Cultural Disjunctions

"Contemporary Jews variously configure their identity, which is no longer necessarily defined by an observance of the Torah and God's commandments. Indeed, the Jews of modernity are no longer exclusively Jewish. They are affiliated with many communities-vocational, professional, political, and cultural-whose interests may not coincide with that of the community of their birth and inherited culture. In Cultural Disjunctions, Paul Mendes-Flohr explores the possibility of a spiritually and intellectually engaged cosmopolitan Jewish identity for our time. To ground this project, he draws on the sociology of knowledge and cultural hermeneutics to reflect on the need to participate in the life of a community so that it enables multiple relations beyond its borders and allows one to balance a commitment to the local and a genuine obligation to the universal. Over the course of six provocative chapters, Mendes-Flohr lays out what this delicate balance can look like for contemporary Jews, both in the Diaspora and in Israel. Mendes-Flohr takes us through the ghettos of twentieth-century Europe, the differences between the personal libraries of traditional and secular Jews, and the role of cultural memory. Ultimately, the author calls for Jews to remain discontent with themselves (as a check on hubris), but also discontent with the social and political order, and to fight for its betterment"--