Jewish Materialism
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The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s
Eliyahu Stern
Price: $45.00
A paradigm-shifting account of the modern Jewish experience, from one of the most creative young historians of his generation
In the face of dire poverty and rampant anti-Semitism, they mobilized Judaism for projects directed at ensuring the fair and equal distribution of resources in society. Their program drew as much from the universalism of Karl Marx and Charles Darwin as from the messianism and utopianism of biblical and Kabbalistic works. Once described as a religion consisting of rituals, reason, and rabbinics, Judaism was now also rooted in land, labor, and bodies. Exhaustively researched, this original, revisionist account challenges our standard narratives of nationalism, secularization, and de-Judaization.
"Stern specializes in eye opening! For all those assuming Judaism and materialism were on radically diverging paths in the world of 19th century Russian Jewry, this brilliant book will come as a salutary shock. It chronicles the countless ways in which writers and thinkers struggled to make religion and a realistic understanding of Jewish life come together. The dilemma elegantly set out by Stern has never really gone away, making the book timely in every possible sense."—Simon Schama
Publication Date: March 20, 2018
24 b/w illus.