Description
Book SynopsisA lively tour of the landscape of modern Jewish memory sites from the Old and New Worlds and the Land of Israel.
Trade ReviewRoskies (Jewish Theol. Seminary) shows that the Jewish present is not evolving as a simple continuation of the past nor, contrary to what is often claimed, is it emerging from a radical break with the past. It sits, rather, upon what Roskies calls memory sites, images of the past recreated from the ashes of destruction and the potentially debilitating sense of Jewish loss these catastrophes create. How are such memory sites created? Roskies illustrates the process through careful and engaging examinations of, among other topics, Jewish chronicles of the Warsaw Ghetto, of Jewish rethinking of Jewish participation in the early socialist and Zionist movements, and of the function of the concept of holy space for secular Israelis. These studies, each a gem unto itself, together reveal how Jews cope with loss and catastrophe and illustrate that it is exactly by coping with loss and tragedy that Jews create a usable past and, in the process, define their present and shape their future. Recommended for general readers and for faculty and researchers. —A. J. Aver
-- Peck * Choice *
Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments
1. The Jewish Search for a Usable Past
2. The Library of Jewish Catastrophe
3. Ringelblum's Time Capsules
4. The Shtetl in Jewish Collective Memory
5. Rabbis, Rebels, and the Lost Art of the Law
6. The Golden Peacock: The Art of Song
7. A Culture Set in Stone: The Art of Burial
8. A City, a School, and a Utopian Experiment
9. Zionism, Israel, and the Search of a Covenantal Space
Conclusion
Notes
Index
