Stranger at Home - Hardcover

Neusner, Jacob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226576280 ISBN 13: 9780226576282

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1981

Synopsis

Jacob Neusner, the preeminent Judaic scholar who is himself a Jew and a Zionist, here explores the issue he believes to be at the very heart of American how two events remote from the experience of most American Jews have become the twin pillars upon which their world view is built. These two events, the murder of six million Jews between 1933 and 1945 and the subsequent creation of the State of Israel, form what Neusner calls the myth of the Holocaust and redemption. 'Stranger at Home' scrutinizes the paradox of a central myth generated out of events never witnessed and a place never inhabited by the majority of American Jewry. Written over a period of nearly twenty years, these systematically related essays begin with an analysis of the social and psychological problems confronting American Jews. The second and third set of studies concern the implications of the two elements that constitute the mythic vision that begins in death, the Holocaust, and is completed by rebirth, Israel. Finally the author offers his view of the actual and desirable role of Zionism for the Jewish community outside of Israel. Neusner's penetrating exposition sheds light on the search of an American minority culture for identity in the context of freedom and free choice and on the process of adaptation of an archaic religious tradition to modernity.

About this title

About the Author

Jacob Neusner, 1932-2016, was one of the world’s foremost scholars of Jewish rabbinical texts. He taught at Dartmouth College, Brown University, the University of South Florida, and Bard College. He was author or editor of more than 900 books for students, scholars, and general readers in Judaism, comparative religion, and the history and analysis of rabbinic texts. He was general editor of The Talmud of the Land of Israel, published in thirty-five volumes by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226576280
• ISBN 13: 9780226576282
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224