Studies of the Jewish experience among peoples with whom they live share some similarities with the usual histories of anti-Semitism, but also some differences. When the focus is on anti-Semitism, Jewish history appears as a record of unmitigated hostility against the Jewish people and of passivity on their part. However, as Werner J. Cahnman demonstrates in this posthumous volume, Jewish-Gentile relations are far more complex. There is a long history of mutual contacts, positive as well as antagonistic, even if conflict ...
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Studies of the Jewish experience among peoples with whom they live share some similarities with the usual histories of anti-Semitism, but also some differences. When the focus is on anti-Semitism, Jewish history appears as a record of unmitigated hostility against the Jewish people and of passivity on their part. However, as Werner J. Cahnman demonstrates in this posthumous volume, Jewish-Gentile relations are far more complex. There is a long history of mutual contacts, positive as well as antagonistic, even if conflict continues to require particular attention. Cahnman's approach, while following a historical sequence, is sociological in conception. From Roman antiquity through the Middle Ages, into the era of emancipation and the Holocaust, and finally to the present American and Israeli scene, there are basic similarities and various dissimilarities, all of which are described and analyzed. Cahnman tests the theses of classical sociology implicitly, yet unobtrusively. He traces the socio-economic basis of human relations, which Marx and others have emphasized, and considers Jews a "marginal trading people" in the Park-Becker sense. Simmel and Toennies, he shows, understood Jews as "strangers" and "intermediaries." While Cahnman shows that Jews were not "pariahs," as Max Weber thought, he finds a remarkable affinity to Weber's Protestantism-capitalism argument in the tension of Jewish-Christian relations emerging from the bitter theological argument over usury. The primacy of Jewish-Gentile relations in all their complexity and variability is essential for the understanding of Jewish social and political history. This volume is a valuable contribution to that understanding.
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Seller's Description:
VG-(ex-library w/ stamps to textblock edges & usual markings etc. interior clean. dustjacket taped to cover edges; ID sticker to lower spine; spine lightly sunned) Blue cloth boards. book xvi, 253 pgs. blue dustjacket w/ grey & light orange printing w/ protective plastic. A previously unpublished manuscript by Cahnman (1902-1980), edited and published by colleagues. A refugee from Hitler's Germany (he fled in 1939), Cahnman continued his sociological writings in the USA. He argues that in the diaspora the Jew has played the role of mediator or transmitter of spiritual and material goods. He is an outsider who is, on the one hand, viewed with mistrust and, on the other, appreciated. His role has caused irritation in many places, but not at all times. The Jews have often suffered from their position between the upper and lower "millstones" of society. While the Jewish experience often overlaps with antisemitism, it is not identical with it. Noting the influence of Christian anti-Jewish ideology, claims that by the 12th century the socio-economic factor as a cause of antagonism overshadowed all else. Discusses Jewish usury and demonization of Jews, the alternation of welcoming and expelling the Jews in relation to class struggles, the failure of medieval Spain's monarchy to withstand popular and Church-supported pressure to punish the Jews, the challenge of racism and imperialism to the nation state, the situation wherein Jews were criticized by both Left and Right, the gap between real and mythical Jews, Zionism as a reaction to antisemitism, anti-Jewish stereotypes in Soviet and other communist societies, and the Jews as outsiders even in America. --WorldCat.
