EMANCIPATION: HOW LIBERATING EUROPE’S JEWS FROM THE GHETTO LED TO REVOLUTION AND RENAISSANCE

Book ID/图书代码： 00500006B07398

English Summary/英文概要： For almost 500 years the Jews of Europe were kept apart, confined to ghettos or tiny villages in the countryside. Then, in one extraordinary moment in the French Revolution, the Jews of France were emancipated. Soon the ghetto gates were opened all over Europe. The era of Emancipation had begun. What happened next would change the course of history.

Emancipation tells the story of how this isolated minority emerged from the ghetto and against terrible odds very quickly established themselves as shapers of history, as writers, revolutionaries, social thinkers, and artists. Their struggle to create a place for themselves in Western European life led to revolutions and nothing less than a second renaissance in Western culture.

The book spans the era from the French Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century. The story is told through the lives of the people who lived through this momentous change. Some are well-known: Marx, Freud, Mahler, Proust, and Einstein; many more have been forgotten. Michael Goldfarb brings them all to life.

This is an epic story, and Goldfarb tells it with the skill and eye for detail of a novelist. He brings the empathy and understanding that has marked his two decades as a reporter in public radio to making the characters come alive. It is a tale full of hope, struggle, triumph, and, waiting at the end, a great tragedy.

This is a book that will have meaning for anyone interested in the struggle of immigrants and minorities to succeed. We live in a world where vast numbers are on the move, where religions and races are grinding against each other in new combinations; Emancipation is a book of history for our time.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 在近五百年的时间当中，欧洲的犹太人一直饱受种族隔离之苦，或是受限于孤立的犹太社区、又或是被安置在荒僻的郊区村镇。
直到法国大革命的爆发击碎了犹太人禁锢的枷锁，伴随拿破仑在欧洲大陆纵横驰骋，一时间欧洲各地的犹太人们纷纷获得渴望许久的自由。于是，这场犹太人的大解放，将彻底改变人类历史的进程。从孤立贫苦的种族隔离区中走出，在克服了种种艰难险阻后，犹太人们在人类历史的发展中留下自己浓重的一笔，于文学、思想、艺术以及社会变革等领域纷纷出现了他们杰出的身影。为了在西欧社会中占据一席之地，他们所付出的不懈努力直接带来了一场变革，而其对于西方文化的影响程度就堪比是第二次文艺复兴。本书横跨了多个历史年代，从法国大革命直至二十世纪初期，全书内容亦围绕着生活在这场巨大历史变革中的人们所展开，其中的一些家喻户晓：马克思、弗洛伊德、马勒、蒲鲁斯特、爱因斯坦；而更多的名字则早已被后世所淡忘。
作者戈德法布以一名小说家独特的视角重新审视了这段过去，全书好比是一本史诗，既有希望的喜悦也有催泪的悲剧。对于渴望对少数人种及移民的奋斗史有所了解的读者来说，这本书可谓寓意深远。(Andy)

Awards/获奖情况：French Jews gained full citizenship during the Revolution, and as Napoleon conquered territories across Europe, ghetto gates were thrown open and Jewish emancipation became an unstoppable force, writes NPR correspondent Goldfarb. Emancipation set off an explosion of Jewish achievement, and Jews played an increasingly important if still conflicted role in Europe. For instance, Heinrich Heine, who converted to Christianity in 1825 to further a law career, worked out his Jewish identity crisis through poems that mirrored the national identity crisis of his young German contemporaries. When Damascus Jews were tortured during an 1840 blood libel, the Rothschilds successfully interceded, involving the British Parliament and forcing a French prime minister to resign. The forced baptism and abduction of the Bolognese Jewish child Edgardo Mortara helped catalyze the movement for Italian unity, while the Dreyfus affair ultimately led to the creation of Israel. Goldfarb’s history of European Jewish persecution and assimilation (after Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace) is lively and perceptive, but also becomes unfocused and uneven, biting off more than it can chew as he tries to fathom the meaning of emancipation, its causes and its price. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Nov.) ---From Publishers Weekly

“A celebration. . . that speaks to the universal desire for emancipation, material and spiritual.”---Marc Tracy, The New York Times Book Review

“This is one of those marvelous books that not only illuminates an important chain of historical events, but provides timeless—and especially timely—lessons for our own age. . . .Impassioned, thoughtfully argued, well-expressed. . . .Goldfarb has rendered an enormous service.”---Martin Rubin, The Washington Times

“A compelling history of one of the most important social and cultural phenomena of modern times. . . . Good, popular history. . . [a] timely look at an important topic.”---Library Journal

About the Author/作者介绍： Michael Goldfarb was National Public Radio’s voice in London for almost twenty years, first as NPR’s London Correspondent, then Bureau Chief, and finally as Senior Correspondent of Inside Out, the award-winning public radio documentary program. He has been the recipient of the DuPont-Columbia Award, the Overseas Press Club Awqard, and British radio’s highest honor, the Sony Award. The author of Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq, Goldfarb lives in London.

Format:照片

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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