This book explains why the best way to understand the Jewish historical experience is to look at Jewish people, not just as a religious or ethnic group or a nation or "people," but, as bearers of civilization. This approach helps to explain the greatest riddle of Jewish civilization, namely, its continuity despite destruction, exile, and loss of political independence. In the first part of the book, Eisenstadt compares Jewish life and religious orientations and practices with Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, as well as with Christian and Islamic civilizations. In the second part of the book, he analyzes the modern period with its different patterns of incorporation of Jewish communities into European and American societies; national movements that developed among Jews toward the end of the nineteenth century, especially the Zionist movement; and specific characteristics of Israeli society. The major question Eisenstadt poses is to what extent the characteristics of the Jewish experience are distinctive, in comparison to other ethnic and religious minorities incorporated into modern nation-states, or other revolutionary ideological settler societies. He demonstrates through his case studies the continuous creativity of Jewish civilization.
How may we characterie contemporary society in a world so complex? Can looking at thediverse paths followed by various cultures in the modern world generate useful new socialscientific typologies, or must a different set of questions be posed in this era ofglobaliation? What, in short, is the nature of modernity? These are some of the questionsaddressed by the contributors to MultipleModernities. Following the theme in anearlier work edited by Shmuel Eisenstadt, Public Spheres and CollectiveIdentities, this book challenges conventional notions of how the world haschanged politically, socially, and economically. The authors consider the meaning of modernityin contexts as different as communist Russia, modern India, the Muslim world, Latin America,China and East Asia, and the United States. Miscegenation, transnational migration,technological developments, and changing communications have shifted the ground on whichtheories of society were once built; political system, diaspora groups, religion, and"classical" theories of modernity have to be reconsidered in a newcontext. Authors and chapters include: S.N. Eisenstadt,"Multiple Modernities"; Bjrn Wittrock, "Modernity: One, None, orMany? European Origins and Modernity as a Global Condition"; Johann P. Arnason,"Communism and Modernity"; Nilfer Gle, "Snapshots of IslamicModernities"; Dale F. Eickelman, "Island and the Languages ofModernity"; Sudipta Kaviraj, "Modernity and Politics in India";Stanley J. Tambiah, "Transnational Movements, Diaspora, and MultipleModernities"; Tu Weiming, "Implications of the Jrise of 'Confucian' EastAsia"; Jrgen Heideking, "The Pattern of American Modernity from the Revolutionto the Civil War"; and Renato Orti, "From Incomplete Modernity to WorldModernity." Written in clear and non-technicallanguage for both a scholarly and general audience, this volume confronts the problem of justwhat constitutes the common core of modernity. Shmuel N.Eisenstadt is Rose Issacs Professor Emeritus of Sociology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.He is the author of The Political Systems of Empires andco-editor of Public Spheres and Collective Identities,available from Transaction.
Professor S.N. Eisenstadt has written numerous essays on Jewish Identity over the years. This volume brings together some of these. The major argument of the essays follows the Weberian view of Jewish historical experience as that of a distinct civilization, as a distinct Great Religion, the first monotheistic civilization - without, however, accepting many of Weber's concrete analyses.
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