Visualizing Jews Through the Ages: Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism(Routledge Studies in Cultural History)

This volume explores literary and material representations of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Gathering leading scholars from within the field of Jewish Studies, it investigates how the debates surrounding literary and material images within Judaism and in Jewish life are part of an on-going strategy of image management - the urge to shape, direct, authorize and contain Jewish literary and material images and encounters with those images - a strategy both consciously and unconsciously undertaken within multifarious arenas of Jewish life from early modern German lands to late twentieth-century North London, late Antique Byzantium to the curation of contemporary Holocaust exhibitions.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Visualising Jews: An Introduction to Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism Through the Ages Hannah Ewence and Helen Spurling Part I: Divinity, Divine Actions and Their Interpretation: The Management of Theological Images 1. The Idea of Creation out of Nothing: From Qumran to Genesis Rabbah. Markus Bockmuehl 2. The Image of God in Late Antique Apocalyptic Literature: The Holy One as Teacher in Pirqe Mashiah. Helen Spurling 3. Approaching the Divine by Imitatio Dei: Tzelem and Demut in R. Moshe Cordovero’s Tomer Devorah. Patrick Benjamin Koch 4. The Image of Torah Min Ha-Shamayim in the Thought of Louis Jacobs Miri Freud-Kandel 5. Nothing and the Jews Devorah Baum Part II: Contested Images of Judaism and Jewishness: Jewish Perspectives on Identity and Image Management 6. Iconism and Aniconism in the Period of the Monarchy: Was There an Image of the Deity in the Jerusalem Temple? Garth Gilmour 7. The Wissenschaft des Judentums and the Visual Irene Zwiep 8. Aestheticism and the Flight from Jewishness Todd M. Endelman 9. The Jew in the Eruv, the Jew in the Suburb: Contesting the Public Face and the Private Space of British Jewry Hannah Ewence Part III: Interaction and Conflict with the "Other": The Management of Images in Jewish/Non-Jewish Relations 10. Beyond the Generic: Contextual Interpretations of Mediaeval Jewish Female Iconography Israel M. Sandman 11. Navigating Christian Space: Jewish Responses to Christian Imagery in Early Modern German Lands Maria Diemling 12. Translating Modernity: On Aniconism and Negative Aesthetics in German-Jewish Thought Leena Petersen 13. Confronting the Military Image: The Jewish Soldier and the British Army in the First World War Anne Lloyd Part IV: Communication and Representation: The Management of Jewish Images in Cultural Media 14. The Image of the Jews in Belorussian Soviet Cinema, 1924–1936 Claire Le Foll 15. Another Man’s Faith?: The Image of Judaism in the BBC Television Series Men Seeking God. James Jordan 16. The Absent, the Partial and the Iconic in Archival Photographs of the Holocaust Isabel Wollaston 17. Adorno and the Prohibition of the Image: The Case of Music Lars Fischer 18. Ari Folman’s Other War: Animating and Erasing the Holocaust in Waltz with Bashir. Giulia Miller

About the Author :
Hannah Ewence is Lecturer in Modern History at University of Chester. Helen Spurling is Ian Karten Lecturer in Jewish Studies and Outreach Fellow at University of Southampton.