Synopses & Reviews
Although fewer American Jews today describe themselves as religious, they overwhelmingly report a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Indeed, Jewish peoplehood has eclipsed religion—as well as ethnicity and nationality—as the essence of what binds Jews around the globe to one another. In Jewish Peoplehood, Noam Pianko highlights the current significance and future relevance of “peoplehood” by tracing the rise, transformation, and return of this novel term. The book tells the surprising story of peoplehood. Though it evokes a sense of timelessness, the term actually emerged in the United States in the 1930s, where it was introduced by American Jewish leaders, most notably Rabbi Stephen Wise and Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, with close ties to the Zionist movement. It engendered a sense of unity that transcended religious differences, cultural practices, geographic distance, economic disparity, and political divides, fostering solidarity with other Jews facing common existential threats, including the Holocaust, and establishing a closer connection to the Jewish homeland. But today, Pianko points out, as globalization erodes the dominance of nationalism in shaping collective identity, Jewish peoplehood risks becoming an outdated paradigm. He explains why popular models of peoplehood fail to address emerging conceptions of ethnicity, nationalism, and race, and he concludes with a much-needed roadmap for a radical reconfiguration of Jewish collectivity in an increasingly global era. Innovative and provocative, Jewish Peoplehood provides fascinating insight into a term that assumes an increasingly important position at the heart of American Jewish and Israeli life.
Review
"This short book is a highly theoretical exploration of how to engage in original and erudite Jewish studies. It encourages the reader to seek new avenues for source material and develop innovative analytical models to better understand the Jewish experience."
Review
andquot;
Space and Place in Jewish Studies is a valuable introduction to the roles that locations, real and imagined, have played in Jewish historical experiences, literary and artistic works, and scholarship.andquot;
Review
andquot;Benor's engaging and innovative study of language and identity surprises, delights, and educates. Becoming Frum is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand Jewish language and culture today.andquot;
Review
andldquo;
Becoming Frum offers a nuanced visual and sound portrait of Orthodox Jewish life, enabling us to hear the way individualsandrsquo; identities evolve.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;This volume by Benor is a sociolinguistic study of non-Orthodox Jews becoming frum (religious) by returning to the beliefs and practices of Orthodox Jewish life. Nine well-researched chapters underscore the state of hesitation, decision, and action of returnees.
Becoming Frum encodes dress change, eating habits, social outlook, and an impressive array of 'dos and don'ts' that will identify the newly observant. Very informative is Benor's investigative scrutiny of
frumster speech (religious Yinglish). This is a strong ethnographic study of issues and lessons related to becoming religiously Orthodox observant. Recommended.andquot;
Review
"Olga Litvak marshals stunning erudition in a nigh-magical fashion as she revises the reigning conception of the Haskalah as a Jewish version of the European Enlightenment."
Synopsis
Jewish Studies, the first volume in a groundbreaking new series, Key Words in Jewish Studies, introduces the basic approach of the series by organizing discussion around key concepts in the field that have emerged over the last two centuries: history and science, race and religion, self and community, identity and memory. The book is oriented by contemporary critical theory, especially feminist and postcolonial studies, and the multidisciplinary approaches of cultural studies.
By looking backward and forward—and across continents and disciplines—to unearth the evolution of the scholarly study of Jews, Andrew Bush provides a comprehensive introduction to the development of Jewish studies from the turn of the nineteenth century to the present. In the course of engaging scholarship on periods from the classical to the contemporary and from the disciplines of history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and literary studies, Bush questions male-dominated and Ashkenazi-centric visions of the field. He concludes with an experimental exposition of a new Jewish studies for a time where attention to difference has overtaken the security of canons and commonalities.
Synopsis
Jewish Studies, the first volume in a groundbreaking new series, Key Words in Jewish Studies, introduces the basic approach of the series by organizing discussion around key concepts in the field that have emerged over the last two centuries: history and science, race and religion, self and community, identity and memory. The book is oriented by contemporary critical theory, especially feminist and postcolonial studies, and the multidisciplinary approaches of cultural studies.
Synopsis
Jewish peoplehood has eclipsed religion—as well as ethnicity and nationality—as the prevailing definition of what it means to be a Jew. In Jewish Peoplehood, Noam Pianko examines the history, the current significance, and the future relevance of a term that assumes an increasingly important position in American Jewish and Israeli life.
Synopsis
Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.
Synopsis
From stories of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs and their children, through the Gospel’s Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and to modern Jewish families in fiction, film, and everyday life, the family has been considered key to transmitting Jewish identity. Current discussions about the Jewish family’s supposed traditional character and its alleged contemporary crisis tend to assume that the dynamics of Jewish family life have remained constant from the days of Abraham and Sarah to those of Tevye and Golde in
Fiddler on the Roof and on to Philip Roth’s
Portnoy’s Complaint.
Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue instead that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents. The book shows the vast canvas of history and culture as well as the social pressures and strategies that have helped shape Jewish families, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.
Synopsis
Scholars in the humanities have become increasingly interested in questions of how space is produced and perceivedandmdash;and they have found that this consideration of human geography greatly enriches our understanding of cultural history. This andldquo;spatial turnandrdquo; equally has the potential to revolutionize Jewish Studies, complicating familiar notions of Jews as andldquo;people of the Book,andrdquo; displaced persons with only a common religious tradition and history to unite them.
Space and Place in Jewish Studies embraces these exciting critical developments by investigating what andldquo;spaceandrdquo; has meant within Jewish culture and traditionandmdash;and how notions of andldquo;Jewish space,andrdquo; diaspora, and home continue to resonate within contemporary discourse, bringing space to the foreground as a practical and analytical category. Barbara Mann takes us on a journey from medieval Levantine trade routes to the Eastern European shtetl to the streets of contemporary New York, introducing readers to the variety of ways in which Jews have historically formed communities and created a sense of place for themselves. Combining cutting-edge theory with rabbinics, anthropology, and literary analysis, Mann offers a fresh take on the Jewish experience.
Synopsis
When non-Orthodox Jews become frum (religious), they encounter much more than dietary laws and Sabbath prohibitions. They find themselves in the midst of a whole new culture, involving matchmakers, homemade gefilte fish, and Yiddish-influenced grammar. Becoming Frumand#160;explainsand#160;how these newcomers learn Orthodox language and culture through their interactions with community veterans and other newcomers. Some take on as much as they can as quickly as they can, going beyond the norms of those raised in the community. Others maintain aspects of theirand#160;pre-Orthodox selves, yielding unique combinations, like Matisyahuandrsquo;s reggae music or Hebrew wordsand#160;and sing-song intonation used with American slang, as in andldquo;mamish (really) keepinandrsquo; it real.andrdquo;
Sarah Bunin Benor brings insight into the phenomenon of adopting a new identity based on ethnographic andand#160;sociolinguistic research among men and women in an American Orthodox community. Her analysis is applicable to other situations of adult language socialization, such as students learning medical jargon or Canadians moving to Australia. Becoming Frum offers a scholarly and accessibleand#160;look at the linguistic and cultural process of andldquo;becoming.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Conventionally translated as the “Jewish Enlightenment,” the Haskalah propelled Jews into modern life. Based on imaginative and historically grounded readings of primary sources, Olga Litvak presents a compelling case for rethinking the relationship between the Haskalah and the experience of political and social emancipation. Litvak challenges the prevailing view that the Haskalah provided the philosophical mainspring for Jewish liberalism.
Synopsis
Commonly translated as the “Jewish Enlightenment,” the Haskalah propelled Jews into modern life. Olga Litvak argues that the idea of a Jewish modernity, championed by adherents of this movement, did not originate in Western Europe’s age of reason. Litvak contends that the Haskalah spearheaded a Jewish religious revival, better understood against the background of Eastern European Romanticism.
Based on imaginative and historically grounded readings of primary sources, Litvak presents a compelling case for rethinking the relationship between the Haskalah and the experience of political and social emancipation. Most importantly, she challenges the prevailing view that the Haskalah provided the philosophical mainspring for Jewish liberalism.
In Litvak’s ambitious interpretation, nineteenth-century Eastern European intellectuals emerge as the authors of a Jewish Romantic revolution. Fueled by contradictory longings both for community and for personal freedom, the poets and scholars associated with the Haskalah questioned the moral costs of civic equality and the achievement of middle-class status. In the nineteenth century, their conservative approach to culture as the cure for the spiritual ills of the modern individual provided a powerful argument for the development of Jewish nationalism. Today, their ideas are equally resonant in contemporary debates about the ramifications of secularization for the future of Judaism.
About the Author
SARAH BUNIN BENOR is an associate professor of contemporary Jewish studies at Hebrew Union Collegeandndash;Jewish Institute of Religion. She has published and lectured widely on sociolinguistics, Jewish languages, and Orthodox Jews.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Transcription Conventions
1. Introduction: Orthodox Jews and Language Socialization
2. andquot;Now You Look Like a Ladyandquot;: Adventures in Enthnographic and Sociolinguistic Fieldwork
3. andquot;He Has Tzitzis Hanging Out of His Ponytailandquot;: Orthodox Cultural Practices and How BTs Adapt Them
4. andquot;This Is Not What to Recordandquot;: Yiddish, Hebrew, and the English of Orthodox Jews
5. andquot;Torah or Toyrahandquot;: Language and the Modern Orthodox Black Hat Continuum
6. andquot;Just Keepin' It Real, Mamishandquot;: Why Ba'alei Teshuva Adopt (or Avoid) Orthodox Language
7. andquot;I Finally Got the Lingoandquot;: Progression in Newcomers' Acquisition of Orthodox Language
8. andquot;A Ba'al Teshuva Freakandquot;: Distinguishing Practies of Newly Orthodox Jews
9. Matisyahu and My Fair Lady: Reflections on Adult Language Socialization
Notes
Bibliography
Index