Taking stock : cultures of enumeration in contemporary Jewish life / edited by Michal Kravel-Tovi and Deborah Dash Moore.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Introduction : counting in Jewish / Michal Kravel-Tovi -- part I. Counting the dead : iconic numbers and collective memory -- 1. Six Million : The numerical icon of the Holocaust / Oren Baruch Stier 29 -- 2. Breathing life into iconic numbers : Yad Vashem's Shoah Victims' Names Recovery Project and the constitution of a posthumous census of six million Holocaust dead / Carol A. Kidron -- 3. Putting numbers into space : place names, collective remembrance, and forgetting in Israeli culture / Yael Zerubavel -- Part II. Counting the living : putting the "Jewish" in social science -- 4. Jewish "crime" by the numbers, or putting the "social" in Jewish social science / Mitchell B. Hart -- 5. Counting people : the co-production of ethnicity and Jewish majority in Israel-Palestine / Anat Leibler -- 6. Wet numbers : the language of continuity crisis and the work of care among the organized American Jewish community / Michal Kravel-Tovi -- part III. Counting objects : material subjects and the social lives of enumerated things -- 7. "Let's start with the big ones" : numbers, thin description, and the magic of Yiddish at the Yiddish Book Center / Joshua B. Friedman -- 8. "130 kilograms of matza, 3,000 hard-boiled eggs, 100 kilograms of haroset and 2,000 balls of gefilte fish" : hyperbolic reckoning on Passover / Vanessa L. Ochs -- Postscript : balancing accounts : commemoration and commensuration / Theodore M. Porter.

Taking Stock is a collection of lively, original essays that explore the cultures of enumeration that permeate contemporary and modern Jewish life. Speaking to the profound cultural investment in quantified forms of knowledge and representation--whether discussing the Holocaust or counting the numbers of Israeli and American Jews--these essays reveal a social life of Jewish numbers. As they trace the uses of numerical frameworks, they portray how Jews define, negotiate, and enact matters of Jewish collectivity. The contributors offer productive perspectives into ubiquitous yet often overlooked aspects of the modern Jewish experience.

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