Essays on Judaism in the modern world, from philosophy and history to art and politics.
In these essays Deutscher speaks of the emotional heritage of the European Jew with a calm clear-sightedness. As a historian he writes without religious belief, but with a generous breadth of understanding; as a philosopher he writes of some of the great Jews of Europe: Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Trotsky, Luxemburg, and Freud. He explores the Jewish imagination through the painter Chagall. He writes of the Jews under Stalin and of the “remnants of a race” after Hitler, as well as of the Zionist ideal, of the establishment of the state of Israel, of the Six-Day War, and of the perils ahead.
Examining the enduring political and psychological impact of the colonialist ideology, Albert Memmi’s seminal work has been banned by authorities and revered by activists and revolutionaries. Published one year after Tunisia gained independence, it is an extraordinarily powerful exploration of how colonialism degrades both the colonizer and the colonized, providing penetrating insights into colonial inheritance and resistance that remain relevant today.
Yiddish Civilisation: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation, by Paul Kriwaczek.
From the book jacket…
Jews lived in central and eastern Europe for perhaps a thousand years. In that time they created a civilisation, with its own language, literature, laws and institutions, which contributed much to the history of the continent. Yet most people remember this Yiddish world only for its tragic final century.
Here is the life story of the prosperous and successful Yiddish civilisation that once supplied mint masters, diplomatic advisers, physicians and engineers, not to mention music teachers, poets and philosophers, to the royal courts and governments of Europe — and took part in the formative events of European history.
Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity, by Keith Kahn-Harris.
From the book jacket…
How did antisemitism get so strange? How did hate become so clouded in controversy? And what does the strange hate of antisemitism tell us about racism and the politics of diversity today?
Life-long anti-racists accused of antisemitism, life-long Jew haters declaring their love of Israel… Today, antisemitism has become selective. Non-Jews celebrate the “good Jews” and reject the “bad Jews”. And its not just antisemitism that’s becoming selective, racists and anti-racists alike are starting to choose the minorities they love and hate.
In this passionate yet closely-argued polemic from a writer with an intimate knowledge of the antisemitism controversy, Keith Kahn-Harris argues that the emergence of strange hatreds shows how far we are from understanding what living in diverse societies really means.
Strange Hate calls for us to abandon selective anti-racism and rethink how we view not just Jews and antisemitism, but the challenge of living with diversity.
Politics and the English Language, by George Orwell.
From the publisher…
Politics and the English Language is widely considered Orwell’s most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.
‘All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.’
Language is a political issue, and slovenly use of language and cliches make it easier for those in power to deliberately use misleading language to hide unpleasant political facts. Bad English, he believed, was a vehicle for oppressive ideology, and it is no accident that Politics and the English Language was written after the close of World War II.
