Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration

Reflections on Insiders and Outsiders: A General Introduction - Steven E. Aschheim

PART I: INSIDER/OUTSIDER: THE CULTURAL CONUNDRUM
1 The Project of Jewish Culture and its Boundaries---Insiders and Outsiders - Richard I. Cohen
2 Gott fun Avrohom: Itzik Manger and Avot Yeshurun Look Homewards - Zvi Jagendorf
3 Agony and Resurrection: The Figure of Jesus in the Work of Reuven Rubin - Amitai Mendelsohn
4 Mihail Sebastian: A Jewish Writer and his (Antisemitic) Master - Leon Volovici
5 Insiders/Outsiders: Poles and Jews in Recent Polish Jewish Fiction and Autobiography - Karen Auerbach and Antony Polonsky

PART II: ACCULTURATION, ASSIMILATION, AND IDENTITY
6 Negotiating Czechoslovakia: The Challenges of Jewish Citizenship in a Multiethnic Nation-State - Hillel J. Kieval
7 The Debate over Assimilation in Late Nineteenth-Century - Lwow Rachel Manekin
8 The Culture of Ethno-Nationalism and the Identity of Jews in Inter-War Poland: Some Responses to 'the Aces of Purebred Race' - Joanna B. Michlic

PART III: INCLUSION/EXCLUSION: SOCIETY AND POLITICS
9 Urban Society, Popular Culture, Participatory Politics: On the Culture of Modern Jewish Politics in Congress Poland - Scott Ury
10 The 'Non-Jewish Jews' Revisited: Solzhenitsyn and the Issue of National Guilt - Jonathan Frankel
11 The Jewish Informer as Extortionist and Idealist - Ruth R. Wisse

PART IV. TWO CITIES AND TALES OF BELONGING
12 A Jewish El Dorado? Myth and Politics in Habsburg Czernowitz - David Rechter
13 Wilno/Vilnius/Vilne: Whose City Is It Anyway? - Mordechai Zalkin

Notes on Contributors
Index

About the Author

Richard I. Cohen is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has co-curated two major art-historical exhibitions, one in New York (From Court Jews to the Rothschilds) and one in Paris (Le Juif Errant: Un Témoin du Temps). He is the author of Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe, which was the recipient of the Arnold Wischnitzer Prize for the best book in Jewish history (1999), and has edited and co-edited over fifteen books, many focusing on aspects of Jewish art and history. Two of his co-edited works are published by the Littman Library: The Jewish Contribution to Civilization: Reassessing an Idea (2007), and Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry (2010). Jonathan Frankel was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies and the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 marked a turning point in modern Jewish historiography and was awarded a number of prestigious prizes. He is the author of 'The Damascus Affair: ‘Ritual Murder’, Politics, and the Jews in 1840', and the editor of many books, including several volumes of 'Studies in Contemporary Jewry'. He has also published numerous works on modern Jewish politics, with an emphasis on the emergence of Jewish nationalism, the history of the Jews in tsarist and Soviet Russia, and Jewish historiography. An edition of his essays will be published shortly. Stefani Hoffman is the former director of the Mayrock Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently involved in freelance research, editing, and translation on topics related to Russian Jewish history and society. She is co-editor, with Ezra Mendelsohn, of 'The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s Jews' and, with Yitzhak Brudny and Jonathan Frankel, of 'Restructuring Post-Communist Russia'.

Reviews

'Intellectual provocations and controversial and new interpretations are very important, especially if they come together with solid scholarship. This is the case of the book under review, which is a must read for everybody interested in the assimilation of east European Jews.' Piotr Wróbel, H-Judaic

'This volume, thanks to the high quality and diversity of its offerings, is clearly a major contribution to east European Jewish studies and to the larger fields of Jewish history and cultural studies.'  Natan Meir, H-Judaic

'All authors present well-grounded conclusions with regard to the specific problems they analyse and suggest that by using a methodological approach like that of “outsiders” and “insiders” it is possible to widen the scope of research on identity change and provide a fresh look at conflcts possibly based on individual choices, their contexts, and consequences. Thus, the articles in this book, each in their way, convincingly prove the viability and multi-functionality of this methodological apprach in research on modern east European Jewish culture and history.'  Jurgita Siauciunaite-Verbickiene, Judaica