| The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture Contributor(s): Schweid, Eliezer (Author), Levin, Leonard (Editor), Hadary, Amnon (Translator) |
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ISBN: 1936235099 ISBN-13: 9781936235094 Publisher: Academic Studies Press OUR PRICE: $27.55 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2008 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Judaism - History - Social Science | Jewish Studies - Literary Criticism | Jewish |
| Dewey: 296.090 |
| Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (0.97 lbs) 292 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish - Religious Orientation - Jewish |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of Jewish culture. This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organizes and relates them from this vantage point. The first Jewish modernization movements perceived culture as the defining trait of the outside alien social environment to which Jewry had to adapt. To be cultured was to be modern-European, as opposed to medieval-ghetto-Jewish. In short order, however, the Jewish religious legacy was redefined retrospectively as a historical culture, with fateful consequences for the conception of Judaism as a humanly- and not only divinely-mandated regime. The conception of Judaism-as-culture took two main forms: an integrative, vernacular Jewish culture that developed in tandem with the integration of Jews into the various nations of western-central Europe and America, and a national Hebrew culture which, though open to the inputs of modern European society, sought to develop a revitalized Jewish national identity that ultimately found expression in the revival of the Jewish homeland and the State of Israel. |