1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780083803321

Autore

Kieval Hillel J

Titolo

Languages of community [[electronic resource] ] : the Jewish experience in the  Czech lands / / Hillel J. Kieval

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, 2000

ISBN

0-520-92116-X

1-59734-702-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (326 p.)

Disciplina

943.71/004924

Soggetti

Jews - Czech Republic - Intellectual life - 18th century

Jews - Czech Republic - Intellectual life - 19th century

Jews - Identity

Czech Republic Ethnic relations

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-306) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Map -- Introduction: Language, Community, and Experience -- 1. Czech Landscape, Habsburg Crown: The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia to 1918 -- 2. Caution's Progress: Enlightenment and Tradition in Jewish Prague, 1780 -1830 -- 3. The Social Vision of Bohemian Jews: Intellectuals and Community in the 1840's -- 4. Pursuing the Golem of Prague: Jewish Culture and the Invention of a Tradition -- 5. On Myth, History, and National Belonging in the Nineteenth Century -- 6. Education and National Conflict: Germans, Czechs, and Jews -- 7. Jan Hus and the Prophets: Fashioning a Czech Judaism at the Turn of the Century -- 8. Death and the Nation: Ritual Murder as Political Discourse in the Czech Lands -- 9. Masaryk and Czech Jewry: The Ambiguities of Friendship -- Epilogue: A Sitting Room in Prague -- Appendix -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

With a keen eye for revealing details, Hillel J. Kieval examines the contours and distinctive features of Jewish experience in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic), from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. In the Czech lands, Kieval writes, Jews have felt the need constantly to define and articulate the



nature of group identity, cultural loyalty, memory, and social cohesiveness, and the period of "modernizing" absolutism, which began in 1780, brought changes of enormous significance. From that time forward, new relationships with Gentile society and with the culture of the state blurred the traditional outlines of community and individual identity. Kieval navigates skillfully among histories and myths as well as demography, biography, culture, and politics, illuminating the maze of allegiances and alliances that have molded the Jewish experience during these 200 years.