Jewish Studies Commons^™

Fruit Of The Land, Aviya Cammy, Justin Cammy

Jewish Studies: Faculty Books

Edited by: Asaf Romirowsky, Donna Robinson Divine

Justice And Restitution In Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives And Communities, 1944-1950, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

On 23rd August 1944, following the collapse of the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania changed sides and abandoned the Axis to join the Allies. Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania explores the hopes, struggles and disappointments of Jewish communities in Romania seeking to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. Focusing on the efforts of survivors to recuperate rights and property, Stefan Cristian Ionescu demonstrates how the early transitional government enabled short term restitution. However, from 1948, the consolidated communist regime implemented nationalizations which dispossessed many citizens. Jewish communities were disproportionality affected, and real estate and many businesses were lost …

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.

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 …

From Lithuania To Mobile: An Immigrant’S Memoir Comes To Light, Deborah Gurt

University Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Innovating Chaplaincy Education: Integrating Nonreligious Spiritual Care Interventions To Serve A Diverse Patient Population, Dianne Dragon

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The transformation to the curriculum taught in chaplain training in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) will now address the spiritual needs of a more diverse, nonreligious, and interfaith population in the United States. Historically rooted in religious frameworks, CPE curricula are evolving to incorporate non-religious spiritual care interventions and promote research literacy among chaplains. This dissertation study uses descriptive analysis to present a study surveying CPE educators across over 300 U.S. based CPE centers to explore teaching practices and adaptation strategies. Findings reveal that integrating evidence-based methods and interdisciplinary collaboration is key to addressing inclusivity and professional competency in chaplaincy. By …

The (Im)Possibility Of Separating Rabbinic Texts Into Literary Genres: Form Analysis And Text Linguisticslysis And Text Linguistics, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Journal Articles

This paper analyzes rabbinic homiletic texts from the perspective of form analysis in combination with text-linguistic theories. My study indicates that, from the perspective of functional considerations, it is not meaningful to lift small literary forms from a coherent text that depends on a co-text to create meaning. Additionally, the concepts of genre and parable need to be abandoned and replaced by text-type and mashal. The form-analytical description of rabbinic homilies is based on research performed at the Institute of Judaic Studies in Frankfurt am Main. The text-linguistic concepts are based on strict formalizations that demonstrate textual relations.These theories were …

Spiritual Exercises In Novarodok Mussar And The Early Work, Martin Zwick

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper compares aspects of the teachings launched in pre-revolutionary and revolutionary Russia of two spiritual figures: Rabbi Yoseph Yozel Horwitz and George Gurdjieff. Yozel founded the Novarodok school of Mussar within Judaism; Gurdjieff founded the spiritual tradition known as “the Work” or “Fourth Way.” There are of course great differences between Judaism and the Work, but some similarities might be expected between spiritual disciplines, especially similarities in practice as opposed to doctrine. This paper explores similarities of some spiritual exercises in the Mussar school of Novarodok and secondarily in later or other Mussar teachings and in the early Gurdjieff …

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 …

How Much Antisemitism Is There In The United States? Incidences Vs. Impacts, Ira Sheskin

FIU Law Review

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (www.adl.org), founded in 1913, is one of the nation's premier civil rights organizations and was formed to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all. Every year since 1979, the ADL has published an Audit of Antisemitic Incidents in the US (https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2023). The Audit receives significant publicity and is important in communicating the problem of serious antisemitic incidents and the year-to-year increases in such incidents. But, based on surveys of American Jews, the Audit underestimates the extent to which American Jews are being impacted by antisemitism. Survey data …

Shapiro, Sandra "Sandy", Theodora Omotayo

Bronx Jewish History Project

Sandy discusses her experiences during World War II as a young girl and how those experiences shaped her life. Also, Sandy recounts her childhood memories of blackouts and brownouts during the war and her later discovery of the Holocaust's devastation, including the betrayal of Jewish residents in Amsterdam. She emphasized that her experience was more historical than personal memory. She also shares personal stories of friends and family affected by the Holocaust. Sandy reflects on how the influence of her parents' honesty, kindness, and activism, the idealism of post-WWII democracy, and the importance of seeking evidence over belief shaped her …

New Trends In The Study Of Haredi Culture And Society, David N. Myers, Nechumi Malovicki-Yaffe

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

Who are Haredim? And why are they the source of both increasing attention and continuing misunderstanding? New Trends in the Study of Haredi Culture and Society draws on the innovative research of leading scholars from a variety of disciplines—including history, religious studies, demography, linguistics, and geography—to trace the growing prominence of Haredi (often called ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Jewish life. Haredi Jews are committed to preserving a measure of segregation from the rest of society consistent with the guiding principles of their forebears; yet increasingly, they are appearing more visibly and assertively in public spaces. Demographic analysis suggests that they will …

Eleven Are The Stars Of Joseph’S Dream; His Coat, Many Colors, Alexander B. Bloom

Capstones

At the Conservative synagogue where I attended Saturday school for part of my childhood in the 90s I recall the teachers’ reimagination of the popular Michael Jackson song “We Are the World,” taught to the seven and eight year-olds who were made to sing it in chorus at some holiday celebration that year.

“We are the Jews,” we bleated out, in concert, “We are the Chosen.”

From my place among them I remember the unsettled feeling I had, to consider my non-Jewish friends at school, teachers and babysitters who knew not of tefillin, my maternal grandparents in the pews of …

Lazarin, Burt, Caitlin Omey

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarized by Avi Frank

Burt Lazarin was born in 1944 and grew up in the Bronx in the Highbridge and Williamsbridge neighborhoods. His family came from Eastern European Jewish backgrounds, with his father’s side immigrating from Lithuania and his mother’s from a region that later became part of Belarus. Lazarin describes growing up in a working to lower-middle-class household, first in a small apartment in Highbridge and later, in 1952, moving to a larger two-family home in Williamsbridge with his parents, brothers, and extended family. Although not religious, Lazarin recalls a strong sense of Jewish identity shaped by family traditions, …

Singer, William, Joseph Kobeck Ii

Bronx Jewish History Project

William Singer was born in 1949 in a neighborhood known as Far Rockaway, Queens. When Mr. Singer was five years old, his parents moved to the Bronx, and he began living at 214 East 163rd Street. An area that Mr. Singer remembers is about 95% Jewish. An important element of his parents' decision to move into the Bronx was being closer to his grandparents, who lived at 1155 Grand Concourse. While his family's story is quite interesting, during his early childhood, he attended Public School 35, located across the street from what used to be St. Anne'sAnne's Elementary School. He …

The Pagan Reception Of Judaism From The Sibylline Oracles: Insights From Pseudo-Seneca’S Octavia Regarding The Creation And Circulation Of Oral Sibylline Oracles By The Plebs, Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

According to tradition, the original collection of Sibylline Books ac­quired by the Roman monarch Tarquinius Priscus, which were kept in the Temple of Jupiter in the capital, were lost in the fire of 83 BCE. In 76 BCE, the Senate ordered the college of the quindecimviri to travel to the traditional centers of Sibylline activity in the East to find Sibylline Oracles to replace those destroyed in the fire. According to Lactantius, these officials collected many Oracles from private individuals. This reference suggests that Sibylline Oracles circulated widely. However, based on the witnesses regarding their consultation, it appears that the …

Roman History In Sibylline Oracle 13: A Palestinian Jewish Perspective On Emperors, Usurpers, And Saviors During The Third Century Ce (Part Two: From Decius To Odenath Of Palmyra), Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

Sibylline Oracle 13 is a remarkable historical document that contains a unique perspective on the poorly documented period of Roman history known as the “Crisis of the Third Century (235-284 CE), which began with the assassination of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander (222-235 CE), the last ruler of the Severan dynasty. This turbulent era was marked by nearly fifty years of civil wars, barbarian invasions, rebellions, and approximately twenty-six claimants to the throne. Although the end of this turmoil under Diocletian (284-305 CE) is well known, we have little information about much of this century, particularly its first decades. The …

Roman History In Sibylline Oracle 13: A Palestinian Jewish Perspective On Emperors, Usurpers, And Saviors During The Third Century Ce (Part One: From Maximus I “Thrax” To Philip I “The Arab”), Kenneth Atkinson

Faculty Publications

The period commonly known as the “Crisis of the Third Century” (235-284 CE) began with the assassination of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander (222-235 CE), the last ruler of the Severan dynasty. This turbulent era was marked by nearly fifty years of civil war, barbarian invasions, rebellions, and political and social unrest caused by approximately twenty-six claimants to the imperial throne. Although the end of this age of disorder under Diocletian (284-305 CE) is well-known, we have little information about much of the third century CE, particularly its first decades. This study examines book 13 of the Sibylline oracles, which …

Disease And Discrimination: The Persecution Of Jews In The Holy Roman Empire During The Black Death, Abigail M Stanger

The Cardinal Edge

The Black Death, the second major plague pandemic caused by the spread of the bacteria Yersinia pestis, emerged in the Holy Roman Empire in 1348. Throughout its spread until 1352, the plague devastated residents of the Holy Roman Empire regardless of demographic features. However, Christians at the time believed that members of Jewish communities died at significantly lower rates than themselves, and already existing sentiments of antisemitism grew into the assignment of blame onto Jews. This concurrent spread of plague and antisemitism resulted in pogroms and other forms of mass violence against Jewish communities across Europe, but specifically in the …