Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300221800)

A paradigm-shifting account of the modern Jewish experience, from one of the most creative young historians of his generation

To understand the organizing framework of modern Judaism, Eliyahu Stern believes that we should look deeper and farther than the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the influence and affluence of American Jewry. Against the revolutionary backdrop of mid-nineteenth-century Europe, Stern unearths the path that led a group of rabbis, scientists, communal leaders, and political upstarts to reconstruct the core tenets of Judaism and join the vanguard of twentieth-century revolutionary politics.

In the face of dire poverty and rampant anti-Semitism, they mobilized Judaism for projects directed at ensuring the fair and equal distribution of resources in society. Their program drew as much from the universalism of Karl Marx and Charles Darwin as from the messianism and utopianism of biblical and Kabbalistic works. Once described as a religion consisting of rituals, reason, and rabbinics, Judaism was now also rooted in land, labor, and bodies. Exhaustively researched, this original, revisionist account challenges our standard narratives of nationalism, secularization, and de-Judaization.

Author: Eliyahu Stern
ISBN-10: 0300221800
ISBN-13: 9780300221800
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 03/20/2018
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.20w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2018