The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901

The Art and Artists of the Fifth Zionist Congress, 1901
Author: Gilya Gerda Schmidt
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2003-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780815630302

Martin Buber and friends successfully lobbied the congress for inclusion of cultural Zionism into the official agenda of the Zionist organization, resulting in the establishment of the Bezalel Art Institute in Jerusalem in 1905. In the first book of its kind, Gilya Gerda Schmidt places this art exhibition in the context of political Zionism as well as anti-Semitism. Jews had been denied the opportunity to be creative, and religious Zionists feared that Jewish culture would usurp religion within the Zionist movement. Hermann Struck, an artist and Orthodox Jew, became a founding member of the religious Zionist Party, further supporting Buber's assertion that culture and religion were not at odds. The forty-eight works of art in the exhibition were created by eleven artists, all but two of whom were famous in their lifetime. Until now, their works had been largely forgotten. In the last decade, contributing artists—Ephraim Lilien, Lesser Ury, Jozef Israels, Struck, and Maurycy Gottlieb—have enjoyed a revival of their work.

Israel

Israel
Author: Colin Shindler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2023-02-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316761975

Since its establishment in 1948, the state of Israel has not ceased to be a unique and controversial entity: vehemently opposed by some, and loyally supported by others. In this novel and original study, Colin Shindler tells the history of Israel through the unusual vehicle of cartoons - all drawn by different generations of irreverent and contrarian Israeli cartoonists. Richly illustrated with a cartoon for every year since Israel's establishment until 2020, Shindler offers new perspectives on Israel's past, politics, and people. At once incisive and hilarious, these cartoons, mainly published in the Israeli press, capture significant flashpoints, and show how the country's citizens felt about and responded to major events in Israel's history. A leading authority on Israel Studies, Shindler contextualises the cartoons with detailed timelines and commentaries for every year. Sometimes funny and sometimes tinged with tragedy, Shindler offers a new, visually exciting, and accessible way to understand Israel's complex history and, in particular, the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Religionization of Israeli Society

The Religionization of Israeli Society
Author: Yoav Peled
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2018-07-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317356055

During Israel's military operation in Gaza in the summer of 2014 the commanding officer of the Givati infantry brigade, Colonel Ofer Vinter, called upon his troops to fight "the terrorists who defame the God of Israel." This unprecedented call for religious war by a senior IDF commander caused an uproar, but it was just one symptom of a profound process of religionization, or de-secularization, that Israeli society has been going through since the turn of the twenty-first century. This book analyzes and explains, for the first time, the reasons for the religionization of Israeli society, a process known in Hebrew as hadata. Jewish religion, inseparable from Jewish nationality, was embedded in Zionism from its inception in the nineteenth century, but was subdued to a certain extent in favor of the national aspect in the interest of building a modern nation-state. Hadata has its origins in the 1967 war, has been accelerating since 2000, and is manifested in a number of key social fields: the military, the educational system, the media of mass communications, the teshuvah movement, the movement for Jewish renewal, and religious feminism. A major chapter of the book is devoted to the religionization of the visual fine arts field, a topic that has been largely neglected by previous researchers. Through careful examination of religionization, this book sheds light on a major development in Israeli society, which will additionally inform our understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As such, it is a key resource for students and scholars of Israel Studies, and those interested in the relations between religion, culture, politics and nationalism, secularization and new social movements.

In the Shadow of a Giant

In the Shadow of a Giant
Author: Steven E. J. Daly
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2023-11-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666785350

“David”—a name mentioned nearly a thousand times in the Bible! Shepherd boy, musician, singer-songwriter, prophet and king (and part-time priest!), husband and father, and a God-gifted genius at close, hand-to-hand combat. An extraordinary man. This close reading of the life of David—all the way from where teenage David is first introduced (1 Sam 16) to his death (1 Kgs 2)—gives an opportunity to see the wonderful, the awful, and the (shockingly) ugly elements of his life. There are some difficult texts and difficult lessons. Significant matters arise, such as the nature of prayer, the importance of forgiveness, abuse, the nature of leadership, death and enemies, understanding patriarchy in biblical texts, spiritual gifts, and evil spirits. Readers will discover that these texts speak loudly and clearly to the issues of our day. Beginning with the Former Prophets (1 and 2 Samuel, 1 Kings) for the narrator’s point of view, this book also examines the Psalms to give an understanding of what was happening for David on the inside. Undertaken as a devotional exercise, the aim of these studies is always that of seeing Jesus more clearly and living more securely in the shadow of his wing.

I'm Talking about Jerusalem

I'm Talking about Jerusalem
Author: Tim Dowley
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 155
Release: 2023-11-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1666765414

On the famous mappa mundi, housed in Hereford Cathedral, Jerusalem is at the center of the world. For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, this holy city represents not merely a physical focus for their faith, but a theological and spiritual emblem: simultaneously a very earthly city and a uniquely celestial kingdom. How has this insignificant city become such a critical location in geopolitics and psychogeography? I’m Talking about Jerusalem explores the many and varied meanings and resonances of “Jerusalem”—in history, prophecy, theology, literature, imagery, and myth. “Jerusalem” appears 806 times in the Bible. For the Jews, Jerusalem is not simply a significant physical place, past and present, but a religious concept transcending time. For Christians, it is the site of Jesus’s last days—and of countless Christian structures, relics, and remains. Islamic tradition has celebrated the city with seventeen names; it was a key stage in Muhammad’s night journey and became Islam’s third holiest place of pilgrimage. For all three Abrahamic religions, Jerusalem is a major pilgrimage destination. Aldous Huxley wrote, “We have each of us our Jerusalem”—a vision of what life might be. I’m Talking about Jerusalem considers Jerusalem as a political goal and eternal home; its place in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic eschatology; and as a metaphor for all we yearn for in this world and the next. A place of perfection and conclusion, a golden city, a paradise to be attained after death.

The Emergence Of Modern Jewish Politics

The Emergence Of Modern Jewish Politics
Author: Zvi Gitelman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2010-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822970694

The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics examines the political, social, and cultural dimensions of Zionism and Bundism, the two major political movements among East European Jews during the first half of the twentieth century.While Zionism achieved its primary aim—the founding of a Jewish state—the Jewish Labor Bund has not only practically disappeared, but its ideals of socialism and secular Jewishness based in the diaspora seem to have failed. Yet, as Zvi Gitelman and the various contributors to this volume argue, it was the Bund that more profoundly changed the structure of Jewish society, politics, and culture.In thirteen essays, prominent historians, political scientists, and professors of literature discuss the cultural and political contexts of these movements, their impact on Jewish life, and the reasons for the Bund's demise, and they question whether ethnic minorities are best served by highly ideological or solidly pragmatic movements.

Art in Zion

Art in Zion
Author: Dalia Manor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2004-12-03
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134367821

Art in Zion deals with the link between art and national ideology and specifically between the artistic activity that emerged in Jewish Palestine in the first decades of the twentieth century and the Zionist movement. In order to examine the development of national art in Jewish Palestine, the book focuses on direct and indirect expressions of Zionist ideology in the artistic activity in the yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine). In particular, the book explores two major phases in the early development of Jewish art in Palestine: the activity of the Bezalel School of Art and Crafts, and the emergence during the 1920s of a group of artists known as the Modernists.

Hazzan Mordecai Gustav Heiser

Hazzan Mordecai Gustav Heiser
Author: Gilya Gerda Schmidt
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2024-07-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1621908739

When Gilya Gerda Schmidt met him in 1986, Cantor Heiser had spent forty-six of his eighty-one years as a US citizen and was well-acquainted with mourning. Heiser had assumed the cantorate at Congregation B’nai Israel in the East End of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1942. A master of the cantor’s art, he was renowned for his style, elegant choir and service arrangements, and rich, dolesome voice, which seemed to pass effortlessly into hearers’ hearts. But this book is more than a memorial to Heiser. Schmidt melds decades of archival research, conservation efforts, family interviews, and trips to Jerusalem and Berlin into a critical reconstruction of the life and vision of Hazzan Mordecai Gustav Heiser in the multiple contexts that shaped him. Coming of age in Berlin in the afterglow of the Second German Empire meant that young Gustav had tasted European Jewish culture in a rare state of refinement and modernity. But by January 30, 1940, when he reached New York with his wife, Elly, and two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Judith, Cantor Heiser had lost nearly all of his living family relations to the extermination programs of the German Reich, after narrowly surviving a brief incarceration at Sachsenhausen. While Cantor Heiser’s art was steeped in nineteenth-century tradition, Schmidt contends that Heiser’s music was a powerful affirmation of Jewish life in the twentieth century. In a final chapter, Schmidt describes his influence on the American cantorate and American culture and society.

Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History

Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History
Author: Richard I. Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199934258

Continuing its distinguished tradition of focusing on central political, sociological, and cultural issues of Jewish life in the last century, Volume XXVI of the annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry examines the visual revolution that has overtaken Jewish cultural life in the twentieth century onwards, with special attention given to the evolution of Jewish museums. Bringing together leading curators and scholars, Visualizing and Exhibiting Jewish Space and History treats various forms of Jewish representation in museums in Europe and the United States before the Second World War and inquires into the nature and proliferation of Jewish museums following the Holocaust and the fall of Communism in Western and Eastern Europe. In addition, a pair of essays dedicated to six exhibitions that took place in Israel in 2008 to mark six decades of Israeli art raises significant issues on the relationship between art and gender, and art and politics. An introductory essay highlights the dramatic transformation in the appreciation of the visual in Jewish culture. The scope of the symposium offers one of the first scholarly attempts to treat this theme in several countries. Also featured in this volume are a provocative essay on the nature of antisemitism in twentieth-century English society; review essays on Jewish fundamentalism and recent works on the subject of the Holocaust in occupied Soviet territories; and reviews of new titles in Jewish Studies..