Mapping Jewish identities / edited by Laurence J. Silberstein.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Silberstein, Laurence J. (Laurence Jay), 1936-

Series:

New perspectives on Jewish studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Identity.

Jews.

Physical Description:

x, 368 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2000]

Summary:

Is Jewish identity flourishing or in decline? Community leaders and scholarly researchers continually seek to determine the attitudes, beliefs, and activities that best measure Jewish identity. At issue, according to these studies, is the very survival of the Jewish community itself. But such studies rarely ask what actually is being examined when we attempt to assess "Jewish identity" or any identity. Most tend to assume that identity is a preexisting, relatively fixed frame of reference reflecting shared cultural and historical experiences.

Drawing on recent work in such fields as cultural studies, poststructuralist theory, postmodern philosophy, and feminist theory, Mapping Jewish Identities challenges this premise. Contesting conventional approaches to Jewish identity, contributors argue that Jewish identity should be conceptualized as an ongoing dynamic process of "becoming" in response to changing cultural and social conditions rather than as a stable defining body of traits.

Contributors, including Daniel Boyarin, Laura Levitt, Adi Ophir, and Gordon Bearn, examine such topics as American Jews' desires to connect with a lost immigrant past through photography, the complicated function of the Holocaust in the identity formation of contemporary Jews, the impact of the struggle with the Palestinians on Israeli group identity construction, and the ways in which repressed voices such as those of women. Mizrahim, and Israeli Arabs have changed our ways of thinking about Jewish and Israeli identity.

Contents:

1. Mapping, Not Tracing: Opening Reflection / Laurence J. Silberstein 1

2. "The Changing Same": Narratives of Contemporary Jewish American Identity / Tresa L. Grauer 37

3. Photographing American Jews: Identifying American Jewish Life / Laura S. Levitt 65

4. The Labor of Remembrance / Michelle A. Friedman 97

5. Surviving on Cat and Maus: Art Spiegelman's Holocaust Tale / Marilyn Reizbaum 122

6. On the Yiddish Question / Anita Norich 145

7. Two Female Characters in Search of a Theory: Mapping Jewish Identity through Personal Narrative / Regina Morantz-Sanchez 159

8. The Identity of the Victims and the Victims of Identity: A Critique of Zionist Ideology for a Post-Zionist Age / Adi Ophir 174

9. Mapping Literary Spaces: Territory and Violence in Israeli Literature / Hannan Hever 201

10. Reterritorializing the Dream: Orly Castel-Bloom's Remapping of Israeli Identity / Deborah A. Starr 220

11. Weighing the Losses, Like Stones in Your Hand / Ammiel Alcalay 250

12. The Close Call; or, Could a Pharisee Be a Christian? / Daniel Boyarin 266

13. On Thinking Identity Otherwise / Susan E. Shapiro 299

14. Individuation without Identity: A Deleuzian Aesthetics of Existence / Gordon C. F. Bearn 324.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0814797687

0814797695

OCLC:

43411438