The Light of Learning

Hasidism in Poland on the Eve of the Holocaust

Glenn Dynner (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

320 Seiten

2024
Oxford University Press Inc (Verlag)
978-0-19-767063-7 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

The Light of Learning tells the story of an unexpected Hasidic revival in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of World War I, the Jewish mystical movement appeared to be in shambles. Hasidic leaders had dispersed, Hasidic courts lay in ruins, and the youth seemed swept up in secularist trends as a result of mandatory public schooling and new Jewish movements like Zionism and Socialism. Author Glenn Dynner shows that in response to this, Hasidic leaders reinvented themselves as educators devoted to rescuing the youth by means of thriving networks of heders (primary schools), Bais Yaakov schools for girls and women, and world-renowned yeshivas.

During the ensuing pedagogical revolution, Hasidic yeshivas soon overshadowed courts, and Hasidic leaders became known more for scholarship than miracle-working. By mobilizing Torah study, Hasidic leaders were able to subvert the "civilizing" projects of the Polish state, successfully rival Zionists and Socialists, and create clandestine yeshiva bunkers in ghettos during the Holocaust. Torah study was thus not only a spiritual-intellectual endeavor but a political practice that fueled a formidable culture of resistance. The Light of Learning belies notions of late Hasidic decadence and decline and transforms our understanding of Polish Jewry during its final hour.

Glenn Dynner is the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies at Fairfield University, editor of the journal Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, and a recent Guggenheim Fellow. He is author of Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (OUP, 2006), and Yankel's Tavern: Jews, Liquor, and Life in the Kingdom of Poland (OUP, 2013).

Introduction

1. Weathering the Crisis: Polish Hasidism through the First World War

2. A Higher Education: The Hasidic Pedagogical Revival

3. Aguda: The Politicization of Hasidism

4. Against Aguda: Politics without Party Politics

5. Physical Pogroms and Spiritual Pogroms: Hasidism in Post-Piludski Poland

6. Hasidism during the Holocaust

Conclusion

Erscheinungsdatum	18.12.2023
Zusatzinfo	35 b/w photos; 1 map
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	163 x 243 mm
Gewicht	599 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
ISBN-10	0-19-767063-6 / 0197670636
ISBN-13	978-0-19-767063-7 / 9780197670637
Zustand	Neuware