Wisse, Ruth R.

A little love in big Manhattan by Ruth R Wisse( Book )

16 editions published between 1987 and 2014 in 4 languages and held by 343 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Index

If I am not for myself- : the liberal betrayal of the Jews by Ruth R Wisse( Book )

3 editions published in 1992 in English and held by 342 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

For over a century, Jews have been identified with liberalism. Not only have they been a driving force behind the spread of liberal politics; they have also been steadfastly loyal to a doctrine that promised them both safety and political acceptance. Recent evidence suggests that their commitment has not waned. But while Jews continue to stand up for other groups and "vote their conscience," contends Ruth Wisse, the liberal commitment to the Jews is not nearly so strong. Whenever Jews have been attacked - from the trial of Captain Dreyfus to the sustained military and political war against Israel - liberals have been slow to defend Jewish rights and have preferred instead to hold the Jews responsible for the persistence of their enemies. The explanation for this liberal default, Wisse argues, is the survival and success of anti-Semitism. This irrational idea continues to flourish throughout the world, despite the destruction of the fascist and communist regimes that were its deadliest twentieth-century allies. Wisse points out that anti-Semitism's astonishing resilience has put liberals - including liberal Jews - in an impossible position. The only reasonable response to such a doctrine, Wisse insists, is not appeasement or avoidance, but steadfast confrontation and rejection. Yet such opposition is alien to liberal ideas of open-mindedness and strikes many as intolerant. Unwilling to suspend their optimistic view of man as a benevolent and rational being in order to combat a mortal enemy, most liberals - including many Jews - conclude that Jews themselves must be responsible for the continuing wars against them - thus implicitly condoning their sacrifice. Wisse's book, inspired by a friend's emigration to Israel, traces the Jewish romance with liberalism from its discovery by Jewish integrationists and Zionists to the acceptance today by many Jews of a moral equivalence between Zionism and the war against it. She also explores, among the many contradictions of modern Jewish politics, the ambiguous question of Jewish "chosenness," and the Jewish longing for acceptance in a larger human family; the successful Arab war of ideas against Israel; and the dilemma of Jewish writers and intellectuals who wish to transcend their parochializing siege. Above all, she shows how and why anti-Semitism became the twentieth century's most successful ideology and reveals what people in liberal democracies would have to do to prevent it from once again achieving its goal

Stories by Meir Blinkin( Book )

3 editions published in 1984 in English and held by 338 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Sholem Aleichem : laughing in the darkness( Visual )

5 editions published between 2012 and 2013 in English and held by 232 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

A portrait of writer Sholem Aleichem, whose stories about Tevye the milkman became the basis of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. Aleichem (1859-1916) was a rebellious wordsmith who created a new genre of literature and used his remarkable humor to encapsulate the realities of the Eastern European Jewish world in the late nineteenth century. Using a rich collection of archival footage, the film recreates a time in czarist Russia when Jews were second-class citizens and frequent scapegoats in times of social and political unrest

Arguing the modern Jewish canon : essays on literature and culture in honor of Ruth R. Wisse( Book )

7 editions published in 2008 in English and held by 217 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Ruth R. Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and one of our most fearless public intellectuals on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, Wisse's colleagues pay tribute to her with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature. Inspired by her award-winning book, The Modern Jewish Canon, Wisse's fellow scholars take up many questions raised by her definition of Jewish canonicity, while offering new readings of such disparate writers as George Eliot, Isaac Babel, J.D. Salinger, S.Y. Agnon, Philip Roth, and many others

Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer( Book )

4 editions published between 1996 and 2005 in English and held by 207 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

As messianic zeal sweeps through medieval Poland, the Jews of Goray divide between those who, like the Rabbi, insist that no one can "force the end" and those who follow the messianic pretender Sabbatai Zevi. But as hysteria and depravity increase, it becomes clear that it is not the Messiah who has come to Goray

The poetry of Abraham Sutzkever : the Vilno poet, reading in Yiddish by Abraham Sutzkever( )

5 editions published between 1960 and 1991 in Yiddish and held by 117 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Burnt pearls : ghetto poems of Abraham Sutzkever by Abraham Sutzkever( Book )

6 editions published in 1981 in English and held by 109 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Sholem Aleichem and the art of communication by Ruth R Wisse( Book )

6 editions published between 1979 and 1980 in English and held by 100 WorldCat member libraries worldwide