Providing an assessment of Jewish identity, this volume presents critical engagements with a number of Jewish writers and filmmakers from a variety of European countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Poland, and the UK. The novels and films discussed explore the meaning of being Jewish in Europe today, and investigate the extent to which this experience is shaped by factors that lie outside the national context, notably by the relationship to Israel. As the recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo, and the targeting of a Jewish supermarket in Paris, demonstrate, these questions are more pressing than ever, and will challenge Jews, as well as Jewish writers and intellectuals, as they explore the answers.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.
This book provides an assessment of Jewish identity, by presenting engagements with European Jewish writers and filmmakers. Topics explore the meaning of being Jewish in Europe today, and the extent this experience is shaped by factors that lie outside the national context. It was published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.
Foreword Introduction 1. Negotiating Jewish identity in an asemitic age 2. Standing apart/being a part: Cixousâs fictional Jewish identities 3. Frenchness, Jewishness, and âintegrationâ in Karin Albouâs La Petite JĂŠrusalem 4. âBecoming Englishâ: assimilation and its discontents in contemporary British-Jewish literature 5. Antisemitism and Israel in British Jewish fiction: perspectives on Clive Sinclairâs Blood Libels (1985) and Howard Jacobsonâs The Finkler Question (2010) 6. Lost in Third Space? Narrating German-Jewish identity in Maxim Billerâs autobiography Der gebrauchte Jude (2009) 7. The persistence of nostalgia? When Poles miss their Jews and Israelis yearn for Europe 8. Is there an âIsraeli Diasporaâ? Jewish Israelis negotiating national identity between Zionist ideology and diasporic reality 9. Growing up Jewish in Austria: a personal testimony