Ezra Mendelsohn

Dr Mendelsohn analyses the nature and condition of the Russian Jewish proletariat and the Jewish labour movement.

The Formative Years of the Jewish Worker's Movement in Tsarist Russia

Class Struggle in the Pale

Volume XXIII of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry explores the role of sports in modern Jewish history. The centrality of sports in modern life--in popular and even in high culture, in economic life, in the media, in international and national politics, and in forging ethnic identities--can hardly be exaggerated, but in the field of Jewish studies this subject has been somewhat neglected, at least until recently. Students of American Jewish history, for example, often emphasize the role of sports in the Americanization of the immigrants, while students of Jewish nationalism pay closer attention to its appeal for the regeneration of the Jewish nation, as well as the creation of a new, healthy, Jewish body. The essays brought together in Jews and the Sporting Life expand the body of knowledge about the place sports occupied, and continue to occupy, in Jewish life. They examine the connection between sports and Jewish nationalism, particularly Zionism, and how organized Jewish sports have been an agent of nation-building. They consider the role of Jews as owners of sports teams, as amateur and professional athletes, and as fans and bettors. Other themes include sports and Jewish literature, and boxing as a sport that enabled Jewish men to prove their masculinity in a world that often stereotyped them as weak and "feminine." This volume concentrates on twentieth century developments in Israel, Europe, and the United States.

Studies in Contemporary Jewry XXIII

Jews and the Sporting Life

Stefani Hoffman

In this multidisciplinary volume, leading historians provide new understanding of a time that sent shockwaves through Jewish communities in and beyond the Russian Empire and transformed the way Jews thought about the politics of ethnic and national identity.

The Revolution of 1905 and Russia's Jews

Literary Strategies: Jewish Texts and Contexts collects essays on Jewish literature which deal with "the manifold ways that literary texts reveal their authors' attitudes toward their own Jewish identity and toward diverse aspects of the 'Jewish question.'" Essays in this volume explore the tension between Israeli and Diaspora identities, and between those who write in Hebrew or Yiddish and those who write in other "non-Jewish" languages. The essays also explore the question of how Jewish writers remember history in their "search for a useable past." From essays on Jabotinsky's virtually unknown plays to Philip Roth's novels, this book provides a strong overview of contemporary themes in Jewish literary studies.

Volume XII: Literary Strategies: Jewish Texts and Contexts

Studies in Contemporary Jewry

Peter Y. Medding

Jonathan Frankel

This series is published yearly by the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is edited by Jonathan Frankel, Peter Medding, and Ezra Mendelsohn, all distinguished professors of history at The Hebrew University. The volumes include symposia, articles, book reviews, and lists of recent dissertations by major scholars of Jewish history from around the world. Among the topics examined in this volume are the transformation of Russian Jewish communal life; Habsburg Jewry and its disappearance; the Bolsheviks and British Jews; and the Palestinian labor movement. This diverse collection is one of the first attempts to examine the over-all impact of the First World War and the Russian revolution on the Jewish people.

Ezra Mendelsohn

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