The Jewish People in The First Century

Herbert, Gilbert / Richter, Liliane: Through a Clouded Glass. Mendelsohn, Wijdeveld and the Jewish Connection. Berlin: Wasmuth Vlg. 2008.
Despite the extensive bibliography on Mendelsohn and the more limited one on Wijdeveld, there is no other serious study which looks at the topic in the way this book does, throwing new light on the lives of these two architects, and their times. The study is unique in that it focuses on the troubled relationship between them not only as colleagues and friends (a friendship which includes their wives), but as complex, at times enigmatic, personalities. This portrait is set against the unfolding drama of Europe in an age of turmoil. Mendelsohn was a German-Jew, Wijdeveld a Dutch Catholic married to a Jewish wife, and their personal stories must be read in the context of what were for the Jewish people the seminal events of the period: the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, the rise of National Socialism, Germany's dominion over Europe, and the catastrophe of the Holocaust. The book, both in its wide-ranging content and its style, should attract a diverse audience. For academics it is a scholarly, fully-researched work; for the wider readership of professionals, and laymen it is a moving and gripping narrative. It is directly relevant to those concerned with the history of art and architecture, especially the development of the modern movement in the first half of the 20th century. It should interest those concerned with the richness of personal biography in all its aspects: family origin, marriage, education, politics, ideology, religion. For the anthropologist and sociologist there is the question of the interaction of cultures and cultural adaptation. Finally, the book should be of considerable interest to those concerned with the history of the Jewish people, and with problems of Jewish identity, assimilation, intermarriage, and anti-Semitism, in the first half of the 20th century.

200 S., 90 Abb., davon 3 farb. Reg. Lex 8° Br. *verlagsneu*

[SW: Architektur; Architektur]

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KESSNER, CAROLE S. Marie Syrkin: Values Beyond The Self. Brandeis University Press, Waltham / University Press of New England, Hanover: 2008.

501 pages. The life and times of Marie Syrkin, polemicist of pragmatic idealism. Marie Syrkin's life spanned ninety years of the twentieth century, 1899 - 1989. As a polemical journalist, socialist Zionist, poet, educator, literary critic, translator, and idiosyncratic feminist, she was eyewitness to and reporter on most of the major events in America, Israel, and Europe. Beautiful as well as brilliant, she had a rich personal life as lover, wife, mother, and friend. During her lifetime Syrkin's name was widely recognized in the world of Jewish life and letters. Yet, inevitably, since her death, recognition of her name is no longer quite so immediate. Carole S. Kessner's intention is to restore for a new generation the singular legacy of Syrkin's life. Syrkin was born in Switzerland, the only child of the theoretician of socialist Zionism Nachman Syrkin and Bassya Osnos Syrkin, a feminist socialist Zionist. Following short stints in several European countries, the family immigrated to the United States in 1909. By the age of ten Marie was fluent in five languages. Educated in American public schools and at Cornell University, by the time she was twenty-three she had published translations as well as her own poetry. After her first trip to Palestine in 1933, Syrkin joined the staff of the Jewish Frontier. This began her lifelong contribution to Zionism, Jewish life, and responsible journalism. In 1947 she published her most celebrated work, Blessed Is the Match. In 1950 she became a professor of English literature at Brandeis University and later published a biography of her father and the authorized biography of her longtime close friend Golda Meir. Syrkin married three times: the first, to Maurice Samuel, annulled by her father's intervention; the second, to the biochemist Aaron Bodansky, the father of her son David; the third, to the poet Charles Reznikoff, lasted on and off for more than forty years. In the course of her life, Marie had many influential friends, such as Hayim Greenberg, Ben Gurion, and Irving Howe, and she served as inspiration to many younger intellectuals, including Martin Peretz, Michael Walzer, and Leon Wieseltier. As poet and journalist, Zionist activist and public intellectual, Syrkin's work and actions illuminate a wide range of twentieth-century literary, cultural, and political concerns. Her passions demonstrate, as Irving Howe said, "a life of commitment to values beyond the self." "Finally, Zionist thinker Marie Syrkin gets the recognition she deserves . . . It is not sentimental over praise to say that Marie Syrkin deserves a place at the roundtable of great intellects who helped shape contemporary Jewish-American liberalism."NHaaretz "[Marie Syrkin: Values Beyond the Self] is best approached as a personal tribute rather than a work of scholarship-a successful attempt to restore Marie Syrkin to her modest but fascinating place in Jewish history." N Nextbook "Carole Kessner restores to us a brilliant and valiant figure: poet and polemicist, lover and wife, heroine of a people's striving for historic justice. In Kessner's informative, clarifying, and devoted rendering, Marie Syrkin is revealed as a robust and pragmatic idealist creatively responsive to the exigencies of her time, and a courageous model for ours."NCynthia Ozick, author of Art and Ardor and Dictation "Carole Kessner's work is a labor of love for an admirable woman and, at the same time, a portrait of a generation and an age. Kessner adroitly sets the story of Marie Syrkin's personal life and loves against the background of her vigorous defense of the Jewish people in traumatic times, including her involvement with a host of memorable figures from Maurice Samuel and Charles Resnikoff to Hayim Greenberg, David Ben Gurion, and Golda Meir. Kessner gives us a sensitive, multi-layered biographyNan engrossing read for everyone interested in the public and private travails of Jewishness in the twentieth century."NRobert Seltzer, Professor of History, Hunter College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York, author of Jewish People, Jewish Thought National Jewish Book Award 2008. Carole S. Kessner is professor emerita, Department of Comparative Studies, SUNY Stony Brook. She is the recipient of the Marie Syrkin Fellowship for 1994. The author of many essays and articles ranging from "Milton's Hebraic Herculean Hero" to "The Emma Lazarus-Henry James Connection: Eight Letters," she is the editor and contributor to The "Other" New York Jewish Intellectuals (1994). Hardcover with dustjacket. Brand new book.

[SW: (Key Words: Marie Syrkin, Carole S. Kessner, Biography, Jewish Studies, Jews, Judaica, Zionism, Maurice Samuel, Charles Resnikoff, Hayim Greenberg, David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Nachman Syrkin, Bassya Osnos Syrkin, Aaron Bodansky).]

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Vital, David: A People Apart: the Jews in Europe, 1789-1939, 1999 Oxford University Press, USA
9780198219804

Hardcover Fine in Fine dust jacket Edition: First Edition No defects in book or jacket, the latter now protected by fresh mylar sleeve. Pages are clean and crisp, the binding is tight and square; book appears unread. . The modern history of the Jewish people. This is the first edition. . Oxford History of Modern Europe Series. 8vo - 8" to 9" tall. 944 pages

[SW: European Jews 19th Century 20th Century]

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RUBINSTEIN W. & H. RUBINSTEIN. Philosemitism. Palgrave Macmillan. 1999.. Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. ; fester Einband / hard cover
Hardback, 296pp., NEW, This work is the first comprehensive study of philosemitism in the modern world.> PhilosemitismM> is admiration and support for Jews by non-Jews, especially during times of anti-semitic persecution. Although literally thousands of books have been written on antisemitism (including the Holocaust), only a handful have been written on philosemitism, and no other book has used original sources of a detailed and sweeping kind. >>This work discusses philosemitism in Britain, America, Australia and Canada during the century between the Damascus blood libel of 1840 and the Holocaust (with a further chapter on the post-1945 situation). The first part of the book examines the philosemitic responses of non-Jews, often among the most influential people of their time, to the persecution of Jews during the best-known antisemitic crises of the century from 1840 until 1945, such as the Czarist pogroms of the 1880s and the rise of Nazism. The second part of the book offers a typology of philosemitism, dividing it into liberal/progressive, Christian, Zionist, and conservative/elitist strands. The book is based almost entirely upon primary sources of the past. >>>PhilosemitismM> draws attention to a powerful and widespread movement which befriended the Jewish people during times of persecution, and which is all but unknown to most historians. No longer on the Palgrave list imported on 06/10/2009.

Hardback, NEAR FINE.

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