Synopses & Reviews
In the period from 1840 to 1900 the British image of the Jew progressed from a collection of stereotypes -- the financier, the peddler, the sharp entrepreneur, the rather shady ancillary of the machinery of the law -- to a more accurate representation of a Victorian bourgeois with distinctive religious practices and traditions.
Anne and Roger Cowen have chosen nearly 150 contemporary images -- from magazines such as the Illustrated London News, Punch, and the Graphic -- that illustrate this change, and have added a full commentary which puts each picture into its social and political context. The result is a fascinating insight into nineteenth-century attitudes and a valuable source on the social history of the Jews in Britain.
Synopsis
What is fair? How do rights join hands with generosity? How can punishment be justified? Is there recompense for human suffering? What sense can we make of immortality, or of the idea of a messianic age? In On Justice Lenn Goodman offers the first general theory of justice for more than a century to tap the riches of the Jewish tradition-biblical, rabbinic, and philosophical-and bring its texts into dialogue with the classic works of Western ethics and political philosophy. Against the backdrop of conversation he opens up-with Saadiah, Halevi, Maimonides, and Spinoza, with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Rawls-Goodman develops a fresh, ontological approach to the core issues of ethics, politics, and the human condition. The original ideas of On Justice will engage both Jewish and non-Jewish philosophers and students of society and ethics.
Synopsis
When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, Britain was home to only 30,000 Jews and they did not yet have full political rights. By the end of the century their numbers had increased about sevenfold, and practising Jews had taken their places in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Victoria's reign therefore saw a tremendous change in the profile of Jews within British society. The Victorian period was also one of economic transition for British Jews. While initially in a narrow range of predominantly working-class or marginal occupations with only a small upper-class elite, Jews became increasingly middle-class during these years; they began to enter the professions, and to move from inner London to fashionable suburbs. Increasingly, Britain's Jews were British-born and of British descent, and proclaimed their loyalty to British ideals. From 1881 on, however, the position changed dramatically: a mass of Jewish immigrants arriving from Russia, made conspicuous by their foreign dress, appearance, language, and habits, prompted the emergence of an 'Aliens Question' into the British political arena. The image of Jews changed yet again.
All these developments were picked up in the illustrated magazines of the time: the object of a magazine is to interest its readers, and the unfamiliar may be more compelling reading than the commonplace. To illustrate the social history of the Jews in Victorian Britain, the authors therefore combed the Illustrated London News, Punch, and The Graphic and selected nearly 150 illustrations, with commentary, to show how the British image of the Jew developed in this period. The topics considered include early Victorian attitudes to Jews; the leading Jewish families and other prominent Jews; the Jewish way of life; immigrant Jews; Jewish life abroad; and the Jew in art. The book includes an introductory essay by V. D. Lipman, late Director of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings for England.
Table of Contents
Early attitudes towards Jews -- Three prominent families: the Rothschilds, the Sassoons, the Montefiores -- Other prominent Jews -- The Jewish way of life -- The immigrants -- Jewish life abroad: places and people -- The Jew in art.