%{search_type} search results

• Introduction
• 1. Moving Away From Communism: The Case of Arthur Koestler
• 2. "Is it good for the Jews?" The Conversion of Norman Podhoretz, Editor of Commentary Magazine, from the New Left to Neoconservatism
• 3. From Anti-Zionist Orthodoxy to Messianic Religious Zionist: the Case of Yissachar Shlomo Teichtel
• 4. From Spiritual Conversion to Ideological Conversion: The Quest of Ruth Ben-David
• 5. The "Deconversion" of Haim Herman Cohn: A Model of Secular Religion
• 6. Avraham (Avrum) Burg between Religious-Zionism and Post-Zionism
• Concluding remarks.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This volume explores the processes that led several modern Jewish leaders - rabbis, politicians, and intellectuals - to make radical changes to their ideology regarding Zionism, Socialism, and Orthodoxy. Comparing their ideological change to acts of conversion, the study examines the philosophical, sociological, and psychological path of the leaders' transformation. The individuals examined are novelist Arthur Koestler, who transformed from a devout Communist to an anti-Communist crusader following the atrocities of the Stalin regime; Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, who moved from the New Left to neoconservative, disillusioned by US liberal politics; Yissachar Shlomo Teichtel, who transformed from an ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Hungarian rabbi to messianic Religious-Zionist due to the events of the Holocaust; Ruth Ben-David, who converted to Judaism after the Second World War in France because of her sympathy with Zionism, eventually becoming a radical anti-Israeli advocate; Haim Herman Cohn, Israeli Supreme Court justice, who grew up as a non-Zionist Orthodox Jew in Germany, later renouncing his belief in God due to the events of the Holocaust; and Avraham (Avrum) Burg, prominent centrist Israeli politician who served as the Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency, who later became a post-Zionist. Comparing aspects of modern politics to religion, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas including modern Jewish studies, sociology of religion, and political science.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1 Judaising Movements and Colonial Discourse; 2 Israel in China A Judaising Discourse in the Far East; 3 The Lemba An African Judaising Tribe; 4 Conversion and Judaisation The 'Lost Tribes' Committees at the Birth of the Jewish State; 5 A Conversion Movement in Italy Jewish Universalism, Conversion and Gender in San Nicandro; 6 The 'Falashisation' of the Blacks of Harlem A Judaising Movement in 20th-century USA; Bibliography; Notes; Index

The history of Judaising movements has been largely ignored by historians of religion. This volume analyzes the interplay between colonialism, a Judaism not traditionally viewed as proselytising but which at certain points was struggling to heed the Prophets and become a light unto the Gentiles' and the attraction for many different peoples of the rooted historicity of Judaism and by the symbolic appropriation of Jewish suffering. This book will look at the role of colonialism in the development of Judaising movements throughout the world, including New Zealand, Japan, India, Burma and Africa. Particular attention will be paid to the Lemba tribe of Southern Africa. A remarkable parallel movement in 1930s Southern Italy will also be dealt with. The history of the converts of San Nicandro is seen in the context of currents of Jewish universalism, messianism and Zionism. Gender issues are also discussed here as the converted women assumed powers they had not hitherto enjoyed.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Not many people know of the utterly extraordinary events that took place in a humble southern Italian town in the first half of the twentieth century - and those who do have struggled to explain them. In the late 1920s, a crippled shoemaker had a vision where God called upon him to bring the Jewish faith to this 'dark corner' in the Catholic heartlands, despite him having had no prior contact with Judaism itself. By 1938, about a dozen families had converted at one of the most troubled times for Italy's Jews. The peasant community came under the watchful eyes of Mussolini's regime and the Catholic Church, but persisted in their new belief, eventually securing approval of their conversion from the rabbinical authorities, and emigrating to the newly founded State of Israel, where a community still exists today. In this first fully documented examination of the San Nicandro story, John Davis explains how and why these incredible events unfolded as they did. Using the converts' own accounts and a wide range of hitherto unknown sources, Davis uncovers the everyday trials and tribulations within this community, and shows how they intersected with many key contemporary issues, including national identity and popular devotional cults, Fascist and Catholic persecution, Zionist networks and postwar Jewish refugees, and the mass exodus that would bring the Mediterranean peasant world to an end. Vivid and poignant, this book draws fresh and intriguing links between the astonishing San Nicandro affair and the wider transformation of twentieth-century Europe.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)