Table of Contents

Note on Transliteration

Introduction: Framing Jewish Culture
  Simon J. Bronner

PART I: BOUNDARY CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE
1 Representing Jewish Culture: The Problem of Boundaries
  Jonathan Webber
2 Trickster’s Children: Genealogies of Jewishness in Anthropology
  Jonathan Boyarin
3 Selective Inclusion: Integration and Isolation of Jews in Medieval Civic Space
  Samuel D. Gruber
4 The Question of Hasidic Sectarianism
  Marcin Wodzinski

PART II: NARRATING AND VISUALIZING JEWISH RELATIONSHIPS
5 Framing Father--Son Relationships in Medieval Ashkenaz: Folk Narratives as Markers of Cultural Difference
  Magdalena Luszczynska
6 Sites of Collective Memory in Narratives of the Prague Ghetto
  Rella Kushelevsky
7 Wearing Many Hats: The Boundaries of Hair-Covering Practices by Orthodox Jewish Women in Amish Country
  Amy Milligan
8 Chronic Dissatisfaction: Negative Interfaith Romances and the Reassertion of Jewish Difference
  Holly Pearse

PART III: EXHIBITIONS AND PERFORMANCES OF JEWISH CULTURE
9 ‘The Night of the Orvietani’ and the Mediation of Jewish and Italian Identities
  Steve Siporin
10 Jewish Museums: Performing the Present through Narrating the Past
  David Clark
11 Framing Jewish Identity in the Museum of Moroccan Judaism
  Sophie Wagenhofer
12 The Framing of the Jew: Paradigms of Incorporation and Difference in the Jewish Heritage Revival in Poland
  Magdalena Waligorska

PART IV: HOW REAL IS THE EUROPEAN JEWISH REVIVAL?
13 Beyond Virtual Jewishness: Monuments to Jewish Experience in Eastern Europe
  Ruth Ellen Gruber
14 Unsettling Encounters: Missing Links of European Jewish Experience and Discourse
  Francesco Spagnolo
15 Virtual Transitioning into Real: Jewishness in Central Eastern Europe
  Annamaria Orla-Bukowska
16 Virtual, Virtuous, Vicarious, Vacuous? Toward a Vigilant Use of Labels
  Erica Lehrer
17 Response
  Ruth Ellen Gruber

Contributors

Index

About the Author

Simon J. Bronner is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Folklore and Founding Director of the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at the Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg. He is also the convener of the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Section of the American Folklore Society. His books include Folklore: The Basics (2017) and Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture (2011).

Reviews

"[T]hese essays help us understand the social dynamics of Jewish identity and how identity is constructed in modern life." -- Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews (February/March 2015)