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World War I and the Jews

World War I and the Jews

Marsha L. Rozenblit | Jonathan Karp

(2017)

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Abstract

World War I utterly transformed the lives of Jews around the world: it allowed them to display their patriotism, to dispel antisemitic myths about Jewish cowardice, and to fight for Jewish rights. Yet Jews also suffered as refugees and deportees, at times catastrophically. And in the aftermath of the war, the replacement of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian and Ottoman Empires with a system of nation-states confronted Jews with a new set of challenges. This book provides a fascinating survey of the ways in which Jewish communities participated in and were changed by the Great War, focusing on the dramatic circumstances they faced in Europe, North America, and the Middle East during and after the conflict.


“This volume fills a crucial research gap in modern Jewish history, contains excellent essays by senior and junior scholars, and makes a convincing case why the ‘Great War’ marked a crucial turning point in modern Jewish history on both sides of the Atlantic.” · Tobias Brinkmann, The Pennsylvania State University


Jonathan Karp is Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Binghamton University. He is the author of The Politics of Jewish Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in Europe, 1638-1838 (2008) and editor of several academic collections, including, with Adam Sutcliffe, Philosemitism in History (2012) and the Cambridge History of Judaism in the Early Modern Period (2017). He was Executive Director of the American Jewish Historical Society from 2010-2013.


Marsha L. Rozenblit is the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Maryland.  She is the author of The Jews of Vienna, 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity (1983) and Constructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (2001) and co-editor, with Pieter M. Judson, of Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (2005). 

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
World War I and the Jews iii
Copyright Page iv
Contents vii
Figures ix
Tables x
Maps xi
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction: On the Significance of World War I and the Jews 1
Part I — Overviews 15
Chapter 1 — World War I and Its Impact on the Problem of Security in Jewish History 17
Chapter 2 — The European Jewish World 1914–1919: What Changed? 32
Chapter 3 — Jewish Diplomacy and the Politics of War and Peace 56
Part II — Local Studies 83
Chapter 4 — Bravery in the Borderlands, Martyrs on the Margins: Jewish War Heroes and World War I Narratives in France, 1914–1940 85
Chapter 5 — The Budapest Jewish Community's Galician October 112
Chapter 6 — Confronting the Bacterial Enemy: Public Health, Philanthropy, and Jewish Responses to Typhus in Poland, 1914–1921 131
Chapter 7 — The Union of Jewish Soldiers under Soviet Rule 151
Chapter 8 — Global Conflict, Local Politics: The Jews of Salonica and World War I 175
Chapter 9 — Recounting the Past, Shaping the Future: Ladino Literary Representations of World War I 201
Chapter 10 — Women and the War: The Social and Economic Impact of World War I on Jewish Women in the Traditional Holy Cities of Palestine 222
Chapter 11 — Baghdadi Jews in the Ottoman Military during World War I 242
Chapter 12 — Unintentional Pluralists: Military Policy, Jewish Servicemen, and the Development of Tri-Faith America during World War I 263
Chapter 13 — American Yiddish Socialists at the Wartime Crossroads: Patriotism and Nationalism versus Proletarian Internationalism 279
Chapter 14 — Louis Marshall during World War I: Change and Continuity in Jewish Culture and Politics 303
Index 326