Jewish Studies Commons^™

Silver. Jerry And Irene, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Jerry Silver grew up in the Bronx after moving from Brooklyn in the mid-1930s. His family rented an apartment on Kruger Avenue before buying a home on Holland Avenue during the Depression. Jerry attended PS 96 and PS 76 before graduating early from Christopher Columbus High School and later earning his undergraduate and law degrees from NYU. He fondly remembers playing in the street, working part-time jobs, and being passionate about baseball, often attending games. He served in the military from 1952 to 1954, started a small law practice in the Bronx, and worked extensively with the Legal Aid Society. …

Contributors, Jewish Folkore & Ethnology Editors

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

Contributors to Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Volume 2

In Memoriam: Tamar Alexander-Frizer (1945–2023), Eli Yassif

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

Memorial Essay for Professor Tamar Alexander (1945-2023)

(Candle)Sticks On Stone: The Representation Of Women In Jewish Tombstone Art, Ruth Ellen Gruber

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

Candles and candlesticks are a common and potent symbol on the gravestones of Jewish women because lighting the Sabbath candles is one of the three so-called “women’s commandments” carried out by female Jews; it is the only one easily represented in visual terms. This essay describes the author’s field research, photographic, and writing project, “(Candlesticks) on Stone,” carried out mainly in 2009–2011, to explore the variety of ways candles and candlesticks are depicted on women’s gravestones in Eastern Europe. It also questions the transmission of the candle-lighting tradition from her East European ancestors to later generations.

“In Proverbiis Non Semper Veritas”: Reflections On The Reprint Of An Antisemitic Proverb Collection, Wolfgang Mieder

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

This article concerns the highly questionable 2016 reprint of Ernst Hiemer’s antisemitic proverb collection Der Jude im Sprichwort der Völker (1942, The Jew in the Proverbs of the People). It begins with a glance at earlier antisemitic proverb collections while also reviewing some of the superb Yiddish and Jewish/Hebrew proverb collections and serious studies on this rich repertoire of proverbs. This is followed by a discussion of the misguided antisemitic publications of the nineteenth century that were precursors of even more slanderous and prejudiced collections that appeared during the time of National Socialism. It is shown that both traditional …

Why Were There No Jokes After The 2021 Meron Crowd Crush? On Israeli “Joking Relationships”, Tsafi Sebba-Elran

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

The vast research literature on disaster jokes demonstrates that no calamity is too horrific to be followed by jokes that typically recontextualize traumatic events and channel the threatening voices that these events provoke. Why, then, did no jokes circulate after the deadliest civil disaster in Israel’s history, which occurred on Mount Meron during the Lag Ba’Omer celebrations in April 2021? Drawing upon the ethnographic concept of “joking relationships,” this essay documents representations of ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) in contemporary Israeli memes and explains the restraint that Israeli society shows toward this group with whom the Meron disaster is associated. …

The Besht As Ba’Al Shem: Magic In The Life And Legacy Of Israel Ba’Al Shem Tov, Elly Moseson

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (the Besht), the purported founder of the Hasidic movement, achieved renown during his lifetime as a holy man and a ba’al shem—a magician and folk healer. This paper surveys the sources containing evidence pertaining to the Besht’s medico-magical activities, presents the variety of recipes and rituals that have been preserved in his name, and explores the implications these hold for understanding his life and legacy. It further argues that the centrality of magic we find in the life of the Besht did not disappear with his death but was maintained within the Hasidic movement that …

“Let Me Tell You Some Stories, And You Will Record Them”: Dan Ben-Amos And The Study Of Jewish Folklore And Ethnology, Simon J. Bronner

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

Dan Ben-Amos (1934–2023) was associated with groundbreaking work beginning during the 1960s on concepts of context and performance and the paradigm shift in folkloristics with his groundbreaking essay “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context.” His odyssey from Israel to the United States, including formative experiences as a youth absorbing ideas about social reality and Jewish folklore as counterculture, has a profound influence on an equally profound shift in the understanding of Jewish experience as well as on the globalization of folkloristics as a discipline. In addition to interpreting his culminating work of the Folktales of the Jews series of …

Note On Transliteration

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

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Review Of Spiritual Audacity: The Abraham Joshua Heschel Story, John C. Merkle

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Aspis, Harold, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Harold Aspis was born in 1954 to two American born parents. His father was a college professor of economics, and his mother returned to work as a secretary and administrator at Montefiore Hospital when Aspis was in junior high school. Aspis describes the movement of his family as “the Jewish neighborhood profession of the Bronx,” first living in University Heights and then in the North Bronx near the Bronx High School of Science, then his parents moved to Riverdale after Aspis had left the house.

Aspis attended PS 91, which he shares what a stable component of …

Langer, Eileen, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Eileen Langer is a lifelong Bronxite. Despite her world travels, she identifies the Bronx as her home. As a child, she lived in Roosevelt Gardens on the Grand Concourse and remembers walking to see her grandmother across the Concourse. As she got older, Langer remembers going to the movies, going shopping, eating ice cream, and attending the Sephardic synagogue all along the Grand Concourse. Though she went to college at City College, she completed all of her other schooling in the Bronx, including a master’s degree from Lehman College. Becoming an educator herself, she has taught and …

Cohen, Marsha, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Marsha Cohen’s parents grew up in New York City, her mother living in the Highbridge area of the Bronx and her father living first in East Harlem then the South Bronx. Her grandparents had immigrated from Eastern Europe. Her parents married in 1939 and, by the time Cohen was born in 1946, the family lived at 3050 Decatur Avenue, on the north side of Mosholu Parkway. The neighborhood had five and six story apartment buildings, like theirs, and private houses and was mixed Irish, Italian, and Jewish. Cohen describes her building as primarily Jewish, with all boys …

Bergen Koster, Debra, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Debra Bergen Koster was born in the Bronx at Bronx Lebanon Hospital on December 14, 1955. Her family moved to the Bronx in the 1930s and she grew up there until 1964, living on Shakespeare Avenue in a predominantly Jewish and Irish neighborhood. Bergen Koster recalls a close-knit community, where her family experienced significant events like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. She also has fond memories of local spots like Featherbed Lane, where she would run errands for her mother, and of communal activities like playing on the streets with friends and attending local events.

In 1964, her …

Polovsky, Terrie, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Terrie Polovsky, born around 1942 to a homemaker mother and hatmaker father, grew up in her beloved Parkchester, a vibrant community of 50,000 residents. She grew up forming relationships with people of all backgrounds, including Jews, Irish Catholics, Italians, African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. Polovsky emphasizes people of different faiths living in community, even remembering a case in which the Presbyterian church lent her synagogue its facilities when it fell victim to a fire. She notes the close partnership between the church and her synagogue - when the church’s monsignor died, her mother planted a tree in Israel in …

Can Human Rights Be Reconciled With Citizenship: Reconsidering Marx's Zur Judenfrage Today, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay critically re-examines Marx’s youthful analysis of the separation of church and state and his complex views about the function of rights in the modern state. I argue that Marx’s condemnation of Christian nationalism and endorsement of citizenship for Jews is consistent with his view that the modern, secular state cannot emancipate itself entirely from religiosity, as evidenced by the continuing legacy of nationalism and cultural identity politics today. Although Marx correctly follows Hegel in identifying modernity with a structural differentiation between civil society and state, I argue that he misunderstands the nature of this separation and, along with …

Gilbert, Jeff, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Jeff Gilbert, born 1951, grew up on Walton Avenue nearby Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Both of his parents were born in New York, with his great-grandparents and grandparents immigrating from Hungary, Austria, and Poland. Gilbert describes the neighborhood at the time as 99% Jewish, and he lived next door to the Congregation Hope of Israel, despite being educated at and attending Tremont Temple. Among the amenities in the “self-contained neighborhood for shopping” were bakeries, movie theaters, grocery stores, and butchers. Gilbert remembers most Val’s Luncheonette for the delicious food, famous athletes, and the money he made …

Hendler, Elliot, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Elliot Hendler is a lifelong Bronx resident, born during the Great Depression in 1935. He moved to various addresses throughout his childhood, having lived on 172nd Street and Washington Avenue, 169th Street and Washington Avenue, and 170th and Townsend Avenue. Describing his childhood neighborhood as “bad” and marked by crime, he details his experiences with violence and vandalism. When he married his wife, Libby, in 1958, they moved to an apartment on 205th Street, and in 1969 moved to Co-op City, where they have lived ever since. Together, they have two children and two grandchildren.

Hendler details his impressive educational …

Hendler, Libby, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Libby Hendler shared her life story, detailing her upbringing in the Bronx. Libby discusses her upbringing in a kosher home and her decision to maintain kosher practices initially. Libby shares that her mother kept a kosher home, and she continued this practice when she got married. She mentions having two sets of dishes, one for Passover and one for regular use. She recounts how she stopped keeping kosher after her daughter turned three, opting for non-kosher food during a vacation where kosher options were unavailable. Despite this change, she still has a strong aversion to certain non-kosher foods, such as …

Comac, Linda, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Linda Comac was born in 1948 in the Bronx and raised on Walton Avenue near 164th Street, where she lived until 1969. Her family had deep roots in the borough, dating back to the 1930s. She grew up across from Joyce Kilmer Park, which she remembers fondly, as well as frequenting local shops and hangouts along 161st Street, including Addie Valens ice cream parlor and the corner candy store near “the rocks.” Her building and neighborhood were overwhelmingly Jewish, and she recalled a strong sense of community and safety. Comac’s family kept kosher, and Jewish cultural traditions shaped much of …