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Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Print Price: $13.50

Format:
Paperback
176 pp.
10 illustrations, 4.375" x 6.875"

ISBN-13:
9780199730988

Publication date:
May 2017

Imprint: OUP US


Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction

David N. Myers

Series : Very Short Introductions

How have the Jews survived? For millennia, they have defied odds by overcoming the travails of exile, persecution, and recurring plans for their annihilation. Many have attempted to explain this singular success as a result of divine intervention. In this engaging book, David N. Myers charts the long journey of the Jews through history. At the same time, it points to two unlikely - and decidedly this-worldly - factors to explain the survival of the Jews: antisemitism and assimilation. Usually regarded as grave dangers, these two factors have continually interacted with one other to enable the persistence of the Jews. At every turn in their history, not just in the modern age, Jews have adapted to new environments, cultures, languages, and social norms. These bountiful encounters with host societies have exercised the cultural muscle of the Jews, preventing the atrophy that would have occurred if they had not interacted so extensively with the non-Jewish world. It is through these encounters - indeed, through a process of assimilation - that Jews came to develop distinct local customs, speak many different languages, and cultivate diverse musical, culinary, and intellectual traditions.

Left unchecked, the Jews' well-honed ability to absorb from surrounding cultures might have led to their disappearance. And yet, the route toward full and unbridled assimilation was checked by the nearly constant presence of hatred toward the Jew. Anti-Jewish expression and actions have regularly accompanied Jews throughout history. Part of the ironic success of antisemitism is its malleability, its talent in assuming new forms and portraying the Jew in diverse and often contradictory images - for example, at once the arch-capitalist and revolutionary Communist. Antisemitism not only served to blunt further assimilation, but, in a paradoxical twist, affirmed the Jew's sense of difference from the host society. And thus together assimilation and antisemitism (at least up to a certain limit) contribute to the survival of the Jews as a highly adaptable and yet distinct group.

Readership : General readers interested in Jewish history, European history, the history of Israel, the Holocaust, American foreign policy, and American Jewry. Students in courses on Jewish history, history of the ancient Near East, medieval history, anti-Semitism, zionism. Students in courses on Jewish history, history of the ancient Near East, medieval history, antisemitism.

Introduction
1. Names
2. Numbers
3. Cultures
4. Politics
5. Perceptions
References
Further reading
Index

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

David N. Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA. He is the author of numerous books and articles in the field of Jewish history, with a particular focus on modern Jewish intellectual history.

Special Features

  • An exceptionally concise, accessible, and wide-ranging account of the long history of the Jews.
  • Offers a new theory to explain the Jews' survival, based on the relationship between antisemitism and assimilation.
  • While identifying continuities, it notes variation in the local customs, social status, and self-perception of Jews across time and space.