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The Jewish Book and Beyond in Modern Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2010

Jeffrey Shandler*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
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Extract

How might one begin to think about the Jewish book in the modern era? The period is defined by unprecedented proliferation—not only of many new books, but also of an array of new kinds of books, as well as a plethora of new print and other communications technologies, new professions and institutions associated one way or another with books, and new text practices. This burgeoning volume of material, as well as the expansive range of possibilities for books and how they figure in Jewish life, demand that those who would study the place of the book in modern Jewish life (up to and including contemporary phenomena) would do well to begin with reconnaissance, casting the net wide and considering which larger issues this wealth of materials and practices suggests for further study. This survey not only yields an impressive roster of potential subjects of inquiry; the information itself suggests possibilities for understanding Jewish books and book practices as a defining feature of modern Jewish life.

Type
Symposium: The Jewish Book
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2010

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References

1. On the history of new media, see Gitelman, Lisa and Pingree, Geoffrey B., eds., New Media, 1740–1915 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Marvin, Carolyn, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. On the impact of new media of the twentieth century on American Jewish religious life, see Shandler, Jeffrey, Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America (New York: New York University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See, e.g., Parush, Iris, Reading Jewish Women: Marginality and Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Eastern European Jewish Society, trans. Sternberg, Saadya (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press/Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. See, e.g., Stein, Sarah Abrevaya, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

4. A case in point is Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer; see Saltzman, Roberta, Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Bibliography of His Works in Yiddish and English, 1960–1991 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

5. On Jewish encyclopedias, see, e.g., Schwartz, Shuly Rubin, The Emergence of Jewish Scholarship in America: The Publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Trachtenberg, Barry, “From Edification to Commemoration: ‘Di Algemeyne Entsiklopedye,’ the Holocaust and the Changing Mission of Yiddish Scholarship,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 5, no. 3 (2006): 285300CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Jewish children's literature, see, e.g., Jewish Children's Literature: Proceedings of a Conference on April 2, 1984 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Library, 1985)Google Scholar.

6. See, e.g., Sarna, Jonathan D., JPS: The Americanization of Jewish Culture, 1888–1988 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989)Google Scholar.

7. On Jewish book art, see, e.g., Wolitz, Seth, “The Ashkenazic Gaze: Creating the Jewish Art Book,” Studies in Jewish Civilization 16 (2005): 2960Google Scholar.

8. See Stolow, Jeremy, Orthodox by Design: Judaism, Print Politics, and the ArtScroll Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

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10. On the “Holocaust Torah,” see Ochs, Vanessa L., Inventing Jewish Ritual (Philadelphia: JPS, 2007), 187213Google Scholar.

11. The pin test is reported in Stratton, George M., “The Mnemonic Feat of the ‘Shass Pollak,’” Psychological Review 24 (1917): 244–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Parry, Rabbi Aaron, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding the Talmud (New York: Alpha Books/Penguin, 2004)Google Scholar.

13. See Mintz, Sharon Liberman and Goldstein, Gabriel M., eds., Printing the Talmud: From Bomberg to Schottenstein (New York: Yeshiva University Museum, 2005)Google Scholar.

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16. See H-Judaic, Jewish Studies Network (JSN), Digest, Sept. 19–20, 2007 (2007-89), and Sept. 22–23, 2007 (2007-92) at www.h-net.org/~judaic/.

17. On the Jewish presence in Second Life, see Voloj, Julian, “Virtual Jewish Topography: The Genesis of Jewish (Second) Life,” in Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place, ed. Brach, Julia et al. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 345–56Google Scholar.

18. David Landes is conducting ethnographic work on yeshiva study and recently presented some of his preliminary findings on the use of technology to the Working Group on the Jewish Book at the Center for Jewish History (April 15, 2010). For his earlier work, see David J. Landes, “Traditional Struggle: Studying, Deciding, and Performing the Law at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary” (Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 2010).