54823
2017
2017
eng
111
131
21
35
article
Purdue University Press
West Lafayette
1
2017-09-18
2018-09-18
--
Further foward thriugh the past
From the 1940s well into the 1960s, a new sociocultural constellation let American Jews redefine their relationship to the religious tradition. This article analyzes the response of a religious elite of rabbis and intellectuals to this process, which was driven by various factors. Many American Jews were at least one generation away from traditional Judaism, which seemed out of place in postwar America. Liberal Judaism, with its narrow concept of religion, on the other hand, while fitting a larger social consensus, did not satiate many Jews' spiritual and identity needs. Sensing this deficit, rabbis and other religious thinkers explored broader concepts of Judaism. Religious journals that sprang up in the postwar decades served as vehicles for the attempt to understand Judaism in broader, cultural terms, while preserving a religious core. The article shows how in this search religious thinkers turned to the Eastern European past as a resource. As other groups similarly tried to mine this past for the sake of their present agendas, its reconstruction became a key process in the transformation of postwar American Judaism and its relationship to the tradition.
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
postwar American jews reconfigue the east European tradition in cultural terms
10.1353/sho.2017.0027
0882-8539
1534-5165
wos:2017
WOS:000417993600007
Krah, M (reprint author), Univ Potsdam, Sch Jewish Theol, Jewish Religious & Intellectual Hist, Potsdam, Germany.
2022-04-19T07:35:21+00:00
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Markus Krah
Andere Religionen
Institut für Jüdische Studien und Religionswissenschaft
Referiert
Import
50108
2017
2017
eng
519
533
15
4
101
article
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
Baltimore
1
--
--
--
Clinging to Borders and Boundaries?
American Jewish History
The (Sorry) State of Transnational American Jewish Studies
10.1353/ajh.2017.0066
0164-0178
1086-3141
wos:2017
WOS:000415137000008
Krah, M (reprint author), Univ Potsdam, Jewish Religious & Intellectual Hist, Sch Jewish Theol, Potsdam, Germany.
2021-03-29T12:17:03+00:00
sword
importub
filename=package.tar
01f48817065cf42d2b37c05222052d0c
false
true
Markus Krah
Religion
Referiert
Import
Institut für Jüdische Theologie
40855
2017
2017
eng
111
131
4
35
article
Purdue University Press
Ashland
1
--
--
--
Further forward through the past
From the 1940s well into the 1960s, a new sociocultural constellation let American Jews redefine their relationship to the religious tradition. This article analyzes the response of a religious elite of rabbis and intellectuals to this process, which was driven by various factors. Many American Jews were at least one generation away from traditional Judaism, which seemed out of place in postwar America. Liberal Judaism, with its narrow concept of religion, on the other hand, while fitting a larger social consensus, did not satiate many Jews' spiritual and identity needs. Sensing this deficit, rabbis and other religious thinkers explored broader concepts of Judaism. Religious journals that sprang up in the postwar decades served as vehicles for the attempt to understand Judaism in broader, cultural terms, while preserving a religious core. The article shows how in this search religious thinkers turned to the Eastern European past as a resource. As other groups similarly tried to mine this past for the sake of their present agendas, its reconstruction became a key process in the transformation of postwar American Judaism and its relationship to the tradition.
Shofar : an interdisciplinary journal of Jewish studies
Postwar American jews reconfigure the East European tradition in cultural terms
10.1353/sho.2017.0027
0882-8539
0882-8539
online registration
Markus Krah
Religion
Institut für Jüdische Studien und Religionswissenschaft
Referiert
50107
2017
2017
eng
517
518
2
4
101
other
Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore
1
--
--
--
Introduction: "Re-Framing American Jewish History and Thought: New Transnational Perspectives," Potsdam (Germany), July 20-22, 2016
In recent years, “transnationalism” has become a key concept for historians and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences. However, its overuse threatens to dilute what would otherwise be a distinct approach with promising heuristic potential. This danger seems especially pronounced when the notion of transnationalism is applied to Jewish history, which, paradoxically, most scholars would agree, is at its core transnational. Many studies have analyzed how Jewries in different times and places, from the biblical era to the present, have been shaped by people, ideas, texts, and institutions that migrated across state lines and between cultures. So what is new about transnationalism in Jewish Studies? What new insights does it offer?
American Jewry offers an obvious arena to test transnationalism’s significance as an approach to historical research within Jewish studies. As a “nation of nations,” the United States is made up of a distinct and unique society, built on ideas of diversity and pluralism, and transcending old European concepts of nation and state. The transformative incorporation in American life of cultural, political, and social traditions brought from abroad is one feature of this distinctiveness. American Jewish history and culture, in particular, are best understood in the context of interaction with Jews in other places, both because of American Jews’ roots in and continued entanglement with Europe, and because of their differences from other Jews.
These considerations guided the participants in a roundtable that formed a prologue to an international conference held July 20–22, 2016, at the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany. The conference title, “Re-Framing American Jewish History and Thought: New Transnational Perspectives,” indicated the organizers’ conviction that the transnational approach does have the potential to shed fresh light on the American Jewish experience. The participants were asked to bring their experiences to the table, in an effort to clarify what transnationalism might mean for American Jewish Studies, and where it might yield new approaches and insights.
The conference brought together some thirty scholars of various disciplines from Europe, Israel, and the United States. In addition to exploring a relatively new approach (at least, in the field of American Jewish Studies), the conference also served a second purpose: to further the interest in American Jewry as a subject of scholarly attention in countries outside the U.S., where the topic has been curiously neglected. The assumption underlying the conference was that a transnational perspective on American Jewry would bring to bear the particular interests and skills of scholars working outside the American academy, and thereby complement, rather than replicate, the ways American Jewish Studies have been pursued in North America itself.
American Jewish History
10.1353/ajh.2017.0065
0164-0178
1086-3141
wos:2017
WOS:000415137000007
Gallas, E (reprint author), Univ Leipzig, Simon Dubnow Inst Jewish Hist & Culture, Leipzig, Germany.
2021-03-29T11:49:42+00:00
sword
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Elisabeth Gallas
Anton Hieke
David Jünger
Ulrike Kleinecke
Markus Krah
Religion
Referiert
Import
Institut für Jüdische Theologie