Cizí i blízcí - Židé, literatura, kultura v českých zemích ve 20. století – Holý Jiří (2016)

The Jewish cultural tradition, which has been present in the Czech lands since the early Middle Ages, was systematically suppressed and marginalized during the decades of the communist regime. It only came to the forefront of public and scholarly interest after 1989. This monograph builds on the results of previous research and presents Jewish themes from a wide range of perspectives, approaches, and ideological currents: from romantic admiration for Jews, through Jewish (auto)stereotypes and anti-Jewish heterostereotypes to antisemitism, from Czech-Jewish identity to Zionism and socialism, from the reflection of Jews in fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century to their portrayal in contemporary Jewish magazines and the thematization of the Holocaust in poetry, prose, and film. The book does not perceive cultural memory as a bastion of a single national culture or ideology, but presents cultural events in the Czech lands as ideologically pluralistic and multilingual (it follows literature not only written in Czech but also in German and Hebrew). The core of the publication consists of broader and overview studies based on extensive and often groundbreaking material research – for example, the Representation of Jews and Judaism at the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th century, Theater and literary activity in...