The Trace of Political Theology in Stanisław Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Tekstualia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (50) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Jazienicki
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Biographical Research ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Theoretical Frame

The article focuses on Stanisław Lem’s novel Memoirs Found in a Bathtub which is discussed in the postsecular contexts of the Jewish theology and its political implications. The interpretation is supported by the latest biographical research on Lem’s life which implies that his Jewish identity, concealed by the author in the communist reality, and experience of the Holocaust have been ignored or at least insuffi ciently articulated in Lem criticism. The article analyzes Lem’s novel as an attempt to rethink the main categories of Jewish theology, such as creation, revelation and salvation, as a theoretical frame of this Kafkaesque anti-totalitarian satire. In this work, the writer not only identifi es the theological axis of a modern politics, but also tries to point to a possible – unobtrusively subversive – line of fl ight by adumbrating the “Messianic” strategy of escaping from the Mythical closure of the biopolitical necessity.

scholarly journals On Becoming a Non-Jewish Holocaust Writer: Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Family Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Origins

To appraise Martel’s non-Jewish perspective of Holocaust thematic, it is important to assess it in the context of the Jewish relations with the Holocaust. Even though the Jewish claim to the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been disputed since the end of the war especially in Eastern Europe, the Jewish response determined to a large extent the reception of the disaster on the global scene. On a family level, the children of survivors have identified themselves as the legitimate heirs of the unknowable experience of their parents. On a collective level, the decree of Jewish annihilation constructed a Jewish identity that imposed an obligation to keep the Holocaust memory in the consciousness of the world. Martel proposes to supersede the history of the Holocaust with a story which would downplay the Jewish filiation with the Holocaust, elicit an affiliative response to the event of the non-Jewish writer and consequently integrate it into the memory of humanity at large. However, the Holocaust theme of Beatrice and Virgil refuses to assimilate within the general memory of humanity; rather, the consciousness of the event, which pervades the post-Holocaust world, insists on its constant presence. The omnipresence of the Holocaust blurs the distinctions between the filiative (Jewish) and affiliative (non-Jewish) attitudes toward the Jewish tragedy, gripping the writer in its transcendent horror. Disregarding his ethnic or religious origins, the Holocaust takes over the writer’s personal life and determines his story.

Concerto for Orchestra “The Yellow Stars” by Isaac Schwartz: In the Mirror of Ashkenazi’s Musical Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
И.Ф. Двужильная
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Huge Number ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
The Holocaust

В статье предпринят анализ последнего произведения выдающегося петербургского композитора Исаака Шварца (1923–2009) — мемориального опуса памяти жертв Холокоста. Аргументированно доказывается, что ашкеназская культура, в том числе и музыкальная, была органичной частью всей жизни композитора. Об этом свидетельствуют сформировавшийся в детские годы этнослух И. Шварца, огромное количество песен на идиш, которые он мог играть наизусть часами и, безусловно, тематизм инструментального концерта «Желтые звезды», в котором наряду с цитатным материалом выявляются и многочисленные авторские темы, отмеченные знаком еврейской идентичности. В них прослеживаются традиции синагогальной молитвы, клезмерского музицирования, идишской народной песни. Вместе с тем в работе с тематическим материалом, с формой, с оркестровкой обнаруживается прочная связь И. Шварца с ленинградской-петербургской композиторской школой. The article analyzes the last work of the well-known Petersburg composer Isaac Schwartz (1923–2009) which is a memorial opus in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. It is argued that the Ashkenazi musical culture was a natural part of the composer’s entire life. This is evidenced by the ethnic rumor of Schwartz formed in his childhood, a huge number of songs in Yiddish that he could play by heart for hours and, of course, the themes of the instrumental concerto “The Yellow Stars”, which demonstrates, along with quotation material, numerous author’s themes, marked by Jewish identity. They trace the traditions of synagogue prayer, klezmer music, Yiddish folk song. At the same time, the work with thematic material, with form, and with orchestration, reveals Schwartz’s tight relationship with the Leningrad-Petersburg school of composition.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Masculine Identity ◽  
The Holocaust

This chapter gives a vivid picture of what the Jews had to go through at the hand of the Nazis. It discusses what some Jewish veterans had to do to prove their “Germaness.” The chapter tries to understand the motives of the Jewish victims and what they did in order to cope with the circumstance they were in. It argues that Jewish veterans needed to orient themselves towards normative masculine identity, and and cultivated a distinctive manner of thinking and behaving, where courage, self-assertion, and endurance became the measure against which ideal manhood was evaluated. The chapter raises the question of the complexity of the Jewish identity during the time of the holocaust.

Jewish Liturgical Memory and the Non-Jew

2012 ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Ruth Langer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Jewish Liturgy ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines the power and construction of Jewish memory as well as the image of the religious Other in Jewish liturgy, which has been so heavily conditioned by adversarial biblical narratives and the experience of historical persecution. In the memory shaped by Jewish liturgy — be it the daily Amidah, the High Holiday prayers, Passover and Purim texts, or the Ninth of Av piyutim (liturgical poems) memorializing the destruction of the Temple, the tragedies of the Middle Ages, and the Holocaust — the religious or political Other is portrayed as almost universally negative. The non-Jew — usually considered in the impersonal abstract, rather than the particular other — is a threat to Jewish uniqueness. It disrupts God's covenantal plan for Israel. The chapter then looks at the ongoing tension between making historical memory part of Jewish identity and an openness to allowing history to unfold into a future that may move beyond tragedy.

scholarly journals “Zwischen allen Stühlen”: Reflections on Judaism in Germany in Victor Klemperer’s Post-Holocaust Diaries

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 168
Author(s):  
Sepp
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Soviet Occupation Zone

This article focuses as a case study on Victor Klemperer’s diaristic representation of German-Jewish identity and culture after 1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR. The contribution shows how Klemperer’s professional and social situation remained very uncomfortable even in East Germany. For the diarist, the communist code ‘antifascist/fascist’, just like the code ‘German/un-German’ before it, was tantamount to concealing Jewish origin. His post-Holocaust journals provide an immediate insider’s view of Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust from the perspective of a victim of active persecution. Against this backdrop, the contribution examines how the author’s original German nationalism gradually makes way, caught between contradictory impulses of assimilation and decreed Jewish identity, for a much more complex understanding of his own cultural identity. Klemperer’s diaries highlight a number of tensions that ultimately reflect on the disjunction between living and writing: The divide between a single and changing self lies at the heart of his diaries after 1945, which depict an astute, complex psychogram of the assimilated German-Jewish bourgeoisie that survived the Holocaust and tried to continue living in communist Germany.

scholarly journals Governing the End Times? Planet Politics and the Secular Eschatology of the Anthropocene

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delf Rothe
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Change ◽  
Emergency Management ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
End Times

This article furthers the debate on the political implications of the Anthropocene – the most recent geological epoch marked by catastrophic environmental change – by engaging it through the lens of political theology. The article starts from the observation that discourses on the Anthropocene and related political projects are deeply influenced by a linear temporality and a common orientation towards the threat of the end of time. It distinguishes three competing discourses of the Anthropocene, eco-catastrophism, eco-modernism and planetary realism. The article analyses how these discourses invoke and update key symbols, images, and storylines of Christian political theology. Furthermore, it studies how each discourse mobilises these secularised Christian motifs to promote competing planet political projects. Each of these projects develops a different position towards the unfolding planetary crisis and the related threat of the end of time. Eco-catastrophism calls for a planetary emergency management, eco-modernism promotes ongoing experimentation with the planet, whereas planetary realism translates into what could be called a ‘realpolitik of resilience’. Revealing the Western theological roots of the Anthropocene and planet politics is essential if the emerging literature on the Anthropocene wants to live up to its promise of pluralising and decolonising IR.

scholarly journals The Breakdown of Discourse: Post-Holocaust Jewish Identity and the Scholem-Arendt Exchange

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-110
Author(s):  
Dávid Kaposi
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Rhetorical Analysis ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Moral Frameworks ◽  
State Of Affairs

This article examines the significance of the private-public exchange of letters between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt in the wake of the Eichmann trial. Using rhetorical analysis, it considers the respective arguments concerning Jewish responsibility, the incompatible political-moral frameworks offered to underpin such judgments, and the extreme identities the correspondents construct for each other. In doing so, it identifies the ultimate significance of the exchange with the total breakdown of discourse it symbolically resulted in—in other words, with the consensus pertaining to the Holocaust leading to a complete incommensurability of the respective political-moral positions. Such a state of affairs is finally accounted for, paradoxically, in terms of the far-reaching agreement between Arendt and Scholem, reaching beyond politics and even identity: the total inescapability of Jewishness.

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.

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