
Unsettling Difference
Music Drama, the Bible, and the Critique of German Jewish Identity
Adi Nester(Author)
Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library
Published on 15. January 2025
294 pages
978-1-5017-7970-1 (ISBN)
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Unsettling Difference challenges the major-minor pattern that has framed discussions of German Jewish difference, focusing on instances that fall outside traditional understandings of minority culture. Exploring expressions of Jewish identity and difference in biblical-themed musical dramas and their literary sources, Adi Nester argues that the issue of Jewish difference should be treated as an aesthetic question in the first half of the twentieth century, even amid the rise of pseudoscientific theories about race and blood.
Drawing on the fraught, parallel histories of opera and the modern reception of the Hebrew Bible in Germany, both significant in debates at the time about the nature of Jewish separateness, Unsettling Difference shows how this discourse troubles concepts of Jewish marginality and (non-Jewish) German dominance. Through innovative readings of key works in this tradition-Rudolf Borchardt's poem, Das Buch Joram; Paul Ben-Haim's oratorio, Joram; Arnold Schoenberg's opera, Moses und Aron; Joseph Roth's novel, Hiob; and Eric Zeisl's opera, Hiob-Nester shows how these biblical adaptations foreground alternative notions of difference that rely on confusion, ambiguity, radical heterogeneity, excess, and repetition.
Drawing on the fraught, parallel histories of opera and the modern reception of the Hebrew Bible in Germany, both significant in debates at the time about the nature of Jewish separateness, Unsettling Difference shows how this discourse troubles concepts of Jewish marginality and (non-Jewish) German dominance. Through innovative readings of key works in this tradition-Rudolf Borchardt's poem, Das Buch Joram; Paul Ben-Haim's oratorio, Joram; Arnold Schoenberg's opera, Moses und Aron; Joseph Roth's novel, Hiob; and Eric Zeisl's opera, Hiob-Nester shows how these biblical adaptations foreground alternative notions of difference that rely on confusion, ambiguity, radical heterogeneity, excess, and repetition.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Ithaca
United States
Publishing group
Cornell University Press
Product notice
Reflowable
Illustrations
11 b&w halftones - 11 Halftones, black and white
File size
11,28 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-7970-1 (9781501779701)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
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Additional editions

Book
01/2025
Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library
€52.18
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Book
01/2025
Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library
€172.33
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Book
11/2024
Cornell University Press
Unfortunately, price unknown
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Person
Adi Nester is Assistant Professor of German and Levine-Sklut Fellow in Jewish Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Content
On Jewish Difference, the Bible, and the Great Artwork
1. Rudolf Borchardt's Das Buch Joram and the Restoration of aBiblical Language
2. Opening the Work: The German Oratorio and Paul Ben-Haim'sJoram
3. Moses and Aron Representing the People
4. On Being Superfluous
5. Inorganic Quotations
Afterword
1. Rudolf Borchardt's Das Buch Joram and the Restoration of aBiblical Language
2. Opening the Work: The German Oratorio and Paul Ben-Haim'sJoram
3. Moses and Aron Representing the People
4. On Being Superfluous
5. Inorganic Quotations
Afterword
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