Read more
Secularism in Question examines how twentieth-century revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the modern era. Scholars of Jewish history, religion, philosophy, and literature illustrate how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed.
List of contents
Introduction. Rethinking Jews and Secularism
—Ari Joskowicz and Ethan Katz
PART I. NARRATIONS
Chapter 1. "Our Rabbi Baruch": Spinoza and Radical Jewish Enlightenment
—Daniel B. Schwartz
Chapter 2. Reading Mendelssohn in Late Ottoman Palestine: An Islamic Theory of Jewish Secularism
—Jonathan Marc Gribetz
Chapter 3. Tradition and the Hidden: Hannah Arendt's Secularization of Jewish Mysticism
—Vivian Liska
PART II. TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 4. Messianism Without Messiah: Messianism, Religion, and Secularization in Modern Jewish Thought
—Christoph Schulte
Chapter 5. In the Name of the Devil: Reading Walter Benjamin's "Agesilaus Santander"
—Galili Shahar
Chapter 6. The Secular and Its Dissonances in Modern Jewish Literature
—Michal Ben-Horin
Chapter 7. Civil Society, Secularization, and Modernity Among Jews in Turn-of-the-Century Eastern Europe
—Scott Ury
Chapter 8. Secular French Nationhood and Its Discontents: Jews as Muslims and Religion as Race in Occupied France
—Ethan Katz
PART III. ADAPTATIONS
Chapter 9. Galician Haskalah and the Discourse of
Schwärmerei—Rachel Manekin
Chapter 10. Secularism and Neo-Orthodoxy: Conflicting Strategies in Modern Orthodox Fiction
—Eva Lezzi
Chapter 11. Secularism and Nationalism: The Modern Halakhic Discourse on the Identity and Boundaries of the Jewish Community
—Arye Edrei
PART IV. NEW CONCEPTIONS: A FORUM
Chapter 12. Between Supersessionism and Atavism: Toward a Neosecular View of Religion
—David N. Myers
Chapter 13. Secularism, the Christian Ambivalence Toward the Jews, and the Notion of Exile
—Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin
Chapter 14. "Eleven Calendars": Beyond Secular Time
—Andrea Schatz
Notes
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
Ari Joskowicz teaches Jewish studies and European studies at Vanderbilt University. He is author of The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France. Ethan B. Katz teaches history at the University of Cincinnati.
Summary
Secularism in Question examines how twentieth-century revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the modern era. Scholars of Jewish history, religion, philosophy, and literature illustrate how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed.
