After Tragedy and Triumph: Essays in Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience
Cambridge University Press
Edition: 1st Edition, 11/30/1990
EAN 9780521380577, ISBN10: 052138057X
Hardcover, 220 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The story of American Jewry is inextricably entwined with the awesome defeat of the Holocaust and the rebirth of the state of Israel. However, for Michael Berenbaum, and others of his generation, whose adult consciousness included the war in Lebanon and the Palestinian Uprisings, the tale is more anguished, for the Jewish people is now divided, uncertain about the implications of the past and the direction of its future. Berenbaum explores the Jewish identity of this generation, the first to mature after tragedy and triumph. He probes the Holocaust's impact on Jewish consciousness and the imprint of American culture on Jewish identity. While demonstrating that the security of victory is one step from the anguish of victims, even when the victors have recently emerged from the fire, Berenbaum holds out the hope of liberation for Judaism, maintaining that five thousand years of history, with its chapter of Holocaust and empowerment, provide a unique foundation upon which to build a future.
Foreword Richard L. Rubenstein
Introduction
Part I. The Holocaust in Contemporary American Culture
1. The nativisation of the Holocaust
2. The uniqueness and universality of the Holocaust
3. Public commemoration of the Holocaust
4. Is the centrality of the Holocaust overemphasised? Two dialogues
5. Issues in teaching the Holocaust
6. What we should teach our children
7. The shadows of the Holocaust
Part II. Jewish Thought and Modern History
8. Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber Reconsidered
9. The problem of pluralism in contemporary orthodoxy
philosophy and politics
10. From Auschwitz to Oslo
the journey of Elie Wiesel
11. Jacob Neusner and the renewal of an ever-dying people
12. Political Zionism's would-be successors
sectarianism, Messianism, nationalism, and secularism
13. The situation of the American Jew
Notes
Index.