Spinoza’s Jewish Modernities

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
Great Culture

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.

scholarly journals Gender, Jewish Identity, and Cultural Memory in the Poetry of Rhea Tregebov

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donna Krolik Hollenberg
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
Parent Child

Rhea Tregebov’s self consciousness as a woman facilitated her developing self consciousness as a Canadian Jew, a process recorded in her five books of poetry. In the course of this work, her reflections on the social meanings of motherhood are particularly important. When insights about the parent-child bond are transferred to reflections about the meanings of modern Jewish history, particularly the Holocaust, the poet’s understanding of her role is extended. The result is an ambitious collection of elegies in which she changes the structure of mourning specific to that genre.

Georg Simmel’s Logic of the Future: ‘The Stranger’, Zionism, and ‘Bounded Contingency’

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 71-94
Author(s):  
Amos Morris-Reich
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Descent ◽  
The Stranger

For reasons that have more to do with the historiographical traditions of modern Jewish history and the history of critical thought than history itself, Georg Simmel – of Jewish descent – is rarely discussed within the frame of modern Jewish history. Bringing the two together as a theoretical contribution to Simmel studies and modern Jewish history alike, this article explores Simmel’s logic of contingency in the context of modern Jewish history. Which forms and types could Jews realistically seek to fulfill from the perspective of Simmel’s thought? Which could they hope to escape and what could they expect from the future? The author suggests that in answering these questions we disclose a peculiar notion of ‘bounded contingency’ embedded in Simmel’s positing of a non-binary, ‘gray area’ between the necessary and the impossible. This hypothesis is tested in several distinct contexts: a letter on Zionism from around 1900; an odd passage on love in the excursus on ‘The Stranger’ (1908); and a letter on individuals of Jewish background in German academia (1906). Simmel’s coherency lies in the ‘realist’ approach he adopts to reality as the domain of the contingently possible. When applied to Jewish history in general and Zionism in particular, this notion not only explains why Zionism is unfeasible but also demystifies its emergence as an attempt to escape the status of stranger in Europe. It also evinces why this Jewish national enterprise inevitably carried within it the seeds of the problem it sought to solve.

Is Tunisia Ready for a Jewish Museum? Perspectives on the Current Debates Surrounding the Status of Jewish History in My Country

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-240
Author(s):  
Habib Kazdaghli
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Democratic Transition ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Cultural Taboos ◽  
French Protectorate ◽  
Democratic Ideals ◽  
Jewish Museum

This chapter charts the genesis of the Museum of Jewish-Tunisian Heritage in Tunis. Jewish culture has been exhibited in Tunisian museums since the beginning of the French Protectorate in 1881. Until recently, however, the idea of a museum entirely dedicated to Jewish-Tunisian history and culture was simply unconceivable in Tunisia, as Judaism was solidly understood as being tied to Israeli politics. Kazdaghli explains how the Jewish-Tunisian community, domestically and overseas, have seized the so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ and the democratic ideals it purports to push for the establishment of a joint-venture Museum of Jewish-Tunisian Heritage in Tunis. In a context of new democratic achievements, the museum project is publicised as an instrument of social change, a partner to the democratic transition. However, the chapter shows that such a project proves a difficult exercise as the organising committee navigates cultural taboos surrounding Judaism in Tunisian society, as well as conflicting patrimonial opinions within the community itself, in Tunisia and within the diaspora.

scholarly journals Rachel Lichtenstein’s Narrative Mosaics

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Phyllis Lassner
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Recent Immigrants ◽  
Multimedia Art ◽  
Long Time ◽  
East End

Rachel Lichtenstein’s books, along with her multimedia art, represent her explorations of her British Jewish identity and her place in British Jewish culture as an imaginative odyssey. Her work represents research, stories, and traces from London’s Jewish past and multicultural present as well as from Poland and Israel, her family’s accounts, and the testimony of recent immigrants and long-time residents. Lichtenstein is a place writer whose artistic projects subject her relationship to the Jewish past and East End to critical interrogation through a metaphorical method composed of fragments that represent varied segments of Jewish history and memory as well as wandering as a narrative of personal exploration.

History and Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Lorenz
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
History Writing ◽  
True Nature ◽  
The Status ◽  
Current Return ◽  
Theoretical Reflection ◽  
Three Phases

This introductory chapter assesses the role of theory in history and traces the developments in the discipline of history. Theoretical reflection about the ‘true nature’ of history fulfils three interrelated practical functions. First, theory legitimizes a specific historical practice—a specific way of ‘doing history’—as the best one from an epistemological and a methodological point of view. Second, theory sketches a specific programme of doing history. Third, theoretical reflections demarcate a specific way of ‘doing history’ from other ways of ‘doing history’, which are excluded or degraded. The chapter then considers three phases of theoretical changes from analytical to narrative philosophy of history, and then on to ‘history from below’ and the ‘presence’ of history, ultimately leading to the current return of fundamental ontological and normative questions concerning the status of history and history-writing.

scholarly journals Gender and Migrant Roles in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Films: Cinema as an Apparatus of Reconfiguration of National Identity and ‘Otherness’

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Marianna Charitonidou
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship

The article examines an ensemble of gender and migrant roles in post-war Neorealist and New Migrant Italian films. Its main objective is to analyze gender and placemaking practices in an ensemble of films, addressing these practices on a symbolic level. The main argument of the article is that the way gender and migrant roles were conceived in the Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Cinema was based on the intention to challenge certain stereotypes characterizing the understanding of national identity and ‘otherness’. The article presents how the roles of borgatari and women function as devices of reconceptualization of Italy’s identity, providing a fertile terrain for problematizing the relationship between migration studies, urban studies and gender studies. Special attention is paid to how migrants are related to the reconceptualization of Italy’s national narrations. The Neorealist model is understood here as a precursor of the narrative strategies that one encounters in numerous films belonging to the New Migrant cinema in Italy. The article also explores how certain aspects of more contemporary studies of migrant cinema in Italy could illuminate our understanding of Neorealist cinema and its relation to national narratives. To connect gender representation and migrant roles in Italian cinema, the article focuses on the analysis of the status of certain roles of women, paying particular attention to Anna Magnagi’s roles.

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