Jewish Studies Commons^™

Austrian Again Book Talk, Cardozo Law Institute In Holocaust And Human Rights (Clihhr), Anne Hand, Evelyn Konrad

2025–2026 Flyers

The Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights hosted a special book talk featuring author Anne Hand, discussing her memoir Austrian Again. In her book, Hand explores her journey to uncover her family’s hidden history during the Holocaust while pursuing Austrian citizenship, tracing her Austrian and Czechoslovakian roots through personal stories and historical records.

The program also featured Evelyn Konrad, Cardozo alumna and Holocaust survivor, who joined the conversation and shared her personal reflections. Moderated by Konrad, the event examined themes of identity, migration, heritage, and historical memory.

Staff Development Day 2025: Topics On Jewish Law & Culture, Ellen Drucker-Albert

Library Staff Presentations

This presentation was delivered by Ellen Drucker-Albert, Head of Reference & Faculty Services, during Staff Development Day 2025 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. It explores key aspects of Jewish law and culture, including the sources and development of Halacha, intersections with U.S. civil law, Jewish holidays and food customs, denominations of Judaism, and symbols like the mezuzah.

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 …

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 …

The Rise And Fall Of An Aryanization Bank: The Romanian Credit Institute, 1941–1951, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Probably the most important domestic project of the pro-Nazi Antonescu regime, the policy of Romanianization of the economy had ambitious goals. It aimed to seize Jewish-owned real estate and to redistribute it to “deserving” Romanians, state agencies, and welfare organizations and to increase the share of ethnic Romanian entrepreneurs and skilled employees through purchasing Jewish companies, adopting business and labour restrictions against Jews and “foreigners,” training and funding ethnic Romanian professionals and would-be entrepreneurs, and establishing new companies to displace minority and foreign competitors. While this project looked feasible on paper, in practice, it faced major obstacles, including a lack …

"Is There Any Possibility That They Might Have Remained Alive?": The George Barlaz Papers And The Search For Family After The Holocaust, Jacob Kahn-Samuelson

Student Publications

The paper explores the topic of American Jews searching for their families after the Holocaust. The paper uses the George Barlaz Papers, to argue that after the Holocaust Jews used Jewish organizations to search for family. Charity organizations like HIAS, Jewish newspapers like The Forward and various Landsmanshaftn were all used by George Barlaz to look for his family. From the search for family, new relationships were formed between searchers and those who were helping them find their family. George Barlaz developed a strong friendship with Moses Feinblüt who helped him search for his family and connect him with the …

The Holocaust's Legacy: Influencing Jewish Political Identity, Jordan Eskew

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis addresses the intricate relationship between the historical persecution of the Holocaust and its enduring influence on contemporary Jewish political engagement, a subject of significant contemporary relevance in political and international relations. Despite broad recognition of the Holocaust’s impact, the specific ways in which its memory affects Jewish political attitudes and actions around the world in the modern day have not been sufficiently thoroughly examined. Utilizing qualitative methods, including interviews with 20 individuals—public figures, Holocaust survivors, their descendants, and broader members of the Jewish diaspora— this study focuses on understanding the interplay between historical trauma, community cohesion, and the …

Review Of La Roumanie Et La Shoah: Destruction Et Survie Des Juifs Et Des Roms Sous Le Régime Antonescu, 1940-1944, By Radu Ioanid, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of La Roumanie et la Shoah: Destruction et survie des Juifs et des Roms sous le régime Antonescu, 1940-1944, by Radu Ioanid.

Dancers Of The Book: Yemenite, Persian, And Kurdish Jewish Dance, Quinn Bicer

Anthós

Despite the cultural significance of dance in Jewish communities around the world, research into Middle Eastern Jewish dance outside of the modern nation-state of Israel is sorely under-researched. This article aims to help rectify this by focusing on Yemenite, Persian/Iranian, and Kurdish Jewish dance and explores how these dancers have functioned and been received within the societies they have been a part of. The methods that have gone into this article are a combination of analyzing primary source recorded dances and existing secondary source research into the dance of these communities. Through these methods, this article reveals how Yemenite, Iranian, …

Studies In The Ancient Israelite Cult Of Dead Kin, Joshua Jacobs

World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 1986, Klaas Spronk published a monograph titled, Beatific Afterlife in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East. Although many have criticized Spronk’s central thesis, his study began a new era in biblical scholarship on death and the afterlife in ancient Israel. More specifically, it sparked renewed interest in the study of the relationship between the living and the dead. Just three years after Spronk’s work, Theodore J. Lewis published his own study, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit (1989). Lewis affirmed and developed evidence for one of the foundational aspects of Spronk’s book: in …

Paternal Affliction: Emotions And Masculinity Among Eighteenth-Century Italian Jewish Merchants, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

This essay focuses on the “rhetoric of paternal affliction” that late eighteenthcentury

Italian Jewish merchant patriarchs employed in letters and supplications

addressing threats to their intertwined paternal and commercial authority,

particularly when filial disobedience or apostasy was involved. I examine this

rhetoric as an emotional style that illuminates Jewish merchant masculinity.

Although the image of a suffering father seems to deviate from known early

modern models of hegemonic masculinity, within the context of the eighteenthcentury

culture of sensibility this rhetoric emphasized Jewish patriarchs’ honesty

and righteousness, beseeching male compassion and sympathy. By performing

vulnerability vis-à-vis Jewish associates, as well as …

Jewish Daily Life In Medieval Northern Europe, 1080-1350, Tzafrir Barzilay, Eyal Levinson, Elisheva Baumgarten

TEAMS Documents of Practice

Designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of the Jews who lived in the German Empire, northern France, and England from the 11th to the mid-14th centuries, the volume consists of translations of primary sources written by or about medieval Jews. Each source is accompanied by an introduction that provides historical context. Through the sources, students can become familiar with the spaces that Jews frequented, their daily practices and rituals, and their thinking. The subject matter ranges from culinary preferences and even details of sexual lives, to garments, objects, and communal buildings. The documents testify to how Jews enacted …

Jewish Experience In Huntsville, Alabama, Reagan Grimsley, Charlie Gibbons

Summer Community of Scholars (RCEU and HCR) Project Proposals

No abstract provided.

Assimilating To Art-Religion: Jewish Secularity And Edgar Zilsel’S Geniereligion (1918), Abigail Fine

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1918, Edgar Zilsel—a Marxist-Jewish philosopher who was soon to be exiled from Vienna—published a sociological study that later readers have found prescient of fascism. In Die Geniereligion (“The Religion of Genius”), Zilsel cautioned against the hidden dangers of elevating secular figures to the status of deities. As early as 1912, Zilsel was disturbed by how art-religion shaped music culture: his earliest published essay ruminated on timelessness and canonicity, on striving for heavenly tones while cast down to the earthly squalor of the concert hall. Indeed, in Zilsel’s Vienna, art-religion had come to dominate the music world—biographers made Beethoven a …

Creating Cultural Capital: The Education Of Jewish Females At The Alliance Israélite Universelle (Aiu) School For Girls In The City Of Tunis, 1882–1914, Joy A. Land Phd

Published Articles

Based on rarely viewed images from the fin de siècle, this article will contribute to the burgeoning field of Jewish women in the world of Islam. At the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the city of Tunis, 1882–1914, after a seven-year course of study, Jewish and non-Jewish girls acquired certification of their academic or vocational skills through a certificate or diploma of couture. Such credentials, according to Bourdieu (1986), constitute “cultural capital.” Furthermore, “cultural capital … is convertible … into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications.” A young woman could create …

Life Is Beautiful, Or Not: The Myth Of The Good Italian, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Life is Beautiful illustrates a popular misconception about Italy's role in the Holocaust. The film features the good Italian and the warped view that Italy treated Jews kindly in the late 1930s and during World War II. Historians have proven this claim to be grossly exaggerated, arguing that Italians persecuted Jews vigorously. Yet popular representations of the past-films, novels, museum exhibits, and websites-continue to give credence to the notion that Italians were overwhelmingly good to Jews. Although France and Germany cultivated similar self-acquitting myths in the decades immediately after the war, they eventually moved on to accept the more …

May 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Encounters a 20th Century Yiddish American Phenomenon; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

April 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates Passover; From the Rabbi;From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

March 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates our Cherished Seniors; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

February 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Travels to Europe; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

January 2021, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom had a Great Fall; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

Deportation, Genocide, And Memorial Politics: Remembrance And Memory In Postwar France, 1943-2015, Rachel Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis examines how the remembrance of deportation from France during the Second World War impacted the creation of two memorials in Paris in the postwar years. The two memorials, located just over 500 meters apart in the center of Paris and inaugurated within seven years of one another, physically embody each of these narratives. The Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, created by the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center (CDJC) in 1956, represents the narrative of Jewish persecution and genocide throughout Europe during the Second World War. Expanded in 2005, the Tomb is now known as the Shoah Memorial and …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Rhetoric, Pathology, And The Jewish Race In Late Victorian England, Stephanie G. Pokras

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis examines how both late Victorian Anglo-Jews and Gentiles used rhetoric of race science and Jewish pathology to encode lines of difference, as well as the relationship between these discourses. My first chapter analyzes the role of Gentile discourse of disease and disability as the foundation of late Victorian anti-Semitism. My second chapter focuses on Jewish ‘expert’ engagement with race science. In this chapter, I argue that contrary to the dominant historical narrative, not only was the Jewish community engaged with race science, but their scholarly conversations were dynamic and diverse. Ideas about race and pathology became central to …

How Palestinian Aid Organizations Adapt To The Possibility Of Further Annexation And Rights Abuses In The Wake Of "The Deal Of The Century", Nadia L. Wiggins

Capstone Collection

This research explores the question, “To what extent has the ‘Deal of the Century’ impacted Palestinian aid organizations, and how might it impact them in the future?” The significance of this question lies in the fact that the “Deal of the Century” claims to solve one of the longest and most complex conflicts, yet it has not been sufficiently analyzed from a Palestinian perspective nor a humanitarian perspective. Furthermore, by presenting scholarly critiques of the deal and aid worker’s concerns, my hope is that an American audience may be convinced of the complicity of our government in devising a failed …

December 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Mega-Chanukah Party; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

November 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group;Community Notices

October 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Simchat Torah (and Sukkot), From the Rabbi, President's Message, Book Group, Commmunity Notices

September 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Erev Rosh Hashanah Sacred Music Concert and Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices