A Time to Gather
A Time to Gather

Author: Jason Lustig

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 019756352X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How do people link the past to the present, marking continuity in the face of the fundamental discontinuities of history? A Time to Gather argues that historical records took on potent value in modern Jewish life as both sources of history and anchors of memory because archives presented oneway of transmitting Jewish culture and history from one generation to another as well as making claims of access to an "authentic" Jewish culture. Indeed, both before the Holocaust and in its aftermath, Jewish leaders around the world felt a shared imperative to muster the forces and resources ofJewish life and culture. It was a "time to gather," a feverish era of collecting and conflict in which archive making was both a response to the ruptures of modernity and a mechanism for communities to express their cultural hegemony.Jason Lustig explores these themes across the arc of the twentieth century by excavating three distinctive archival traditions, that of the Cairo Genizah (and its transfer to Cambridge in the 1890s), folkloristic efforts like those of YIVO, and the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden (Central or TotalArchive of the German Jews) formed in Berlin in 1905. Lustig presents archive-making as an organizing principle of twentieth-century Jewish culture, as a metaphor of great power and broad symbolic meaning with the dispersion and gathering of documents falling in the context of the Jews' longdiasporic history. In this light, creating archives was just as much about the future as it was about the past.

How Jews Became Germans
How Jews Became Germans

Author: Deborah Sadie Hertz

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0300110944

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, an urgent priority was to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country’s premier Jewish city. Deborah Hertz’s discovery of these records, the Judenkartei, was the first step on a long research journey that has led to this compelling book. Hertz begins the book in 1645, when the records begin, and traces generations of German Jewish families for the next two centuries. The book analyzes the statistics and explores letters, diaries, and other materials to understand in a far more nuanced way than ever before why Jews did or did not convert to Protestantism. Focusing on the stories of individual Jews in Berlin, particularly the charismatic salon woman Rahel Levin Varnhagen and her husband, Karl, a writer and diplomat, Hertz humanizes the stories, sets them in the context of Berlin’s evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.

My Future Is in America
My Future Is in America

Author: Jocelyn Cohen

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2008-04-05

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 0814716954

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1942, YIVO held a contest for the best autobiography by a Jewish immigrant on the theme “Why I Left the Old Country and What I Have Accomplished in America.” Chosen from over two hundred entries, and translated from Yiddish, the nine life stories in My Future Is in America provide a compelling portrait of American Jewish life in the immigrant generation at the turn of the twentieth century. The writers arrived in America in every decade from the 1890s to the 1920s. They include manual workers, shopkeepers, housewives, communal activists, and professionals who came from all parts of Eastern Europe and ushered in a new era in American Jewish history. In their own words, the immigrant writers convey the complexities of the transition between the Old and New Worlds. An Introduction places the writings in historical and literary context, and annotations explain historical and cultural allusions made by the writers. This unique volume introduces readers to the complex world of Yiddish-speaking immigrants while at the same time elucidating important themes and topics of interest to those in immigration studies, ethnic studies, labor history, and literary studies. Published in conjunction with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

New Essays in American Jewish History
New Essays in American Jewish History

Author: Pamela Susan Nadell

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781602801486

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the American Jewish Archives and the tenth anniversary of Gary P. Zola as its Director, New Essays in American Jewish History includes twenty-two new articles representing the best in modern American and Jewish scholarship. More than a celebration, New Essays serves as a scholarly benchmark in the growing field of American Jewish studies." --Amazon.com.

Social Discredit
Social Discredit

Author: Janine Stingel

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780773520103

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Social Discredit Janine Stingel exposes a crucial, yet previously neglected, part of Social Credit history - the virulent, anti-Jewish campaign it undertook before, during, and after the Second World War. While most Canadians acknowledged the perils of race hatred in the wake of the Holocaust, Social Credit intensified its anti-Semitic campaign. By examining Social Credit's anti-Semitic propaganda and the reaction of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Stingel details their mutual antagonism and explores why Congress was unable to stop Social Credit's blatant defamation. She argues that Congress's ineffective response was part of a broader problem in which passivity and a belief in "quiet diplomacy" undermined many of its efforts to combat intolerance. Stingel shows that both Social Credit and Congress changed considerably in the post-war period, as Social Credit abandoned its anti-Semitic trappings and Congress gradually adopted an assertive and pugnacious public relations philosophy that made it a champion of human rights in Canada. Social Discredit offers a fresh perspective on both the Social Credit movement and the Canadian Jewish Congress, substantively revising Social Credit historiography and providing a valuable addition to Canadian Jewish studies.

Jerusalem on the Amur
Jerusalem on the Amur

Author: Henry Felix Srebrnik

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2008-10-03

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 0773577815

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Canadian Jewish Communist movement, an influential ideological voice within the Canadian left, played a major role in the politics of Jewish communities in cities such as Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, as well as many smaller centres, between the 1920s and the 1950s. Jerusalem on the Amur looks at the interlocking group of left-wing Jewish organizations that shared the political views of the Canadian Communist Party and were vocal proponents of policies perceived as beneficial to the Jewish working class. Focusing on the Association for Jewish Colonization in Russia, known by its transliterated acronym as the ICOR, and the Canadian Ambijan Committee, Henry Srebrnik uses Yiddish-language books, newspapers, pamphlets, and other materials to trace the ideological and material support provided by the Canadian Jewish Communist movement to Birobidzhan.