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 …

Imagining The “Day Of Reckoning”: American Jewish Performance Activism During The Holocaust, Maya C. Gonzalez

Masters Theses

Scholars of American Jewish history have long debated the complicity of the American Jewish community in the loss of six million Jewish lives in Europe during the Holocaust. After Hitler took power in 1933, American Jewish leaders took to the streets to protest the Nazi Party’s abuse of German Jews. Two central figures in this history are Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise and Revisionist Zionist Ben Hecht because of their wide-reaching protest movements that operated in competition with each other. Although the historiography presents Wise and Hecht's inability to unite as the product of difference, my examination of their protest performances …

Publishing The Pan-Jewish: The First Hebrew Newspaper And Its Modernities, Philip E. Keisman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Publishing the Pan-Jewish emerges from a question about sites of synthesis between claims of sacred continuity and novel forms of communication. It centers on the first ten years of Hamagid (1856-1866), acknowledged within the historiography as history’s first Hebrew-language newspaper. Eliezer Lipman Silberman, an Orthodox butcher founded Hamagid in East Prussia as a bulwark of his vision of traditional Judaism. The first chapter of this dissertation examines the formal elements of the newspaper as a medium, demonstrating the myriad ways in which it presented novel experiences for its reading public. Chapter two narrates an untold history of the newspaper’s early …

In A Condition Of No Light, Alana Perino

Masters Theses

In a Condition of No Light is an autofictional investigation into lineages of familial domesticity. The performances therein circumnavigate one family in one domestic environment, yet are in dialogue with repertoires learned and rehearsed within legacies of myth, literature, theater, film, music, and image; as well as through the otherwise untraceability of embodied memory and inherited trauma. The methodologies used are primarily photographic but also encompass practices reaching towards sculpture, installation, and performance. The line of questioning reserved for this inquiry is how a home, its objects, and inhabitants generate, spacialize, and embody the conditions of wealth, whiteness, and gender. …

Invoking The Holocaust At The Border: Holocaust Museums, Commemoration And Community Activism In The Southwest., Mayra A. Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is a localized study that engages with the literature on Holocaust memory and memorialization in the U.S. and asks how the themes and methodologies of those scholars elucidate Holocaust memorialization and education along the U.S.-Mexico border. During 2018-2019, the U.S. witnessed migrant Caravans from Central America, Haiti, Africa, and South Asia as migrants fled violence, displacement, and extreme poverty to cross multiple borders and perilous terrain to seek refuge at the U.S.-Mexico border. During these same years, Holocaust analogies and Holocaust memory were instrumentalized by human rights advocates, descendants of survivors, and public officials who either linked migrant …

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 …

To Have Sex Or Not To Have Sex: An Exploration Of Medieval Christian And Jewish Sexual Values, Rachel Zaslavsky

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of Medieval Jewish and Christian conceptions of sex and aims to challenge the notion of Judeo-Christian values. Medieval Judaism and Christianity are at odds with each other in their understandings of sexuality. By considering Judaism, the belief that medieval religion was averse to sexuality and sexual pleasure is disproven. An analysis of religious works, such as those produced by Christian theologians and Jewish rabbis, yields the following conclusion: medieval Christianity restricted sex on the basis of abstinence, while medieval Judaism restricted sex on the basis of ritual impurity but mandated sex for procreation and female …

Between Faith And Nation: The Complexities Of Jewish Identity In Interwar Austria, Sarah E. Townsend

Honors College Theses

During the period between the First and Second World Wars, the people of the newly established Austrian Republic faced many changes: the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Habsburg Monarchy, economic hardships during and following the First World War, and the question of German ethnic nationalism and unification with Germany. The question of national identity was relevant to the entire Austrian population and Austrians had to make an important decision about their nationality: Austrian or German? For Austrian Jews, the dilemma was more complicated. Zionism promoted the idea of Jewish statehood and a solely Jewish identity. This thesis explores the …

The History Of Teaching The Holocaust In Public Secondary Schools In The United States, From The 1960s To The Present, Julia Highbury Spenser

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Ambush, Reprisal, Riot, Revolt, And Reform: The Transnational Evolution Of British Colonial Policing In Ireland And The Palestine Mandate, 1918-1948, Tyler Kickler Krahe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation looks at the changes in British colonial policing between Ireland and the Palestine Mandate from 1918 and 1948. This time period covers the duration of the Anglo-Irish War, as well as Britain’s mandatory control of Palestine. It is the argument of this work that from 1918 to 1936, between Ireland and the Palestine Mandate, British colonial police forces demonstrated a pattern of evolving police training, practice, and organization, spurred on by violent action and followed by attempts at reform. This pattern continued until the Arab Revolt of 1936 when the police forces in the Palestine Mandate abandoned attempts …

Jewish Presence In The Venetian Empire: A Challenge To Venetian Mythology, Avery Rosensweig

Honors Theses

This paper attempts to explain the significance of Jewish presence in the Venetian Empire in the context of the myth of Venice. Jews were officially permitted to settle in Venice in 1516, but their connection with the Venetian Empire goes further back. Jews were important for the success of the Venetian Empire, particularly from the sixteenth century onward. The permanent settlement of the Jews in Venice directly impacted the very ideology of the Venetian Empire.

Although the phrase "myth of Venice" was developed by twentieth-century historians, Venetians perpetuated the myth and wove its ideals into the foundation of the Venetian …