Bücher der Reihe Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts

This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.

Homeland, Exile, Imagined Homelands are features of the modern experience and relate to the cultural and historical dilemmas of loss, nostalgia, utopia, travel, longing, and are central for Jews and others. This book is an exploration into a world of boundary crossings and of desired places and alternate identities, into a world of adopted kin and invented allegiances.

The book presents an aesthetic-semiotic reading of Arendt by traversing the ensemble of her work. An attempt is made to literally enact Arendt¿s notion of "natality". Arendt is invited here to pay visitations to four figures: a student, the poetess, Stefan Zweig and Michal, Saul¿s daughter. The intellectual visitation, as a complex process of both mimesis and rejection, is revealed to be a natality, a rebirth in spirit.

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters.This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world.

This book covers the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new options of thought and action.

Includes both historical treatments of differing German-Jewish understandings of their experience - their relations to their Judaism, general culture and to other Jews - and contemporary reflections and competing interpretations as to how to understand the overall experience of German Jewry.

This volume addresses the complex topic of the preeminent status of the divine feminine power, to be referred also as Female, within the theosophical structures of many important Kabbalists, Sabbatean believers, and Hasidic masters. This privileged status is part of a much broader vision of the Female as stemming from a very high root within the divine world, then She was emanated and constitutes the tenth, lower divine power, and even in this lower state She is sometime conceived of governing this world and as equal to the divine Male. Finally, She is conceived of as returning to Her original place in special moments, the days of Sabbath, the Jewish Holidays or in the eschatological era. Her special dignity is sometime related to Her being the telos of creation, and as the first entity that emerged in the divine thought, which has been later on generated. In some cases, an uroboric theosophy links the Female Malkhut, directly to the first divine power, Keter. The author points to the possible impact of some of the Kabbalistic discussions on conceptualizations of the feminine in the Renaissance period.

The Book of Job has held a central role in defining the project of modernity from the age of Enlightenment until today. This volume engages this question and offers new perspectives on the tragic bent of the Book of Job, on its dramatic irony, on Job's position as mourner, and the unique representation of the Joban body in pain.

The Book of Job has held a central role in defining the project of modernity from the age of Enlightenment until today. This volume engages this question and offers new perspectives on the tragic bent of the Book of Job, on its dramatic irony, on Job's position as mourner, and the unique representation of the Joban body in pain.

This volume deals with the significance of the avant-garde(s) for modern Jewish culture and the impact of the Jewish tradition on the artistic production of the avant-garde, be they reinterpretations of literary, artistic, philosophical or theological texts/traditions, or novel theoretical openings linked to elements from Judaism or Jewish culture, thought, or history.

This collection features essays by leading scholars on the philosophical, theological, poetic and cultural aspects of lament, touching on the textual traditions of lament in Judaism, from Biblical, rabbinic and medieval iterations to contemporary Yemenite oral lamentations.

This collection features essays by leading scholars on the philosophical, theological, poetic and cultural aspects of lament, touching on the textual traditions of lament in Judaism, from Biblical, rabbinic and medieval iterations to contemporary Yemenite oral lamentations.