Europe’s formative encounter with its “others” is still widely assumed to have come with its discovery of the peoples of the New World. But, as Jonathan Boyarin argues, long before 1492 Christian Europe imagined itself in distinction to the Jewish difference within. The presence and image of Jews in Europe afforded the Christian majority a foil against which it could refine and maintain its own identity. In fundamental ways this experience, along with the ongoing contest between Christianity and Islam, shaped the rhetoric, attitudes, and policies of Christian colonizers in the New World.
The Unconverted Self proposes that questions of difference inside Christian Europe not only are inseparable from the painful legacy of colonialism but also reveal Christian domination to be a fragile construct. Boyarin compares the Christian efforts aimed toward European Jews and toward indigenous peoples of the New World, bringing into focus the intersection of colonial expansion with the Inquisition and adding significant nuance to the entire question of the colonial encounter. 
Revealing the crucial tension between the Jews as “others within” and the Indians as “others without,” The Unconverted Self is a major reassessment of early modern European identity.

The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe

History

Boyarin, Jonathan

Americas

University of Chicago Press

Thinking in Jewish (Religion and Postmodernism)

How does one "think" in Jewish? What does it mean to speak in English of Yiddish as Jewish, as a certain intermediary generation of immigrants and children of immigrants from Jewish Eastern Europe has done?A fascination with this question prompted Jonathan Boyarin, one of America's most original thinkers in critical theory and Jewish ethnography, to offer the unexpected Jewish perspective on the vexed issue of identity politics presented here. Boyarin's essays explore the ways in which a Jewish—or, more particularly, Yiddish—idiom complicates the question of identity. Ranging from explorations of a Lower East Side synagogue to Fichte's and Derrida's contrasting notions of the relation between the Jews and the idea of Europe, from the Lubavitch Hasidim to accounts of self-making by Judith Butler and Charles Taylor, Thinking in Jewish will be indispensable reading for students of critical theory, cultural studies, and Jewish studies.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

How does one "think" in Jewish? What does it mean to speak in English of Yiddish as Jewish, as a certain intermediary generation of immigrants and children of immigrants from Jewish Eastern Europe has done? A fascination with this question prompted Jonathan Boyarin, one of America's most original thinkers in critical theory and Jewish ethnography, to offer the unexpected Jewish perspective on the vexed issue of identity politics presented here. Boyarin's essays explore the ways in which a Jewish—or, more particularly, Yiddish—idiom complicates the question of identity. Ranging from explorations of a Lower East Side synagogue to Fichte's and Derrida's contrasting notions of the relation between the Jews and the idea of Europe, from the Lubavitch Hasidim to accounts of self-making by Judith Butler and Charles Taylor, Thinking in Jewish will be indispensable reading for students of critical theory, cultural studies, and Jewish studies.

Anthropology

preface and acknowledgments, Introduction: I. What is a Landsmanshaft? ; Part 1. The Work of the Past: II. Children of the Country; III. From the Pale to the City of Light; IV. Maybe There Is a God; V. Getting By. Part 2. Pieces of the Mirror: VI. Reports of the War in Debanon; VII. Dejeuner Solennel; VIII. High Culture and Folklore; IX. Leaders and Intellectuals; X. Mourning; XI. Children and Other Strangers; Postscript: The Landslayt and the End of the Country; references, index. Modern Jewish Experience series. "This book chronicles the stubborn persistence of that community and its members efforts to construct a collective memory of their generation. It focuses on the immigrant societies known as landsmanshaftn and on other immigrand institutions that help keep Yiddish culture alive and involve the immigrants in the politics of the Jewish and wider worlds." from the jacket flap.

Polish Jews in Paris: The Ethnography of Memory (Modern Jewish Experience)

Indiana Univ. Pr

Writing, the subject of much innovative scholarship in recent years, is only half of what we call literacy. The other half, reading, now finally receives its due in these groundbreaking essays by a distinguished group of anthropologists and literary scholars. The essays move well beyond the simple rubric of "literacy" in its traditional sense of evolutionary advancement from oral to written communication. Some investigate reading in exotically cross-cultural contexts. Some analyze the long historical transformation of reading in the West from a collective, oral practice to the private, silent one it is today, while others demonstrate that in certain Western contexts reading is still very much a social activity. The reading situations described here range from Anglo-Saxon England to contemporary Indonesia, from ancient Israel to a Kashaya Pomo Indian reservation. Filled with insights that erase the line between orality and textuality, this collection will attract a broad readership in anthropology, literature, history, and philosophy, as well as in religious, gender, and cultural studies.

The Ethnography of Reading

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

University of California Press

Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side

Review "This dexterous account enables the reader to be a fly on some of the world's quirkiest walls―those inside Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Hats off to Jonathan Boyarin for capturing the specific emotional investments, fraught relationships, and clubbish camaraderie that are unique to the yeshiva experience."―Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, author of The Talmud: A Biography"The yeshiva has long been a major aspect of Jewish culture, but I know of no other ethnography on the experience of 'sitting and learning.' Boyarin's captivating prose is beautiful, witty, honest, unsentimental, and full of surprises and sharp observation."―Naomi Seidman, author of Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition"Yeshiva Days is a highly original meditation on traditional Jewish learning and a unique lens onto the Lower East Side, perhaps the most iconic Jewish space in the history of the United States. Boyarin's book is one of the most self-aware yet unpretentious works of Jewish ethnography I have ever read."―Nathaniel Deutsch, author of The Jewish Dark Continent: Life and Death in the Russian Pale of Settlement Product Description An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learningNew York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway. Yeshiva Days is Jonathan Boyarin's uniquely personal account of the year he spent as both student and observer at Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, and a poignant chronicle of a side of Jewish life that outsiders rarely see.Boyarin explores the yeshiva's relationship with the neighborhood, the city, and Jewish and American culture more broadly, and brings vividly to life its routines, rituals, and rhythms. He describes the compelling and often colorful personalities he encounters each day, and introduces readers to the Rosh Yeshiva, or Rebbi, the moral and intellectual head of the yeshiva. Boyarin reflects on the tantalizing meanings of "study for its own sake" in the intellectually vibrant world of traditional rabbinic learning, and records his fellow students' responses to his negotiation of the daily complexities of yeshiva life while he also conducts anthropological fieldwork.A richly mature work by a writer of uncommon insight, wit, and honesty, Yeshiva Days is the story of a place on the Lower East Side with its own distinctive heritage and character, a meditation on the enduring power of Jewish tradition and learning, and a record of a different way of engaging with time and otherness. About the Author Jonathan Boyarin is the Diann G. and Thomas A. Mann Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Cornell University. His books include Jewish Families, Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side, and The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe.

Biographies & Memoirs

Regional U.S.

Princeton University Press

An intimate and moving portrait of daily life in New York's oldest institution of traditional rabbinic learning New York City's Lower East Side has witnessed a severe decline in its Jewish population in recent decades, yet every morning in the big room of the city's oldest yeshiva, students still gather to study the Talmud beneath the great arched windows facing out onto East Broadway. Yeshiva Days is Jonathan Boyarin's uniquely personal account of the year he spent as both student and observer at Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, and a poignant chronicle of a side of Jewish life that outsiders rarely see. Boyarin explores the yeshiva's relationship with the neighborhood, the city, and Jewish and American culture more broadly, and brings vividly to life its routines, rituals, and rhythms. He describes the compelling and often colorful personalities he encounters each day, and introduces readers to the Rosh Yeshiva, or Rebbi, the moral and intellectual head of the yeshiva. Boyarin reflects on the tantalizing meanings of "study for its own sake" in the intellectually vibrant world of traditional rabbinic learning, and records his fellow students' responses to his negotiation of the daily complexities of yeshiva life while he also conducts anthropological fieldwork. A richly mature work by a writer of uncommon insight, wit, and honesty, Yeshiva Days is the story of a place on the Lower East Side with its own distinctive heritage and character, a meditation on the enduring power of Jewish tradition and learning, and a record of a different way of engaging with time and otherness.

Kugelmass, Jack, Boyarin, Jonathan

From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry

Kugelmass, Jack

World

Schocken Books

Jewish Families (Volume 4) (Key Words in Jewish Studies)

From stories of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs and their children, through the Gospel’s Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and to modern Jewish families in fiction, film, and everyday life, the family has been considered key to transmitting Jewish identity. Current discussions about the Jewish family’s supposed traditional character and its alleged contemporary crisis tend to assume that the dynamics of Jewish family life have remained constant from the days of Abraham and Sarah to those of Tevye and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof and on to Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue instead that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents. The book shows the vast canvas of history and culture as well as the social pressures and strategies that have helped shape Jewish families, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.

Rutgers University Press

From stories of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs and their children, through the Gospel’s Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and to modern Jewish families in fiction, film, and everyday life, the family has been considered key to transmitting Jewish identity. Current discussions about the Jewish family’s supposed traditional character and its alleged contemporary crisis tend to assume that the dynamics of Jewish family life have remained constant from the days of Abraham and Sarah to those of Tevye and Golde in Fiddler on the Roof and on to Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint. Jonathan Boyarin explores a wide range of scholarship in Jewish studies to argue instead that Jewish family forms and ideologies have varied greatly throughout the times and places where Jewish families have found themselves. He considers a range of family configurations from biblical times to the twenty-first century, including strictly Orthodox communities and new forms of family, including same-sex parents. The book shows the vast canvas of history and culture as well as the social pressures and strategies that have helped shape Jewish families, and suggests productive ways to think about possible futures for Jewish family forms.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Boyarin, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Boyarin, Jonathan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Boyarin, Jonathan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Unconverted Self: Jews, Indians, and the Identity of Christian Europe

Thinking in Jewish (Religion and Postmodernism)

Thinking in Jewish (Religion and Postmodernism)

Polish Jews in Paris: The Ethnography of Memory (Modern Jewish Experience)

The Ethnography of Reading

Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side

Yeshiva Days: Learning on the Lower East Side

From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry

Jewish Families (Volume 4) (Key Words in Jewish Studies)

Jewish Families (Volume 4) (Key Words in Jewish Studies)