Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
By focusing on the Jewish textual traditions the book series Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts examines both the continuity of a tradition through its transmission of canonical, classical and contemporary texts, as well as the ways that a tradition must continuously adapt itself to respond to new intellectual, historical, social and political contexts. Since there is no reading that is not also an interpretation, imbuing the past with concerns of the present day, the volumes in this series will examine the Jewish textual tradition through questions of its transmissibility, focusing on how these texts give rise to new commentaries, translations and adaptations. By attending to the evolving, topical concerns of Judaism, understood as a living textual tradition, and by fostering dialogue between literary, philosophical, political and religious perspectives, the book series, which consists of original scholarship and proceedings of international conferences, reflects contemporary concerns of Jewish Studies in the broadest sense.
Editorial Board
Prof. Robert Alter (University of California, Berkeley)
Prof. Steven E. Aschheim (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Prof. Richard I. Cohen (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Prof. Mark H. Gelber (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva)
Prof. Moshe Halbertal (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Prof. Christine Hayes (Yale University, New Haven)
Prof. Moshe Idel (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)
Prof. Samuel Moyn (Columbia University, New York)
Prof. Ada Rapoport-Albert (University College London)
Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld (Indiana University, Bloomington)
Prof. David Ruderman (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
Prof. Bernd Witte, (Heinrich Heine Universitt, Dsseldorf)
Synopsis
This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies ) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.