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The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany
Although Jewish participation in German society increased after World War I, Jews did not completely assimilate into that society. In fact, says Michael Brenner in this intriguing book, the Jewish population of Weimar Germany became more aware of its Jewishness and created new forms of German-Jewish culture in literature, music, fine arts, education, and scholarship. Brenner presents the first in-depth study of this culture, drawing a fascinating portrait of people in the midst of redefining themselves.
The Weimar Jews chose neither a radical break with the past nor a return to the past but instead dressed Jewish traditions in the garb of modern forms of cultural expression. Brenner describes, for example, how modern translations made classic Jewish texts accessible, Jewish museums displayed ceremonial artifacts in a secular framework, musical arrangements transformed synagogue liturgy for concert audiences, and popular novels recalled aspects of the Jewish past. Brenner's work, while bringing this significant historical period to life, illuminates contemporary Jewish issues. The preservation and even enhancement of Jewish distinctiveness, combined with the seemingly successful participation of Jews in a secular, non-Jewish society, offer fresh insight into modern questions of Jewish existence, identity, and integration into other cultures.
The Weimar Jews chose neither a radical break with the past nor a return to the past but instead dressed Jewish traditions in the garb of modern forms of cultural expression. Brenner describes, for example, how modern translations made classic Jewish texts accessible, Jewish museums displayed ceremonial artifacts in a secular framework, musical arrangements transformed synagogue liturgy for concert audiences, and popular novels recalled aspects of the Jewish past. Brenner's work, while bringing this significant historical period to life, illuminates contemporary Jewish issues. The preservation and even enhancement of Jewish distinctiveness, combined with the seemingly successful participation of Jews in a secular, non-Jewish society, offer fresh insight into modern questions of Jewish existence, identity, and integration into other cultures.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 24, 1996
65 people want to read
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August 12, 2018
One has to be careful with analogies, since while they're helpful to a certain extent, they can be overextended and cease to be useful, and actually become harmful. Still, a good way to think of the efflorescence of Judaica and interest in all-things Jewish in Weimar Germany among Jews in the interwar period is to compare it to the process of self-discovery and self-definition that took place among many American blacks in Harlem around roughly the same time.
Most such studies and analyses of this period focus on the compromises and paradoxes involved in either "going back to roots" or investing in assimilation (a gamble which, alas, did not pay off for patriotic German Jews). Many German Jews, for instance, came to regard the Eastern shtetl Jew as more authentic than the Western Jew (sometimes derisively called "Sunday Jews") while other assimilated Jews sort of held their noses at these Eastern imports (rumored to be carrying disease and strange revolutionary ideas), those men with long beards, black caftans, and their anti-intellectual mysticism.
Herr Brenner focuses most of his study on this former cohort, those who felt that the Judaism of their fathers was a deracinated and empty husk of the true faith of the Jews (whose roots they traced not to the Pale and Shtetl, but all the way back to the Middle East). Some familiar names pop up in this study (Martin Buber, Franz Kafka) as well as some people and works who were more obscure to me.
Lastly, before getting to the book's demerits, another thing the book has going for it is that Herr Brenner makes an effort (at least near the end of the book) to show that Eastern, supposedly more authentic Jews owed a great debt to the (perhaps) self-loathing, Germanized milieu of the the nominal Jews, since it was these people discovering Judaism from the outside who produced the great wealth of scholarship on Judaism around this time, reinventing, preserving, and definitely reinvigorating the culture as they sifted through their mostly-occluded (and sometimes deliberately destroyed) past. Rabbinical and Orthodox scholarship at this time was mercilessly hermeneutical, and mostly about preservation and repudiation of the material word. Also biblical proscriptions against "graven images" limited the output of Orthodox Jewish artworks, and it sometimes took reform, liberal, and even lapsed Jews to provide an idiomatically Jewish vernacular in the space where piety had previously laid down too many prohibitions for art (or music outside of very dour cantor singing) to flourish.
The problem with the book is that most of what should be conveyed in a compelling way just seems to be cataloged. The work comes alive at times, but more often than not the prose just lies there limp. If you're mortified at the idea of actually being able to really enjoy something that's scholarly, and like for your reading experience to feel like a dry seminar where half the audience is snoring, you might not have the same qualms as I.
That said, there's some good yeoman's work in here, some interesting images and ephemera, as well as a king's ransom of bibliographical sources to raid in the back of the book. Perhaps it would be wisest to do as the subjects of Brenner's work did, though, and to skip the intermediary (Brenner in this case) and go back to the sources. Conversely, if you write me off as a Goykopf philistine and plebe with the attention span of a gnat, and happen to find the book compelling cover to cover, no hard feelings.
Most such studies and analyses of this period focus on the compromises and paradoxes involved in either "going back to roots" or investing in assimilation (a gamble which, alas, did not pay off for patriotic German Jews). Many German Jews, for instance, came to regard the Eastern shtetl Jew as more authentic than the Western Jew (sometimes derisively called "Sunday Jews") while other assimilated Jews sort of held their noses at these Eastern imports (rumored to be carrying disease and strange revolutionary ideas), those men with long beards, black caftans, and their anti-intellectual mysticism.
Herr Brenner focuses most of his study on this former cohort, those who felt that the Judaism of their fathers was a deracinated and empty husk of the true faith of the Jews (whose roots they traced not to the Pale and Shtetl, but all the way back to the Middle East). Some familiar names pop up in this study (Martin Buber, Franz Kafka) as well as some people and works who were more obscure to me.
Lastly, before getting to the book's demerits, another thing the book has going for it is that Herr Brenner makes an effort (at least near the end of the book) to show that Eastern, supposedly more authentic Jews owed a great debt to the (perhaps) self-loathing, Germanized milieu of the the nominal Jews, since it was these people discovering Judaism from the outside who produced the great wealth of scholarship on Judaism around this time, reinventing, preserving, and definitely reinvigorating the culture as they sifted through their mostly-occluded (and sometimes deliberately destroyed) past. Rabbinical and Orthodox scholarship at this time was mercilessly hermeneutical, and mostly about preservation and repudiation of the material word. Also biblical proscriptions against "graven images" limited the output of Orthodox Jewish artworks, and it sometimes took reform, liberal, and even lapsed Jews to provide an idiomatically Jewish vernacular in the space where piety had previously laid down too many prohibitions for art (or music outside of very dour cantor singing) to flourish.
The problem with the book is that most of what should be conveyed in a compelling way just seems to be cataloged. The work comes alive at times, but more often than not the prose just lies there limp. If you're mortified at the idea of actually being able to really enjoy something that's scholarly, and like for your reading experience to feel like a dry seminar where half the audience is snoring, you might not have the same qualms as I.
That said, there's some good yeoman's work in here, some interesting images and ephemera, as well as a king's ransom of bibliographical sources to raid in the back of the book. Perhaps it would be wisest to do as the subjects of Brenner's work did, though, and to skip the intermediary (Brenner in this case) and go back to the sources. Conversely, if you write me off as a Goykopf philistine and plebe with the attention span of a gnat, and happen to find the book compelling cover to cover, no hard feelings.
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