The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture / / Eliezer Schweid; ed. by Leonard Levin.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Backlist eBook-Package 2008-2013
• VerfasserIn: Schweid, Eliezer,
• MitwirkendeR: Hadary, Amnon,
• HerausgeberIn: Levin, Leonard,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2008]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: Reference Library of Jewish Intellectual History
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (292 p.)

The vast majority of intellectual, religious, and national developments in modern Judaism revolve around the central idea of "Jewish culture." This book is the first synoptic view of these developments that organizes and relates them from this vantage point. The first Jewish modernization movements perceived culture as the defining trait of the outside alien social environment to which Jewry had to adapt. To be "cultured" was to be modern-European, as opposed to medieval-ghetto-Jewish. In short order, however, the Jewish religious legacy was redefined retrospectively as a historical "culture," with fateful consequences for the conception of Judaism as a humanly- and not only divinely-mandated regime. The conception of Judaism-as-culture took two main forms: an integrative, vernacular Jewish culture that developed in tandem with the integration of Jews into the various nations of western-central Europe and America, and a national Hebrew culture which, though open to the inputs of modern European society, sought to develop a revitalized Jewish national identity that ultimately found expression in the revival of the Jewish homeland and the State of Israel.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Editor’s Preface -- Foreword -- Chapter One. Culture as a Concept and Culture as an Ideal -- Chapter Two. Tensions and Contradiction -- Chapter Three. Internalizing the Cultural Ideal -- Chapter Four. The Underlying Philosophy of Jewish Enlightenment -- Chapter Five. The Meaning of Being a Jewish-Hebrew Maskil -- Chapter Six. Crossroads: The Transition from Haskalah to the Science of Judaism -- Chapter Seven. The Dialectic between National Hebrew Culture and Jewish Idealistic Humanism -- Chapter Eight. The Philosophic Historic Formation of Jewish Humanism: a Modern Guide to the Perplexed -- Chapter Nine. The Science of Judaism—Research in Judaism as a Culture -- Chapter Ten. The Science of Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Historical Positivism. -- Chapter Eleven. A Critique of the Science of Judaism and the Cultural Ideal of the Enlightenment -- Chapter Twelve. Accelerated Change and Revolution -- Chapter Thirteen. The Vision of Jewish Cultural Renaissance in Political Zionism -- Chapter Fourteen. The Pioneering (Halutzic) Culture of the Jewish Labor Movement in Palestine -- Chapter Fifteen. Polar Views on Sources of Jewish Culture -- Chapter Sixteen. Alienation from Religion and Tradition -- Chapter Seventeen. The Jewish Folk Culture of Eretz Israel -- Chapter Eighteen. Judaism as the Totality of a National Historic Culture -- Chapter Nineteen. Sanctity and the Jewish National Movement -- Chapter Twenty. The Dimension of Sanctity in Pioneering Labor Zionism -- Chapter Twenty One. Orthodox Zionist Culture-Sanctifying Modernity -- Chapter Twenty Two. Judaism as a Culture in the Diaspora -- Chapter Twenty Three. The Secular Jewish Culture of Yiddish -- Chapter Twenty Four. The Transition from the Hebrew Culture of Pre-state Eretz Israel to Israeli Culture -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index