History of Religion Commons^™

A Spiritual Community In The Social World: Lurianic Notions Of Identity And Inter-Subjectivity Within The Community, Assaf Tamari

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The importance of Lurianic Kabbalah to the context of early modern Jewish religiosity has been recognized almost unanimously. However, only in recent years scholars acknowledge its highly embodied nature, the specific historical community which lies at the heart of its religious interest, i.e. the Lurianic fellowship. The present presentation will discuss some of the radical notions of identity within the community developed in the writings of Lurianic Kabbalah. Based on its highly complex anthropological theory, and especially its theories of soul transmigration and soul interrelations, Lurianic Kabbalah sees individual action and identity as highly dependent upon the spiritual “soul community” …

Conjugal Disputes At The Jewish Court Of 18th Century Altona, Noa Shashar

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Disputes between married couples in 18th century were sometimes brought before the Jewish court ( the Beit-Din). Analysis of protocols of session which dealt with such disputes reveals facts about tensions caused by contemporary family structure and marriage customs as well as about the means which the court applied to enforce policy. The texts presented here are excerpts from one of the protocol books of the Jewish court of Altona. Altona, at the time subject to the Danish King, shared institutions with the neighboring Jewish communities in Hamburg and Wandsbeck, a union which produced several kinds of documents covering a …

Layered Networks: Functioning Across Communities, Shuki Ecker

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

A considerable part of Rabbi Abraham Joseph Canette s book includes autobiographical material. It sheds light on the life of an orphaned son who became a travelling rabbi. He describes the circumstances of his life in Safed, Jerusalem, Aleppo, Candia, Venice, Livorno, Algiers and Constantinople, and praises his benefactors and patrons in each. While much of his writing is stylized praise for these individuals, he also portrays his own personal life in great detail. His life story and the networks it reveals offer a view of individuals in communities and between communities. I intend to focus on several overlapping networks …

Communication And Community : Multiplex Networks In The 18th Century Sephardi Diaspora, Evelyne Oliel Grausz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In many aspects, the Sephardi diaspora functioned as a combination of overlapping circulations and networks, its many levels of communication and interaction involving family ties, economic partnerships, and official intercommunal links. Whereas the question of intercommunal networks has recently attracted some topical studies, little attention has been paid to the articulation between these various levels of circulation and interaction. I propose to explore this idea of a multiplex diaspora through a selection of documents emanating from the Amsterdam and London Sephardic community, essentially letters, addressed to Bordeaux, Safed, Surinam and Ferrara : these documents describe several paradigmatic situations of interaction …

The Early Modern Jewish Parliament: The Council Of Four Lands In Poland, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation will examine the structure, functions, and internal tensions of the Council of Four Lands, based on a set of regulations drawn up in Polish by the Council at the request of the Treasury Commissioner, Dzialynski, in 1739. It will also attempt to examine the Council in its Polish and European contexts.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Regulations of the Jewish Council in Jaroslaw

The Price Of Power: Financing A Jewish Community, Cornelia Aust

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The communal pinkas (logbook) of the Jewish community in Frankfurt on the Oder from the second half of the eighteenth century provides a glimpse into the ways of the communal leaders – usually the wealthiest merchants of the community – to raise the increasing taxes and dues demanded by the Prussian state. It, thus, allows us to examine, first, the interrelation between economic position and social power within the Jewish community and what this power meant taking into account the limited degree of communal autonomy of Prussian Jews. Secondly, it helps us to explore the trans-regional networks Jewish merchants used …

Rabbinic Authority And Community In 18th Century Germany: Moses Brandeis Levi And The Jewish Community Of Mainz, Stefan Litt

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Moses Brandeis Levi (d. 1767) was one of the important rabbis of the early modern community in Mainz. Besides his local duties, he was also in charge for the rural communities in the territory of the archbishopric of Mainz. A number of sources indicate that his relations both to the local community and to the Gentile authorities were all but easy. In my presentation, I will introduce an unknown source from the records of the Jewish community in Mainz (Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, D/Ma7/5, pp. 100-102). This Yiddish text is about a sharp dispute …

The Struggle To Transcend Differences And Conflicts Among Early American Jewry, Eli Faber

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Exploration of two contrary tendencies among colonial American Jews to achieve consensus within their religious fellowship. In one case, they relied upon European precedent by attempting to recreate the kehilla in America, while in the other they rejected European precedents that forbade commonality among Ashkenazim and Sepharadim. The outcome was a new kind of community: the voluntary one.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Minute Book of the Congregation Shearith Israel in New York (1730-1760)

Regulating Communal Space: Mikvaot In Seventeenth-Century Altona, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Over the course of a few years in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the community of Altona made several changes in the administration of local ritual baths. A series of entries in the communal pinkas, or logbook, elucidates how the community raised funds from mikvaot, how lay and rabbinic leaders worked together, and how communal leaders regulated ritual space both in homes and in communal space.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Pinkas/Communal Logbook of Altona (CAHJP AHW 14 [50])
• Pinkas/Communal Logbook of Altona (CAHJP AHW 14 [90])
• Pinkas/Communal Logbook of Altona (CAHJP AHW 14 [91])

Minhag And Migration: A Yiddish Custom Book From Venice, 1553, Lucia Raspe

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation focuses on a Yiddish book of customs written in Venice in the mid-sixteenth century, which describes synagogue and home observances over the course of the Jewish year. Comparing MS Oxford Can. Or. 12 to the fifteenth-century Hebrew custumal it is based on (MS Frankfurt hebr. oct. 227), the presentation will discuss the efforts of Ashkenazic émigrés to northern Italy trying to preserve their identity in the face of a Jewish world suddenly become complex.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Book of Customs (MS Frankfurt hebr. oct. 227)
• Book of Customs (MS Oxford Can. Or. 12)

Communities Developing In Association With Place: Testament Of Ginebra Blanis, 1574, Stefanie Siegmund

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Recent attention to Jewish demography and to the spatial characteristics of Jewish residential patterns has demonstrated that in more than one region, Early Modern Jews were associated with each other more loosely, and less locally, than has previously been imagined. The "communities" to which Jews may have felt they belonged are difficult to know as they are likely to have varied with economic or social status, gender, age, and ethnic origin. The testament translated below is that of a merchant woman in the first years of the existence of the Florentine ghetto (founded 1571). The study of early modern bequests …

Jewish Community And Identity In The Early Modern Period, Emw 2010

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 7th Early Modern Workshop took place from August 15-17, 2010 at Wesleyan University. The topic was “Jewish Community and Identity in the Early Modern Period.”

The traditional approach to “Jewish community” has been focused on the formal communal structures of Jewish self-government. This approach often traced the presence of “autonomous” Jewish self-government in the diaspora from antiquity till the modern times, when, it was stressed, these “autonomous” structures were shattered by the interference of modern states in Jewish communal affairs.

Scholars discussed takkanot (decisions and regulations by Jewish community leaders), privileges granted to Jews, correspondence between Jews across different …

A Great Appearance Of Force: Puritan Family Government In Colonial Connecticut, 1672-1725, Alicia Desiree Martin-Cowger

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to take up Edmund Morgan’s thesis in The Puritan Family that the family incorporated “economic as well as political and ecclesiastical functions” and discover how the Puritan family interacted with social and political structures, in this case religion, belief, and the community, in colonial Connecticut. In order to explore such dynamics, several cases of incest will be explored. Colonial Connecticut’s history of incest prosecution provides a window into the workings of family government and its function in preparing individuals to integrate fully into Puritan society. Even as the American Puritan justice system based on …

Between The Great Idea And Kemalism: The Ymca At İzmir In The 1920s, Samuel David Lenser

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Despite the voluminous historical literature concerning American missionary efforts in the Middle East during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the international work of the Young Men’s Christian Association has figured only marginally into most of these accounts. Similarly, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and the “Great Fire” of İzmir, which concluded that conflict and brought an end to Hellenism in Asia Minor, remain largely disregarded episodes in the English-language historiography of the immediate post-World War I era. This thesis will address the place of İzmir between the Greek “Great Idea” and Kemalist “Anatolianism,” the YMCA’s efforts to …

The People's Hour And The Social Gospel: George Howard Gibson's Gilded Age Search For An Organization Of The Kingdom Of God, Michelle D. Tiedje

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Previous studies of the Social Gospel movement have acknowledged the fact that Social Gospelers were involved in multiple social reform movements during the Gilded Age and into the Progressive Era. However, most of these studies have failed to explain how the reform experiences of the Social Gospelers contributed to the development of the Social Gospel. The Social Gospelers’ ideas regarding the need to transform society and their strategies for doing so were largely a result of their personal experiences as reformers and their collaboration with other reformers. The knowledge and insight gained from interaction with a variety of reform methods …

Parenting A Child With Behavior Problems: Dimensions Of Religiousness That Influence Parental Stress And Sense Of Competence, Chelsea Weyand M.S.

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Parenting a child with behavior problems has been associated with an increase in parental stress and a decrease in parental sense of competence. While parental religiosity has generally been associated with greater child and parent functioning, it has been suggested that when parenting a child with behavior problems, some aspects of parental religiousness (e.g., negative religious coping, biblical conservatism) might decrease functioning. One hundred and thirty-nine parents of children between the ages of three and twelve completed a questionnaire in order to examine the influence of religious variables (sanctification of parenting, negative religious coping, positive religious coping, biblical conservatism) on …

Christian Fundamentalism: Militancy And The Scopes Trial, Michael Smith

All Theses

The Scopes Trial held in Dayton, Tennessee, lasting for eight days in 1925, is one of the seminal events in American history. Its importance has little to do with the place, but much to do with cultural, political, scientific, and religious trends of the times. Historians extensively studied these trends and volumes were written, filled with their analyses of these trends and why the Scopes Trial represents such an interesting snapshot of history.
This work considers the militancy of the Fundamentalist movement as a definer of religious zeal and a desire to defend publicly what they perceived as an erosion …

Preservation Ethics In The Case Of Nebraska's Nationally Registered Historic Properties, Darren Michael Adams

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation focuses on the National Register of Historic Places and considers the geographical implications of valuing particular historic sites over others. Certain historical sites will either gain or lose desirability from one era to the next, this dissertation identifies and explains three unique preservation ethical eras, and it maps the sites which were selected during those eras. These eras are the Settlement Era (1966–1975), the Commercial Architecture Era (1976–1991), and the Progressive Planning Era (1992–2010). The findings show that transformations in the program included an early phase when state authorities listed historical resources pertaining to the settlement of the …

Filid, Fairies And Faith: The Effects Of Gaelic Culture, Religious Conflict And The Dynamics Of Dual Confessionalisation On The Suppression Of Witchcraft Accusations And Witch-Hunts In Early Modern Ireland, 1533 – 1670, William Kramer

Master's Theses

The European Witch-Hunts reached their peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Betweeen 1590 and 1661, approximately 1500 women and men were accused of, and executed for, the crime of witchcraft in Scotland. England suffered the largest witch-hunt in its history during the Civil Wars of the 1640s, which produced the majority of the 500 women and men executed in England for witchcraft. Evidence indicates, however, that only three women were executed in Ireland between 1533 and 1670. Given the presence of both English and Scottish settlers in Ireland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the dramatic discrepancy of these …

The Vampire Myth And Christianity, Dorothy Ivey

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The purpose of this work is to uncover the mystery of the relationship between the Catholic Church and the vampire myth. Presented first is a discussion of what a vampire is and its origins. The discussion moves to the vampire myth and the close relationship and similarities between the myth and Christianity, like the importance of blood as a life force. This work goes on to address how the late medieval Church exploited the vampire myth in order to impart a greater influence on society than any other non-Christian belief system. Also, it explores how the Church provided solace for …