Languages of Community : The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands

24x15cm, xi,311 pp Contents: Introduction: Language, Community, & Experience; Czech Landscape,Habsburg Crown: The Jews of Bohemia & Moravia to 1918; Caution's Progress: Enlightenment & Tradition in Jewish Prague, 1780-1830 ; The Social Vision of Bohemian Jews: Intellectuals & Community in the I840s; Pursuing the Golem of Prague: Jewish Culture & the Invention of a Tradition; On Myth, History, and National Belonging in the 19th Century; Education & National Conflict: Germans, Czechs, & Jews; Jan Hus & the Prophets: Fashioning a Czech Judaism at the Turn of the Century; Death & the Nation: Ritual Murder as Political Discourse in the Czech Lands; Masaryk & Czech Jewry: The Ambiguities of Friendship; Epilogue: A Sitting Room in Prague ["With a keen eye for revealing details, Hillel J. Kieval examines the contours & distinctive features of Jewish experience in the lands of Bohemia & Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic), from the late 18th to the late 20th century. In the Czech lands, Kieval writes, Jews have felt the need constantly to define & articulate the nature of group identity, cultural loyalty, memory, & social cohesiveness, & the period of "modernizing" absolutism, which began in 1780, brought changes of enormous significance. From that time forward, new relationships with Gentile society & with the culture of the state blurred the traditional outlines of community & individual identity. Kieval navigates skillfully among histories & myths as well as demography, biography, culture, & politics, illuminating the maze of allegiances & alliance.." - Publisher's description]. …