Literacy among Jews in Eastern Europe in the Modern Period

2010 ◽  
pp. 190-210
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
East European ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Interesting Topic ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The One ◽  
General Culture

This chapter describes the literacy of the Jews of eastern Europe in the modern period. This is an interesting topic because, on the one hand, these Jews were heirs to a long tradition of literacy. At the same time, they lived in a multilingual world. In that society, Jews usually spoke Yiddish to each other; prayed in Hebrew; came into contact with bureaucrats who spoke the languages of rulers such as Russian or German; and dealt with customers and clients who spoke Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Belorussian. Most of the latter were oppressed languages with limited possibilities for publication and literary expression. Thus, when considering the literacy of east European Jews, one has to consider literacy in their vernacular (Yiddish), in their literary language (Hebrew), and also in non-Jewish languages. Literacy in the first two categories is significant as a reflection of cultural patterns and exposure to the written word. Meanwhile, literacy in the last category is a reflection both of acculturation and exposure or openness to general culture and society.

scholarly journals Sociology in Eastern Europe: Trends and Prospects

Slavic Review ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan Denitch
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Major Stage ◽  
Science Community ◽  
The One ◽  
Seventh World

The Seventh World Congress of Sociologists in Varna, Bulgaria, held in September 1970, marked a major stage in the development of social science, particularly sociology, in the one-party states of Eastern Europe. Taking place in the most orthodox country of an increasingly diverse bloc, the congress was characterized by the largest and best-organized participation to date of sociologists from Eastern Europe. One country in the area—Albania—did not participate at all; and Yugoslavia, which is probably the country with the most developed social science community and institutions, had a notably small delegation. Yet the fact is that for prestige reasons, if no other, the East European countries and the Soviet Union did their best to show the state of their current development of sociology. This was shown in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Most delegates presented papers.

scholarly journals NATO Eastern Flank: Continuity and New Accents in the U.S. Policies in Eastern Europe under the Biden Administration

2021 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Pavel Smirnov
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
Lower Priority ◽  
The Face ◽  
Western European ◽  
Nord Stream ◽  
The One ◽  
Specific Interests ◽  
The U.S

Specific traits of the U.S. policies in Eastern Europe in the first months of the Joe Biden presidency are pre-determined primarily by the Democrats’ desire to normalize the U.S. relationship with the major Western European allies and the EU as a whole, spoiled under Donald Trump. This task makes it necessary to abandon artificial opposing of Eastern Europe to Western Europe. The Biden administration attaches major importance to the issue of common liberal values, which creates certain problems in relations with some East European governments, like Hungary or Poland. Political and diplomatic steps of the new administration in the region, both in a bilateral format and through multilateral forums (in particular the Three Seas Initiative), have revealed, on the one hand, the U.S. desire to keep protecting the security of the region in the face of the Russian and, increasingly Chinese, challenge; on the other hand, lower priority attached to "energy wars" with Russia, gradual waiving of sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, as well as Biden's unwillingness to sacrifice relations with Germany and other Western European allies for the sake of specific interests of countries like Poland, which were conceived by the Trump administration as a counterweight to Western Europe. 

scholarly journals East European Jews – prejudice or pride?

2015 ◽  
pp. 165-179
Author(s):  
Waldemar Szczerbiński
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
East European ◽  
Central Eastern Europe ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Spiritual Legacy

Jews from Central-Eastern Europe play a significant role in the formation of individual and social self-awareness in the Jewish world. It seems that in the Jewish world there exists a polarised approach to the Jews from this part of the world. On the one hand, there is pride, on the other, prejudice verging on shame. Some Jews have identified themselves with the group, others did the opposite, denied having anything to do with them. The most important question of our analyses is: what is the role of Eastern European Jews in building Jewish collective identity? Byron Sherwin, an American Jew, is an example of a great fascination with the Yiddish civilisation. Not only does he recognize and appreciate the spiritual legacy of Jews in Poland for other Jews around the world, but also accords this legacy a pre-eminent status in the collective Jewish identity. At the same time, he is conscious of the fact that not all Jews, if only in the United States, share his view. It is an upshot of the deep prejudice towards the life in the European Diaspora, which has been in evidence for some time. The same applies to the Jews in Israel. The new generations see the spiritual and cultural achievements of the Eastern European Jews as a legacy that should be learned and developed. This engenders hope that the legacy of the Jews of Eastern Europe will be preserved and will become a foundation of identity for future generations. 

THE STRANGE TRIUMPH OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 1933–1950

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK MAZOWER
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
World War ◽  
New Approach ◽  
East European ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
First World

This article explores the origins of the UN's commitment to human rights and links this to the wartime decision to abandon the interwar system of an international regime for the protection of minority rights. After 1918, the League of Nations developed a comprehensive machinery for guaranteeing the national minorities of eastern Europe. But by 1940 the League's policies were widely regarded as a failure and the coalition of forces which had supported them after the First World War had disintegrated. German abuse of the system after 1933, and the Third Reich's use of ethnic German groups as fifth columns to undermine the Versailles settlement were cited by east European politicians as sufficient justification for a new approach which would combine mass expulsion, on the one hand, with a new international doctrine of individual human rights on the other. The Great Powers supported this because they thereby escaped the specific commitments which the previous arrangements had imposed on them, and which Russian control over post-war eastern Europe rendered no longer practicable. But they also supported it because the new rights regime had no binding legal force. In respect, therefore, of the degree to which the principle of absolute state sovereignty was threatened by these arrangements, the rights regime of the new UN represented a considerable weakening of international will compared with the interwar League. But acquiescing in a weaker international organization was probably the price necessary for US and Soviet participation.

scholarly journals Between Empire and Nation-State: Comments on the Pathology of State Formation in Eastern Europe during the ‘Short Twentieth Century’

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-384
Author(s):  
György Péteri
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
State Formation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nation State ◽  
East European ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Supranational Integration ◽  
The One ◽  
Modern Nation State

This essay considers the basic differences between the development of the modern nation-state in west and east European contexts. It suggests that, because the foundations of state formation in the latter in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were ethnonationalist, a long road lies ahead in eastern Europe before the region can free itself from its lengthy captivity between the bad extremes of Empire on the one hand and the ethnonational Nation-State on the other. It disputes the idea that ethnocultural homogeneity within the borders of the nation-state provides a viable solution, even if the way to the creation of such homogeneity may be painful, and claims that policies which aim to create this ethnocultural homogeneity tend to prolong the swing of the region's political organisation between Empire and Nation-State. The only way out of the dilemma would appear to be the inclusion of these states in the processes of voluntary (non-imperial) regional and European supranational integration.

scholarly journals The Republic of Slovenia—Geographical Constants of the New Central-European State

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Gams
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Independent State ◽  
Central European ◽  
East European ◽  
European State ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The One

AbstractThe territory of this new European state is crossed by strategically important passes, the lowest in the entire Alps, leading from the Danubian basin to the Mediterranean (Italy). Thus, the Slovenes had been under cultural, civilizational and political domination of centers from these two parts of Europe until 1918. Because the mountainous land forms, dissected also by valleys and basins, were prone to processes of diffusion rather than fusion, the Slovenes became a national and political subject of their own as late as the nineteenth century. From 1918 to 1990 they were joined to Yugoslavia, a South-East European state, and learnt, to their cost, all the differences between the cultures of West and Central Europe on the one hand, and South-East and Eastern Europe and the Near East on the other. Hence the plebiscite decision by the nation for an independent state.

The Inheritance of the Rabbinate in Eastern Europe

2010 ◽  
pp. 302-323
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Standard Pattern ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East European ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Integral Element

This chapter investigates the inheritance of the rabbinate in eastern Europe. Inheritance of rabbinical posts is almost taken for granted in many contemporary Orthodox or strictly Orthodox Jewish communities. This is true not only in hasidic groups, where inheritance is an integral element of the dynastic system, but in yeshivas and other Orthodox communities as well. It would be tempting but incorrect to assume that there was an unbroken tradition of inheritance of rabbinical posts from antiquity to the modern period. Granted, in many Jewish societies, inheritance of rabbinic leadership was accepted. However, for centuries, the standard pattern of Ashkenazi Jewry was quite different. In medieval and early modern Ashkenazi Jewry, inheritance of rabbinic posts was actually prohibited. In other words, although contemporary inheritance of rabbinical posts appears very traditional and even archaic, in reality it is also a modern innovation. The chapter suggests that it was a practical and reasonable response to changes that took place in the structure of the Jewish community in modern times and that clarifying this development sheds light on the nature of the east European rabbinate and the characteristics of the Jewish community.

Eastern European Jewry in the Modern Period: 1750–1939

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stanislawski
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
East European ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

This article notes that the study of the modern history of East European Jews is not a field driven at present by deep conceptual or ideological divides or abiding scholarly or methodological controversies. The past debates on this score between Israeli and diaspora Jewish scholarship have all but disappeared, as has even more dramatically the attempt at a Marxist version of juedische Wissenschaft. While the major works of the founders of the field from Simon Dubnov on ought to be studied and the impressive resurgence of interest in the history and culture of East European Jewry in the modern age is underway, the work is still largely undone. The crucial challenge to the field is not to succumb to the lachrymose and romanticized stereotypes of Jewish life in Eastern Europe while continuing to explore the history of this the largest Jewry in the world before the Holocaust.

scholarly journals Dispositif Analysis in Eastern Europe: The Outline of a Research Program

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 146-169
Author(s):  
Magdalena Nowicka-Franczak
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Research Program ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
East European ◽  
Research Areas ◽  
The One ◽  
Late Works

The article discusses uses of dispositif analysis inspired by Michel Foucault’s late works, in a context different from the original one. The author presents the main methodological assumptions of dispositif analysis and the factors which result in its critical and interdisciplinary potential not being fully exploited at present. Based on a literature review of dispositif analysis in post-socialist Eastern Europe, the author formulates an interdisciplinary research program aimed at adapting this approach to the study of East European power networks, taking into account both its different historical, cultural, and geopolitical context – compared to the one of West European countries – and Foucault’s conception of neoliberalism. Methodological recommendations are presented in two research areas: 1) labor in the Polish post-transformation society; and 2) reactions to pedophilia in the Polish Catholic Church.

scholarly journals Remembering the Past in Early Modern England: Oral and Written Tradition

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 233-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Fox
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Important Case ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Written Word ◽  
The One

For students of the interaction between oral and written forms of communication the early modern period provides an important case study. England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was far from being an oral society; and yet it was not a completely literate one either. On the one hand, old vernacular traditions had long been infused and supplemented, or corrupted and destroyed, by the written word; on die other hand, only a certain part of the population could read and write or ever relied on the products of literacy. Indeed, as Keidi Thomas has suggested, ‘it is the interaction between contrasting forms of culture, literate and illiterate, oral and written, which gives this period its particular fascination’.

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