John M. Efron's Books

Defenders of the Race

Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-siècle Europe

By: John M. Efron,Professor John M Efron

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Defenders of the Race

Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-siècle Europe

By: John M. Efron,Professor John M Efron

This text describes the response of Jewish race scientists in the late 1800s to the question of whether there was a biological basis for Jewish distinctiveness and social development and the complex factors involved in the debate.

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Page Count

286

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300054408

ISBN 13

9780300054408

Medicine and the German Jews

A History

By: John M. Efron

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Medicine and the German Jews

A History

By: John M. Efron

Medicine played an important role in the early secularization and eventual modernization of German Jewish culture. And as both physicians and patients Jews exerted a great influence on the formation of modern medical discourse and practice. This fascinating book investigates the relationship between German Jews and medicine from medieval times until its demise under the Nazis. John Efron examines the rise of the German Jewish physician in the Middle Ages and his emergence as a new kind of secular, Jewish intellectual in the early modern period and beyond. The author shows how nineteenth-century medicine regarded Jews as possessing distinct physical and mental pathologies, which in turn led to the emergence in modern Germany of the “Jewish body” as a cultural and scientific idea. He demonstrates why Jews flocked to the medical profession in Germany and Austria, noting that by 1933, 50 percent of Berlin’s and 60 percent of Vienna’s physicians were Jewish. He discusses the impact of this on Jewish and German culture, concluding with the fate of Jewish doctors under the Nazis, whose assault on them was designed to eliminate whatever intimacy had been built up between Germans and their Jewish doctors over the centuries.

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Page Count

353

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300133596

ISBN 13

9780300133592

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

By: John M. Efron

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German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

By: John M. Efron

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as German Jews struggled for legal emancipation and social acceptance, they also embarked on a program of cultural renewal, two key dimensions of which were distancing themselves from their fellow Ashkenazim in Poland and giving a special place to the Sephardim of medieval Spain. Where they saw Ashkenazic Jewry as insular and backward, a result of Christian persecution, they depicted the Sephardim as worldly, morally and intellectually superior, and beautiful, products of the tolerant Muslim environment in which they lived. In this elegantly written book, John Efron looks in depth at the special allure Sephardic aesthetics held for German Jewry. Efron examines how German Jews idealized the sound of Sephardic Hebrew and the Sephardim's physical and moral beauty, and shows how the allure of the Sephardic found expression in neo-Moorish synagogue architecture, historical novels, and romanticized depictions of Sephardic history. He argues that the shapers of German-Jewish culture imagined medieval Iberian Jewry as an exemplary Jewish community, bound by tradition yet fully at home in the dominant culture of Muslim Spain. Efron argues that the myth of Sephardic superiority was actually an expression of withering self-critique by German Jews who, by seeking to transform Ashkenazic culture and win the acceptance of German society, hoped to enter their own golden age. Stimulating and provocative, this book demonstrates how the goal of this aesthetic self-refashioning was not assimilation but rather the creation of a new form of German-Jewish identity inspired by Sephardic beauty.

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352

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691192758

ISBN 13

9780691192758

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

By: John C. Reeves,Annette Yoshiko Reed

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Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Sources from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

By: John C. Reeves,Annette Yoshiko Reed

Across the ancient and medieval literature of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, one finds references to the antediluvian sage Enoch. Both the Book of the Watchers and the Astronomical Book were long known from their Ethiopic versions, which are preserved as part of Mashafa Henok Nabiy ('Book of Enoch the Prophet')--an Enochic compendium known in the West as 1 Enoch. Since the discovery of Aramaic fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, these books have attracted renewed attention as important sources for ancient Judaism. Among the results has been the recognition of the surprisingly long and varied tradition surrounding Enoch. Within 1 Enoch alone, for instance, we find evidence for intensive literary creativity. This volume provides a comprehensive set of core references for easy and accessible consultation. It shows that the rich afterlives of Enochic texts and traditions can be studied more thoroughly by scholars of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity as well as by scholars of late antique and medieval religions. Specialists in the Second Temple period-the era in which Enochic literature first appears-will be able to trace (or discount) the survival of Enochic motifs and mythemes within Jewish literary circles from late antiquity into the Middle Ages, thereby shedding light on the trajectories of Jewish apocalypticism and its possible intersections with Jewish mysticism. Students of Near Eastern esotericism and Hellenistic philosophies will have further data for exploring the origins of 'gnosticism' and its possible impact upon sectarian currents in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those interested in the intellectual symbiosis among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Middle Ages-and especially in the transmission of the ancient sciences associated with Hermeticism (e.g., astrology, theurgy, divinatory techniques, alchemy, angelology, demonology)-will be able to view a chain of tradition reconstructed in its entirety for the first time in textual form. In the process, we hope to provide historians of religion with a new tool for assessing the intertextual relationships between different religious corpora and for understanding the intertwined histories of the major religious communities of the ancient and medieval Near East.

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Page Count

412

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0198718411

ISBN 13

9780198718413

The Jews

A History

By: John Efron,Steven Weitzman,Matthias Lehmann

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The Jews

A History

By: John Efron,Steven Weitzman,Matthias Lehmann

The Jews: A History is a comprehensive and accessible text that explores the religious, cultural, social, and economic diversity of the Jewish people and their faith. Placing Jewish history within its wider cultural context, the book covers a broad time span, stretching from ancient Israel to the modern day. It examines Jewish history across a range of settings, including the ancient Near East, the age of Greek and Roman rule, the medieval realms of Christianity and Islam, modern Europe, including the World Wars and the Holocaust, and contemporary America and Israel, covering a variety of topics, such as legal emancipation, acculturation, and religious innovation. The third edition is fully updated to include more case studies and to encompass recent events in Jewish history, as well as religion, social life, economics, culture, and gender. Supported by case studies, online references, further reading, maps, and illustrations, The Jews: A History provides students with a comprehensive and wide-ranging grounding in Jewish history.

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Page Count

1239

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351017853

ISBN 13

9781351017855

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

By: John M. Efron

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German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

By: John M. Efron

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Page Count

352

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0691192758

ISBN 13

9780691192758

Book's by John M. Efron

Defenders of the Race

Defenders of the Race

Medicine and the German Jews

Medicine and the German Jews

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Enoch from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

The Jews

The Jews

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

German Jewry and the Allure of the Sephardic

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