Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters Series)

Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters Series) at leondumoulin.nl Read honest and unbiased product reviews .
Table of contents

• Series: Jewish Encounters
• Works (26)
• Join Kobo & start eReading today
• Jews and Power by Ruth R. Wisse

The Promise of Israel. The Vanishing American Jew. The Rise of Israel. What Ifs of Jewish History. A Very Short Introduction.

Between Jew and Arab. The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia. One Hundred Great Jewish Books. Comfort Ye My People: The Jewish Divide Over Israel. David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance. An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice. Israel's Years of Bogus Grandeur. Ahad Ha'am Elusive Prophet. The Languages of the Jews. This is Not the Way. The Test Of Courage: Historical Dictionary of Zionism. Be Inspired to overcome your own adversity.

The Global Architecture of Survival:. Legends of the Jews.

Works (26)

The State of the Jews. The Jews in America Trilogy. The Life of Flavius Josephus. What is Modern Israel? The Ten Lost Tribes. The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History. Her discussion of Jewish self-blame piqued my interest: According to the theory, Jews have found a way to criticize themselves for their political failings since the Babylonian Exile 2, years ago as a way to maintain their moral agency through history and ward off a sense of hopeless victimhood.

Consequently, this tendency to be self-critical has prepared them to flourish in liberal democratic societies. Taken to an extreme, however, it has blinded generations of Jews from seeing that sometimes, there are real, external threats over which Jews have little or no control. The last third of the book gets a little polemical in an attempt to shift the blame game of the Arab-Israeli conflict in favor of the Jewish perspective, but overall, a great read. This book provides an excellent but brief overview of how the Jewish nation was able to survive for two thousand years without having a state.

Wisse does a very good job in setting forth the history and the "power" that the Jews had. The concept of power is discussed and Prof Wisse showed that historically the Jews had no power with respect to the communities in which they lived. The only power, if any, was with respect to the Jewish community and was always at the pleasure of the reigning non-Jewish authority. The book is short and does not cover the topic in any great detail but it was very interesting and provided an accurate portrayal of the issues. One person found this helpful. This is an important book to read and would be even better to study with a small group.

Initially I bought it because I thought I would have the opportunity to study with Professor Wisse in a class she taught for a week in NY. That didn't happen but reading that book made me more anxious to meet her and learn from her. The writing is clear and contemporary, the examples pertinent, and I think the conclusions are right on target. I kept shaking my head in agreement as I read various parts.

If you are interested in Jewish anything, you will find this a great encounter. The Jews are a unique people. No other people in the history of the world have been quite like them. Every other nation, after it's been conquered, and even dispersed to the four winds of the globe, has disappeared - most often because they assimilated into the societies which were victorious over them. The Jews lost their country and were dispersed all over the world and yet, after almost years, they are not only still identifiable as a separate people, but have gone back to reclaim their ancestral lands and reconstituted the country of Israel.

This is even more surprising when one considers how small of a people the Jews really are. This book asks the questions of why that historical anomaly occurred and what made the Jews so special. The answers provided by Ruth Wisse are very interesting and combined led me to give this book 5 stars.

Wisse points out that the Jews believe in the ultimate power of god as being the King of Kings. That meant that God is the ultimate ruler who will wreak vengeance on the enemies of the Jews if that vengeance is deserved. Jews do not have to revere their local rulers - they revere God.

In any land they find themselves, and regardless of the political situation there at the time, the Jews adapt and find ways to make themselves useful so as to earn the right to remain. So, they give local tribute to the temporal power while leaving to God the business of taking revenge and playing out the relative merits of one society over another. That adaptability and the liberal and democratic traditions that grew along with it are the single and strongest characteristics of the Jewish people and are what allowed them to survive for so many centuries while every other nation and ethnic group persecuted and murdered them.

Wisse points out the differences between the main monotheistic religions in showing how Christianity - which started out as a Jewish sect - got subverted by power and the church and the state joined forces. Islam is a religion that does not distinguish between the state and God and views the ruler as the ultimate arbiter.

So, in essence, Jews and Moslems grow up with completely opposite points of view and completely opposite ways of acting and reacting to events. In terms of helping the rest of humanity move forward, the Jews are the most evolved group and were successful throughout history because their special adaptability and capabilities were needed throughout the centuries and throughout the world. As long as Christian societies were stuck in feudal or monarchical forms, the local rulers needed and encouraged the Jews to stick around to provide their special talents The Jewish "invitation" throughout Europe ended in the mid 19th and 20th centuries as European societies started evolving away from the old political organization and became more democratic.

The problem for the Jews was that such a change produced huge disruptions in society who could no longer count on things being the same that they were - the Jews, being the most adaptable, quickly found ways to profit from these changes while the rest of those societies found that the despised Jews were more successful. This led to the pogroms and rise of anti-semitism that poisoned so much of the history of those two centuries in Europe. All of this culminated, of course, in the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust.

The strange thing was that the Jews started to return to Israel at that precise moment in time. The land of Israel was closed to them by the politics of Britain at the time of most need, but still, the country of Israel was born in in its ancestral home and currently flourishes as one of the most advanced, liberal, and democratic nations of the world - probably second only to the United States in all those measures. The Arabs and Moslems are still caught up in the feudal and tribal culture that has held them captive since the seventh century.

They have not made the same progress that the Christians have made as a society and this clash between a vibrant, liberal, and democratic culture and an anti-democratic, stagnant, and regressive culture is leading to the wars seen since These are wars were Israel is on the front lines of the culture war that will either end with the victory of liberalism and a move forward for all of humanity - or a descent to the dark ages of yore.

Clearly this is a war that all civilized beings should encourage Israel to win and reading this book will lead you - as it did me - to understand its deeper implications. While the book is relatively short at small pages, I believe it will have an indelible impact on those who read it carefully. It is not a difficult read and I managed to devour it in about three nights. The Five Hurdles to Happiness. Mitch Abblett and Mitch Abblett. The Wisdom of No Escape. The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi. Slightly Bad Girls of the Bible.

The Inner Tradition of Yoga. The Hum of Angels. Ben Malcolmson and Patti McCord. Finding Purpose in a Godless World.

1. Jews and Power.
2. ?
3. CHICKEN POX EXPLOSION?
4. Aus die Maus: Ungewöhnliche Todesanzeigen (German Edition).

An Introduction to Buddhism. Allison Choying Zangmo and Anyen Rinpoche. The Way of the Bodhisattva. A Brief History of Everything. Ken Wilber and Ken Wilber. Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? Looking for More Great Reads? Download our Spring Fiction Sampler Now.

• Jews and Power (Jewish Encounters Series): Ruth R. Wisse: leondumoulin.nl: Books?
• Vegetable Gardening Made Easy.
• Hanns Heinz Ewers Volume I.
• Advanced Linux Programming (Landmark).

LitFlash The eBooks you want at the lowest prices.