Table of Contents
NEW BOOK> "Jewish Encounters with Buddhism in German Culture – Between Moses and Buddha, 1890-1940" by Sebastian Musch (Palgrave Macmillan)
by A. Charles Muller
by Sebastan Musch
Sebastian Musch (Osnabrueck University): "Jewish
Encounters with Buddhism in German Culture – Between Moses and Buddha,
1890-1940", Palgrave Series in Asian German Studies, Palgrave Macmillan
2019.https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030274689
In his new book with Palgrave Macmillan Dr. Sebastian Musch traces the entanglement of Buddhism and Judaism in German culture from the turn of the century up to World War II.
In Germany at the turn of the century, Buddhism transformed from an obscure topic, of interest to only a few misfit scholars, into a cultural phenomenon. Many of the foremost authors of the period were profoundly influenced by this rapid rise of Buddhism—among them, some of the best-known names in the German-Jewish canon. Sebastian Musch excavates this neglected dimension of German-Jewish identity, drawing on philosophical treatises, novels, essays, diaries, and letters to trace the history of Jewish-Buddhist encounters up to the start of the Second World War. Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Leo Baeck, Theodor Lessing, Jakob Wassermann, Walter Hasenclever, and Lion Feuchtwanger are featured alongside other, lesser known figures like Paul Cohen-Portheim and Walter Tausk. As Musch shows, when these thinkers wrote about Buddhism, they were also negotiating their own Jewishness.
The book contributes to the emerging field of Asian-German Studies and appeals to scholars of Jewish Studies, German Studies, Orientalism, and Postcolonial Studies.
TOC:
1.
1 Introduction 1
2.
2 Buddhism and German-Jewish
Orientalism 19
3.
3 The Buddha, the Rabbis, and the
Philosophers: Rejections
and Defenses 41
and Defenses 41
4.
4 The Bridgebuilders: Jewishness Between
Asia and Europe 101
5.
5 The Assimilation and Dissimilation of a
Buddhist Jew:
Walter Tausk’s Contested Identities 189
6 Conclusion: Toward the Study of Jewish-Buddhist Relations 245Bibliography 255
Index 281
