Search results for ""author benjamin ravid""

Simon Rawidowicz (1896-1957) was one of the most innovative, if also underappreciated, Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. He was a partner in conversation with many of the leading Jewish cultural or political figures of the first half of the century including David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Nahman Bialik, Martin Buber, and Simon Dubnow. His distinctive theory of "Babylon and Jerusalem" remains one of the most interesting formulations of Jewish national ideology, as it sought to mediate between the poles of Zionism and Diasporism. This volume captures Rawidowicz's multiple and overlapping concerns - both scholarly and contemporary -- as well as the distinctive rich timbre of his Hebrew style. All those interested in modern Jewish thought, the relationship between Israel and Diaspora, the recurrent "Arab Question" in Zionist and Israeli politics, and the state of Jewish people will find benefit in this collection of new or hardly known texts from the pen of Simon Rawidowicz.

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In this authoritative volume, specialists from many fields of Jewish studies provide an introduction to the history of the ghetto of Venice and up-to-date scholarship on the subject from the perspectives of various disciplines-including political, economic, women's, institutional, social and cultural history, religious studies, and musicology. While the book's coverage extends throughout Venetian history and to the broader contexts of Italy, the main focus is the period when Jewish life in the city was at its most vigorous-from the early sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries, a period which saw the creation of both the cultural heritage and the physical architecture that came to characterize the ghetto. The eleven essays constituting the volume are divided into three sections. The first section, titled "Settlement," provides a historical overview and topographical prologue. The second section, "Ethnicities and Identities," examines the varied social groups that combined to make up the ghetto community. The final section, "Cultures," looks at the traditions of faith, thought, and art which were produced in the Venetian ghetto over the centuries. As the editors point out, the ghetto and its community "paradoxically was at the same time an integral part of the city of Venice while also rigorously excluded from it." The constraints of the ghetto and the concomitant interaction of various Jewish traditions produced a remarkable cultural flowering.

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