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Property Holding, Charitable Purposes and Dissolution

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Property Holding, Charitable Purposes and Dissolution Introduction to 2014 volume of Jewish Journal of Sociology his volume of the Jewish Journal of Sociology covers a lot of ground, touching on issues of fundamental importance for the T study of contemporary Jewish life. The issue starts with a special section on ‘The Relevance of the Jewish Question in the Twenty First Century’, co-edited with Ilan Baron. Baron’s own contribution to this section, which also serves as an introduction, argues that The Jewish Question seemed to be ‘solved’ in the latter half of the twentieth century. The foundation of the Jewish state of Israel, together with legislation in many Diaspora countries and internationally to protect the rights of minorities, seemed to guarantee the Jewish place in the world. Yet, as Baron argues, the Question has not gone away, and as he shows with reference to the work of the authors Howard Jacobson and Michael Chabon, for both Jews and non-Jews, the place of Jews in the modern world still raises complex questions and animates anguished debate. Robert Fine’s article roots The Jewish Question in enlightenment and post-enlightenment thinking. He not only shows, like Baron, that the Question has not disappeared, but the same issues that enlightenment thinkers raised about the place of Jews in the modern world still resonate today. In particular, questions of how Jews fit or do not fit into universalist ideologies are still both theoretically and politically contested. It is in debates about contemporary anti-Semitism that these questions become most difficult and most intractable. The Jewish Question as a question of difference is the focus of Fiona Wright’s article. Wright reflects in particular on her own position as a non-Jewish ethnographer researching Israelis who are critical of or oppose the Zionist project. Such subject positions complicated questions of what a Jew is and what Jewish difference might mean. As Wright alludes, it also opens up spaces for artistic and intellectual play that destabilize any closure in The Jewish Question today. Roni Berger’s article, while not part of the special section, demonstrates that the question how to be Jewish within a particular kind of Jewish community can lead to tortuous questions that raise v difficult choices and dilemmas. For Haredi Jews leaving Haredi Jewish communities, The Jewish Question is less a question about the place of Jews in the world, so much as a very practical question of how to remain Jewish or not once the all-encompassing Jewish community that they were raised in has been left behind. The policy recommendations that Berger The Jewish Journal of Sociology, vol 56, nos, 1 and 2, 2014 1 offers reminds us that to be a Jew today is not simply to reflect on existential questions, but to be faced with the necessity of action. Miron Kantorowicz, the Jewish social scientist that Mark Tolts discusses in his article, may or may not have thought much about The Jewish Question during his turbulent twentieth century, but he certainly experienced the fallout from the various grand projects that attempted to answer it. As life pushed him from Russia, Germany, the UK and finally to the US, Kantorowicz managed to make significant contributions to the emerging science of Jewish demography. In particular, this little-known figure forms part of the story of pre-war British Jewish demography. It is serendipitous that Tolts’ article appears in the same issue as an obituary of Professor Sigbert Prais, written by his daughter. Prais, the author of several articles in the Jewish Journal of Sociology, made an important contribution to post-war British Jewish demography. We owe it to pioneers such as Prais and Kantorowicz that those of us who are still fascinated and animated by The Jewish Question today are able to drawn on ‘hard’ data in our deliberations. We are delighted that, for the second year running, the Jewish Journal of Sociology’s ‘Chronicle’ section has been produced by the Berman Jewish Policy Archive in the US. The digest of social research will be invaluable in surveying the constantly-developing field of Jewish social research. 2 SPECIAL SECTION: THE RELEVANCE OF THE JEWISH QUESTION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY (CO-EDITED BY ILAN BARON AND KEITH KAHN-HARRIS) THE JEWISH QUESTION IN THE 21ST CENTURY: AN UNANSWERED QUESTION? EXPLORING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN LITERATURE AND POLITICS Ilan Zvi Baron Abstract his paper explores the relevance of the Jewish Question in the Twenty-First Century. The Jewish Question, what political space T exists for the Jews in the modern world, was seemingly answered by two historic events in 1948. The first of these was the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. The second was the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first of these meant that Jews could live as Jews in their own state as a majority, in control of their own political destiny. The second of these paved the way for the age of minority rights that developed in the 1960s. This development meant that Jews could live a life as Jews in the Diaspora, thereby significantly altering the terms under which assimilation could be understood. Assimilation became integration. Consequently, it would appear that the Jewish Question has been answered and is no longer of significance in contemporary Jewish thought. However, if that is the case, why is it that the Jewish Question is serving a central role in important contemporary Jewish novels? The Question has served as a key plot element in the novels of two award-winning Jewish novelists, Howard Jacobson and Michael Chabon. Why is the Jewish Question featuring so strongly in the works of leading Jewish authors in the Twenty-First Century? Because it has not been answered. Using a combination of Jewish literature and a political sociological framing of contemporary debates regarding Diaspora/Israel relations, this paper explores how the Jewish Question was not answered, and suggests that part of the reason why the Question I would like to thank Devorah Baum for her helpful comments on an earlier draft The Jewish Journal of Sociology, vol 56, nos, 1 and 2, 2014 5 ILAN ZVI BARON has not been answered is because we were never clear about what the Question was in the first place. Keywords: Jewish Question, Political Space, Diaspora, Israel, Transnationalism, Michael Chabon, Howard Jacobson. Introduction The Jewish Question which asks what political space exists for the Jews in the modern world, was seemingly answered by two historic events in 1948. The first of these was the creation of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. The second was the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first of these meant that Jews could live as Jews in their own state as a majority, in control of their own political destiny. The second of these paved the way for the age of minority rights that developed in the 1960s. This development meant that Jews could live a life as Jews in the Diaspora, thereby significantly altering the terms under which assimilation could be understood. Assimilation became integration. Consequently, it would appear that the Jewish Question has been answered and is no longer of significance in contemporary Jewish thought. However, if that is the case, why is it that the Jewish Question is serving a central role in important contemporary Jewish novels. The Question has served as a key plot element in the novels of two award- winning Jewish novelists, Howard Jacobson and Michael Chabon. Their work helps to reveal not only that the Jewish Question remains relevant, but that its answers could challenge the underlying premises upon which the Question was based. The Unanswered Answered Question Jewish political thought is seemingly no longer concerned with what used to be called the Jewish Question. This Question addressed what political space exists for the Jews in modernity. Michael Walzer suggests that there were only two (humane) answers: assimilation and Zionism.1 There were, however, more than these two. Its well-known Jewish answers were not just assimilationism and Zionism but also Jewish socialism. The Jewish orthodoxy also provided its own response in its rejection of modernity. Walzer‟s point, however, is that in a sense all answers spoke to two spatial options. As he writes, “The question itself might be phrased as follows: What political space is there for Jews in the modern world? The first 6 EXPLORING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN LITERATURE AND POLITICS answer points toward citizenship in inclusive democratic states; the second answer toward sovereignty in the „land of Israel.‟”2 With these answers in mind, the Jewish Question, it would appear, is no longer relevant because both have ostensibly proved successful. Sixty plus years after the State of Israel declared independence, and in an age of minority rights in the Diaspora countries with significant Jewish populations, the Jewish Question seems to have, at long last, been resolved and in a positive way. Jews have their own state, and have international legal standing as a member of the community of nations. Instead of court Jews there are now diplomats that represent their own Jewish state. The change has not just been political and legal. Israel also offers Jews a sense of pride, and in this vein is sometimes referred to as the world's first „start-up nation‟.3 In 2009, Dan Senor and Saul Singer noted that Israel has more companies listed on the NASDAQ than any country other than the United States4 While, this claim is no longer empirically valid,5 Israel is nevertheless a leader in technological innovation.
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