Edith Stein's Life in a Jewish Family, 18911916

Edith Steins Life in a Jewish Family, 18911916 is a treasure trove for the study of Steins youth and early adulthood, her approach to writing autobiographically, and her intricate relationship with historical influences of her time and place. Through intellectual mining Steins narrative and conducting a comprehensive historical analysis of Steins achievement as a distinct type of autobiography, Joyce Avrech Berkman argues that a key axis of Steins consciousness, values, philosophical ideas, and life choices is a deep, tense, unresolved, philosophical, and spiritual struggle to both uphold traditional societal and cultural values and practices and also critiquing them to pioneer new patterns of thought. Berkman further probes the sharply controversial nature of Steins autobiography for her family members and Stein scholars in the decades after her death. Edith Steins Life in a Jewish Family, 18911916: A Companion serves as an important guide to scholars in autobiographical studies, history, philosophy, and theology, as well as to a broader readership interested in Steins life for religious and cultural reasons.