Jews And Power

Author : Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher : Schocken
ISBN 13 : 0307533131
Total Pages : 258 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jews and Power written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2008-12-24 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of the Jewish Encounter series Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe; this later transformed itself into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Wisse, an eminent professor of comparative literature at Harvard, demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as perpetual targets. Although she sees hope in the State of Israel, Wisse questions the way the strategies of the Diaspora continue to drive the Jewish state, echoing Abba Eban's observation that Israel was the only nation to win a war and then sue for peace. And then she draws a persuasive parallel to the United States today, as it struggles to figure out how a liberal democracy can face off against enemies who view Western morality as weakness. This deeply provocative book is sure to stir debate both inside and outside the Jewish world. Wisse's narrative offers a compelling argument that is rich with history and bristling with contemporary urgency.

Author : J. J. Goldberg
Publisher : Addison Wesley Publishing Company
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jewish Power written by J. J. Goldberg and published by Addison Wesley Publishing Company. This book was released on 1996-10-24 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: an independent force on the national and world scene in the last quarter-century. Goldberg offers an insider's portrait of the people, the institutions, the money, and the ideas that make up organized Jewish political influence in the U.S.

Author : Ruth R. Wisse
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743229614
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book If I Am Not For Myself written by Ruth R. Wisse and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1992 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over a century, Jews have been identified with liberalism. Not only have they been a driving force behind the spread of liberal politics; they have also been steadfastly loyal to a doctrine that promised them both safety and political acceptance. Recent evidence suggests that their commitment has not waned. But while Jews continue to stand up for other groups and "vote their conscience", contends Ruth Wisse, the liberal commitment to the Jews is not nearly so strong. Whenever Jews have been attacked - from the trial of Captain Dreyfus to the sustained military and political war against Israel - liberals have been slow to defend Jewish rights and have preferred instead to hold the Jews responsible for the persistence of their enemies. The explanation for this liberal default, Wisse argues, is the survival and success of anti-Semitism. This irrational idea continues to flourish throughout the world, despite the destruction of the fascist and communist regimes that were its deadliest twentieth-century allies. Wisse points out that anti-Semitism's astonishing resilience has put liberals - including liberal Jews - in an impossible position. The only reasonable response to such a doctrine, Wisse insists, is not appeasement or avoidance, but steadfast confrontation and rejection. Yet such opposition is alien to liberal ideas of open-mindedness and strikes many as intolerant. Unwilling to suspend their optimistic view of man as a benevolent and rational being in order to combat a mortal enemy, most liberals - including many Jews - conclude that Jews themselves must be responsible for the continuing wars against them - thus implicitly condoning their sacrifice. Wisse's book, inspired by afriend's emigration to Israel, traces the Jewish romance with liberalism from its discovery by Jewish integrationists and Zionists to the acceptance today by many Jews of a moral equivalence between Zionism and the war against it. She also explores, among the many contradictions of modern Jewish politics, the ambiguous question of Jewish "chosenness", and the Jewish longing for acceptance in a larger human family; the successful Arab war of ideas against Israel; and the dilemma of Jewish writers and intellectuals who wish to transcend their parochializing siege. Above all, she shows how and why anti-Semitism became the twentieth century's most successful ideology and reveals what people in liberal democracies would have to do to prevent it from once again achieving its goal.

Author : Marc Dollinger
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 147982688X
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.89/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Black Power, Jewish Politics written by Marc Dollinger and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Black Power, Jewish Politics expands with this revised edition that includes the controversial new preface, an additional chapter connecting the book's themes to the national reckoning on race, and a foreword by Jews of Color Initiative founder Ilana Kaufman that all reflect on Blacks, Jews, race, white supremacy, and the civil rights movement"--

Author : Edward Tivnan
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lobby written by Edward Tivnan and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 1987 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces Zionism in America and the activities of the pro-Israel lobby, officially created in 1954 as AZCPA (American Zionist Council of Public Affairs) and later called AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). Mentions antisemitism and anti-Zionism and the possibility of an antisemitic backlash engendered by AIPAC's activities.

Author : Elka Klein
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472115228
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jews, Christian Society, & Royal Power in Medieval Barcelona written by Elka Klein and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the development of the Jewish community in Barcelona from 1050 to 1300 and its interactions with greater Catalan society and its rulers

Author : Idith Zertal
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520921712
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book From Catastrophe to Power written by Idith Zertal and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book certain to generate controversy and debate, Idith Zertal boldly interprets a much revered chapter in contemporary Jewish and Zionist history: the clandestine immigration to Palestine of Jewish refugees, most of them Holocaust survivors, that was organized by Palestinian Zionists just after World War II. Events that captured the attention of the world, such as the Exodus affair in the summer 1947, are seen here in a strikingly new light. At the center of Zertal's book is the Mossad, a small, unorthodox Zionist organization whose mission beginning in 1938 was to bring Jews to Palestine in order to subvert the British quotas on Jewish immigration. From Catastrophe to Power scrutinizes the Mossad's mode of operation, its ideology and politics, its structure and history, and its collective human profile as never before. Zertal's moving story sweeps across four continents and encompasses a range of political cultures and international forces. But underneath this story another darker and more complex plot unfolds: the special encounter between the Zionist revolutionary collective and the mass of Jewish remnant after the Holocaust. According to Zertal, this psychologically painful yet politically powerful encounter was the Zionists' most effective weapon in their struggle for a sovereign Jewish state. Drawing on primary archival documents and new readings of canonical texts of the period, she analyzes this encounter from all angles—political, social, cultural, and psychological. The outcome is a gripping and troubling human story of a crucial period in Jewish and Israeli history, one that also provides a key to understanding the fundamental tensions between Israel and the Jewish communities and Israel and the world today.

Author : Shlomo Sand
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1788736613
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Invention of the Jewish People written by Shlomo Sand and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland? Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths. After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.

Author : David S. Koffman
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 197880086X
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Jews’ Indian written by David S. Koffman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-08 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jews' Indian investigates the history of American Jewish relationships with Native Americans, both in the realm of cultural imagination and in face-to-face encounters. This book is the first history to analyze Jewish participation in, and Jews' grappling with the legacies of Native American history and the colonial project upon which America rests.

Author : Melvin Konner
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0142196320
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unsettled written by Melvin Konner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-09-28 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far reaching, intellectually rich, and passionately written, Unsettled takes the whole history of Western civilization as its canvas and places onto it the Jewish people and faith. With historical insight and vivid storytelling, renowned anthropologist Melvin Konner charts how the Jews endured largely hostile (but at times accepting) cultures to shape the world around them and make their mark throughout history—from the pastoral tribes of the Bronze Age to enslavement in the Roman Empire, from the darkness of the Holocaust to the creation of Israel and the flourishing of Jews in America. With fresh interpretations of the antecedents of today's pressing conflicts, Unsettled is a work whose modern-day reverberations could not be more relevant or timely.