The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies: Personalities, Issues, Events Revised Edition Contributor(s): Cantril, Hadley (Author), Alexander, Edward (Author) |
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ISBN: 0887388736 ISBN-13: 9780887388736 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $54.10 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 1988 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social - Social Science | Jewish Studies - Religion | Judaism - General |
Dewey: 305.892 |
Physical Information: 276 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Jewish - Religious Orientation - Jewish |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: This volume deals with the modern fate of the traditional conception of Jews as a covenanted people chosen to receive the Law, whose ultimate purpose is contributing to the universal salvation of mankind. The author shows how, under the influence of liberalism, rationalism, relativism, and other Enlightenment ideologies, this idea was distorted, denied, inverted, yet never entirely obliterated. In his discussions of modern Jewish thinkers and writers and the ideological and political struggles of Zionism and the state of Israel against enemies from without and from within, Alexander shows that the ancient idea of covenant is still alive today, if only in the assumption that Jewish life can lead somewhere so long as Jews remember that it began somewhere. Ranging from literary criticism and the history of ideas to journalism and politics, the book is unified by a point of view unabashedly espousing the Jewish idea and challenging its enemies. |
Contributor Bio(s): Alexander, Edward: - Edward Alexander is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of The Jewish Idea and Its Enemies, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas, Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew, and Lionel Trilling and Irving Howe.
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