Dear Friends and Colleagues,
No, a pit is not what I had in mind as an answer.
The question comes from thinking as a historian and an anthologist. Historians, everyone knows, love dates because of the way they conjoin events and prompt one to ponder the meanings behind such coincidences. Anthologists have to consider how to organize the material they have collected. In The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization the historical and anthological perspectives converge. Within broad genres, selections are arranged chronologically.
Let me give you an example.
Take the date 1963, a pivotal year in American history. If we look at Volume 9, Catastrophe and Rebirth, 1939–1973, of The Posen Library, we see that the editors, Sam Kassow and David Roskies, have placed three fascinating texts in conversation with each other. The first is from Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil* by Hannah Arendt; the second is from The Feminine Mystique* by Betty Friedan; and the third is the entire moving text of “America Must Not Remain Silent”* by Joachim Prinz. (If you haven't already, just register for free, log on, and those links will take you directly to the texts.)
Each of these texts speaks powerfully to concerns animating American Jews of the time and collectively invite readers to contemplate their relationship. Both Arendt, a political philosopher, and Prinz, a rabbi, escaped Nazi Germany to the United States. They brought a sharp awareness of the significance and relevance of the Holocaust to American Jewish consciousness. Indeed, Prinz drew upon his experience in Nazi Germany when he spoke at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Speaking just before Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Prinz specifically warned Americans that the greatest sin is silence. Americans should not become a nation of onlookers as Germans had. Friedan, born in the United States, initiated her own revolution through her book. It galvanized American women, many of them Jewish, to organize for equal rights for women.
Reading these three selections together, an exercise in intersectionality, makes visible how the feminist movement overlapped not only with the movement for Black civil rights but also with awareness of the Holocaust. These selections point to the transformative impact of German Jews on American Jewish politics and culture along with the rise of new forms of Jewish political consciousness.
One of the advantages of the Posen Digital Library (PDL) is that it offers you an opportunity to be your own anthologist. You can choose your own date, if historically inclined, or you can reorganize the wealth of material under different rubrics. For example, you will find Arendt, Friedan and Prinz among the 180 selections in the genre “Cultural, Political, and Religious Thought” and together again in a smaller group of seven selections if you use “1963” to filter your search. The possibilities are rich and the PDL is free upon registration. If you’re teaching remotely, it’s a great resource.
But to stick with 1963 a little longer. If we go to Visual Culture, we find several arresting images that complicate and enrich our understanding of that year. Mikhail Grobman’s Tomb of an Israeli Soldier* presents a raised, covered coffin beside a menorah in a stark landscape. Sun and moon shine together, emblems of time standing still in death. A poet and artist, Grobman pays tribute to Israeli soldiers, but he didn’t arrive in Israel from the Soviet Union until 1971.
Tomb of an Israeli Soldier I (1963) by Michael Grobman © Michael Grobman
An Israeli artist, Gedula Ogen, a ceramicist, constructs a very different scene that draws upon images placed in various-sized rectangles. The Gathering of Israel, Kibbutz Galuyot,* commemorates not martyrdom but a Zionist vision of bringing diaspora Jews together. One single stylized sun radiates warmth over all of the figures, many still in the penumbra of exile. Viewed together they comment on diverse forms of Zionism running through Jewish culture worldwide, one emphasizing the sacrifices and deaths of Israeli soldiers shared with the many martyrs in the diaspora, the other stressing hope and fulfillment of a transformative promise to return all Jews to Israel.
The Gathering of Israel, Kibbutz Galuyot (1963) by Gedula Ogen © Gedula Ogen
We have just entered 2021. Let’s hope that this date brings much good health and a sense of restored possibilities to one and all.
Deborah Dash Moore
Editor in Chief
The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization
P.S.*To access selections on the PDL you do need to register. It’s free and takes just a few minutes. And, if you’re active on social media, you can keep up to date with everything The Posen Library is doing by following our posts on Twitter, Facebook, and our new YouTube channel, which features video recordings of several of our recent events.
