Synopses & Reviews
The articles in this collection originated from an international symposium at the University of Haifa and centre around a major topic in German, European and American literature, i.e. the way in which Jewish self-definition, both positive and negative, has materialized as a product of the tensions between secular culture and society on the one hand, and Jewish tradition and religion on the other. The broad range of authors (most of them of German-speaking origin) necessarily results in an almost equally broad range of answers to this central question. The volume is dedicated to the memory of the Israeli literary scholar Chaim Shoham.
Synopsis
This book-series, initiated in 1992, has an interdisciplinary orientation; it is published in English and German and comprises research monographs, collections of essays and editions of source texts dealing with German-Jewish literary and cultural history, in particular from the period covering the 18th to 20th centuries.
The closer definition of the term German-Jewish applied to literature and culture is an integral part of its historical development. Primarily, the decisive factor is that from the middle of the 18th century German gradually became the language of choice for Jews, and Jewish authors started writing in German, rather than Yiddish or Hebrew, even when they were articulating Jewish themes. This process is directly connected an historical change in mentality and social factors which led to a gradual opening towards a non-Jewish environment, which in its turn was becoming more open. In the Enlightenment, German society becomes the standard of reference - initially for an intellectual elite. Against this background, the term German-Jewish literature refers to the literary work of Jewish authors writing in German to the extent that explicit or implicit Jewish themes, motifs, modes of thought or models can be identified in them.
From the beginning of the 19th century at the latest, however, the image of Jews in the work of non-Jewish writers, determined mainly by anti-Semitism, becomes a factor in German-Jewish literature. There is a tension between Jewish writers' authentic reference to Jewish traditions or existence and the anti-Semitic marking and discrimination against everything Jewish which determines the overall development of the history of German-Jewish literature and culture. This series provides an appropriate forum for research into the whole problematic area.
Synopsis
Die 1992 gegr ndete Buchreihe ist interdisziplin r ausgerichtet; sie umfasst wissenschaftliche Monographien, Aufsatzsammlungen und kommentierte Quelleneditionen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Der Begriff deutsch-j dische Literatur bzw. Kultur verweist auf Werke j discher Autoren in deutscher Sprache, insoweit j dische Aspekte erkennbar sind. Aber auch das h ufig vom Antisemitismus gepr gte Judenbild nichtj discher Autoren wird zu einem Faktor der literarisch vermittelten deutsch-j dischen Beziehungsgeschichte. Der Erforschung des gesamten Problemfelds bietet die Reihe ein angemessenes Forum.