The First Modern Jew

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The First Modern Jew

Daniel B. Schwartz

Author : Daniel B. Schwartz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2013-12-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780691162140

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The First Modern Jew by Daniel B. Schwartz Pdf

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.

The Origins of the Modern Jew

Michael A. Meyer

Author : Michael A. Meyer
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 1972-04-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780814337547

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The Origins of the Modern Jew by Michael A. Meyer Pdf

An excellent overview of the intellectual history of important figures in German Jewry.

Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity

Steven B. Smith

Author : Steven B. Smith
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1997-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0300076657

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Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity by Steven B. Smith Pdf

Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677)--often recognized as the first modern Jewish thinker--was also a founder of modern liberal political philosophy. This book is the first to connect systematically these two aspects of Spinoza's legacy. Steven B. Smith shows that Spinoza was a politically engaged theorist who both advocated and embodied a new conception of the emancipated individual, a thinker who decisively influenced such diverse movements as the Enlightenment, liberalism, and political Zionism. Focusing on Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Smith argues that Spinoza was the first thinker of note to make the civil status of Jews and Judaism (what later became known as the Jewish Question) an essential ingredient of modern political thought. Before Marx or Freud, Smith notes, Spinoza recast Judaism to include the liberal values of autonomy and emancipation from tradition. Smith examines the circumstances of Spinoza's excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, his skeptical assault on the authority of Scripture, his transformation of Mosaic prophecy into a progressive philosophy of history, his use of the language of natural right and the social contract to defend democratic political institutions, and his comprehensive comparison of the ancient Hebrew commonwealth and the modern commercial republic. According to Smith, Spinoza's Treatise represents a classic defense of religious toleration and intellectual freedom, showing them to be necessary foundations for political stability and liberal regimes. In this study Smith examines Spinoza's solution to the Jewish Question and asks whether a Judaism, so conceived, can long survive.

The Jew in the Modern World

Paul R. Mendes-Flohr,Jehuda Reinharz

Author : Paul R. Mendes-Flohr,Jehuda Reinharz
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 772 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : History
ISBN : 019507453X

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The Jew in the Modern World by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr,Jehuda Reinharz Pdf

The last two centuries have witnessed a radical transformation of Jewish life. Marked by such profound events as the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel, Judaism's long journey through the modern age has been a complex and tumultuous one, leading many Jews to ask themselves not only where they have been and where they are going, but what it means to be a Jew in today's world. Tracing the Jewish experience in the modern period and illustrating the transformation of Jewish religion, culture, and identity from the 17th century to 1948, the updated edition of this critically acclaimed volume of primary materials remains the most complete sourcebook on modern Jewish history. Now expanded to supplement the most vital documents of the first edition, The Jew in the Modern World features hitherto unpublished and inaccessible sources concerning the Jewish experience in Eastern Europe, women in Jewish history, American Jewish life, the Holocaust, and Zionism and the nascent Jewish community in Palestine on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel. The documents are arranged chronologically in each of eleven chapters and are meticulously and extensively annotated and cross-referenced in order to provide the student with ready access to a wide variety of issues, key historical figures, and events. Complete with some twenty useful tables detailing Jewish demographic trends, this is a unique resource for any course in Jewish history, Zionism and Israel, the Holocaust, or European and American history.

Early Modern Jewry

David B. Ruderman

Author : David B. Ruderman
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780691152882

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Early Modern Jewry by David B. Ruderman Pdf

Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before. Ruderman explores five crucial and powerful characteristics uniting Jewish communities: a mobility leading to enhanced contacts between Jews of differing backgrounds, traditions, and languages, as well as between Jews and non-Jews; a heightened sense of communal cohesion throughout all Jewish settlements that revealed the rising power of lay oligarchies; a knowledge explosion brought about by the printing press, the growing interest in Jewish books by Christian readers, an expanded curriculum of Jewish learning, and the entrance of Jewish elites into universities; a crisis of rabbinic authority expressed through active messianism, mystical prophecy, radical enthusiasm, and heresy; and the blurring of religious identities, impacting such groups as conversos, Sabbateans, individual converts to Christianity, and Christian Hebraists. In describing an early modern Jewish culture, Early Modern Jewry reconstructs a distinct epoch in history and provides essential background for understanding the modern Jewish experience.

The Origins of the Modern Jew

Michael A. Meyer

Author : Michael A. Meyer
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1967
Category : History
ISBN : 0814314708

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The Origins of the Modern Jew by Michael A. Meyer Pdf

An excellent overview of the intellectual history of important figures in German Jewry.

The Invention of the Jewish People

Shlomo Sand

Author : Shlomo Sand
Publisher : Verso Books
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2020-08-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781788736619

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The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand Pdf

A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland? Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths. After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.

Betraying Spinoza

Rebecca Goldstein

Author : Rebecca Goldstein
Publisher : Schocken
Page : 306 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2009-01-16
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780307514172

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Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein Pdf

Part of the Jewish Encounter series In 1656, Amsterdam’s Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty–three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza’s progeny. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition’ s persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza’s philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe’ s first experiment with racial anti-Semitism. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero—a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. From the Hardcover edition.

Makers of Jewish Modernity

Jacques Picard,Jacques M. Revel,Michael P. Steinberg,Idith Zertal

Author : Jacques Picard,Jacques M. Revel,Michael P. Steinberg,Idith Zertal
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 688 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2016-08-09
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9780691164236

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Makers of Jewish Modernity by Jacques Picard,Jacques M. Revel,Michael P. Steinberg,Idith Zertal Pdf

A unique reference to leading Jewish figures who helped shape the modern world This superb collection presents more than forty incisive portraits of leading Jewish thinkers, artists, scientists, and other public figures of the last hundred years who, in their own unique ways, engaged with and helped shape the modern world. Makers of Jewish Modernity features entries on political figures such as Walther Rathenau, Rosa Luxemburg, and David Ben-Gurion; philosophers and critics such as Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler; and artists such as Mark Rothko. The book provides fresh insights into the lives and careers of novelists like Franz Kafka, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth; the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen; social scientists such as Sigmund Freud; religious leaders and thinkers such as Avraham Kook and Martin Buber; and many others. Written by a diverse group of leading contemporary scholars from around the world, these vibrant and frequently surprising portraits offer a global perspective that highlights the multiplicity of Jewish experience and thought. A reference book like no other, Makers of Jewish Modernity includes an informative general introduction that situates its subjects within the broader context of Jewish modernity as well as a rich selection of photos.

The Jewish Eighteenth Century

Shmuel Feiner

Author : Shmuel Feiner
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 561 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780253049476

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The Jewish Eighteenth Century by Shmuel Feiner Pdf

The eighteenth century was the Jews' first modern century. The deep changes that took place during its course shaped the following generations, and its most prominent voices still reverberate today. In this first volume of his magisterial work, Shmuel Feiner charts the twisting and fascinating world of the first half of the 18th century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe. Paying careful attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices of protest, to aspirations of reform, and to strivings for personal and general happiness, Feiner identifies the tectonic changes that were taking place in Europe and their unprecedented effects on and among Jews. From the religious and cultural revolution of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) to the question of whether Jews could be citizens of any nation, Feiner presents a broad view of how this century of upheaval altered the map of Europe and the Jews who called it home.

Connecting Histories

David B. Ruderman,Francesca Bregoli

Author : David B. Ruderman,Francesca Bregoli
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2019-03-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780812296037

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Connecting Histories by David B. Ruderman,Francesca Bregoli Pdf

Whether forced by governmental decree, driven by persecution and economic distress, or seeking financial opportunity, the Jews of early modern Europe were extraordinarily mobile, experiencing both displacement and integration into new cultural, legal, and political settings. This, in turn, led to unprecedented modes of social mixing for Jews, especially for those living in urban areas, who frequently encountered Jews from different ethnic backgrounds and cultural orientations. Additionally, Jews formed social, economic, and intellectual bonds with mixed populations of Christians. While not necessarily effacing Jewish loyalties to local places, authorities, and customs, these connections and exposures to novel cultural settings created new allegiances as well as new challenges, resulting in constructive relations in some cases and provoking strife and controversy in others. The essays collected by Francesca Bregoli and David B. Ruderman in Connecting Histories show that while it is not possible to speak of a single, cohesive transregional Jewish culture in the early modern period, Jews experienced pockets of supra-local connections between West and East—for example, between Italy and Poland, Poland and the Holy Land, and western and eastern Ashkenaz—as well as increased exchanges between high and low culture. Special attention is devoted to the impact of the printing press and the strategies of representation and self-representation through which Jews forged connections in a world where their status as a tolerated minority was ambiguous and in constant need of renegotiation. Exploring the ways in which early modern Jews related to Jews from different backgrounds and to the non-Jews around them, Connecting Histories emphasizes not only the challenging nature and impact of these encounters but also the ambivalence experienced by Jews as they met their others. Contributors: Michela Andreatta, Francesca Bregoli, Joseph Davis, Jesús de Prado Plumed, Andrea Gondos, Rachel L. Greenblatt, Gershon David Hundert, Fabrizio Lelli, Moshe Idel, Debra Kaplan, Lucia Raspe, David B. Ruderman, Pavel Sládek, Claude B. Stuczynski, Rebekka Voß.

Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx

Professor Emeritus Jonathan I Israel

Author : Professor Emeritus Jonathan I Israel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 544 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2021-06-06
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0295748664

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Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx by Professor Emeritus Jonathan I Israel Pdf

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a small but conspicuous fringe of the Jewish population became the world's most resolute, intellectually driven, and philosophical revolutionaries, among them the pre-Marxist Karl Marx. Yet the roots of their alienation from existing society and determination to change it extend back to the very heart of the Enlightenment, when Spinoza and other philosophers living in a rigid, hierarchical society colored by a deeply hostile theology first developed a modern revolutionary consciousness. Leading intellectual historian Jonathan Israel shows how the radical ideas in the early Marx's writings were influenced by this legacy, which, he argues, must be understood as part of the Radical Enlightenment. He traces the rise of a Jewish revolutionary tendency demanding social equality and universal human rights throughout the Western world. Israel considers how these writers understood Jewish marginalization and ghettoization and the edifice of superstition, prejudice, and ignorance that sustained them. He investigates how the quest for Jewish emancipation led these thinkers to formulate sweeping theories of social and legal reform that paved the way for revolutionary actions that helped change the world from 1789 onward--but hardly as they intended.

Who Is A Jew?

Leonard J. Greenspoon

Author : Leonard J. Greenspoon
Publisher : Purdue University Press
Page : 434 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2015-04-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781612493466

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Who Is A Jew? by Leonard J. Greenspoon Pdf

Jewish identity is a perennial concern, as Jews seek to define the major features and status of those who “belong,” while at the same time draw distinctions between individuals and groups on the “inside” and those on the “outside.” From a variety of perspectives, scholarly as well as confessional, there is intense interest among non-Jewish and Jewish commentators alike in the basic question, “Who is a Jew?” This collection of articles draws diverse historical, cultural, and religious insights from scholars who represent a wide range of academic and theological disciplines. Some of the authors directly address the issue of Jewish identity as it is being played out today in Israel and Diaspora communities. Others look to earlier time periods or societies as invaluable resources for enhanced and deepened analysis of contemporary matters. All authors in this collection make a concerted effort to present their evidence and their conclusions in a way that is accessible to the general public and valid for other scholars. The result is a richly textured approach to a topic that seems always relevant. If, as is the case, no single answer appeals to all of the authors, this is as it should be. We all gain from the application of a number of approaches and perspectives, which enrich our appreciation of the people whose lives are affected, for better or worse, by real-life discussions of this issue and the resultant actions toward exclusivity or inclusivity.

Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity

Leo Strauss

Author : Leo Strauss
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 526 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2012-02-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9781438421445

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Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity by Leo Strauss Pdf

This is the first book to bring together the major essays and lectures of Leo Strauss in the field of modern Jewish thought. It contains some of his most famous published writings, as well as significant writings which were previously unpublished. Spanning almost 30 years of continuously deepening reflection, the book presents the full range of Strauss's contributions as a modern Jewish thinker. These essays and lectures also offer Strauss's mature considerations of some of the great figures in modern Jewish thought, such as Baruch Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Theodor Herzl, and Sigmund Freud. They also encompass his incisive analyses and original explorations of modern Judaism (which he viewed as caught in the grip of the "theological-political crisis"): from German Jewry, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust to Zionism and the State of Israel; from the question of assimilation to the meaning and value of Jewish history. In addition Strauss's two sustained interpretations of the Hebrew Bible are also reprinted. These essays and lectures cumulatively point toward the "postcritical" reconstruction of Judaism which Strauss envisioned, suggesting it rebuild along Maimonidean lines. Thus, the book lends credence to the view that Strauss was able to uncover and probe the crisis at the heart of modern Jewish thought and history, perhaps with greater profundity than any other contemporary Jewish thinker.

Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe

David B. Ruderman

Author : David B. Ruderman
Publisher : Wayne State University Press
Page : 440 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2001
Category : History
ISBN : 0814329314

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Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe by David B. Ruderman Pdf

A study on the scientific dimension of Jewish intellectual history in the early modern world

The First Modern Jew

The First Modern Jew by Daniel B. Schwartz Pdf

The Origins of the Modern Jew by Michael A. Meyer Pdf

Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity by Steven B. Smith Pdf

The Jew in the Modern World by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr,Jehuda Reinharz Pdf

Early Modern Jewry by David B. Ruderman Pdf

The Origins of the Modern Jew by Michael A. Meyer Pdf

The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand Pdf

Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein Pdf

Makers of Jewish Modernity by Jacques Picard,Jacques M. Revel,Michael P. Steinberg,Idith Zertal Pdf

The Jewish Eighteenth Century by Shmuel Feiner Pdf

Connecting Histories by David B. Ruderman,Francesca Bregoli Pdf

Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx by Professor Emeritus Jonathan I Israel Pdf

Who Is A Jew? by Leonard J. Greenspoon Pdf

Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity by Leo Strauss Pdf

Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe by David B. Ruderman Pdf

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