File:2007 Hoffman.jpg

From Rebel to Rabbi: Reclaiming Jesus and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (2007) is a book by Matthew Hoffman.

Abstract

From Rebel to Rabbi establishes how the changes that occurred in Jewish culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries stimulated a widespread fascination with the figure of Jesus and with Christian motifs among numerous Jewish theologians, historians, intellectuals, writers, and artists. It illustrates how and why the process of modernization for these Jews involved a radical reevaluation of Jesus of Nazareth. This book analyzes works of Jewish history, theology, Yiddish literature, Jewish visual art, and intellectual debates, in an attempt to situate this phenomenon within the broader context of a cultural history of how Jews have related to and depicted the figure of Jesus in the modern period. It suggests that for writers and artists, such as Sholem Asch and Marc Chagall, refiguring Jesus as intrinsically Jewish and using Christian themes to express aspects of the modern Jewish experience were an integral part of creating a new and distinctive modern Jewish culture. -- Publisher's summary

Editions and translations

Published in Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Table of contents

Introduction: Jesus and the Jewish Question

• 1. The Quest for the Jewish Jesus
• 2. The Crucifix Question
• 3. Yiddish Modernism and the Landscape of the Cross
• 4. The Passion of Jewish History
• 5. The Artist Crucified

Epilogue: The Jesus Question Revisited

External links

• Google Books (partial view)