Editorial: European Judaism at 50 (original) (raw)
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This international symposium focuses on the decades from 1880-1950, a time of cultural, political, and economic ferment in Euro-American Jewish communities, when thinkers, writers, and artists generated a host of platforms and ideas about what shape the Jewish future would take in the twentieth century. Leading scholars gather to present papers and discuss the wide array of possibilities for Jewish life – many now forgotten – that this vibrant, often stormy period generated, and to consider how these trends both emerged from and further shaped the era’s views of what the future would hold.
The Jewish Future – Commentary Magazine
Commentary Magazine, 2015
The Jewish people are in the initial stages of a demographic revolution, a change so profound and historic in nature that it will reshape the contours, character, and even the color of Jewry. Around the world, an unprecedented awakening is taking place. Descendants of Jews from all walks of life are looking to return to their roots and embrace their heritage. Israel and the Jewish people must reach out to them and welcome them back into our midst - for their sake and for ours.
EJJS and European Jewish Studies: A Note from the New Editors
European Journal of Jewish Studies
This 16.2 (2022) issue of the European Journal of Jewish Studies (EJJS), is the first one published under our new editorial team. The former editorial team of our distinguished colleagues, Patrick Benjamin Koch, Ze'ev Strauss, and Giuseppe Veltri, had decided to step down after years of successful work for the journal. Theirs has been an important and impressive service to the academic community, for which we are most grateful. Thanks to their hard work and bold vision, the journal managed to take an important position in the European, indeed global field of Jewish Studies. It provided an excellent platform for publishing important scholarship for dozens of scholars at all stages of their academic careers. Several hundreds of important articles published in the EJJS clearly influenced the field, sometimes even creating whole new directions in established research areas. Especially the last issue published under the stewardship of the previous editorial team-the EJJS 16.1 (2022) special issue on "Kabbalah and Knowledge Transfers in Early Modernity"-provides such an impressive example, and puts us in the somewhat intimidating position of stepping into the large shoes of our predecessors. However, we understand that for "every thing there is a season […].1" The new team of editors would like to take this occasion to express our admiration for what the previous editors managed to achieve, and our sincere gratitude for the quality of the journal they pass into our hands. We accepted the offer of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Jewish Studies to fill the position of the new editorial team with an equal sense of pride and responsibility. We realize that the EJJS is an important platform of academic exchange, and not only for our immediate field of Jewish Studies. What is more, we believe that it has established solid foundations for becoming an even more important voice in global Jewish Studies. And we take it as our responsibility to work toward the fulfilment of this ambitious objective.
Europe: Education of Adult Jewish Leaders in a Pan-European Perspective
International Handbooks of Religion and Education, 2011
What has been termed "the renewal of Jewish culture in Europe" is a mixed and nuanced phenomenon. Although much of adult Jewish education in Europe retains the forms and substance of similar efforts throughout the Diaspora and in Israel, Jewish education in Europe for adults is to a great extent a reflection of the specificity of this Jewish renewal and is worthy of examination. Beyond descriptively profiling these developments, this chapter claims that what is currently taking place in Jewish education has importance not only for Jewish life in Europe, but also has far-reaching implications for education in the rest of the Jewish world. A profile of contemporary Europe and Jewish life therein must commence with the caveat that the concept "Europe" is a construct, a geographical notion that, given the variety of cultures, languages, and histories, encompasses a great number of divergent realities. Together with all that, however, the emergence of the European Union has done much to give substance to the notion of a unified entity. Sweeping developments, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the formation of a single European market, and the opening of borders of previously intact nation-states, have affected all citizens of Europe, and Jews among them. The trajectory of transformation that has been embarked upon, if successful, will lead to a pluralistic Europe composed of a mosaic of cultures that both maintain their own identities and yet participate in the common agora. Jewish life is part of that transformation. Jonathan Webber points out, "in today's new Europe the Jews have the opportunity, as do all other European citizens, to participate in the future political and economic reconstruction of the continent-and the question for them is to determine what their own social and political philosophy might be in these new circumstances." 1 Jeremy Cohen emphasizes that the new context of the breakdown of nation-state identities towards multiethnic mosaics entails great challenges for contemporary B.L. Spectre (B)
The 2010 Survey of New Jewish Initiatives in Europe: Key Findings
2010
Over the past fifteen years, a revival of Jewish life has spread across Europe, one that is rooted in its 2,000-year heritage, reflects the diversity of contemporary Jewish thought and experience, and reflects the hope for a promising future. Quietly, and in small pockets across the continent, Jewish social entrepreneurs have been experimenting with new forms of communities and organizations designed to engage a new generation of Jews, their partners and friends in meaningful Jewish experiences. Conventional discussions of Europe often emphasise antisemitism, Jewish continuity, and anti-Israel activism. While we do not dismiss or diminish those concerns, we know that these are only part of the story. The European Jewry we know is confident, vibrant, and growing.
Early in the twentieth century, American philosopher and educator Horace M. Kallen (1882Kallen ( -1974 constructed a cultural philosophy under the headline Cultural Pluralism. This philosophy was intended to have cosmopolitan effects in the sense that it had global ecumenical concerns for the social hope for all. Nevertheless, Kallen avoided the concept of cosmopolitanism because of the deep controversy over Jews and Jewishness entangled in the history of cosmopolitan thought since the Enlightenment. As an alternative, Kallen re-invented a new Jewish past to suit a future when Jewishness could be a model attitude for living in cosmopolis. This article shows how and why cosmopolitanism has been a problematic idea for Jewish thinkers such as Kallen, and it demonstrates how Kallen's early-twentieth-century ideas of Cultural Pluralism in many ways constitute a postcolonial cosmopolitanism avant la lettre.