Читать книгу Judaism I - Группа авторов - Страница 40

Dr. Joachim Schlör of the University of Southhampton writes that modern culture offers perspectives beyond traditional ways of living and thinking. The idea to open the Jewish community of Berlin to new horizons by the translation of the Hebrew Bible into German, the daily use of the German language, the creation of a »free school« with instruction in worldly topics, reform of synagogue services, and a weakening of rabbinical authority, provoked resistance within the community.

Jacob Katz contended that a major criterion for determining when modernity began was when Jews began to think in cultural patterns taken from the non-Jewish world. »Port Jews« from Amsterdam, London, Hamburg, Bordeaux, and Venice, down to Sarajevo and Constantinople established reformed communities with an interest in education and integration. Odessa became a creative centre for modern Jewish literature not just in Yiddish and in Hebrew, but also in Russian. Ideas born in Odessa travelled from Warsaw to Berlin, New York, Buenos Aires, and Tel Aviv.

Urbanization was most important for Jewish encounters with modern culture: free schools, access to libraries and museums, theatre and concerts, and the chance to make one’s life outside of the traditional community. In Berlin, this chance was taken by those who became »German Jews« and saw themselves on the path to emancipation and integration within wider society. The city provided the immigrant from Russia and Eastern Europe, not least Hasidic groups with the space to build up their own institutions.

Two main areas of engagement were religious and cultural practice on the one hand, and the question of national identity, on the other. Modernity came at a price for each individual and his or her relationship with others, and with the self. Modern Jewish engagement with urban culture and the experience of immigration found a new American outlook. With the foundation of a Jewish State in 1948, yet another form of Jewish engagement ensued. While the State of Israel was made by the experiences of immigrants from more than a hundred countries, a new Israeli and Hebrew engagement with modernity and modern culture emerged.