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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > Jewish studies
Kiryat Shmona, located near the Israeli-Lebanese border, often
makes the news whenever there is an outbreak of violence between
the two countries. In Israel's northernmost city, the residents are
mostly Mizrahim, that is, Jews descending from Arab and Muslim
lands. Cathrine Thorleifsson uses the dynamics at play along this
border to develop wider conclusions about the nature of
nationalism, identity, ethnicity and xenophobia in Israel, and the
ways in which these shift over time and are manipulated in
different ways for various ends. She explores the idea of being on
the 'periphery' of nationhood: examining the identity-forming and
negotiating processes of these Mizrahim who do not neatly dove-tail
with the predominantly Ashkenazi concept of what it means to be
'Israeli'. Through in-depth ethnographic observation and analysis,
Thorleifsson highlights the daily negotiation of Moroccan and
Persian Jewish families who define themselves in opposition to
Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Central and Eastern Europe and the
Druze, Christian and Muslim Arab populations which surround them.
But this is not just an examination of differences and stereotypes
which are continually perpetuated. Instead, Thorleifsson highlights
the instances of inter-marriage between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews,
and what this means for the high politics of nationalist narratives
as well as the everyday aspect of family dynamics. But having done
so, she does also acknowledge that many of Israel's laws which deal
with ethnic identity do result in discrimination and daily
exclusion against a large number of its citizens, something which
reflects the ethnocratic character of the state. By including all
of these different aspects of the daily negotiation of identity in
a northern town in Israel, Thorleifsson offers a frank and balanced
account of the nature of state nationalism and the people who are
affected by it. Covering an interesting aspect of Israeli society
which is often overlooked, this account of relations between both
Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews and those between Mizrahi Jews and
Palestinians is an important contribution to the study of Israeli
and Middle Eastern societies.
The scientific debates on border crossings and cultural exchange
between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have much increased over
the last decades. Within this context, however, little attention
has been given to the biblical Exodus, which not only plays a
pivotal role in the Abrahamic religions, but also is a master
narrative of a border crossing in itself. Sea and desert are spaces
of liminality and transit in more than just a geographical sense.
Their passage includes a transition to freedom and initiation into
a new divine community, an encounter with God and an entry into the
Age of law. The volume gathers twelve articles written by leading
specialists in Jewish and Islamic Studies, Theology and Literature,
Art and Film history, dedicated to the transitional aspects within
the Exodus narrative. Bringing these studies together, the volume
takes a double approach, one that is both comparative and
intercultural. How do Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and
images read and retell the various border crossings in the Exodus
story, and on what levels do they interrelate? By raising these
questions the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding
of contact points between the various traditions.
aFor the general reader, and the ever-burgeoning number of students
in Jewish studies programs, the "Essential Papers" series brings
together a wealth of core secondary material, while the
commentaries offered by the editors aim to place this material in
critical comparative context.a
--"Jewish Journal of Sociology"
No work has informed Jewish life and history more than the
Talmud. This unique and vast collection of teachings and traditions
contains within it the intellectual output of hundreds of Jewish
sages who considered all aspects of an entire peopleas life from
the Hellenistic period in Palestine (c. 315 B.C.E.) until the end
of the Sassanian era in Babylonia (615 C.E.). This volume adds the
insights of modern talmudic scholarship and criticism to the
growing number of more traditionally oriented works that seek to
open the talmudic heritage and tradition to contemporary readers.
These central essays provide a taste of the myriad ways in which
talmudic study can intersect with such diverse disciplines as
economics, history, ethics, law, literary criticism, and
philosophy.
Contributors: Baruch Micah Bokser, Boaz Cohen, Ari Elon, Meyer
S. Feldblum, Louis Ginzberg, Abraham Goldberg, Robert Goldenberg,
Heinrich Graetz, Louis Jacobs, David Kraemer, Geoffrey B. Levey,
Aaron Levine, Saul Lieberman, Jacob Neusner, Nahum Rakover, and
David Weiss-Halivni.
This book examines the talmudic writings, politics, and ideology of
Y.I. Halevy (1847-1914), one of the most influential
representatives of the pre-war eastern European Orthodox Jewish
community. It analyzes Halevy's historical model of the formation
of the Babylonian Talmud, which, he argued, was edited by an
academy of rabbis beginning in the fourth century and ending by the
sixth century. Halevy's model also served as a blueprint for the
rabbinic council of Agudath Israel, the Orthodox political body in
whose founding he played a leading role. Foreword by Jay M. Harris,
Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard
University and the author of How Do We Know This? Midrash and the
Fragmentation of Modern Judaism, among other works.
The first book-length study of the survival of Polish Jews in
Stalin's Soviet Union. About 1.5 million East European Jews-mostly
from Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia-survived the Second World War
behind the lines in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union. Some
of these survivors, following the German invasion of the USSR in
1941, were evacuated as part of an organized effort by the Soviet
state, while others became refugees who organized their own escape
from the Germans, only to be deported to Siberia and other remote
regions under Stalin's regime. This complicated history of survival
from the Holocaust has fallen between the cracks of the established
historiographical traditions as neither historians of the Soviet
Union nor Holocaust scholars felt responsible for the conservation
of this history. With Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish
Survival in the Soviet Union, the editors have compiled essays that
are at the forefront of developing this entirely new field of
transnational study, which seeks to integrate scholarship from the
areas of the history of the Second World War and the Holocaust, the
history of Poland and the Soviet Union, and the study of refugees
and displaced persons.
In the name of academic freedom, the core values of higher
education honest scholarship, unbiased research, and diversity of
thought and person have been corrupted by an academy more
interested in preserving its privileges than in protecting its own
integrity. The American university has lost its civility. Nowhere
is this loss more apparent than in the rise of anti-Semitism and
anti-Israelism on college campuses. This book documents the
alarming rise in bigotry and bullying in the academy, using a range
of evidence from first-hand accounts of intimidation of students by
anti-Israel professors to anti-Semitic articles in student
newspapers and marginalization of pro-Israel scholars. The UnCivil
University exposes the unspoken world of double standards,
bureaucratic paralysis, and abdication of leadership that not only
allows but often supports a vocal minority of extremists on
campus."
The agonizing correspondence between Jewish family members ensnared
in the Nazi grip and their American relatives Just a week after the
Kristallnacht terror in 1938, young Luzie Hatch, a German Jew, fled
Berlin to resettle in New York. Her rescuer was an American-born
cousin and industrialist, Arnold Hatch. Arnold spoke no German, so
Luzie quickly became translator, intermediary, and advocate for
family left behind. Soon an unending stream of desperate requests
from German relatives made their way to Arnold's desk. Luzie Hatch
had faithfully preserved her letters both to and from far-flung
relatives during the World War II era as well as copies of letters
written on their behalf. This extraordinary collection, now housed
at the American Jewish Committee Archives, serves as the framework
for Exit Berlin. Charlotte R. Bonelli offers a vantage point rich
with historical context, from biographical information about the
correspondents to background on U.S. immigration laws, conditions
at the Vichy internment camps, refuge in Shanghai, and many other
topics, thus transforming the letters into a riveting narrative.
Arnold's letters reveal an unfamiliar side of Holocaust history.
His are the responses of an "average" American Jew, struggling to
keep his own business afloat while also assisting dozens of
relatives trapped abroad-most of whom he had never met and whose
deathly situation he could not fully comprehend. This book
contributes importantly to historical understanding while also
uncovering the dramatic story of one besieged family confronting
unimaginable evil.
Spirit possession is more commonly associated with late Second
Temple Jewish literature and the New Testament than it is with the
Hebrew Bible. In Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible, however,
Reed Carlson argues that possession is also depicted in this
earlier literature, though rarely according to the typical western
paradigm. This new approach utilizes theoretical models developed
by cultural anthropologists and ethnographers of contemporary
possession-practicing communities in the global south and its
diasporas. Carlson demonstrates how possession in the Bible is a
corporate and cultivated practice that can function as social
commentary and as a means to model the moral self. The author
treats a variety of spirit phenomena in the Hebrew Bible, including
spirit language in the Psalms and Job, spirit empowerment in Judges
and Samuel, and communal possession in the prophets. Carlson also
surveys apotropaic texts and spirit myths in early Jewish
literature-including the Dead Sea Scrolls. In this volume, two
recent scholarly trends in biblical studies converge:
investigations into notions of evil and of the self. The result is
a synthesizing project, useful to biblical scholars and those of
early Judaism and Christianity alike.
'My mind refuses to play its part in the scholarly exercise. I walk
around in a daze, remembering occasionally to take a picture. I've
heard that many people cry here, but I am too numb to feel. The
wind whips through my wool coat. I am very cold, and I imagine what
the wind would have felt like for someone here fifty years ago
without coat, boots, or gloves. Hours later as I write, I tell
myself a story about the day, hoping it is true, and hoping it will
make sense of what I did and did not feel.' _From the Foreword Most
of us learn of Auschwitz and the Holocaust through the writings of
Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel. Remarkable as their stories are, they
leave many voices of Auschwitz unheard. Mary Lagerwey seeks to
complicate our memory of Auschwitz by reading less canonical
survivors: Jean Amery, Charlotte Delbo, Fania Fenelon, Szymon Laks,
Primo Levi, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk. She reads for how gender,
social class, and ethnicity color their tellings. She asks whether
we can_whether we should_make sense of Auschwitz. And throughout,
Lagerwey reveals her own role in her research; tells of her own
fears and anxieties presenting what she, a non-Jew born after the
fall of Nazism, can only know second-hand. For any student of the
Holocaust, for anyone trying to make sense of the final solution,
Reading Auschwitz represents a powerful struggle with what it means
to read and tell stories after Auschwitz.
A literary memoir of exile and survival in Soviet prison camps
during the Holocaust. Most Polish Jews who survived the Second
World War did not go to concentration camps, but were banished by
Stalin to the remote prison settlements and Gulags of the Soviet
Union. Less than ten percent of Polish Jews came out of the war
alive-the largest population of East European Jews who endured-for
whom Soviet exile was the main chance for survival. Ellen G.
Friedman's The Seven, A Family HolocaustStory is an account of this
displacement. Friedman always knew that she was born to
Polish-Jewish parents on the run from Hitler, but her family did
not describe themselves as Holocaust survivors since that label
seemed only to apply only to those who came out of the
concentration camps with numbers tattooed on their arms. The title
of the book comes from the closeness that set seven individuals
apart from the hundreds of thousands of other refugees in the
Gulags of the USSR. The Seven-a name given to them by their fellow
refugees-were Polish Jews from Warsaw, most of them related. The
Seven, A Family Holocaust Story brings together the very different
perspectives of the survivors and others who came to be linked to
them, providing a glimpse into the repercussions of the Holocaust
in one extended family who survived because they were loyal to one
another, lucky, and endlessly enterprising. Interwoven into the
survivors' accounts of their experiences before, during, and after
the war are their own and the author's reflections on the themes of
exile, memory, love, and resentment. Based on primary interviews
and told in a blending of past and present experiences, Friedman
gives a new voice to Holocaust memory-one that is sure to resonate
with today's exiles and refugees. Those with an interest in World
War II memoir and genocide studies will welcome this unique
perspective.
The edition collects and presents all papyri and ostraca from the
Ptolemaic period, connected to Jews and Judaism, published since
1957. It is a follow-up to the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum (= CPJ)
of the 1950s and 60s, edited by Victor Tcherikover, which had
consisted of three volumes - I devoted to the Ptolemaic period; II
to the Early Roman period (until 117 CE); and III to the Late Roman
and Byzantine periods. The present book, CPJ vol. IV, is the first
in a new trilogy, and is devoted to the Ptolemaic period. The
present and upcoming volumes supplement the original CPJ. They
present over 300 papyri that have been published since 1957. They
also include papyri in languages other than Greek (Hebrew, Aramaic,
Demotic), and literary papyri which had not been included in the
old CPJ. Aside from quite a number of papyri in these categories,
the present volume (of over 100 documents) includes 21 papyri from
Herakleopolis in Middle-Egypt that record the existence of a Jewish
self-ruling body - the politeuma. These papyri put an end to a
long-standing dispute over whether such a Jewish institution had
ever existed in Egypt.
As early as the first century of the common era, Jews followed the
Romans to live on German territory. For two thousand years Jews and
the local population co-existed. This relationship has been
turbulent at times but has occasionally been a model of
multicultural synergism. Together the two groups have produced a
unique and rich culture. Germany's Jewish Community, with thriving
congregations, schools, publications, and museums, has been the
world's fastest growing group. This work focuses on the present
while addressing the underlying question of the future for Jews in
Germany: How temperate is the German social climate and how fertile
is its soil for Jews? This work focuses on the present while
addressing the underlying question of the future for Jews in
Germany: How temperate is the German social climate and how fertile
is its soil for Jews? Seventy people were interviewed for this book
to establish what kind of relationships are being established
across the Jewish and non-Jewish border. The interviewees represent
three generations and all walks of life. This text depicts their
legacies, fears, and hopes in their own words. Existing German
societal conditions are evaluated for possible future creativity
and synergy.
Full Circle: Escape from Baghdad and the return chronicles a
prosperous Iraqi Jewish family's escape frompersecution through the
journey of one family member, a young boy, who witnesses public
hangings and the 1941 Krustalnacht (Farhood) in Baghdad. After a
dangerous escape from Iraq, this 10-year-old begins a lifelong
search for meaning and his place in the world. This journey takes
him to the newly-formed nation of Israel, then to Brazil, and
finally to the United States.
First published in a Yiddish edition in 1958, Profiles of a Lost
World is an incomparable source of information about Eastern Europe
before World War II as well as an invaluable touchstone for
understanding a rich and complex cultural environment. Hirsz
Abramowicz (1881-1960), a prominent Jewish educator, writer, and
cultural activist, knew that world and wrote about it, and his
writings provide a rare eyewitness account of Jewish life during
the first half of the twentieth century.
Abramowicz was a witness to war, revolution, and major cultural
transformations in the Jewish world. His essays, written and
originally published in Yiddish between 1920 and 1955, document the
local history of Lithuanian Jewry in rural and small-town settings,
and in the city of Vilna -- the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" -- which
was a major center of East European Jewish intellectual and
cultural life. They shed important light on the daily life of Jews
and the flourishing of modern Yiddish culture in Eastern Europe
during the early twentieth century and offer a personal perspective
on the rise of Jewish radical politics.
The collection incorporates local history of Lithuanian Jewry,
shtetl folklore, observations on rural occupations, Jewish
education, and life under German occupation during World War I. It
also includes a series of profiles of leading social and
intellectual Jewish personalities of the authors day, from
traditional scholars to revolutionaries. Together the selections
provide a unique blend of social and personal history and a window
on a lost world.
Following World War II, members of the sizable Jewish community in
what had been Kurdistan, now part of Iraq, left their homeland and
resettled in Palestine where they were quickly assimilated with the
dominant Israeli-Jewish culture. Anthropologist Erich Brauer
interviewed a large number of these Kurdish Jews and wrote The Jews
of Kurdistan prior to his death in 1942. Raphael Patai completed
the manuscript left by Brauer, translated it into Hebrew, and had
it published in 1947. This new English-language volume, completed
and edited by Patai, makes a unique ethnological monograph
available to the wider scholarly community, and, at the same time,
serves as a monument to a scholar whose work has to this day
remained largely unknown outside the narrow circle of
Hebrew-reading anthropologists. The Jews of Kurdistan is a unique
historical document in that it presents a picture of Kurdish Jewish
life and culture prior to World War II. It is the only ethnological
study of the Kurdish Jews ever written and provides a comprehensive
look at their material culture, life cycles, religious practices,
occupations, and relations with the Muslims. In 1950-51, with the
mass immigration of Kurdish Jews to Israel, their world as it had
been before the war suddenly ceased to exist. This book reflects
the life and culture of a Jewish community that has disappeared
from the country it had inhabited from antiquity. In his preface,
Raphael Patai offers data he considers important for supplementing
Brauer's book, and comments on the book's values and limitations
fifty years after Brauer wrote it. Patai has included additional
information elicited from Kurdish Jews in Jerusalem, verified
quotations, correctedsome passages that were inaccurately
translated from Hebrew authors, completed the bibliography, and
added occasional references to parallel traits found in other
Oriental Jewish communities.
Sceptical Paths offers a fresh look at key junctions in the history
of scepticism. Throughout this collection, key figures are
reinterpreted, key arguments are reassessed, lesser-known figures
are reintroduced, accepted distinctions are challenged, and new
ideas are explored. The historiography of scepticism is usually
based on a distinction between ancient and modern. The former is
understood as a way of life which focuses on enquiry, whereas the
latter is taken to be an epistemological approach which focuses on
doubt. The studies in Sceptical Paths not only deepen the
understanding of these approaches, but also show how ancient
sceptical ideas find their way into modern thought, and modern
sceptical ideas are anticipated in ancient thought. Within this
state of affairs, the presence of sceptical arguments within
Medieval philosophy is reflected in full force, not only enriching
the historical narrative, but also introducing another layer to the
sceptical discourse, namely its employment within theological
settings. The various studies in this book exhibit the rich variety
of expression in which scepticism manifests itself within various
context and set against various philosophical and religious
doctrines, schools, and approaches.
Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds examines the phenomenon of Jewish
bureaucracy in the Russian empire-its institutions, personnel, and
policies-from 1850 to 1917. In particular, it focuses on the
institution of expert Jews, mid-level Jewish bureaucrats who served
the Russian state both in the Pale of Settlement and in the central
offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in St. Petersburg. The
main contribution of expert Jews was in the sphere of policymaking
and implementation. Unlike the traditional intercession of
shtadlanim (Jewish lobbyists) in the high courts of power, expert
Jews employed highly routinized bureaucratic procedures, including
daily communications with both provincial and central
bureaucracies. Vassili Schedrin illustrates how, at the local
level, expert Jews advised the state, negotiated power, influenced
decisionmaking, and shaped Russian state policy toward the Jews.
Schedrin sheds light on the complex interactions between the
Russian state, modern Jewish elites, and Jewish communities. Based
on extensive new archival data from the former Soviet archives,
this book opens a window into the secluded world of Russian
bureaucracy where Jews shared policymaking and administrative tasks
with their Russian colleagues. The new sources show these Russian
Jewish bureaucrats to be full and competent participants in
official Russian politics. This book builds upon the work of the
original Russian Jewish historians and recent historiographical
developments, and seeks to expose and analyze the broader
motivations behind official Jewish policy, which were based on the
political vision and policymaking contributions of Russian Jewish
bureaucrats. Scholars and advanced students of Russian and Jewish
history will find Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds to be an
important tool in their research.
The promotion and vernacularization of Hebrew, traditionally a
language of Jewish liturgy and study, was a central accomplishment
of the Zionist movement in Palestine. Viewing twentieth-century
history through the lens of language, author Liora Halperin
questions the accepted scholarly narrative of a Zionist move away
from multilingualism during the years following World War I,
demonstrating how Jews in Palestine remained connected
linguistically by both preference and necessity to a world outside
the boundaries of the pro-Hebrew community even as it promoted
Hebrew and achieved that language's dominance. The story of
language encounters in Jewish Palestine is a fascinating tale of
shifting power relationships, both locally and globally. Halperin's
absorbing study explores how a young national community was
compelled to modify the dictates of Hebrew exclusivity as it
negotiated its relationships with its Jewish population,
Palestinian Arabs, the British, and others outside the margins of
the national project and ultimately came to terms with the
limitations of its hegemony in an interconnected world.
In this book, Lee Shai Weissbach offers the first comprehensive
portrait of Jewish life in America. Exploring the history of
communities of 100 to 1000 Jews, the book focuses on the years from
the mid-nineteenth century to World War II. Weissbach examines the
dynamics of 490 communities across the United States and reveals
that smaller Jewish centres were not simply miniature versions of
larger communities but were instead alternative kinds of
communities in many respects. choices, from Jewish education and
marriage strategies to congregational organization. The story of
smaller Jewish communities attests to the richness and complexity
of American Jewish history and also serves to remind us of the
diversity of small-town society in times past. communities, this
volume will stand for many years as the definitive work on the
subject. Jonathan Sarna, author of American Judaism
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