The New German Jewry and the European Context: The Return of the European Jewish Diaspora

Among Jews in the Diaspora, recent years and especially recent months have seen a growing disenchantment with Israeli politics and with Israel's claim as the only legitimate basis for Jewish existence. At the same time, European Jews have begun to reassert their own traditions in contrast to both America and Israel. As the case of German Jewry makes clear, much of this return of Diaspora comes from the Jewish periphery: women, Russian Jewish immigrants, Jews not recognised by Jewish law and Gays and Lesbians. But German Jews are also facing the involvement of non-Jewish Germans in Jewish culture, as both a boost and as an irritant. Ten internationally distinguished scholars are addressing these and other issues.

Departing from the recent critical literature on the emergence of a new German Jewry, this volume proposes a new perspective on the post-1980s phenomenon of re-emerging Jewish culture in Germany as a case study for wider developments in Europe and the international context.

Y. MICHAL BODEMANN is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Introduction: The Return of the European Jewish Diaspora--Y. M. Bodemann * PART I: A EUROPEAN JEWISH SPACE? * Can One Reconcile the Jewish World and Europe?--D. Pinto * Residues of Empire: The Paradigmatic Meaning of Jewish Trans-Territorial Experience for an Integrated European History--D. Diner * PART II: THE NEW DIASPORIC FIELD * Can the Experience of Diaspora Judaism serve as a Model for Islam in Today's Multicultural Europe?--S. Gilman * Learning Diaspora: German Turks and the Jewish Narrative--Y. M. Bodemann, and G. Yurdakul * PART III: GERMAN-JEWISH LIMINALITIES * Jewish Studies or Gentile Studies? A Discipline in Search of its Subject--L. Weissberg * How Jewish is it? W. G. Sebald and Contemporary German-Jewish Writing: L. Morris * PART IV: RUSSIAN SPEAKING JEWS AND TRANSNATIONALISM * Homo Sovieticus in Disneyland: The Jewish Communities in Germany Today--J. Kessler * Fifteen Years of Russian-Jewish Immigration to Germany: Successes and Setbacks--J. H. Schoeps and O. Glöckner * In the Ethnic Twilight: The Paths of Russian Jews in Germany--Y. M. Bodemann and O. Bagno * Afterword--J. M. Peck