Jewish Studies Commons^™

Lishmah: An Exploration Of Syntactic Ambiguity And Biblical Exegesis Through The Jewish Calendar Year, Shani Tzoref

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lishmah (Hebrew, meaning “for its own sake”) is a digital resource for exploring syntactic ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible and traditional Jewish biblical interpretation. Hosted on CUNY Manifold, it currently features twelve curated cases of syntactic ambiguity, each linked to a month of the Hebrew calendar, accompanied by annotated medieval Jewish commentaries.

The project employs digital tools for data compilation, presentation, and user interaction. While in its early stages, Lishmah aims to contribute to digital humanities by bridging traditional close reading with computational approaches and highlighting discourse analysis in biblical studies.
Future plans include developing Lishmah into a collaborative research …

Coexistence, My Ass!, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Coexistence, My Ass! (2025), directed by Amber Fares.

Unholy, William L. Blizek, Monica Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a review of the short film, Unholy (2025), directed by Daisy Friedman.

Holy Day Surveys And Political Attitudes In Israel, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Researchers regularly use large survey studies to examine public political opinion. Surveys running over days and months will necessarily incorporate religious occasions that can introduce variation in public opinion. Using recent survey data from Israel, this study demonstrates that giving surveys on religious occasions (e.g., the Sabbath, Hannukah, Sukkot) can elicit different opinion responses. These effects are found among both religious and non-religious respondents. While incorporating these fluctuations is realistic in longer-term surveys, surveys fielded in a short window inadvertently drawing heavily on a holiday or holy day sample may bias their findings. This study thus urges researchers to be …

The Anatomy Of Resistance: Jewish Life, Struggle, And Revolt In The Vilna And Warsaw Ghettos, Theodore A. Evison

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland, marking the start of WWII. In the following months, the Nazis established an inconceivable array of ghettos meant to concentrate the Jewish population and facilitate their deportation to killing centers across continental Europe. Of the over 1,000 ghettos set up throughout Nazi-occupied territory, this paper focuses on two, Vilna and Warsaw. Despite the hellish conditions imposed on the Jews in the Vilna and Warsaw ghettos—conditions rivaled only by the killing centers that awaited most of their inhabitants—an important phenomenon took form: the Jews of the ghettos resisted. How, it must be contended, …

Trans Inequity, Intersectional Ritual, And Jewish Tikkun Olam (Healing Of The World), Valerie Estelle Frankel

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

As Jewish science fiction expands into twenty-first-century questions of identity, some authors explore the trans experience and build bridges towards intersectionality. Ritual and tradition become popular subjects. In the post-apocalyptic Fragments of the Brooklyn Talmud by Andrew Ramer, diverse rabbis create new prayers and practices. A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys offers protagonists from a diverse commune who welcome aliens and rise up against the corporations. Bogi Takács’ short story “Three Partitions” questions where to segregate the shapeshifting Adira, and how the Orthodox space colony can change. Several of these stories ask how comfortable Jewish protagonists are with alien rituals …

Restitution Of Jewish Property In Northern Transylvania During The Early Postwar Years, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

The restitution of Jewish property in the multiethnic region of Northern Transylvania faced numerous challenges during the first post-Holocaust years as a result of the complicated wartime history, postwar demographics, legal status, interethnic dynamics, and occasional violence. Having the lowest rate of survival among all Jewish communities in Romania, most of the region’s Jews died during the deportation and did not return to their native places to claim their properties. This impacted the extent of restitution of individual private property. Some of the Aryanized property was restituted to the Jewish survivors or their heirs because the wartime beneficiaries fled the …

The Growing Rift Between Holocaust Scholars Over Israel/Palestine, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

"A chasm has formed between Holocaust scholars concerning Israel/Palestine, deepening immeasurably since 7 October 2023. Unlike previous controversies in the field, the divide is not just historical or methodological; it revolves around academics’ role in the world today, particularly the public stand they choose to take on Palestine/Israel and Zionism. Two main camps have formed. Put reductively, one camp defends Israel, while the other defends Palestinians, although differences between individual scholars within each camp make for more of a spectrum than a clear-cut divide. How, despite a diversity of ideas and foci within each camp, did two academic-political antipodes solidify …

50 Years Of Women Cantors, Judith S. Pinnolis

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Pharaoh-Joeseph Tradition-Medieval Judaism, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

Pharaoh-Exodus Tradition-Rabbinic And Medieval Judaism, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

Pharaoh-Joseph Tradition, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

Pharaoh-Abraham Tradition- Rabbinic Judaism, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

Pharaoh's Daughter-Adoptive Mother Of Moses-Rabbinic Judaism, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

Pesiqta Rabbati, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

Curated Bricolage: Questions Of Agency, Accuracy, And Complicity In Munich Holocaust Memorialization, Jamie Downing

Academic Affairs

As the birthplace of the Nazi movement, Munich has long struggled to reckon with its legacy from World War II and the Holocaust. While some museums in Munich document the rise of the Nazis, the war, and the Holocaust, unlike other European cities, Munich lacks a centralized Holocaust museum or memorial. Instead, across the city there are dozens of mini-monuments—plaques, sculptures, cobblestone markings—that reference different figures and events related to Munich's Nazi history. These sites comprise a decentralized, bricolage approach to memorialization, leaving individuals to happen upon these mini-memorials and make sense of them without much context.

While this approach …

Pharaoh- Joseph Tradition- Medieval Judaism, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

How To Remain A Stranger / Encountering, In A Basement, Hannah Rotwein

Theses and Dissertations

How to Remain a Stranger / Encountering, in a Basement consists of two parallel essays. On the lefthand side of the page, How to Remain a Stranger explores the ways that the legend of the Wandering Jew, the Tradescantia genus of plants, peddlers, and exile relate to my practice of collecting, sorting, and combining found objects. On the righthand side, Encountering, in a Basement describes my thesis exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. Focusing on the idea of the encounter, I detail the materials, considerations, and processes behind four of the ten sculptures in the …

Pesiqta De-Rav Kahana, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Contributions to Books

The projected thirty-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to the current state of knowledge on the background, origins, and development of the canonical texts of the Bible as they were accepted in Judaism and Christianity. Unprecedented in breadth and scope, this encyclopedia also documents the history of the Bible’s interpretation and reception across the centuries, not only in Judaism and Christianity, but also in literature, visual art, music, film, and dance, as well as in Islam and other religious traditions and new religious movements.

“Windows For Witness: Dan Fishback’S Radical Access”, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

Dan Fishback’s Jewish crip aesthetic – art made within a framework of integrated access – is rooted in the human (or Jewish!) capacity to be generous and so much more. He expands our understandings of who is in the room, who is in the world, who is in our community, who lives at the same time as us but in a different way. This connection in his show between chronic illness and Palestine is not only about alienation it is about identification and solidarity.