Jewish Studies Commons^™

Dolmetscher, Spione Und Mörder: Südtiroler Im Sicherheitsdienst Des Reichsführers Ss In Italien 1943-45, Gerald Steinacher

Department of History: Faculty Publications

Bei Kriegsende 1945 blickte die Welt entsetzt auf das Ausmaß der NS-Verbrechen. Auf die Frage, wie konnte das geschehen und wer war verantwortlich für Völkermord und Krieg, verwies man meist auf eine kleine Clique (größen-) wahnsinniger Führer und ihre fanatische und mörderische SS-Gefolgschaft. Alle anderen - etwa die Angehörigen der Wehrmacht und der Waffen-SS - hatten mit den Verbrechen nichts zu tun, hieß es zumeist. Seit den 1990er Jahren hat sich diese Sichtweise in Deutschland und Österreich deutlich geändert. Das jahrzehntelange Schweigen der deutschen Gesellschaft während des Kalten Krieges bezüglich der NS-Täter wurde durchbrochen. Ausstellungen wie "Verbrechen der Wehrmacht" und …

Ijcs News, Volume 2, The Institute Of Judaeo-Christian Studies

Newsletters

The 2014 issue of IJCS News, the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies' annual newsletter, Vol 2.

Film Review: The Rabbi's Daughter And The Midwife, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author presents a review of the film The Rabbi's Daughter and the Midwife.

Book Review: The Most Tenacious Of Minorities: The Jews Of Italy, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book The Most Tenacious of Minorities: The Jews of Italy.

Book Review: Maimonides: Life And Thought, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author reviews the book Maimonides: Life and Thought.

An Overview Of Ladino: The Origins, Survival And Resurgence Of Judeo-Spanish, Rachel S. Goodman

MA TESOL Collection

This paper will examine the historic and linguistic roots of the development of the language of Ladino, also referred to as Judeo-Spanish. The paper explores the early Jewish community in medieval Spain and the development of a dialect of Spanish and Hebrew. The paper will also examine the results of the community’s expulsion from Spain in the 1490s and the consequential Diaspora. The paper analyzes the linguistic components of Ladino and the role of print media, both journalistic and creative, in its survival. The paper also discusses the resurgence in interest in Ladino since the Holocaust and its current uses …

Jorge Luis Borges’S Poetic Response To The Arab-Israeli Six Day War, Stephen Silverstein

Hipertexto

At variance with the pro-Arab stance that most Latin American intellectuals assumed during the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War (June 5-10, 1967), Jorge Luis Borges’s life-long connection to “lo hebreo,” as he called it, translated into “an immediate taking of sides” with Israel (“Autobiographical Essay” 257). As war erupted between Israel and its Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian neighbors, Borges expressed his felt kinship to the Jewish state in the poem “A ISRAEL.” In the war’s aftermath he penned a second poem, “ISRAEL.” Whereas the Jewish motifs that proliferate in Borges’s prose have been well studied, his poetry has received much less critical …

Creating Knowledge, Volume 7, 2014

Creating Knowledge

Dear Students, Faculty Colleagues and Friends, It is my great pleasure to introduce the seventh volume of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences’ Creating Knowledge—our undergraduate student scholarship and research journal. First published in 2008, the journal is the outcome of an initiative to enhance and enrich the academic quality of the student experience within the college. Through this publication, the college seeks to encourage students to become actively engaged in creating scholarship and research and gives them a venue for the publication of their essays.

Beginning with the sixth volume of the journal, we instituted a major …

Front-Page Jews: Doris Wittner's (1880-1937) Berlin Feuilletons, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In ‘Die jüdische Frau und das jüdische Buch’ (The Jewish woman and the Jewish book), an article published 18 March 1931 on the front page of the Jüdisch-liberale Zeitung, Doris Wittner included the following lines that concisely sum up her pioneering ideological and political agendas: ‘Aber bis der endgültige Rechtspruch über des Weibes Ruf und Berufung erfolgt, werden wir jedem Frauengeist, der “strebend sich bemüht”, Anerkennung und Ehrerbietung zollen. […] Insbesondere unsere Glaubensgenossinnen, die gewohnt sind, Menschenlose nur nach Jahrtausenden zu messen.’ With such feuilleton articles, Wittner worked to validate women’s contributions to professional spheres, particularly literature and journalism; to …

Right-Skilling: Rabbis And The Rabbinic Role For A New Century, Barak D. Richman, Daniel Libenson

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter applies Clayton Christensen's model of organizational innovation to Jewish contexts. It observes a parallel between the many challenges that currently confront U.S. healthcare and American Jewry: a mismatch in the skills acquired by professionals and the needs expressed by the broader public; expensive institutions with high fixed costs that are struggling to provide value and maintain sustainable revenues; a failure to respect individual autonomy and cultural mores; and a disenfranchised public that suffers from high costs and unmet demand for meaningful services. It then applies Christensen's adapted model for the healthcare sector to American Jewish institutions, suggesting reforms …

Introduction: Memory And Reflection, Annette Finley-Croswhite

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

During the spring semester of 2014, Old Dominion University offered a Study Abroad course called “Paris/Auschwitz” that I designed with funding from the Curt C. and Else Silberman Foundation and the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Over spring break, I led a group of eighteen students to France and Poland to study sites of Holocaust memory along with faculty team member, Dr. Brett Bebber. Dr. Bebber and I are both professors in the Department of History. The Study Abroad course was part of my attempt to create more Holocaust courses at Old Dominion …

Auschwitz As A Site Of Memory, Emma Needham

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

Auschwitz is known as the most substantial site of the Holocaust namely because Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration camp in Europe, and it is estimated that about 960,000 Jews and 125,000 others were murdered there.¹ Not only was the process of creating the memorial at Auschwitz filled with controversies, but the site also remains questionable today with regards to dark tourism, or thanatourism, “the tourism of death.”² For some, the thought of traveling to a place subsumed in death and despair sounds troubling as the consumption of dark tourism involves a process of “confronting, understanding and accepting death.” …

Sites Of Memory, Tonya Schmehl, Sherry Dixon

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

Photo Essay.

Auschwitz-Birkenau: A Memorial, Nichole Delasalas

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

In the 1940s, Nazi Germany was an unstoppable force spreading throughout Europe. Hitler’s agenda was to take control of Europe and make it part of his pure Aryan race. As a result of his actions and his “final solution”, many people suffered. The concentration camp of Auschwitz I was created out of an old Polish military compound for three main reasons. The first was to incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite amount of time.¹ The second was to have available a supply of forced labor for …

The Paradigm Of The Holocaust Will Not Last Forever, Richard A. Primus

Book Chapters

In college I studied political theory. In class after class, I noticed that instructors and students alike regularly used the Holocaust as a way to test ideas. Any successful principle of political morality must show that the Nazis were wrong; any successful theory of political institutions must be structured to prevent Nazis from rising to power again. These were the implicit rules of the discipline. I preferred to argue in other ways. The Holocaust was personal, and too big to be put to use. Surely I could ground my ideas in something else, some problem or event other than the …

Written With The Finger Of God: Divine And Human Writing In Exodus, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

"The presence of writing in the book of Exodus must be considered not only for its contribution to the narrative as story, but also as a witness to several key socio-political issues (such as the interplay of textuality and orality in ancient Israel), for the role of writing in the history of Israel's religion, and for the struggle to define, through several centuries and editorial layers, the nature of YHWH's "true image'' in the world."

Holocaust Denial Literature Twenty Years Later: A Follow-Up Investigation Of Public Librarians' Attitudes Regarding Acquisition And Access, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

This study was undertaken to learn about public librarians' attitudes and opinions concerning the sometimes conflicting issues of intellectual freedom, collection balance, and controversial materials, and whether those attitudes and opinions have changed over twenty years. The investigation focused on Holocaust denial literature, a body of work which ranges from minimizing the Holocaust to outright denying that it happened. Public librarians in Nassau County, New York, were surveyed, and the results were compared with a similar survey from 1992. The results indicate that librarians are even more open to Holocaust denial literature than they were twenty years ago and, regardless …

Sexuality And Textuality (Fall 2014), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

"Sexuality and Textuality" serves as an introduction to gay and lesbian literary studies and queer theory. It looks at questions of sexuality and literature in ancient and early modern texts (from the Hebrew, Greek and English traditions), as well as in modern texts (from German, French, Spanish, Japanese, and English traditions). In addition to literary texts, students will work with a number of cinematic representations of queer sexuality. Besides these primary texts, students will work with important secondary literature about sexuality."

A photo of this Fall 2014 class was taken as part of Professor Bob Tobin's ongoing class photo tradition.

Haymarket To The Heights: The Movement Of Cleveland's Orthodox Synagogues From Their Initial Meeting Places To The Heights, Jeffrey S. Morris

Cleveland Memory

This document traces the movement, growth and demise of the small neighborhood synagogues, or shuls, established by newly-arrived Eastern European Jews in the Haymarket area as they migrated to the eastern suburbs.

Messianic Jewish Liturgical Practices, Elizabeth Ames

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis explores the current liturgical practices of mainstream Messianic Judaism in the United States using literary and ethnographic research. It examines the historical, biblical, and theological basis for the worship practices used. The origins of their worship practices are evaluated to ascertain whether they reflect charismatic Christian, Jewish denominational or biblical practice. A combination of literary research and qualitative research are used to define the movement; give a brief but comprehensive history of it; and, finally, explain and examine its worship practices. Leaders of the Messianic movement were interviewed for the qualitative research. The findings revealed that a distinction …