Early 20th Century WWI-Nazi Life Culture of East European German Lithuanian Jews

Description

The Face of East European Jewry  by Arnold Zweig (Author), Noah Isenberg (Editor), and Hermann Struck (Illustrator).
NOTE
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DESCRIPTION:
Hardcover with dustjacketoftcover.  Publisher: University of California (2004).  Pages: 186.  Size:  9¼ x 6¼ inches; 1¼ pounds.
A landmark work in the sphere of modern German-Jewish cultural life, “The Face of East European Jewry” is also a window on a lost world. First published in 1920 and never before translated into English, this work brings together the impassioned writing of one of Weimar Germany's most celebrated authors, Arnold Zweig, and the equally poignant illustrations by renowned graphic artist and lithographer Hermann Struck.
As members of the German wartime press division at Ober-Ost, both Zweig and Struck spent the final years of the First World War on the eastern front, on the outskirts of the Lithuanian city of Kovno (Kaunas). There they observed the life of the so-called Ostjuden, or East European Jews. Reflecting the rise of Zionism and the experience of the war, “The Face of East European Jewry” offers a dramatic and moving perspective on the short-lived romance of disenchanted Western Jews with the idea of a more authentic, more meaningful lifestyle in the East. One of the earliest interventions in the vexed relationship between German Jews and their Eastern neighbors, this book brings to life the world of the shtetl that did not survive the twentieth century.
CONDITION
:  NEW. New hardcover. University of California (2004) 186 pages. Unblemished, unmarked, pristine in every respect. Pages are pristine; clean, crisp, unmarked, unmutilated, tightly bound, unambiguously unread. Satisfaction unconditionally guaranteed. In stock, ready to ship. No disappointments, no excuses. PROMPT SHIPPING! HEAVILY PADDED, DAMAGE-FREE PACKAGING! Selling rare and out-of-print ancient history books on-line since 1997. We accept returns for any reason within 14 days! #8427a.
PLEASE SEE DESCRIPTIONS AND IMAGES BELOW FOR DETAILED REVIEWS AND FOR PAGES OF PICTURES FROM INSIDE OF BOOK.
PLEASE SEE PUBLISHER, PROFESSIONAL, AND READER REVIEWS BELOW.
PUBLISHER REVIEWS
:
REVIEW
:  Originally published in 1920, Arnold Zweig's The Face of East European Jewry provides a window into East European Jewish life. This is the first translation of the work into English, with the original illustrations by Hermann Struck. - See more at: https://www.betterworldbooks.com/the-face-of-east-european-jewry-id-9780520215122.aspx#sthash.xddLB6hU.dpuf
REVIEW
:  First published in 1920 and never before translated into English, this work brings together the impassioned writing of one of Weimar Germany's most celebrated authors, Arnold Zweig, and the equally poignant illustrations by renowned graphic artist and lithographer Hermann Struck.
REVIEW
:  Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German writer and anti-war and antifascist activist. He is best known for his six-part cycle on World War I.
REVIEW
:  Arnold Zweig (1887-1968) was a novelist, critic, and writer on Jewish and cultural themes. He emigrated to Palestine in 1933 but returned to East Berlin in 1948. Hermann Struck (1876-1944) was an artist and printmaker. Noah Isenberg is Chair of Humanities at the New School in New York City. He is the author of Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism (1999).
PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS
:
REVIEW
:  Published in 1920, this book by Arnold Zweig positioned itself as a reference for the understanding of Eastern Jewry in the German language world along the entire Nazi era. This book is a fruit from the warlike experiences of its author during his service in the OberOst in the First World War and it offers a demanding intellectual profile of the widespread, but really undefined, category of Ostjudentum, thanks to its beautiful illustrations as well. Nonetheless, beyond this cultural line of understanding, contradicting some common ideas of the anti-Semitic German imagery of the post war years, this book offers, beyond its intentions, a confirmation of other common ideas of that anti-Semitic thought.
To begin with, Zweig's reasoning goes on several understanding paths, organizing what he has watched, with a widely diffused anthropological interest among the German troops, in the Eastern front. Constant in his observation is the parallel between eastern and western Jewry. According to Zweig, the eastern Jewry is not understandable without its permanent religious reference, a reference rather lost in the western Jewry. The Ostjudentum thinks of itself as a historical fragment of eternity, it has a story of suffering finding its global signification only in the meditation of the Talmud. The first three sections of the book have the eastern male Jew as the only character because he is, as a Talmudist or a simple believer doing his job, the guardian of the comprehension enlightening the night of the history. His clothing and his praying posture are a shield defending him from the anguish of his life always threatened by poverty, as a single, and by politics and intolerance, as a member of a community. In its wretched living conditions, the Ostjudentum shows to western Jewry the strength of eternal values, the only ones that let to take hold its identity while elsewhere this identity tries to disappear in the different national communities.
In the fourth and the fifth chapters the youths and the women come in the foreground.  These latter are trapped in their reproductive function that eastern Jewry evaluates as the high task of the continuation of the descent, charged by God of an eternal mission; the chance of a even only slightly different sexual life or of an independent emancipation are simply not considered. The experience of these women with the war is terrible: there is no possible understanding between them and the German troops because their existence is too different from the existence of the troops.
The war causes the traumatic encounter between Ostjudentum and modernity as well, and, most of all, the need to have a discussion with socialism. Zweig affirms that socialism is the actual aim of the eternal idea of justice the Jewry has always had. If, on the one hand, the Talmudic tradition offers a religious and atemporal message of salvation, on the other it seems to offer a strength incentive to a radical innovation of the human world, secularizing the divine command. In the socialism finding its way into the Ostjudentum Zweig individuates the shape of a generational revolt. Once again a contradiction comes to light. If socialism is a part of the Jewish tradition, Zweig thinks that its international diffusion causes, for the Jews embracing it, the desertion of their tradition, the drying up of the original source.
It is here where the paradox comes to its showdown. The lyric, poetic, passionate Zweig description seems to confirm, if we read with nasty eyes, some common ideas of the anti-Semitic tradition: the idea of Judeo-Bolshevism and the prejudice of the antiquity and immobility of Ostjudentum. By this way, what, in the purposes of its author, is a book of hope and thrust in the future, can turn itself in a harsh accusation of the most dark and frightening side of the "Jewish question" for the anti-Semites of the post Great War years.
REVIEW
:  First published in 1920 and never before translated into English, this work brings together the impassioned writing of one of Weimar Germany's most celebrated authors, Arnold Zweig, and the equally poignant illustrations by renowned graphic artist and lithographer Hermann Struck.
READER REVIEWS
:
REVIEW
:  Writing nearly 100 years ago, Arnold Zweig had a good deal to say, but was quite a bit arbitrary and emotional in his tone. His descriptions and statements, within the context of its time, replete with partiality, it is fine. The illustrations are also very good. It is a true record of its times including the writing style and a view along the spectrum of thought of its time.
REVIEW
:  Five stars.  An outstanding read.
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