The End of Jewish Modernity

Has Jewish modernity exhausted itself? Flourishing between the age of Enlightenment and the Second World War, the intellectual, literary, scientific and artistic legacy of Jewish modernity continues to dazzle us, however, in this provocative new book, esteemed historian Enzo Traverso argues powerfully that this cultural epoch has come to an end.

Previously a beacon for critical thinking in the Western world, the mainstream of Jewish thought has, since the end of the war, undergone a conservative turn. With great sensitivity and nuance, Traverso traces this development to the virtual destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and the establishment of the United States and Israel as the new poles of Jewish communal life. This is a compelling narrative, hinged upon a highly original discussion of Hannah Arendt's writings on Jewishness and politics.

With provocative chapters on the relationship between antisemitism and Islamophobia, the ascendance of Zionism, and the new 'civil religion of the Holocaust', The End of Jewish Modernity is both an elegy to a lost tradition and an intellectual history of the present.

Author: Enzo Traverso
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Published: 10/15/2016
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.30w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780745336664

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2017

About the Author
Enzo Traverso is the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University and the author of many books, including Fire and Blood: The European Civil War 1914-1915 and Understanding the Nazi Genocide: Marxism after Auschwitz. David Fernbach is a freelance writer, editor, and translator.

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