Jewish Peoplehood : An American Innovation / Noam Pianko.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pianko, Noam, Author.

Series:

Key words in Jewish studies ; VI.

Key Words in Jewish Studies ; 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Israel and the diaspora.

Jews--United States--Social conditions--21st century.

Jews.

Jews--United States--Politics and government--21st century.

Jews--United States--Identity.

Jews--Identity.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (186 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Winner of the 2017 American Jewish Historical Society's Saul Viener Book Prize Although fewer American Jews today describe themselves as religious, they overwhelmingly report a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Indeed, Jewish peoplehood has eclipsed religion-as well as ethnicity and nationality-as the essence of what binds Jews around the globe to one another. In Jewish Peoplehood, Noam Pianko highlights the current significance and future relevance of "peoplehood" by tracing the rise, transformation, and return of this novel term. The book tells the surprising story of peoplehood. Though it evokes a sense of timelessness, the term actually emerged in the United States in the 1930s, where it was introduced by American Jewish leaders, most notably Rabbi Stephen Wise and Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, with close ties to the Zionist movement. It engendered a sense of unity that transcended religious differences, cultural practices, geographic distance, economic disparity, and political divides, fostering solidarity with other Jews facing common existential threats, including the Holocaust, and establishing a closer connection to the Jewish homeland. But today, Pianko points out, as globalization erodes the dominance of nationalism in shaping collective identity, Jewish peoplehood risks becoming an outdated paradigm. He explains why popular models of peoplehood fail to address emerging conceptions of ethnicity, nationalism, and race, and he concludes with a much-needed roadmap for a radical reconfiguration of Jewish collectivity in an increasingly global era. Innovative and provocative, Jewish Peoplehood provides fascinating insight into a term that assumes an increasingly important position at the heart of American Jewish and Israeli life. For additional information go to: http://www.noampianko.net

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword / Dash Moore, Deborah / Moore, MacDonald / Bush, Andrew

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Deceptively Simple Key Word

1. Terms of Debate: Jewish Nationhood and American Peoplehood

What Is a Nation? Peoplehood's European Precursors

The Emergence of Peoplehood

1948, Israel, and a Crisis of Terminology

From Critique to Code Word

Into the American Mainstream

2. State of the Question: Enduring Entity or Constructed Community

Unity, Solidarity, Statehood

Nationalism, Globalization, and the Limits of Peoplehood

Race, Ethnicity, and Peoplehood Studies

Jewish Studies and Jewish Peoplehood

3. In a New Key: Can Peoplehood Speak to a Global Era?

Jewish: From Periphery to Center, from Describing to Defining

Neighborhood: From National to Local, from Core to Cohort

Project: From Being to Doing, from Essence to Action

Jewishhood Project(s)

Notes

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 21. Dez 2019)

ISBN:

0-8135-6366-6

OCLC:

944303842