The German-Jewish Experience Revisited

"This volume 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"--

In the past decades the 'German-Jewish phenomenon' (Derrida) has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars from various fields: Jewish studies, intellectual history, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, critical theory. In all its complex dimensions, the post-enlightenment German-Jewish experience is overwhelmingly regarded as the most quintessential and charged meeting of Jews with the project of modernity. Perhaps for this reason, from the eighteenth century through to our own time it has been the object of intense reflection, of clashing interpretations and appropriations. In both micro and macro case-studies, this volume engages the multiple perspectives as advocated by manifold interested actors, and analyzes their uses, biases and ideological functions over time in different cultural, disciplinary and national contexts. This volume 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. Steven E. Aschheim, Hebrew University, Israel; Vivian Liska, University of Antwerp, Belgium.

This volume 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

Frontmatter --Preface --Contents --The Jews as Educators of Humanity -- a Christian-Philosemitic Grand Narrative of Jewish Modernity? /Ilany, Ofri --Transfers of Categories: the German-Jewish Experience and Beyond /Idel, Moshe --German Classicism and Judaism /Witte, Bernd --Aliens vs. Predators: Cosmopolitan Jews vs. Jewish Nomads /Gilman, Sander L. --Between Decay and Doom: Zionist Discourses of "Untergang" in Germany, 1890 to 1933 /Vogt, Stefan --Popular Entertainment and Mass Media: The Central Arenas of German-Jewish Cultural Engagement /Jelavich, Peter --Aby Warburg and Weimar Jewish Culture: Navigating Normative Narratives, Counternarratives, and Historical Context /Levine, Emily J. --The Jewish Places of Weimar Cinema: Reconsidering Karl Grune's The Street /Ashkenazi, Ofer --Jewish Liberalism in the Weimar Republic? Reconsidering a Key Element of Political Culture in the Interwar Era /Hacke, Jens --History in the House of the Hangman: How Po stwar Germany Became a Key Site for the Study of Jewish History /Rahden, Till van --Non-Jewish Perspectives on German-Jewish History. A Generational Project? /Schüler-Springorum, Stefanie --Rabbi S.R. Hirsch and his Perception of Germany and German Jewry /Morgenstern, Matthias --Between East and West: Pauline Wengeroff and her Cultural History of the Jews of Russia /Magnus, Shulamit S. --The Anti-Nazi Plays of Habimah during the 1930s and the Making of Eretz-Israel Bildung /Zer-Zion, Shelly --Berlin and Jerusalem: Toward German-Hebrew Studies /Eshel, Amir ; Rokem, Na'ama --Postscript /Aschheim, Steven E. ; Liska, Vivian --Notes on Contributors.

This volume 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.