From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture - Hardcover

Hoffman, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804753717 ISBN 13: 9780804753715

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2007

Synopsis

From Rebel to Rabbi establishes how the changes that occurred in Jewish culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries stimulated a widespread fascination with the figure of Jesus and with Christian motifs among numerous Jewish theologians, historians, intellectuals, writers, and artists. It illustrates how and why the process of modernization for these Jews involved a radical reevaluation of Jesus of Nazareth. This book analyzes works of Jewish history, theology, Yiddish literature, Jewish visual art, and intellectual debates, in an attempt to situate this phenomenon within the broader context of a cultural history of how Jews have related to and depicted the figure of Jesus in the modern period. It suggests that for writers and artists, such as Sholem Asch and Marc Chagall, refiguring Jesus as intrinsically Jewish and using Christian themes to express aspects of the modern Jewish experience were an integral part of creating a new and distinctive modern Jewish culture.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

“From Rebel to Rabbi is a comprehensive exploration of the figure of Christ in Yiddish and Hebrew literature and in modern Jewish art. Matthew Hoffman explores the intriguing and highly controversial ways in which Jewish culture was able to address the ideological fault lines of modernity through considerations of Jesus, the Jew. In representing Jesus to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, writers and artists often sought to subvert dominant (Christian) European culture while also placing Jews in the very center of that culture.”  —Anita Norich, University of Michigan

About the Author:

Matthew Hoffman is Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies and History at Franklin & Marshall College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0804753717
• ISBN 13: 9780804753715
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 305