklore, and the visual and performing arts.
The phrase 'at-homeness in exile' aptly expresses the tension between the different heritages with which Jews identify, including that between the biblical promised land and the cultural locations from which Jewish migration emanated. The essays in this volume take a closer look at the way in which ideas about feeling at home as a Jew are expressed in literature originating in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, and also at the political ramifications of these emotions. The question is further explored in a series of exchanges on the future of Jews feeling 'at home' in Australia, Germany, Israel, and the United States.
Jews at Home is the first book to examine the theme of the Jewish home materially and emotionally from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including literature, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, art history, and folk and popular culture. The essays in the collection use the theme of home and the concept of domestication to revise understanding of the lived (and built) past, and to open new analytical possibilities for the future.
Its discussion of domestic culture and its relevance to Jewish identity is one with which readers should feel right at home.
Table of ContentsNote on Transliteration
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Dualities of House and Home in Jewish Culture SIMON J. BRONNER
Part I: In and Out of the Home1 The Domestication of Urban Jewish Space and the North-West London Eruv JENNIFER COUSINEAU
2 Every Wise Woman Shoppeth for her House: The Sisterhood Gift Shop and the American Jewish Home in the Mid-Twentieth Century JOELLYN WALLEN ZOLLMAN
Part II: Sacred, Secular, and Profane in the Home3 Reimagining Home, Rethinking Sukkah: Rabbinic Discourse and Its Contemporary Implications MARJORIE LEHMAN
4 From Sacred Symbol to Keychain: The Hamsah in Jewish and Israeli Societies SHALOM SABAR
5 770 Eastern Parkway: The Rebbe's Home as Icon GABRIELLE A. BERLINGER
6 From the Nightclub to the Living Room: Party Records of Three Jewish Women Comics GIOVANNA P. DEL NEGRO
Part III: Writing Home7 Samuel Rawet's Wandering Jew: Jewish Brazilian Monologues of Home and Displacement ROSANA KOHL BINES
8 Home in the Pampas: Alberto Gerchunoff's Jewish Gauchos MONICA SZURMUK
9 Domesticity and the Home(Page): Blogging and the Blurring of Public and Private among Orthodox Jewish Women ANDREA LIEBER
Part IV: Forum: Feeling at Home
Introduction10 Culture Mavens: Feeling at Home in America JENNA WEISSMAN JOSELIT
Responses11 At Home in the World DAVID KRAEMER
12 The Co-Construction of Europe as a Jewish Home JOACHIM SCHLÖR
13 'Culture Mavens' from an Australian Jewish Perspective SUZANNE D. RUTLAND
14 There's No Place Like Home: America, Israel, and the (Mixed) Blessings of Assimilation MICHAEL P. KRAMER
15 The Last Word: A Response JENNA WEISSMAN JOSELIT
Notes on Contributors
Index
