Jewish culture

[2] Jewish culture covers many aspects, including religion and worldviews, literature, media, and cinema, art and architecture, cuisine and traditional dress, attitudes to gender, marriage, family, social customs and lifestyles, music and dance.

The 20th century included the notable philosophers Jacques Derrida, Karl Popper, Emmanuel Levinas, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Hilary Putnam, Alfred Tarski, Ludwig Wittgenstein, A. J. Ayer, Walter Benjamin, Raymond Aron, Theodor W. Adorno, Isaiah Berlin and Henri Bergson.

The mathematician and astronomer Abraham bar Hiyya Ha-Nasi authored the first European book to include the full solution to the quadratic equation x2 – ax + b = 0,[35] and influenced the work of Leonardo Fibonacci.

Bonet de Lattes known chiefly as the inventor of an astronomical ring-dial by means of which solar and stellar altitudes can be measured and the time determined with great precision by night as well as by day.

The physicist Leó Szilárd, that conceived the nuclear chain reaction; Edward Teller, "the father of the hydrogen bomb" and Stanislaw Ulam; Eugene Wigner contributed to theory of Atomic nucleus and Elementary particle; Hans Bethe whose work included Stellar nucleosynthesis and was head of the Theoretical Division at the secret Los Alamos laboratory; Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Victor Weisskopf and Joseph Rotblat.

Arno Allan Penzias, the physicist and radio astronomer co-discoverer of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory, the scientists Robert Herman and Ralph Alpher had also worked on that field.

In creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient and a psychoanalyst,[42] Freud developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association and discovered transference, establishing its central role in the analytic process.

[43] Freud postulated the existence of libido, an energy with which mental processes and structures are invested and which generates erotic attachments, and a death drive, the source of repetition, hate, aggression and neurotic guilt.

[51] More remarkable contributors include Heinrich Hertz and Steven Weinberg in Electromagnetism; Carl Sagan, his contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of Venus and known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life; Felix Hausdorff (founder of topology); Edward Witten (M-theory); Vitaly Ginzburg and Lev Landau (Ginzburg–Landau theory); Yakir Aharonov (Aharonov–Bohm effect); Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR paradox); Moshe Carmeli (Gauge theory).

Sidney Altman (Molecular biology, RNA); Melvin Calvin (Calvin Cycle); Otto Wallach (Alicyclic compound); Paul Berg (biochemistry of nucleic acids); Lazăr Edeleanu (synthesis of amphetamine); Ada Yonath (Crystallography, structure of the ribosome); Dan Shechtman (Quasicrystal); Julius Axelrod and Bernard Katz (Neurotransmitter); Elie Metchnikoff (discovery of Macrophage); Selman Waksman (discovery of Streptomycin); Rosalind Franklin (DNA); Carl Djerassi (the pill); Stephen Jay Gould (Evolutionary biology); Baruch Samuel Blumberg (Hepatitis B virus); Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin (developers of the Polio vaccines); Paul Ehrlich (discovery of the Blood–brain barrier); In fields such as psychology and neurology: Otto Rank, Viktor Frankl, Stanley Milgram and Solomon Asch; linguistics: Noam Chomsky, Franz Boas, Roman Jakobson, Edward Sapir, Joseph Greenberg; and sociology: Theodor Adorno, Nathan Glazer, Erving Goffman, Georg Simmel.

Stine (Goosebumps series); J. D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye); Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union); Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time); Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman and The Crucible); Will Eisner (A Contract with God); Shel Silverstein (The Giving Tree); Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon, The Thirteenth Tribe); Saul Bellow (Herzog); The historical novel series The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon is an inspiration for George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels.

The difference is that one can expand the definition of "Jewish Broadway" to include an interdisciplinary roadway with a wide range of artistic activities packed onto one avenue—theatre, opera, symphony, ballet, publishing companies, choirs, synagogues and more.

[70] Another factor in the evolution of musical theatre was vaudeville, and during the early 20th century the form was explored and expanded by Jewish comedians and actors such as Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, The Marx Brothers, Anna Held, Al Jolson, Molly Picon, Sophie Tucker and Ed Wynn.

"[72] Many of these writers used the musical to explore issues relating to assimilation, the acceptance of the outsider in society, the racial situation in the United States, the overcoming of obstacles through perseverance, and other topics pertinent to Jewish Americans and Western Jews in general, often using subtle and disguised stories to get this point across.

[73] For example, Kern, Rodgers, Hammerstein, the Gershwins, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg wrote musicals and operas aiming to normalize societal toleration of minorities and urging racial harmony; these works included Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, Finian's Rainbow, South Pacific and The King and I.

Playwrights such as Natan Alterman, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, Leah Goldberg, Ephraim Kishon, Hanoch Levin, Aharon Megged, Moshe Shamir, Avraham Shlonsky, Yehoshua Sobol and A.

From Sid Caesar and Milton Berle to Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, and Andy Kaufman to Billy Crystal to Jerry Seinfeld, Jewish stand-up comedians have been icons of American television.

In the analysis of Paul Johnson, "The Broadway musical, radio and TV were all examples of a fundamental principle in Jewish diaspora history: Jews opening up a completely new field in business and culture, a tabula rasa on which to set their mark, before other interests had a chance to take possession, erect guild or professional fortifications and deny them entry.

Notable examples of Jewish Romantic composers (by country) are Charles-Valentin Alkan, Paul Dukas and Fromental Halevy from France, Josef Dessauer, Karl Goldmark and Gustav Mahler from Bohemia (most Austrian Jews during this time were native not to what is today Austria but the outer provinces of the Empire), Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer from Germany, and Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein from Russia.

There were very many notable Jewish violin and pianist virtuosi, including Joseph Joachim, Ferdinand David, Carl Tausig, Henri Herz, Leopold Auer, Jascha Heifetz, and Ignaz Moscheles.

Sample Jewish 20th-century composers include Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky from Austria, Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill from Germany, Viktor Ullmann and Jaromír Weinberger from Bohemia and later the Czech Republic (the former perished at the Auschwitz extermination camps), George Gershwin and Aaron Copland from the United States, Darius Milhaud and Alexandre Tansman from France, Alfred Schnittke and Lera Auerbach from Russia, Lalo Schifrin and Mario Davidovsky from Argentina and Paul Ben-Haim and Shulamit Ran from Israel.

The most prolific composers of this genre included Giacomo Meyerbeer, Fromental Halévy, and the later Jacques Offenbach; Halevy's La Juive was based on Scribe's libretto very loosely connected to the Jewish experience.

The great songwriters and lyricists of American traditional popular music and jazz standards were predominantly Jewish, including Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Frank Loesser, Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin.

Popular Jewish artists today include Omer Adam, Noa Kirel, Avior Malasa, A-WA, Eden Alene, Eyal Golan, Debbie Friedman, Barbra Streisand and others.

For Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, for example, dances, whose names corresponded to the different forms of klezmer music that were played, were an obvious staple of the wedding ceremony of the shtetl.

For example, in the United States, the Jewish presence in baseball was important during a major wave of immigration in the early 20th century,[92] and sport was used to shape the assimilation and community formation of both American and British Jews.

[citation needed] Notable Jewish-American comedians include Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Sammy Davis Jr, Rachel Dratch, Gilbert Gottfried, Ilana Glazer, Jan Murray, Julie Klausner, Don Rickles, Andy Samberg, Gene Wilder, Groucho Marx, Gianmarco Soresi, Ben Shwartz, and many others.

During the early 20th century, Jews figured particularly prominently in the École de Paris centered in the Montparnasse movement (including Chaim Soutine, Marc Chagall, Jules Pascin, Yitzhak Frenkel Frenel and Michel Kikoine),[105] and after World War II among the abstract expressionists: Alexander Bogen, Helen Frankenthaler, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Al Held, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Milton Resnick, Jack Tworkov, Mark Rothko, and Louis Schanker, as well as among Contemporary artists, Modernists and Postmodernists.

The collage artist Wallace Berman's engagement with Hebrew reflected the Beat Generation's wider exploration of esoteric spiritual practices such as Zen, palm reading, astrology, kabbalah and psychedelic drugs.

Many of those involved in the later ages of comics are also Jewish, such as Julius Schwartz, Joe Kubert, Jenette Kahn, Len Wein, Peter David, Neil Gaiman, Chris Claremont and Brian Michael Bendis.