The Imaginary Jew, Vol. 9
The Holocaust changed what it means to be a Jew, for Jew and non-Jew alike. Much of the discussion about this new meaning is a storm of contradictions. In The Imaginary Jew, Alain Finkielkraut describes with passion and acuity his own passage through that storm.\ Finkielkraut decodes the shifts in anti-Semitism at the end of the Cold War, chronicles the impact of Israel’s policies on European Jews, opposes arguments both for and against cultural assimilation, reopens questions about Marx and...
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The Holocaust changed what it means to be a Jew, for Jew and non-Jew alike. Much of the discussion about this new meaning is a storm of contradictions. In The Imaginary Jew, Alain Finkielkraut describes with passion and acuity his own passage through that storm. Finkielkraut decodes the shifts in anti-Semitism at the end of the Cold War, chronicles the impact of Israel’s policies on European Jews, opposes arguments both for and against cultural assimilation, reopens questions about Marx and Judaism, and marks the loss of European Jewish culture through catastrophe, ignorance, and cliché. He notes that those who identified with Israel continued the erasure of European Judaism, forgetting the pangs and glories of Yiddish culture and the legacy of the Diaspora. Publishers Weekly A meditation on memory and Judaism in the contemporary world, by the internationally respected French thinker. (Apr.)
AcknowledgmentsIntroductionPt. IThe Romance of the Yellow Star1The Protagonist Introduced32All German Jews?173From the Novelesque to Memory35Pt. 1The Visible and the Invisible4The Jew and the Israelite: Chronicle of a Split575The Ostentation of Nothingness816The Different States of the Child Prodigy's Soul101Pt. 3The Dispersed and Their Kingdom7The Dream of the Diaspora1178The Resurrection of the Octopus1479Another Desire171Notes181Index193
\ New Yorker“The Imaginary Jew is brilliant and rueful and bitter at the same time. It shows the joint influence of Sartre and Philip Roth—a combination that only Alain Finkielkraut could bring off.”—New Yorker\ \ \ \ \ Jewish Chronicle“Finkielkraut’s profoundly personal account of his struggle with Jewish identity is entertaining, witty and . . . unquestionably insightful.”—Jewish Chronicle\ \ \ Voice Literary Supplement“Finkielkraut is exciting to read; good to think with. He delivers sharp and smart prose. . . . [A] most compelling book.”—Voice Literary Supplement\ \ \ \ \ Publishers WeeklyA meditation on memory and Judaism in the contemporary world, by the internationally respected French thinker. (Apr.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalFinkielkraut, one of France's most respected left-wing Jewish intellectuals, originally penned this ``autobiographical work of cultural criticism'' in 1980 as a meditation on Judaism, modernity, and his own tortuous path through life as an ``imaginary Jew,'' living off a borrowed identity, to a newfound commitment to Jewish memory. Readers of this fine translation may wish that parts of the book had been updated or that a more helpful introduction had been supplied. The volume nevertheless remains valuable not only as a period piece but for its many insights on subjects that range from the contemporary condition of French Jewry to the ongoing significance of Jewish memory. For specialized university libraries.-Jonathan D. Sarna, Brandeis Univ., Waltham, Mass.\ \
