Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands / Edition 1

by Hillel J. Kieval

Overview

With a keen eye for revealing details, Hillel J. Kieval examines the contours and distinctive features of Jewish experience in the lands of Bohemia and Moravia (the present-day Czech Republic), from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. In the Czech lands, Kieval writes, Jews have felt the need constantly to define and articulate the nature of group identity, cultural loyalty, memory, and social cohesiveness, and the period of "modernizing" absolutism, which began in 1780, brought changes of enormous significance. From that time forward, new relationships with Gentile society and with the culture of the state blurred the traditional outlines of community and individual identity. Kieval navigates skillfully among histories and myths as well as demography, biography, culture, and politics, illuminating the maze of allegiances and alliances that have molded the Jewish experience during these 200 years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520214101
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	12/26/2000
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	1560L (what's this?)

About the Author

Hillel J. Kieval is Gloria M. Goldstein Professor of Jewish History and Thought at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of The Making of Czech Jewry (1988) and Blood Inscriptions, a forthcoming study of the modern ritual murder trial.

Editorial Reviews

Kieval's learned and sophisticated exploration yields some new and important insights.

Times Literary Supplement