Hannah Arendt was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1906, fled to Paris in 1933, and came to the United States after the outbreak of World War II. She was the editorial director of Schocken Books from 1946 to 1948, and taught at Berkeley, Cornell, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and The New School for Social Research. Arendt died in 1975.

Preface: A Jewish Life: 1906 1975 by Jerome Kohn
A Note on the Text
Publication History
Introduction: The Jew as Pariah: The Case of Hannah Arendt (1906 1975) by Ron H. Feldman

I
THE 1930s
The Enlightenment and the Jewish Question
Against Private Circles
Original Assimilation: An Epilogue to the One Hundredth Anniversary of Rahel Varnhagen s Death
The Professional Reclassification of Youth
A Guide for Youth: Martin Buber
Some Young People Are Going Home
The Gustloff Trial
The Jewish Question
Antisemitism

II
THE 1940s
The Minority Question
The Jewish War That Isn t Happening: Articles from Aufbau, October 1941 November 1942
Between Silence and Speechlessness: Articles from Aufbau, February 1943 March 1944
The Political Organization of the Jewish People: Articles from Aufbau, April 1944 April 1945
Jewish Politics
Why the Crémieux Decree Was Abrogated
New Leaders Arise in Europe
A Way toward the Reconciliation of Peoples
We Refugees
The Jew as Pariah: A Hidden Tradition
Creating a Cultural Atmosphere
Jewish History, Revised
The Moral of History
Stefan Zweig: Jews in the World of Yesterday
The Crisis of Zionism
Herzl and Lazare
Zionism Reconsidered
The Jewish State: Fifty Years After, Where Have Herzl s Politics Led?
To Save the Jewish Homeland
The Assets of Personality: A Review of Chaim Weizmann: Statesman, Scientist, Builder of the Jewish Commonwealth
Single Track to Zion: A Review of Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann
The Failure of Reason: The Mission of Bernadotte
About Collaboration
New Palestine Party: Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed

III
THE 1950s
Peace or Armistice in the Near East?
Magnes, the Conscience of the Jewish People
The History of the Great Crime: A Review of Bréviaire de la haine: Le IIIe Reich et les juifs [Breviary of Hate: The Third Reich and the Jews] by Léon Poliakov

IV
THE 1960s
The Eichmann Controversy: A Letter to Gershom Scholem
Answers to Questions Submitted by Samuel Grafton
The Eichmann Case and the Germans: A Conversation with Thilo Koch
The Destruction of Six Million: A Jewish World Symposium
The Formidable Dr. Robinson : A Reply by Hannah Arendt

Afterword: Big Hannah My Aunt by Edna Brocke
Acknowledgments
Index

Although Hannah Arendt is not primarily known as a Jewish thinker, she probably wrote more about Jewish issues than any other topic. As a young adult in Germany, she wrote about German Jewish history. After moving to France in 1933, she helped Jewish youth immigrate to Palestine. During her years in Paris, her principle concern was the transformation of antinomianism from prejudice to policy, which would culminate in the Nazi "final solution." After France fell, Arendt escaped from an internment camp and made her way to America. There she wrote articles calling for a Jewish army to fight the Nazis. After the war, she supported the creation of a Jewish homeland in a binational (Arab-Jewish) state of Israel.

Arendt's original conception of political freedom cannot be fully grasped apart from her experience as a Jew. In 1961 she attended Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. Her report, Eichmann in Jerusalem, provoked an immense controversy, which culminated in her virtual excommunication from the worldwide Jewish community. Today that controversy is the subject of serious re-evaluation, especially among younger people in the United States, Europe, and Israel.

The publication of The Jewish Writings much of which has never appeared before traces Arendt s life and thought as a Jew. It will put an end to any doubts about the centrality, from beginning to end, of Arendt s Jewish experience.