Olamot in Humanities and Social Sciences

The eighteenth century was the Jews' first modern century. The deep changes that took place during its course shaped the following generations, and its most prominent voices still reverberate today. In this first volume of his magisterial work, Shmuel Feiner charts the twisting and fascinating world of the first half of the 18th century from the viewpoint of the Jews of Europe. Paying careful attention to life stories, to bright and dark experiences, to voices of protest, to aspirations of reform, and to strivings for personal and general happiness, Feiner identifies the tectonic changes that were taking place in Europe and their unprecedented effects on and among Jews. From the religious and cultural revolution of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) to the question of whether Jews could be citizens of any nation, Feiner presents a broad view of how this century of upheaval altered the map of Europe and the Jews who called it home.

Israel's cultural space is frequently studied as if it were synonymous with the Hebrew-Israeli one. But within the borders of Israel, a fascinating culture was (and continues to be) created in many languages other than Hebrew, reflecting its reality from angles that the makers of Hebrew-Israeli culture did not know and all too often lacked the tools to express. I Am Your Dust: Representations of the Israeli Experience in Yiddish Prose, 1948–1967 expands the boundaries of current studies of Israel's cultural history by presenting and analyzing Yiddish-Israeli prose written during the country's first two decades as an independent state. It offers a comprehensive study of that unique, and hitherto little understood, literature, a detailed historical documentation of the contexts of its production, and an eye-opening comparison of its themes to the more familiar outputs of Hebrew-Israeli prose. I Am Your Dust is the first socioliterary investigation of Yiddish-Israeli culture, and it explores how Yiddish-Israeli writers played a vital role in shaping the country's cultural identity in its early years.

The second volume of Shmuel Feiner's The Jewish Eighteenth Century covers the period from 1750 to 1800, a time of even greater upheavals, tensions, and challenges. The changes that began to emerge at the beginning of the eighteenth century matured in the second half. Feiner explores how political considerations of the Jewish minority throughout Europe began to expand. From the "Jew Bill" of 1753 in Britain, to the surprising series of decrees issued by Joseph II of Austria that expanded tolerance in Austria, to the debate over emancipation in revolutionary France, the lives of the Jews of Europe became ever more intertwined with the political, social, economic, and cultural fabric of the continent. The Jewish Eighteenth Century, Volume 2: A European Biography, 1750–1800 concludes Feiner's landmark study of the history of Jewish populations in the period. By combining an examination of the broad and profound processes that changed the familiar world from the ground up with personal experiences of those who lived through them, it allows for a unique explanation of these momentous events.

Among the many narratives about the atrocities committed against Jews in the Holocaust, the story about the Jews who lived in the eye of the storm-the German Jews-has received little attention. Germans against Germans: The Fate of the Jews, 1938–1945, tells this story-how Germans declared war against other Germans, that is, against German Jews. Author Moshe Zimmermann explores questions of what made such a war possible? How could such a radical process of exclusion take place in a highly civilized, modern society? What were the societal mechanisms that paved the way for legal discrimination, isolation, deportation, and eventual extermination of the individuals who were previously part and parcel of German society? Germans against Germans demonstrates how the combination of antisemitism, racism, bureaucracy, cynicism, and imposed collaboration culminated in "the final solution."