Jewish Studies Commons^™

Anita Brenner’S Vision: A Transnational Search For Mexican Jewish Identity, Gina Malagold

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation traces U.S.-Mexico cross-border networks during the cultural Renaissance of early 20^th century influenced by artistic and intellectual encounters in post-revolutionary Mexico. I explore from a transnational perspective the representation of Mexican-Jewish identity in post-revolutionary Mexico through the lens of Mexican-American Jewish anthropologist, artist, and journalist Anita Brenner (1905-1974). In my dissertation, Anita Brenner’s Vision: A Transnational Search for Mexican Jewish Identity, I expand on the notion of mexicanidad and reframe the cosmopolitanism of the time and its manifestation in the United States, arguing that Brenner’s contributions were instrumental in linking Mexico to the larger map of …

Dancers Of The Book: Yemenite, Persian, And Kurdish Jewish Dance, Quinn Bicer

Anthós

Despite the cultural significance of dance in Jewish communities around the world, research into Middle Eastern Jewish dance outside of the modern nation-state of Israel is sorely under-researched. This article aims to help rectify this by focusing on Yemenite, Persian/Iranian, and Kurdish Jewish dance and explores how these dancers have functioned and been received within the societies they have been a part of. The methods that have gone into this article are a combination of analyzing primary source recorded dances and existing secondary source research into the dance of these communities. Through these methods, this article reveals how Yemenite, Iranian, …

Studies In The Ancient Israelite Cult Of Dead Kin, Joshua Jacobs

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 1986, Klaas Spronk published a monograph titled, Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East. Although many have criticized Spronk’s central thesis, his study began a new era in biblical scholarship on death and the afterlife in ancient Israel. More specifically, it sparked renewed interest in the study of the relationship between the living and the dead. Just three years after Spronk’s work, Theodore J. Lewis published his own study, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (1989). Lewis affirmed and developed evidence for one of the foundational aspects of Spronk’s book: in …

Jewish Daily Life In Medieval Northern Europe, 1080-1350, Tzafrir Barzilay, Eyal Levinson, Elisheva Baumgarten

TEAMS Documents of Practice

Designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of the Jews who lived in the German Empire, northern France, and England from the 11th to the mid-14th centuries, the volume consists of translations of primary sources written by or about medieval Jews. Each source is accompanied by an introduction that provides historical context. Through the sources, students can become familiar with the spaces that Jews frequented, their daily practices and rituals, and their thinking. The subject matter ranges from culinary preferences and even details of sexual lives, to garments, objects, and communal buildings. The documents testify to how Jews enacted …

Jewish Experience In Huntsville, Alabama, Reagan Grimsley, Charlie Gibbons

Summer Community of Scholars (RCEU and HCR) Project Proposals

No abstract provided.

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 …

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—biographers made Beethoven a …

Life Is Beautiful, Or Not: The Myth Of The Good Italian, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Life is Beautiful illustrates a popular misconception about Italy's role in the Holocaust. The film features the good Italian and the warped view that Italy treated Jews kindly in the late 1930s and during World War II. Historians have proven this claim to be grossly exaggerated, arguing that Italians persecuted Jews vigorously. Yet popular representations of the past-films, novels, museum exhibits, and websites-continue to give credence to the notion that Italians were overwhelmingly good to Jews. Although France and Germany cultivated similar self-acquitting myths in the decades immediately after the war, they eventually moved on to accept the more …

Creating Cultural Capital: The Education Of Jewish Females At The Alliance Israélite Universelle (Aiu) School For Girls In The City Of Tunis, 1882–1914, Joy A. Land Phd

Published Articles

Based on rarely viewed images from the fin de siècle, this article will contribute to the burgeoning field of Jewish women in the world of Islam. At the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the city of Tunis, 1882–1914, after a seven-year course of study, Jewish and non-Jewish girls acquired certification of their academic or vocational skills through a certificate or diploma of couture. Such credentials, according to Bourdieu (1986), constitute “cultural capital.” Furthermore, “cultural capital … is convertible … into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications.” A young woman could create …

May 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Encounters a 20th Century Yiddish American Phenomenon; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

April 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates Passover; From the Rabbi;From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

March 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates our Cherished Seniors; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

February 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Travels to Europe; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

Deportation, Genocide, And Memorial Politics: Remembrance And Memory In Postwar France, 1943-2015, Rachel Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

This thesis examines how the remembrance of deportation from France during the Second World War impacted the creation of two memorials in Paris in the postwar years. The two memorials, located just over 500 meters apart in the center of Paris and inaugurated within seven years of one another, physically embody each of these narratives. The Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, created by the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center (CDJC) in 1956, represents the narrative of Jewish persecution and genocide throughout Europe during the Second World War. Expanded in 2005, the Tomb is now known as the Shoah Memorial and …

January 2021, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom had a Great Fall; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Rhetoric, Pathology, And The Jewish Race In Late Victorian England, Stephanie G. Pokras

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis examines how both late Victorian Anglo-Jews and Gentiles used rhetoric of race science and Jewish pathology to encode lines of difference, as well as the relationship between these discourses. My first chapter analyzes the role of Gentile discourse of disease and disability as the foundation of late Victorian anti-Semitism. My second chapter focuses on Jewish ‘expert’ engagement with race science. In this chapter, I argue that contrary to the dominant historical narrative, not only was the Jewish community engaged with race science, but their scholarly conversations were dynamic and diverse. Ideas about race and pathology became central to …

How Palestinian Aid Organizations Adapt To The Possibility Of Further Annexation And Rights Abuses In The Wake Of "The Deal Of The Century", Nadia L. Wiggins

Capstone Collection

This research explores the question, “To what extent has the ‘Deal of the Century’ impacted Palestinian aid organizations, and how might it impact them in the future?” The significance of this question lies in the fact that the “Deal of the Century” claims to solve one of the longest and most complex conflicts, yet it has not been sufficiently analyzed from a Palestinian perspective nor a humanitarian perspective. Furthermore, by presenting scholarly critiques of the deal and aid worker’s concerns, my hope is that an American audience may be convinced of the complicity of our government in devising a failed …

December 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Mega-Chanukah Party; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

November 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group;Community Notices

The Jewish Museum Of Florida-Fiu: Archives On The Edge, Todd Bothel, Jacqueline Goldstein, Luna Goldberg

Archives Day

As the COVID-19 pandemic has threatened much of our access to communal spaces of learning and research such as universities, libraries, and museum collections, many new technologies have emerged to make these resources accessible to the public from the comfort of their homes.

The Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU (JMOF) collection consists of ~60,000 objects, documents, images and ephemera. The collections are wide-ranging in content, cover numerous subject headings and geographically represent all sixty-seven counties of Florida and Cuba.

Join the JMOF staff for a series of lightning talks with Registrar Todd Bothel, Curator Jacqueline Goldstein, and Education Manager Luna Goldberg. …

October 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Simchat Torah (and Sukkot), From the Rabbi, President's Message, Book Group, Commmunity Notices

With A Little Help From My Friends: Jewish Mutual Assistance In Nineteenth-Century Maine, David M. Freidenreich, Kristin Esdale

Maine History

Jews in 19th-century Maine relied on familial, ethnic, and, to a lesser degree, institutional networks of mutual assistance to survive and thrive. These Jews, who commonly worked as merchants of clothing and other dry goods, counted on family members to get them through hard times and hired fellow Jews to peddle their wares in the countryside. Jewish peddlers and merchants regularly borrowed or loaned cash and goods on credit within a small, tightly knit community that extended across Maine and as far as Boston and New York. Commercial networks also reinforced familial ties as children and in-laws entered the family …

September 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Erev Rosh Hashanah Sacred Music Concert and Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

Designing Analog Learning Games: Genre Affordances, Limitations And Multi-Game Approaches, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Articles

This chapter explores what the authors discovered about analog games and game design during the many iterative processes that have led to the Lost & Found series, and how they found certain constraints and affordances (that which an artifact assists, promotes or allows) provided by the boardgame genre. Some findings were counter-intuitive. What choices would allow for the modeling of complex systems, such as legal and economic systems? What choices would allow for gameplay within the time of a class-period? What mechanics could promote discussions of tradeoff decisions? If players are expending too much cognition on arithmetic strategizing, could that …

August 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Stan Tetenman,Community Notices

June, July 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Strong; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; A Boy and His Blintzes; Community Notices

“The Community For Educational Experiments”: The Alliance Israélite Universelle, Gender, And Jewish Education In Casablanca, Morocco 1886-1906, Selene Allain-Kovacs

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) opened boys’ and girls’ schools in Casablanca, Morocco, introducing ideas of European-inflected modernity and secular education to the local Jewish community. Letters and reports from the founding directors provide insight into the problems, social and practical, they encountered and reveal the ways in which both Moroccan and European gender norms affected this “educational experiment.”

Is It So Bad To Be Yourself?, Andrew S. Russell

Graduate Theses

Homosexuality has been a topic of recent controversial religious discourse, not only in America, but also world-wide. This begs the question: when did homosexuality become such a divisive issue in religious circles? The purpose of this thesis is to examine how ancient western cultures perceived homosexuality and treated homosexuals. Starting with the pagan civilizations of Greece and Rome, and then looking at how homosexuality was perceived in the ancient Judaic world and into the early Christian community, it seems that homosexuality only gradually became stigmatized as early Christians sought to distinguish themselves as unique in the ancient world.

Infancy Stories Of Jesus: Apocrypha And Toledot Yeshu In Medieval Europe, Natalie Latteri

Theology & Religious Studies

This conference proceeding was originally published by the University of San Francisco Press through the Joan and Ralph Lane Center for Catholic Social Thought and the Ignatian Tradition of the University of San Francisco. The Lane Center Series explores intersections of faith and social justice. Featuring essays that bridge interdisciplinary research and community engagement, the series serves as a resource for social analysis, theological reflection, and education in the Jesuit tradition.

Visit the Lane Center’s website to download each volume and view related resources at www.usfca.edu/lane-center