An excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that aAn excellent short(ish) biography of Theodor Herzl. I knew virtually nothing about him before and appreciated Derek Penslar writing a biography that appeared to my unskilled eyes as deeply and originally researched, largely from primary sources. It is a cradle-to-grave biography (with a brief epilogue about how Herzl is remembered and misremembered to this day), and a substantial fraction of it takes place before Herzl comes to Zionism, but that part is interesting too as a portrait of late 19th century Jewish life in Europe among upper class intellectuals. The story really gets going as Herzl starts going through different ways of thinking about a national homeland for the Jews and rediscovers his own Judaism. The substance, process and charisma and also confusion they are bound up with are all on full display. Penslar is balanced and trying to tell the Herzl story from his time not re-reading in ways to fit it into our current debates. Overall, highly recommended--and would love to read more in the Jewish short lives series....more
A beautifully drawn rendition of the autobiographies of six Yiddish teenagers all written just before the outbreak of World War II. The preface explaiA beautifully drawn rendition of the autobiographies of six Yiddish teenagers all written just before the outbreak of World War II. The preface explains that a Jewish organization launched a contest for autobiographies that were supposed to highlight the ordinary, everyday lives of people. The winner was supposed to be announced on September 1, 1939. Instead the hundreds of biographies were hidden first from the Nazis and then from the Soviets, forgotten, and recently rediscovered. Cartoonist Ken Krimstein picked six of them and told their stories with illustrations evocative of the world they lived in. Note that almost all of the autobiographies were anonymous so little is known of the fate of the writers (beyond one who signed her name), but one can only guess.
I appreciated, however, that this was not about how these people died but how they lived. In one case a multi-generational tale of a family with eight daughters, in another someone writing letters to be admitted to the United States, in still another a folk singer. Much of what they recount is ordinary teenage stuff along with some of the clash of modernity vs. tradition. In this way it both recreates a lost world and also shows how similar that world is to our own.
I should also note that (like many graphic novels) this is a very fast read. You get a lot for not a whole lot of time. Strongly recommend reading it....more
An extraordinary work of scholarship combining economic modeling with primary documents and an enormous synthesis, The Chosen Few seeks to explain JewAn extraordinary work of scholarship combining economic modeling with primary documents and an enormous synthesis, The Chosen Few seeks to explain Jewish economic and demographic history from 70 to 1492. Specifically it attempts to explain several facts including: (1) the decline in Jewish population through about 700, (2) the huge shift of Jews into urban living and trades, ultimately moneylending, from 700 to 1200, (3) the stabilization of population over that period, (4) the spread of Jews to Europe and their dispersion across a wide range of cities, and (5) the decline of the Jewish population from about 1250 through at least 1492.
The authors persuasively demolish a few popular theses including the Jews were banned from agriculture so moved to cities, that Christians were banned from moneylending so Jews filled the vacuum, that Jews were not permitted in guilds and that Jews were afraid of being forced to move so they invested in human capital instead of physical capital. The problem with all of these arguments is that many of the restrictions that they are premised on were instituted well after Jews became a highly urban population. Moreover they were only instituted in some places but Jews became urbanized everywhere. The thesis has lots of other problems, including the majority of moneylending was still Christians and moneylenders worked better if they were rooted in a place so knew all the people.
Instead the authors argue that a cultural development was central and it interacted with global events. Specifically, the destruction of the temple in the year 70 resulted in the primacy of the Jewish sects centering around reading and learning Torah for oneself rather than centralized worship through ritual sacrifices. Universal male literacy with universal primary school started early. Initially this did not confer any economic advantages for Jews because they were still farmers. As a result the population fell as families converted rather than bear the "useless" cost of all the learning to no economic aim. But with Arab conquests an urban world centered around trade emerged and the "random mutation" of literacy all of a sudden became economically favored. The result was a rapid shift of Jews away from agriculture and towards urban occupations.
This eventually evolved into moneylending because literacy/numeracy combined with other cultural/institutional factors including access to capital, networks and institutions to enforce contracts.
As for some of the other facts, the Jewish population started to decline after the Mongol invasion was a setback for urbanization and reduced the benefits of the education that Jews invested in. And Jewish populations were dispersed because they were highly specialized so hard to have too many in one area--and benefits of spreading out.
The book ends in 1492 and I am curious about how some of the explanations fit the next 500 years, particularly the large concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe--a group that was not especially prosperous. Was literacy more widespread so the returns to it fell? Or discrimination/exclusion took an economic toll? Something else? And does this "out of sample" test of their hypotheses fail and if so what does that mean of their explanations in sample?
Overall, the book has enormous erudition, going deeply into cultural, institutional, religious and economic developments across a wide range of territory and time, at times going very deep (e.g., into moneylending in Italy). This can make for exciting reading at times, but in other places it can be repetitive and have the feel of stapling together different papers into a book rather than something that was conceived as a single work. That said, is never boring and highly persuasive....more
I always thought I had an obligation to read this, a chore to honor the dead by reading what I expected to be a stuffy, prissy, cardboard saint sort oI always thought I had an obligation to read this, a chore to honor the dead by reading what I expected to be a stuffy, prissy, cardboard saint sort of a book. Boy was I dead wrong. What an amazing writer and observer. Balanced between observation, humor, biting wit, recording events, the backdrop of the war, evolving feelings, and more. Imagining life in a Secret Annex surrounded by fear with the occasional distant events of the Holocaust recounted would make it an obligatory record of a historical moment. And all of that is there. But it is much more interesting as a girl's evolving relationship with her parents, her sister, the boy that is living with her, and her wry and humorous observations about how all of them get together. And an amazing real-time record of the maturation of her writing and observation as it is written from when she was 13 through 15. Over the course of the book Anne talks about what she is reading and studying, her passion for mythology, and more, all of which shows in the way she constructs and understands her own story.
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