Books in the Jewish Literature and Culture series

';A unique work of art' that captures ';the experiences of an important generation of Russian Jews.... and an important document of its time.' Gabriella Safran,author of Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk's Creator, S. An-Sky S. An-Sky's novel dramatizes the dilemmas of Jewish young people in late Tsarist Russia as they strive to throw off their traditional religious upbringing to adopt a secular and modern identity. The action unfolds in the town of M. in the Pale of Settlement, where an engaging cast of characters wrestles with cultural and social issues. Their exploits culminate in helping a young Jewish woman evade an arranged marriage and a young Russian woman leave home so she can pursue her studies at a European university. This startling novel reveals the tensions and triumphs of coming of age in a revolutionary time. ';An-Sky brilliantly captures a week in the life of young Jewish intellectuals fleeing their tiny villages to find the possibility of personal growth in larger towns where the enlightenment has begun to work its way.' Jewish Book Council ';Michael R. Katz's translation renders another Russian literary gem into fluid and lively English.... The publication of Pioneers in English... appears at an auspicious moment, for readers today may be more receptive than ever to narratives that convey the richness, complexity, and diversity of Jewish life in times of dynamic and decisive change.' Marginalia

Sinister tales written since the early twentieth century by the foremost Hebrew authors, including S. Y. Agnon, Leah Goldberg, and Amos Oz, reveal a darkness at the foundation of Hebrew culture.

Maps the affective landscape of Jewish American culture. This book offers a genealogy of the emotions - shame and self-hatred, nostalgic longing and the impulse to forget - that organized 20th-century Jewish American expressive culture.

Sheds light on the works of Cynthia Ozick, one of America's foremost writers. Arguing that Ozick's fiction is a form of comedy, this title interweaves religion and literature, and illuminates the complex relationship between the comic and the sacred. It explores Ozick's art in works such as "Trust", "The Cannibal Galaxy", and "The Pagan Rabbi".

How have Jews reshaped their identities as Jews in the face of the radical newness called America? This book explores the ways in which exposure to American literary culture - in particular the visionary tradition identified with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman - led American Jewish writers to a new understanding of themselves as Jews.

Analyzes the Holocaust novels of internationally prominent Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld.

Offers a radical interpretation of the writings of Moses Hess, a nineteenth-century German Jewish intellectual figure who was at times religious and secular, traditional and modern, practical and theoretical, socialist and nationalist. This study contributes to the diverse fields of Jewish history, philosophy, Zionism, and religious studies.

Published in Germany in 1920, Sammy Gronemann's satirical novel set in 1903 at the time of the Sixth Zionist Congress follows the life of a baptized Jew, Heinz Lehnsen, as he negotiates legal entanglements, German culture, religious differences, and Zionist aspirations. A chance encounter with a long-lost cousin from a shtetl in Russia further complicates the plot and challenges the characters' notions of Jewish identity and their belief in the claims of the Zionist movement. Gronemann's humor and compassion slyly expose the foibles and contradictions of human behavior. With deep insight into German society, German-Jewish culture, and antisemitism, Utter Chaos paints a highly entertaining portrait of German Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Devoted to the ways in which Holocaust literature and Gulag literature provide contexts for each other, Leona Toker shows how the prominent features of one shed light on the veiled features and methods of the other.

Adds depth to our understanding of the impact of this important man of letters and towering international figure

Examines the emergence of a new generation of Jewish immigrant authors in America, most of whom grew up in formerly communist countries. This collection chronicles and clarifies issues of personal and cultural dislocation and loss, but also affirms the possibilities of reorientation and renewal.

Drawing from available archives, this book uses the dramatic story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the premiere secular Jewish cultural institution of the Soviet era, to demonstrate how Jewish writers and artists were able to promote Jewish national culture within the confines of Soviet nationality policies.

Presents a critical model for students of Holocaust literature and historiography.

With contributions from a dozen American and European scholars, this volume presents an overview of Jewish writing in post-World War II Europe. It includes essays that portray Jewish authors across Europe as writers and intellectuals of multiple affiliations and hybrid identities.

Talmudic culture is often viewed as bound by its traditions. This book maintains that a close reading of talmudic texts frequently reveals their authors as rabbis who, rather than conform uncritically to tradition, knowingly set out to expose and resolve problems inherent in the received traditions.

Presents an anthology that examines the search for God in the work of six prominent Israeli poets - Yehuda Amichai, Admiel Kosman, Rivka Miriam, Zelda Mishkovsky, Hava Pinhas-Cohen, and Asher Reich. This book explores the central role that poetry has always played and continues to play in our understanding of the religious experience.

A groundbreaking collection of essays that mutually engage Jewish and feminist philosophy

Addresses conceptual and ethical questions that arise from historical accounts of the Holocaust.

An account of the life, art, and tragic death of a 20th-century Hungarian Jewish poet.

Demonstrates that Theodor Adorno's famous injunction against writing poetry after Auschwitz paradoxically inspired an ongoing literary tradition. By speaking about or even as the dead, this work tells what it means to cite, reconfigure, consume, or envy the traumatic memories of an earlier generation.