The Jews: History, Memory, and the Present

by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, David Ames Curtis, Paul Berman

Overview

-The well-translated and coherently combined essays gathered in The Jews treat a range of issues from the ancient Jewish revolt against Roman rule and the much-mythologized martyrdom at Masada, the French Revolution, the Dreyfus Affair, and Marxism's difficulties with 'the Jewish Question,' to Nazi genocide and the deep problems of representing it. -Washington Post Book World -A vivid presentation of one of France's most dynamic and original thinkers. . . .With sources ranging from classical texts to contemporary films and Holocaust testimonies, and enhanced by fascinating linguistic, philosophical, and political asides, Vidal-Naquet's book maintains a firm balance between textual criticism and analytic rigor, open inquiry and moral fervor, French republicanism and liberal ideals, Jewish tradition and universal values. - - Choice -Vidal-Naquet discusses Josephus and the Jewish War as a critical historian. He is no less demanding and critical when he turns to the modern era, but this time he writes also as a historian personally involved in the historical process he analyzes. -New York Review of Books -Vidal-Naquet focuses on the way history, especially as it relates to Jews, has been distorted by mainstream cultures through history. In shedding light on this, he rescues for us the golden thread of historical truth that unites us with our ancestors. -Jewish Chronicle

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231102094
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	04/07/1998
Series:	European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Pierre Vidal-Naquet is the author of many books, including The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World and Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (both with Jean-Pierre Vernant) and Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (Columbia).David Ames Curtis is a translator whose credits include works by Cornelius Castoriadis as well as Vidal-Naquet and Pierre Leveque's Cleisthenes the Athenian.

Table of Contents

Translator's Note
Foreward by Paul Berman
Preface to the English-Language Edition
Part One: Origins and History
1. Forms of Political Activity in the Jewish World, Principally Around the First Century C.E.
2. Flavius Josephus and Masada
3. Flavius Josephus and the Prophets
4. Apropos of Zakhor
Part Two: Emancipation and History
5. The Privilege of Liberty
6. Dreyfus in the Affair and in History
7. Jewish Prism, Marxist Prism
Part Three: Destruction, Memory, and the Present
8. The Hero, the Historian, and Choice
9. The Historian and the Test of Murder
10. The Shoah's Challenge to History
11. On an Interpretation of the Great Massacre: Arno Mayer and the 'Final Solution'
12. And by the Power of a Word...
13. A Wonderful School...
14. The Harmonics of Szymon Laks
15. Presentation of a Document: The Journal of Attorney Lucien Vidal-Naquet
Part Four: History, Memory, and the Present
16. Reflections at the Margins of a Tragedy
17. Return to Israel
18. 'Inquiry into a Massacre', by Amnon Kapeliouk
19. The Anti-Peace Colonists
Part Five: Conclusion
20. Recollections of a Witness: Protestants and Jews Durgaing the Second World War in France
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

The well-translated and coherently combined essays gathered in The Jews treat a range of issues from the ancient Jewish revolt against Roman rule and the much-mythologized martyrdom at Masada, the French Revolution, the Dreyfus Affair, and Marxism's difficulties with 'the Jewish Question,' to Nazi genocide and the deep problems of representing it.

Washington Post Book World

A significant contribution to the unending confrontation of history with mythology.

Forward

A provocative look into the Jewish past and its contemporary relevance.

Jewish Book World

Vidal-Naquet discusses Josephus and the Jewish War as a critical historian. He is no less demanding and critical when he turns to the modern era, but this time he writes also as a historian personally involved in the historical process he analyzes.

New York Review of Books

Vidal-Naquet focuses on the way history, especially as it relates to Jews, has been distorted by mainstream cultures through history. In shedding light on this, he rescues for us the golden thread of historical truth that unites us with our ancestors.

Jewish Chronicle

A vivid presentation of one of France's most dynamic and original thinkers....With sources ranging from classical texts to contemporary films and Holocaust testimonies, and enhanced by fascinating linguistic, philosophical, and political asides, Vidal-Naquet's book maintains a firm balance between textual criticism and analytic rigor, open inquiry and moral fervor, French republicanism and liberal ideals, Jewish tradition and universal values.

Choice