The field of American Jewish studies has recently trained its focus on the transnational dimensions of its subject, reflecting in more sustained ways than before about the theories and methods of this approach. Yet, much of the insight to be gained from seeing American Jewry as constitutively entangled in many ways with other Jewries has not yet been realized. Transnational American Jewish studies are still in their infancy.
This issue of PaRDeS presents current research on the multiple entanglements of American with Central European, especially German-speaking Jewries in the 19th and 20th centuries. The articles reflect the wide range of topics that can benefit from a transnational understanding of the American Jewish experience as shaped by its foreign entanglements.
ARTICLES
Shari Rabin – Mobile Jews and Porous Borders: A Transnational History in the Nineteenth Century
Yitzchak Schwartz – American Jewish Ideas in a Transnational Jewish World, 1843 – 1900
Mirjam Thulin – Instituting Transnational Jewish Learning: The Emergence of Rabbinical Seminaries in the Nineteenth Century
Oskar Czendze – In Search of Belonging: Galician Jewish Immigrants Between New York and Eastern Europe, 1890 – 1938
Imanuel Clemens Schmidt – A Secular Tradition: Horace Kallen on American Democracy in the United States and Israel
Markus Krah – Exporting Jewish Ideas from Germany (via Palestine) to America: Salman Schocken and the Transnational Transfer of Texts, 1931 – 1950
Jessica Cooperman – Jewish-Christian Dialogue and American Visions of the Postwar World
FROM THE ARCHIVE
Elisabeth Gallas/Miriam Rürup – “Advocate of the Jewish People” - Nehemia Robinson’s Legal Activism after 1945: An Introduction
Further Reading: A Select Bibliography of Transnational American Jewish Studies
BOOK REVIEWS
Daniel B. Schwartz, Ghetto: The History of a Word (Jürgen Heyde)
Karl Erich Grözinger, Jüdisches Denken: Theologie – Philosophie – Mystik, Band 5 Meinungen und Richtungen im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert Michael Marmur/David Ellenson (eds.), American Jewish Thought Since 1934: Writings on Identity, Engagement, and Belief (Thomas Meyer)
Debra Kaplan, The Patrons and Their Poor: Jewish Community and Public Charity in Early Modern Germany (Rotraud Ries)
Jörg Osterloh, „Ausschaltung der Juden und des jüdischen Geistes“: Nationalsozialistische Kulturpolitik 1920 – 1945 (Anna Ullrich)
Tim Corbett, Die Grabstätten meiner Väter: Die jüdischen Friedhöfe in Wien (Anke Geißler-Grünberg)
David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries (Michael K. Schulz)
Karin Schutjer, Goethe und das Judentum: Das schwierige Erbe der modernen Literatur (Rafael D. Arnold)
Tobias Freimüller, Frankfurt und die Juden: Neuanfänge und Fremdheitserfahrungen, 1945 – 1990 (Andrea A. Sinn)
Rolf Kießling, Jüdische Geschichte in Bayern: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Rotraud Ries)