Jewish Studies Commons^™

Brooks, Martin, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Martin Brooks, b. 1947, lived in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx until he was five years old. He then lived with his family in Germany for three years, before returning to the Bronx until the age of 11. His father had served in WWII, and they had moved to Germany as part of his service. Brooks’ mother worked as a secretary but became at stay-at-home mother when Brooks was born, despite wanting to stay in the workforce.

Brooks recalls going to pickle stores, delis, bakeries, and butches along Lydig Avenue and the Allegro Inn, an …

Fredrics, Howard, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Howard Fredrics paternal grandparents came from Poland, and his maternal grandparents came from Ukraine, eventually all settling in the Bronx. His parents, both living in the Bronx, met in the Catskills, where his father was performing as a magician. Fredrics himself lived on Walton Avenue across the street from Joyce Kilmer Park. He remembers playing in that park, going to the candy store and deli, and visiting his family members’ stores. He would go with his father, a professional magician with various other jobs, to rent pigeons in the Bronx for his shows, which Fredrics would later …

Bell, Shulamit, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarized by Lily Weston

Shulamit Bell spent her formative years growing up in the Bronx and much of her early life there centered around her community shul, the Young Israel of Pelham Parkway on Barnes Avenue. She also spent much time at the Bronx House attending Purim carnivals, Hanukkah parties, and more. The legacy of the Holocaust loomed large in her family and community, as both her parents and many other community members were survivors. She recounts how her mother did not work, and her father worked in the garment district. They lived a simple, happy life in an apartment …

Jewish Nationalism In Israel: A Measurement, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Since Israel’s founding, being a “Jewish state” has been central to its self-representation. However, Israel has struggled to identify what that means. This article examines the strength of Jewish nationalism in Jewish Israeli public opinion. It draws on a recent survey of 200 Jewish Israelis for a qualitative and quantitative investigation of public responses to religious nationalist statements. These findings offer a utilizable survey short scale for measuring Jewish nationalism and to understand how Jewish Israelis are interpreting these statements. This study is a necessary step to empirically evaluating religious nationalism in the “Jewish state”.

Katz, Helen, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Helen Katz was born to Holocaust survivor parents in the Bronx. The family originally lived in the South Bronx until Katz was one year old, when they moved to the Olinville section of the Bronx. They lived there until Katz was in her 20s, when they moved to Pelham Parkway. Each time, they moved because the neighborhood was deteriorating.

Katz describes the Olinville neighborhood as predominantly Italian, although her own family was Orthodox. Despite the differences, she remembers playing with the Italian Catholic school girls. They attended a Lubavitcher shul, and Katz attend a yeshiva for her …

Bisson, Michelle, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Transcriber: Sophia Maier

Michelle Bisson lived the first nine years of her life in the Edenwald Projects in the Bronx. Her mother was born in Budapest, Hungary, and fled to the United States in 1941. There, she met Bisson’s father, who had grown up in Inwood in Manhattan, marrying and moving to the brand new Edenwald Projects in 1951. Bisson describes the Projects as very integrated, with both Black and white people, who got along for the most part. The children became friends, playing in the courtyard and parking lot. For kindergarten, Bisson attended the historic PS 15, before attending …

Cohen, Cheryl, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Cheryl Cohen grew up on Kruger Avenue and Pelham Parkway South, which she describes as 95% Jewish during her time there. Her parents were both born in the United States, her mother of a nonreligious background and her father attending a small Orthodox shul on the holidays. Cohen herself did not have a Jewish education but dressed up for the holidays with her friends and closely associates her Jewish identity with Zionism, moving to Israel in her 20s. Her father, who first worked for his father-in-law’s factory, opened a small store, where her mother worked as well …

Norich, Anita, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Anita Norich was born to two Holocaust survivor parents in a Displaced Persons camp called Föhrenwald in Germany. Despite difficulties acquiring visas because of her father’s left-wing political views, the family moved to the United States in March of 1957, settling on Hunts Point Avenue in the South Bronx. In Hunts Point, Norich attended PS 48, played outside and in a nearby park, and began her love for reading at the library. Starting kindergarten, she didn’t speak Englsih, and Norich describes the total immersion environment she was placed into. She felt it was cruel the teacher would …

Pafundi, Barbara, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Barbara Pafundi, born 1952, grew up in Parkchester in the East Bronx. Her grandparents immigrated from Ukraine and Romania, and her father was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Pafundi describes Parkchester as primarily Jewish and Irish and a really beautiful place to grow up, with green areas around the apartment buildings. She would go with her family to the local Chinese restaurant, grocery stores, and library. Reading is a continued love. In the summers, they would go up to Putnam Valley.

Pafundi explains they never felt antisemitism, except she is not sure if St Helena’s would purposefully …

Schaechter, Rukhl, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Rukhl Schaechter and her family moved from Brooklyn to Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx in 1966 to create a Yiddish-speaking community with two other families. At that time, classes in Yiddish at the Sholem Aleichem Folk Shul 21 supplemented their public school education. During the summers, she also attended Camp Hemshekh, a Yiddish camp founded by Socialist Holocaust survivors. At PS 96, Schaechter began to interact with Jewish and non-Jewish students that came from different background than her, that lived in apartment buildings unlike her private home, for example. She describes her home life as “traditional,” with …

Schaechter Viswanath, Gitl, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Gitl Schaechter Viswanath was born into a Yiddish-speaking family. Her father came from Romania to the United States in 1951, becoming a renowned Yiddish linguist and Columbia professor. He and his wife wanted to raise their children speaking Yiddish within a Yiddish community, and so they created this community with two other families living near one another on Bainbridge Avenue in the north-central Bronx, the Fishmans and the Gottesmans. The families were primarily secular but focused on Jewish culture and tradition.

Schaechter Viswanath attended PS 56 and describes the school and area as primarily Jewish. After school, she went to …

Traces Of The House Of The Catechumens In The Plot Against America, Roy Humlicek-Spindler

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

The purpose of this paper is to give readers of the novel The Plot Against America by Philip Roth background information to better understand the novel. It argues that Philip Roth was aware of the Jewish to Catholic conversion institution of the early modern period known as the “House of the Catechumens,” and uses his knowledge of it to inform the experiences of the character Sandy Roth, a Jewish teenager, in the novel. Sandy’s experiences with the institution called the “Office of American Absorption” in a historically fictitious 20th-century America bear striking resemblances to the Jewish experience in the House …

Recent Trends In The Development Of Jewish Life And Heritage Tourism In Trani, Italy, Andrea Corsale

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper focuses on the recent revival of Jewish religious and cultural activities in the coastal town of Trani, in Southern Italy, after several centuries of substantial interruption. The specific events which led to the re-establishment of an institutional Jewish community and the restoration and reclamation of the local synagogues, along with the renewed visibility of the well-preserved Jewish district, of Medieval origins, are unique to this case study. However, at the same time, they reflect similar phenomena of restoration of Jewish sites and revival of Jewish communities in southern and eastern Europe, and beyond. As the case study analysis …

Radical Hospitality: Height And Excess Of The Other And The New Host Self, Diako Alikhani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical framework and its emphasis on the “height and excess” of “the Other,” this thesis explores and develops a sense of “radical hospitality” in Levinas and across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In particular, the thesis explores how encounter with the Other is not only marked by an overwhelming excess, but one which transforms the subject into what I call a “New Host Self:” Where the self is the host who greets the stranger with hospitality, it is ultimately the stranger—the refugee, the migrant—who transforms the host into someone new. Here, the host ultimately receives a gift …

New Paths In Jewish And Religious Studies: Essays In Honor Of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Glenn Dynner, Susannah Heschel, Shaul Magid

Purdue University Press Books

The work of Elliot R. Wolfson has profoundly influenced the fields of Jewish studies as well as philosophy and religion more broadly. His radically new approaches have created pioneering ways of analyzing texts and thinking about religion through the lens of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory. The contributors to New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars, hearken from diverse fields. Each has learned from and collaborated with Wolfson as student or colleague, and each has expanded the new scholarly directions initiated by Wolfson’s groundbreaking …

Klipper, Stuart, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Stuart Klipper was born in 1941 and grew up in the Bronx, first living on Hoe Avenue and later on the Grand Concourse. His family background reflects Eastern European Jewish heritage, with his father’s side from Lithuania and his mother’s side from Galicia. Klipper’s childhood was shaped by the rich cultural life of the Bronx, frequent visits to the Bronx Zoo and the Botanical Garden, and an early interest in art and photography. He recalls a deep love for reading, art, and exploring New York City’s museums, which would later influence his career as a photographer.

Klipper attended P.S. 66 …

The History Of Jewish Cemeteries In Cleveland And Cuyahoga County, Jeffrey S. Morris

Cleveland Memory

This book documents the history of the sixteen Jewish cemeteries in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, using primary sources such as recorded deed transfers, records of incorporation, and plat maps to trace ownership from the time of acquisition to today. It facilitates an understanding of the correlation between each cemetery and its governance with a synagogue or benevolent organization.

Memoriam, Mira Helena Darham

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The chasm between past and present is a constant reminder of the perilous journey one takes through the fissures of memory. While on this expedition the forms surrounding you, the memories themselves, are a constantly changing landscape that make navigation a difficult and dangerous task. Is a memory a recall or a remembrance, truth, or construction? Are all memories as they happened or are we the “rememberer,” the architect of their composition? This dilemma has been the impetus of my academic pursuits and creative endeavors. For Memoriam I have chosen an event in my past, a wildfire, as the catalyst …

Expanding The Corpus Of Vocalized Hebrew Text: Compiling An Unvocalized Text Corpus And Building An Online Interface For Vocalization Annotation, Rachel Shanblatt Bloch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Written modern Hebrew presents a unique challenge for training computational models for language processing because modern Hebrew text often lacks vocalization. The lack of available vocalized Hebrew data can lead to ambiguity in training these models and generally hinders work on natural language processing problems. The goal of this project is to contribute to the collection of vocalized Hebrew text by collecting and preprocessing a large corpus of unvocalized Hebrew text and building an online annotation tool. The annotation tool allows people to upload unvocalized Hebrew text, to annotate by adding Hebrew vocalization, and to download comma-separated values files of …

The Creation Of An African American Jewish Culinary Tradition: Michael Twitty And The Passover Seder As A Vehicle For Remembering Trauma And Celebrating Survival, Samira Mehta

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The Exodus of the Israelites has long held meaning for African American Christians, as noted by scholars of African American religious history. Jewish studies scholars, meanwhile, have written about both Passover and Jewish relationships to the Exodus. Michael Twitty, public historian, James Beard award-winning author, and memoirist, has fused an identity for himself by drawing on the foodways of both traditions to remember and memorialize the trauma of both traditions While Twitty uses food to create meaning in the context of holidays, his memoirs, Kosher Soul and The Cooking Gene, explore how the food of trauma, poverty, and resilience provide …