Jewish Studies Commons^™

Bus Line 163: A Public Pilgrim Bus To Rachel’S Tomb In Jerusalem, Mustafa Diktaş

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Buses are networks for both physical and social mobility. They permit people to become part of temporary communities of individuals whose goal is to travel along linear routes, which connect multiple stops and reach certain destinations. Through an ethnographic case study of Bus No. 163, which is designated for Jewish pilgrims traveling to Rachel’s tomb in Jerusalem, this paper focuses on the interactions between travelers that took place on this bus during December 2019 and February 2020. The interactions of people on Bus No 163 helps us better understand this liminal phase of pilgrimage. The findings of the research ...

Scribes, Scholars, And Scripts: Reviewing Data From Scribes Of The Cairo Geniza, Emily Esten

Manuscript Studies

In spring 2019, the University of Pennsylvania Libraries launched the transcription phase of “Scribes of the Cairo Geniza,” a crowdsourcing project to sort and transcribe Cairo Geniza fragments. This article describes the results of the sorting phase of the project, and initial progress results for the transcription phase of the project.

Dirty Minds & Failed Endings: Uses Of The Bawdy In Jewish Comedy, American And Israeli Perspectives, Eyal Tamir

Doctoral Dissertations

The connection between Jews, Jewish culture, and comedy in the twentieth century has long been established. The dissertation looks at Jewish comedy, comedians, and comediennes who have made the bawdy a central feature of their work. Moreover, it argues that the bawdy and the lewd have played an important role in the history of Jewish comedy and humor in the United States and in Israel. Aside from simply documenting various uses and occurrences of the bawdy in Jewish comedy, the dissertation seeks out some symptoms, as well as some underlying causes for the proclivity for such material in the work ...

Jews And Gender, Leonard Greenspoon

Studies in Jewish Civilization

Jews and Gender features sixteen authors exploring the history and culture of the intersection of Judaism and gender from the biblical world to today. Topics include subversive readings of biblical texts; reappraisal of rabbinic theory and practice; women in mysticism, Chasidism, and Yiddish literature; and women in contemporary culture and politics. Accessible and comprehensive, this volume will appeal to the general reader in addition to engaging with contemporary academic scholarship.

Strange Genre-Related Loops In A Novel-Short Story: The Tension Between The Genres And Their Cultural Context, Orna Levin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The goal of the current study was to examine the strange genre-related loops in the novel The Short Story Master, by Maya Arad (2009), through the tension between the two genres represented in the text and their cultural contexts. The plot of the novel tells of the professional and personal crisis of the master of the short story, who failed in his mission to write a novel. The text hints to the reader that the central conflict that moves the plot along is neither romantic nor existential, but rather genre-related, and thus the entire work is a manifestation of self-conscious ...

Where Is Anne Frank, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Where Is Anne Frank (2021) directed by Ari Folman.

Jewish Mobile's Narrow Bridge, Deborah Gurt

University Faculty and Staff Publications

Mobile, Alabama, is home to a Jewish community formally established in 1841 when members purchased land for a burial ground. Approximately 1,000 in number, today’s Jewish residents are deeply entwined with the fabric of the city—in business, education, medicine, and civic life. Among them are Holocaust survivors and their descendants, families who have lived here for generations, Jews of color, transplants from the North, LGBTQ Jews, and converts to Judaism, unified primarily by their experiences as members of a religious and cultural minority in Alabama.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021), directed by Bianca Stigter.

The Embroidered Tablecloth: How Locale Influences Eastern European Jewish Textile Production, Elena Solomon

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Recent scholarship frames craft as distinct from art and as an encapsulation of cultural expression at a given moment. Building on that framework, this thesis analyzes the shifting attitudes towards the production of handmade textiles among Eastern European Jews in the US in the twentieth century, as influenced by their migration. To demonstrate the textile environment at that time, this thesis examines pre- and post-migration primary sources and autobiographical writing, including Mary Antin’s The Promised Land, supplemented with interviews of first- and second-generation immigrants to Chicago. In contrast with stereotypes about craft as historically stable, defining craft as regional ...

The Structural Grammaticalization Of The Biblical Hebrew Ethical Dative, Oliver Shoulson

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper offers a structural analysis of the evolution of a grammatical phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew known as the Ethical Dative (ED). My analysis is rooted in the grammaticalization chain proposed by Talmy Givón wherein the Ethical Dative evolves incrementally from other dative forms, accounting for its lopsided distribution across the Bible. Via its similarity to the Personal Dative in Appalachian English, I propose a derivation for the ED whose locus is the specifier of a high Applicative Phrase, allowing us to account for Givón’s progression through the gradual reduction of merge-operations and feature-valuation at that node. My analysis ...

Jewish Ancestral Languages And Communicating The Sephardic Experience: The Judeospanish Of Tela De Sevoya, Julia Kahn

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Judeo-Spanish, the ancestral language of Sephardic Jews, enjoys fewer speakers, literature, and less scholarly attention compared to Yiddish, its counterpart spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. Nonetheless, Judeo-Spanish captures the rich experiences of its speakers through exile, persecution, and perseverance, embodying unique Jewish-Spanish culture and religious practice. It has received fresh recognition in the last two centuries from scholars and Sephardim themselves, and the quincentennial of the 1492 Jewish expulsion from Spain inspired a new Sephardic autobiographical genre, where Sephardic authors grapple with their heritages and language, dimming from assimilation and the Shoa. Myriam Moscona is one such author whose unique descent ...

“The Badge Of All Our Tribe”: Contradictions Of Jewish Representation On The English Renaissance Stage, Becky S. Friedman

Doctoral Dissertations

Literary and historical records fueled fantasies of intense difference between the Jews and Christians of early modern England. Representations of Jewishness in the Renaissance theater drew on many of these enduring pejorative fictions, which associated Jews with financial manipulation, corporeal abnormalities, and an innate predilection for iniquity. At the same time, depictions of stunningly beautiful Jewish women and sympathetic, relatable Jewish commoners also emerged on the stage, complicating centuries-old attitudes of antipathy with suggestions of fascination, compassion, and similitude. “The Badge of All Our Tribe”: Contradictions of Jewish Representation on the English Renaissance Stage sheds light on this broader spectrum ...

From Alsace To America: The Development And Migration Of Ashkenazi Jewish Cuisine From Its Origins In Eastern France, Angela Hanratty

Dissertations

This research examines the historical development of a distinctly Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine from its roots in the Alsace region of France, through the Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe, and the mass immigration to America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim of the research was to come to an understanding of how global perception of what is considered to be quintessentially Jewish food (as evidenced in American Jewish delicatessens, Jewish homes, and in popular culture) has been shaped by developments in Alsace. Long standing views were held that Ashkenazi food developed in Eastern Europe, specifically Poland and the former ...

Assimilating To Art-Religion: Jewish Secularity And Edgar Zilsel’S Geniereligion (1918), Abigail Fine

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1918, Edgar Zilsel—a Marxist-Jewish philosopher who was soon to be exiled from Vienna—published a sociological study that later readers have found prescient of fascism. In Die Geniereligion (“The Religion of Genius”), Zilsel cautioned against the hidden dangers of elevating secular figures to the status of deities. As early as 1912, Zilsel was disturbed by how art-religion shaped music culture: his earliest published essay ruminated on timelessness and canonicity, on striving for heavenly tones while cast down to the earthly squalor of the concert hall. Indeed, in Zilsel’s Vienna, art-religion had come to dominate the music world ...

Civil Disobedience From A Biblical Perspective, Gabriel Reed

Helm's School of Government Conference

To say that civil disobedience is a complicated topic is to severely understate the topic. It is a subject matter that has derived many different and disparate opinions, points of view, and public policies. Specifically, within America today, we observe calls for civil disobedience from both sides of the political spectrum, over several divergent political ideals. These issues are, primarily, driven from both sides’ desire to provide protection and provision for the oppressed and those who cannot necessarily speak for themselves. The definition of who is necessarily oppressed and whom their oppressors are varies from person to person, regardless of ...

The Communal Roots Of The Tree Of Life: The Performativity Of The Torah Scroll In Jewish Ritual, Joseph Maybloom

Theses and Dissertations

The Torah scroll’s materiality is central to its use in ritual and encourages a performance-based analysis. The object acts as a physical connection to the divine, a material embodiment of Jewishness. The congregation’s participation in the scroll’s lifecycle rituals fosters their communion with the object and with each other.

Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, The Jewish Plight, And The Founding Of Israel, John F. Sears

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Refuge Must Be Given details the evolution of Eleanor Roosevelt from someone who harbored negative impressions of Jews to become a leading Gentile champion of Israel in the United States. The book explores, for the first time, Roosevelt’s partnership with the Quaker leader Clarence Pickett in seeking to admit more refugees into the United States, and her relationship with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who was sympathetic to the victims of Nazi persecution yet defended a visa process that failed both Jewish and non-Jewish refugees.

After the war, as a member of the American delegation to the United Nations ...

May 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

No abstract provided.

"Concerning The Immersion": Trends In And Attitudes Towards Mikvah Use Among Jewish Virginians, James Barrie

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A mikvah is a natural water bath used in traditional Judaism to ritually purify people or objects. It is a complex subject in modern Judaism, and there is some disagreement about how to approach it as a ritual in today’s world; American Jews encompass a wide array of stances on the topic, providing the basis for this research. This project operates on the assumption that the performance of rituals is affected by context such as time, location, and personal or cultural values, and within this framework examines mikvah culture within the American South, specifically Virginia. Southern Jewish culture manifests ...

Revisiting British Zionism In The Early 20th Century, Benjamin Marin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Long considered irrelevant and unimportant to Zionist history, British Zionists played a necessarily important role in the movement in the early 20th century leading up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and into the 1920s. Historical narratives that have embraced a reductive view of Zionist history that championed Dr. Chaim Weizmann's prominent role during this period have largely shaped this perspective. In this paper, I examine several British Zionists such as Moses Gaster, Leopold Greenberg, Leonard Stein, Frederick Kisch, and Alfred Mond and the roles they played during this pivotal period for Zionism.