Athens in Jerusalem Classical Antiquity and Hellenism in the Making of the Modern Secular Jew

by Shavit, Yaacov; Naor, Chaya; Werner, Niki

• ISBN13: 9781874774259
• ISBN10: 1874774250
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-10-01
• Publisher: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press

Summary

From the 18th Century on, Jews seeking to aquire a modern identify began to take a new interest in classical antiquity and Hellenistic civilization as a key to the secular Jewish culture they sought to develop. It was of course not the 'real' classical Greece to which they aspired but rather its idealized image as perceived through contemporary eyes, but this image became an important element in the search for a new Jewish self-awareness. For the modernizing Jew, "Greek" became a metaphor for the secular culture of modern Europe in its various forms.

Table of Contents

Translators' Note
Introduction	p. 1
Waking the Dead - Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar	p. 21
Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World	p. 40
Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past	p. 58
'Greek Wisdom' as Secular Knowledge and Science	p. 79
Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture	p. 119
The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity	p. 155
Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities	p. 188
Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts	p. 220
The Nature of the Hellenistic Mirror	p. 281
Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and Alexandria: Two Models of a National and Cultural Encounter	p. 306
Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages	p. 337
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