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Jewish responses to modernity : new voices in America and Eastern Europe

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Jewish responses to modernity : new voices in America and Eastern Europe / Eli Lederhendler.

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Status	Format	Access	Call number	Item location
Status Request for on-site use Request scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	FormatText	AccessUse in library	Call numberDS135.E83 L33 1994	Item locationOff-site

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Summary

Facing the dizzying array of changes commonly referred to as "modernity," Jews in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe and early twentieth-century America reflected the crises and opportunities of the modern world most eloquently in their speech, their culture, and their literature. Relying on those spoken and written words as "eyewitnesses," Eli Lederhendler illustrates how the self-perceptions of Jews evolved, both in the Old World and among immigrants to America. He focuses on a wide range of subjects to provide an overview of this clash between old and new and to reveal ways in which cultural conflicts were reconciled. How, for instance, was messianic language adapted to serve nationalistic goals? What did America signify to Jewish thinkers at the turn of the century? What do Jewish "user's guides" to the New World tell us about Jewish secular culture and its perspective on sex, love, marriage, etiquette, and health? More generally, what do Jewish letters and literature tell us about how communities adapt to radically new environments? Jewish Responses to Modernity highlights the manner in which codes and symbols are passed from one generation to the next, reinforcing a group's sense of self and helping to define its relations with others, demonstrating yet again the importance of language as a vehicle for minority-group self-expression in the past and in the present

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1. Language, Culture, and Politics -- 2. Interpreting Messianic Rhetoric in the Russian Haskalah and Early Zionism -- 3. The Making of a Maskil -- 4. Orthodox Jewish Opinion in Turn-of-the-Century Russia and Poland: A Documentary Study in Culture and Politics -- 5. America: A Vision in a Jewish Mirror -- 6. Guides for the Perplexed: Sex, Manners, and Mores for the Yiddish Reader in America -- 7. Against the Tide: The American Hebrew Yearbook, 1930-1949 -- 8. Afterword: The Politics of Cultural Transmission, the Legacy of Simon Dubnov, and Jewish Studies.

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