Jews and Urban Life recognizes that throughout their long history, Jews have often inhabited cities. The reality of this urban experience ranged from ghetto restrictions to robust participation in a range of civic and social activities. Essays in this collection present relevant examples from within the Jewish community itself, moving historically from the biblical period to the modern-day State of Israel. Taking a comparative approach while recognizing the particulars of individual instances, authors examine these phenomena from a wide variety of approaches, genres, and media. Interdisciplinary and accessibly written, the articles display a multitude of instances throughout history showing the range of Jewish life in urban settings.
Acknowledgments
Editor?s Introduction
Contributors
Jews in Ancient Civic Life, by Gary Gilbert
Urbanizing Jews: Agriculture, Slave Codes, and the Byzantine Empire, by Anthony Meyer
Vienna?s Jewish Community, 1819?1826: Glimpses from Beethoven?s Conversation Books at the Dawn of a New Era, by Theodore Albrecht
A Tale of Two Cities: Jewish Creativity in Venice and Prague, by Ori Z. Soltes
The Cosmopolitan Jewish City: A Typology, by Alan Levenson
The Social Role of Small Jewish Cultural Centers:
The Case of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, by Menachem Keren-Kratz
Jewish Urbanization and the Midsize City: The Case of Kaunas, Lithuania, by Motti Zalkin
Kyiv as a Center of Soviet Jewish Culture in the 1920s?1930s, by Victoria Khiterer
The Yiddish Press in Cleveland, by Sean Martin
Jews Create Towns: An Examination of the Impact of Joseph Sondheimer on the Creation of Muskogee, Oklahoma, by Mara W. Cohen Ioannides
Rescuing that Modest Mansion: The Contributions of Urban Jews to American Historic Preservation, by Barry L. Stiefel
Comicus the Cosmopolite: Diasporic Cosmopolitics and the Promise of the City in Mel Brooks?s History of the World, Part I, by David J. Peterson and Joan Latchaw
City in the Garden, Garden in the City: Clarence Stein, Moshe Safdie, and the Design of Urban Reform, by Martin H. Shukert
