Benjamin Disraeli (Jewish Encounters) | 
 enlarge | Author: Adam Kirsch
Publisher: Schocken
Category: Book
List Price: $21.00
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 39242
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 080524249X
Dewey Decimal Number: 941.081092
EAN: 9780805242492
ASIN: 080524249X
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
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Product Description
A dandy, a best-selling novelist, and a man of political and sexual intrigue, Benjamin Disraeli was one of the most captivating figures of the nineteenth century. His flirtation with proto-Zionism, his ideas about power and empire, and his fantasies about the Middle East remain prophetically relevant today. How a man who was born a Jew--and who remained in the eyes of his countrymen a member of a despised minority--managed to become prime minister of England seems even today nothing short of miraculous.
In this compelling biography, renowned poet and critic Adam Kirsch looks at Disraeli as a novelist as well as a statesman, recognizing that the outsider Jew who became one of the world's most powerful men was his own greatest character. Though baptized by his father at the age of twelve, Disraeli was seen--and saw himself--as a Jew. But her created an idea of Jewishness to rival the British notion of aristocracy.
Disraeli was a figure of fascinating contradictions: an archconservative who benefited from England's liberal attitudes, a baptized Christian who saw Jewishness as a matter of racial superiority, a perennial outsider who dreamed of glory for England, which, in the words of one contemporary, became for Disraeli "the Israel of his imagination."
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| Customer Reviews:
 terrific book November 11, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
read several books re disraeli and was pleasantly surprised that this book gave such a new take on his jewishness
 Biography of a very complex man September 9, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
In 1852 Benjamin Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, posed for a portrait created by Sir Francis Grant. The portrait depicts Disraeli as a young man with full, sensual lips, intelligent black eyes, and thick, dark hair. A detail from the portrait, which illustrates the cover of the new biography, Benjamin Disraeli, by Adam Kirsch, contrasts sharply with a photograph of Disraeli that is also included in the book.
That photograph represents the elder statesman in 1875, a portly gentleman with a receding hairline, his eyes tired yet wise; the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward in a weary smile. The contrasts suggested by these images deftly convey the themes of Kirsch's biography.
Kirsch reveals the complex, contradictory nature of a man born a Jew and raised in the Christian faith, a man who celebrated his Jewish heritage yet refused to join a campaign in 1840 to save Jews in Damascus from government sponsored torture. Liberal in his political outlook, Disraeli was both distrusted and resented by the conservatives in the House of Commons, but indispensable to their cause.
More than fifty biographies have been written about Benjamin Disraeli. Unlike his predecessors, Kirsch focuses his attention, not so much on Disraeli's political career, but on the psychological effects of his Jewish heritage. Kirsch examines how Disraeli and his contemporaries depicted Jews and Judaism in literature, and considers how such representations influenced social behavior and thought during the time of Disraeli's rise to power. Throughout the book, Kirsch provides fascinating details from Jewish history.
Benjamin Disraeli is the tenth book in the Schocken Books/Nextbook "Jewish Encounters" series. An exceptional portrait of an intriguing figure, this book will particularly appeal to those readers interested in studying the history of Jewish thought.
Armchair Interviews says: Most interesting biography.
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