Seductive Modernity?: Intimacy and Culture in the 19th Century

Session Submission Type: Lightning Session

Session Sponsor: The Posen Library

Abstract

This session, styled after the literary salons that began during this period, will include music, short papers, and (hopefully) some food. Elisheva Carlebach describes this historical moment as one “in which every aspect of Jewish life underwent the most profound changes to have occurred since antiquity.” Yet, at the same time, there were extraordinary innovations designed to preserve, adapt, and revitalize traditions. Modernity seduced some and repulsed others. These years of confronting modernity involved an enormous range of contrasting responses. It is a period that encompasses both the birth of Hasidism and of secularism (not a Jewish ideology per se in that period), as well as an era of conversions to Christianity and the emergence of 'ultra-Orthodoxy.’

Papers will bring together scholars working in disparate areas of Jewish culture and will explore the themes of Jewish religion and culture and the rise of secular Jewishness as it takes shape over these years. At the same time, the papers will look at enduring traditions. In formal terms, papers will explore aspects of Jewish thought, children’s literature, visual arts, music, and Ladino/Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies.

Primary sources of this period demonstrate a tumultuous time of changing borders and imperialistic nations, demographic shifts, and significant rates of Jewish immigration to the United States, along with intertwining ideals of enlightenment and emancipation, which become “the very foundation of Jewish experience in this period.” Each paper will be centered on one or two primary artifacts (texts, images, and songs), used as examples to amplify broader cultural trends in the period.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Chair

• Deborah Dash Moore, University of Michigan

Individual Presentations

• A Sephardi Encounter with the Modern Age: The Cry of the Poor of Ottoman Izmir - Dina Danon, Binghamton University

• Fables Without Labels: The Jewish Folkloric between Adult and Child Readerships - Miriam Udel, Emory University

• On the Negotiation of Tradition and Modernity: Hirsch’s NINETEEN LETTERS - Claire Sufrin, Northwestern University

• Jewish Responses to an Age of Transition - Bryan K Roby, University of Michigan

• From Salon to Center Stage: Jewish Musical Participation in 19th Century German-speaking Europe - Amanda Ruppenthal Stein, Northwestern University

• Thoroughly Modern Mother: Jewish Homemaking Guides Confront Modernity in the 19th Century - Amy K. Milligan, Old Dominion University