The End of Jewish Modernity : A Conservative Turn by Enzo Traverso download ebook TXT, EPUB, MOBI
9780745336664 English 0745336663 Jewish modernity flourished between the age of Enlightenment and World War II--and in fact was a major driver of intellectual, scientific, social, literary, and artistic progress in that period. But the age of Jewish modernity is over. That's the argument that historian Enzo Traverso mounts in this provocative book. With great sensitivity and nuance, he teases out the fundamentally conservative turn that the mainstream of Jewish thought has taken in the years since World War II, revealing its roots in the Holocaust and the establishment of the United Nations and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. Building his argument on a highly original reading of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics, Traverso offers both an elegy to a lost tradition and a damning intellectual history of the present., Jewish modernity flourished between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, and its intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy continues to dazzle us. In this provocative new book, however, Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that Jewish modernity has exhausted itself.Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This compelling narrative hinges upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics.With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present., Jewish modernity lasted from the Enlightenment to the Second World War, from the debates that created the Emancipation, to the Holocaust. It was an intellectual, literary, scientific and aesthetic explosion of creativity that took place across Europe. However, this golden age of modern culture has now exhausted its trajectory.The Jews shifted, through a paradoxical reversal, to the side of domination. Intellectuals were called to order and radicals became liberal, often turning conservative. Anti-Semitism ceased to permeate European national cultures and was replaced by islamophobia, the dominant form of racism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Judaism transformed into a 'civil religion', the memory of the Holocaust changed the old 'pariah-people' into a respectable, distinguished minority whose historical legacy allows the liberal West to measure its ethical virtues.In this provocative book, Enzo Traverso analyses this historical metamorphosis. The End of Jewish Modernity does not condemn or justify, but rather meditates on a closed experience in order to save its heritage, a now threatened by both conservative apology and sterile posthumous idealisation.
9780745336664 English 0745336663 Jewish modernity flourished between the age of Enlightenment and World War II--and in fact was a major driver of intellectual, scientific, social, literary, and artistic progress in that period. But the age of Jewish modernity is over. That's the argument that historian Enzo Traverso mounts in this provocative book. With great sensitivity and nuance, he teases out the fundamentally conservative turn that the mainstream of Jewish thought has taken in the years since World War II, revealing its roots in the Holocaust and the establishment of the United Nations and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. Building his argument on a highly original reading of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics, Traverso offers both an elegy to a lost tradition and a damning intellectual history of the present., Jewish modernity flourished between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, and its intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy continues to dazzle us. In this provocative new book, however, Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that Jewish modernity has exhausted itself.Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This compelling narrative hinges upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics.With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present., Jewish modernity lasted from the Enlightenment to the Second World War, from the debates that created the Emancipation, to the Holocaust. It was an intellectual, literary, scientific and aesthetic explosion of creativity that took place across Europe. However, this golden age of modern culture has now exhausted its trajectory.The Jews shifted, through a paradoxical reversal, to the side of domination. Intellectuals were called to order and radicals became liberal, often turning conservative. Anti-Semitism ceased to permeate European national cultures and was replaced by islamophobia, the dominant form of racism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Judaism transformed into a 'civil religion', the memory of the Holocaust changed the old 'pariah-people' into a respectable, distinguished minority whose historical legacy allows the liberal West to measure its ethical virtues.In this provocative book, Enzo Traverso analyses this historical metamorphosis. The End of Jewish Modernity does not condemn or justify, but rather meditates on a closed experience in order to save its heritage, a now threatened by both conservative apology and sterile posthumous idealisation.