Biemann - Inventing New Beginnings

The present book was written, for better or worse, in a state of chosen solitude. All the more, then, should I like to single out the few whose moral and intellectual support has helped me more than they may ever know. David Hall was the first to listen to my ideas on renaissance with an attentive ear and to express a feeling of enthusiasm in the project that stayed with me through all its phases. Peter Ochs was the first to read the manuscript in its entirety (and when it was still immodestly long), and who continued, from beginning to end, to believe in its reclusive author. His encouragement, practical wisdom, and friendship put me in infinite debt. My dear colleagues Larry Bouchard, Valerie Cooper, Jamie Ferreira, Martien Halvorson-Taylor, Paul Jones, Chuck Mathewes, and Vanessa Ochs all read substantial parts of the finished manuscript, as did Liz Shanks Alexander, who shook her head, but shook it in her special way. David Myers took it upon himself to read the chapter on Writing Jewish History in Resurrection. Paul Mendes-Flohr was there to help, as always, when the manuscript and its author were filled with doubt. Harry Gamble and Paul Groner have created an atmosphere of unique comfort and welcome during their tenures as chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Daniel Weiss and Peter Kang have helped me more than graduate students should be allowed to do. Bruce Holsinger has taught me wisely how to sell myself and how to spell the word moot. To all of them I am immensely grateful.

A book and its author, of course, have no real existence until they are in print. I owe, then, my existence to the editors of the Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture, Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein, who were undeterred by the length and idiosyncrasies of the present manuscript, and especially to Norris Pope, who has gently enforced its reduction, and who has truly been an editor with a soul and a heart. Carolyn Brown, Susan Rescigno, and especially Deidre Schaefer have navigated and improved with great editorial expertise the labyrinth of my non-native language. My thanks also for the enormous generosity of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation and its chair, William Frost, as well as to the Deans Office at the University of Virginia, whose grants have substantially contributed to the publishing costs of this book.

Finally, I should not fail to thank my familieshere and there: Alvin and Erna, who have adopted their son-in-law with tremendous warmth, and who have always been there to help; and, of course, my dear parents, who, from a distance, have sent unending words of love and cheer. I feel fortunate to come from a home filled with a passion for music, literature, and art, and a tradition in which the vanishing traces of Stefan Zweigs World of Yesterday are still alive and still at work. Little did my parents know that their son would one day become a Luftmensch in the New World. To keep this Luftmensch on the ground has been the privilege of our children, Natan, Gidi, and Adin, who rightly prefer mud pies to lofty things. To bake pies one can really enjoy and fill this home with a love for music and books has been the gift of their fiction-writer mother , Dali a. Toher, this book, and its quiet author, are dedicated.