Description
Book SynopsisThroughout history, Jews have often been regarded, and treated, as “strangers.” In The Stranger in Early Modern and Modern Jewish Tradition, authors from a wide variety of disciplines discuss how the notion of “the stranger” can offer an integrative perspective on Jewish identities, on the non-Jewish perceptions of Jews, and on the relations between Jews and non-Jews in an innovative way. Contributions from history, philosophy, religion, sociology, literature, and the arts offer a new perspective on the Jewish experience in early modern and modern times: in contact and conflict, in processes of attribution and allegation, but also self-reflection and negotiation, focused on the figure of the stranger.
Table of ContentsList of Figures Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction Catherine Bartlett 2 “The Penitents”: Attitudes of Jewish Society to Marranos in Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth-Century Safed Eyal Davidson 3 The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem: A Borderline Case Michael T. Miller 4 Rights of the Stranger in Jewish Moral: Reactions to M. Lazarus’ Ethics of Judaism in Imperial Germany Mathias Berek 5 The Origins of the Stranger: Georg Simmel’s “The Stranger,” Moritz Lazarus’ “Was Heisst National?” and the Jewish Question of the Fin-de-Siècle Period Søren Blak Hjortshøj 6 The Jewish Stranger in Germany and America Chad Alan Goldberg 7 (Friendly) Strangers in Their Own Land No More: Third-Generation Jews and Socio-Political Activism in the Present in Germany Dani Kranz 8 “They Are Not My People”: Mysticism and Political Extremism in Henry Bean’s Script The Believer (2001) Federico Dal Bo 9 Between Language and Ethnicity: Russian Jewish Writers in the Post-Soviet World, the Question of Self-Identification in Literature and Life Olga Tabachnikova 10 Jews as Strangers, Strangers as Jews in the Twentieth-Century French Novel Maxime Decout 11 Exorcizing the Stranger: The “Daughter of Germany” in the Contemporary Jewish Imagination Efraim Sicher 12 Muslims as Brothers or Strangers? French Jewish Thinkers Confront the Moral Dilemmas of the French-Algerian War Ethan B. Katz 13 The Christian Orphan as the Stranger in Nineteenth-Century European Jewish Fiction Catherine Bartlett 14 The Strange Face and Form of the Stranger in Levinas Benda Hofmeyr 15 Conclusion: Jews and Strangers. Perspective from History Joachim Schlör Index
