“One Should Have Two Homelands”: Discord and Hope in Soma Morgenstern’s Sparks in the Abyss
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 2
Abstract
Soma Morgenstern’s three-part novel Sparks in the Abyss, written between 1930 and 1943, exudes a spirit of serenity and optimism at the same time that its narrative is structured by repeated scenes of conflict and violence. This paper seeks to account for the place of discord in the trilogy. Morgenstern uses the interwar Galician homeland as a site to articulate the possibility of traditional Jewish life in modern Europe. By inhabiting two homes—East and West, Galicia and Vienna, secularism and piety—Jews will be able to negotiate the inevitable discord and occasional brutality that they face in the world. The lessons learned by a Western secular Jew in pluralist Galicia create hope for the negotiation of difference, if not for the complete overcoming of violence, on the eve of World War II.
Authors and Affiliations
Kata Gellen
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25679
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8020026
- Views 372
- Downloads 6
Almsgiving and Competing Soteriologies in Second-Century Christianity
While care for the poor was widely advocated and practiced in early Christianity, charity was not universally endorsed. The Gospel of Thomas (Gos. Thom.), for example, is notable for its rejection of almsgiving, along...
The Apparatus of Belief: Prayer, Technology, and Ritual Gesture
Through a focus on the early history of a mass mediated ritual practice, this essay describes the “apparatus of belief,” or the specific ways in which individual religious belief has become intimately related to tele-t...
Hidden Suffering and the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences
To understand suffering is to understand what it means to be human. Suffering focuses our attention on our vulnerability, which we would rather ignore or deny. As health care professionals (HCP) we need to be able to l...
I Have Faith in Thee, Lord: Criticism of Religion and Child Abuse in the Video Game the Binding of Isaac
The game The Binding of Isaac is an excellent example of a game that incorporates criticism of religion. Isaac is a roguelike dungeon crawler with randomly generated dungeons. Both from the perspective of narrative and...
One-Birth, Many-Births: A Conversation Reborn A Response to “Perspectives on Reincarnation: Hindu, Christian, and Scientific,” a Thematic Issue of Religions
“Interrogating Rebirth: Hindu-Christian Debates and Their Contemporary Relevance” was a panel at the Dharma Association of North America (DANAM) meeting in conjunction with the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeti...