Jewish Studies Commons^™

Jewish Consumption And Material Culture In The Early Modern Period, Emw 2007

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

At the 2007 Early Modern Workshop, speakers discussed the representation of Jews and their way of life in art and the use of various types of images and objects by scholars trying to learn about Jewish rituals, customs, and culture: images from Christian sources (Shalom Sabar), beakers (Vivian Mann), cloth and textiles used to make parokhet (Rachel Greenblatt). Can symbols used in synagogues and books tell us much about the values of the Jewish community? What role did ideology play in public representations of the Jewish community (Limor Mintz-Manor)? Scholars discussed the usefulness and pitfalls of using inventory records, focusing …

Holocaust Si Gulag – Variante Ale Conceptului De Genocid? Intre Dreptul International Si Teoriile Contemporane Privind Violenta Colectiva [Holocaust And Gulag – Varieties Of The Concept Of Genocide? Between International Law And Current Theories Of Collective Violence]., Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the concept of genocide from the point of view international legislation, its applicability to the mass violence phenomena known as Holocaust and Gulag, the difficulties of interpretation and the various solutions proposed by contemporary scholars. It seems that there is a need for a change in the definition of genocide in the international law, in the sense of updating this definition to the political and social developments in the world. The current concept of genocide, regulated by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide poses a series of impediments that makes …

Juveniles In Early Modern Jewish-Italian Communities Between Family Control And Kabbalistic Piety, Roni Weinstein

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presentation discusses conceptions of childhood, youth, and marriage in Italian Jewish Culture.

The text reproduced is an excerpt from a mid-seventeenth century work by Pinhas Baruch Monselice.

The Role Of Marriage And Marital Sexuality In Lurianic Kabbalah, Lawrence Fine

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presentation situates the development of Lurianic Kabbalah in its context of sixteenth-century Safed. Focusing on two texts by Hayyim Vital, Lawrence Fine discusses sexuality and marital relations in Lurianic Kabbalah and among the Kabbalists themselves.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Ta'amei Mitsvot, Parshat Bereshit (Reasons for the Commandments concerning “Be Fruitful and Multiply”) by Hayim Vital (1570s)
• Sha'ar Kavvanot (The Gate of [Contemplative] Intentions, Concerning Sabbath Eve) by Hayim Vital (1570s)

The Woodstruck Deed The Documentation Of Accidental Defloration Among The Jews Of Early Modern Italy, David Malkiel

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The “woodstruck” (mukat ets) deed, a Hebrew document that officially records the accidental defloration of a young girl, appears in sixteenth-century Italy, in a block of deeds recorded by Jewish notaries in Rome, in a rabbinic responsum and in the record book of the Padua community. Prior to that, there is no record of such an instrument anywhere in Jewish history and literature, despite the fact that the frequency of accidental defloration must have been a constant. Moreover, the registers of the Jewish notaries of sixteenth-century Rome contain over a hundred such deeds for the sixteenth century alone. The appearance …

Jewish Women And Economic Encounters With Christians, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

R. Yair Hayyim ben Moses Samson Bacharach (1638-1702) is well-known for his knowledge of halakha and Kabbalah. Over the course of his lifetime, he served as the rabbi in several locations in the Holy Roman Empire. In these two responsa, Bacharach deals with one of the halakhic problems surrounding women’s trade with non-Jews. Such trade inevitably caused women to enter into seclusion (yihud) with non-Jews, especially since according to Jewish law, the presence of the non-Jew’s wife did not alleviate the prohibition of seclusion with a non-Jew.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Havvot Yair, Responsum 66
• Havvot Yair, …

How Family Wealth And Power Are Organized, Moshe Rosman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following is a translation of Todros Kozuchowski's will. Originally written in Polish, then translated into Hebrew, the will was translated into English by Moshe Rosman.

Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767), Elisheva Carlebach

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Elisheva Carlebach's presentation discusses excerpts from the Pinkas Shamash Altona, providing a glimpse on an aspect of Jewish life that usually remained obscured--illegitimate children born to Jewish domestic servants, and the servants themselves, held very marginal status in the community. One of the pertinent issue was death. If they died the responsibility for buying them was contested between many different parties.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767)

Click here for a video presentation.

Jewish Marriage In Christian Eyes, Yaacov Deutsch

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation deals with a Christian description of early modern Jewish marriage rituals. The text is a translation of a chapter on Jewish marriage from Johannes Buxtorf's "Synagoga Judaica" or "Jewish Synagogue" (1603).

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Synagoga Judaica (The Jewish Synagogue) by Johannes Buxtorf (1603)

Emw 2006: Gender, Family, And Social Structures, Emw 2006

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2006 Early Modern Workshop on the topic of “Gender, Family, and Social Structures” addressed a spectrum of topics about the transformation of the concept and form of family in general, and of Jewish family in particular in the early modern period.

The workshop took up questions of: marriage rituals, as represented by early modern (Elisheva Baumgarten) and Christians (Jacob Deutsch), and marriage contracts (Ruth Lamdan), responsibilities of the Jewish community to women and out-of-wedlock children (Elisheva Carlebach), challenges to marriage and marital propriety (Debra Kaplan on rabbinic responses to Jewish women’s encounters with Christian men; David Malkiel and Kenneth …

Close Quarters Privacy And Jewish House Space In Early Modern Polish Cities, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following texts were chosen in order to illustrate the implications of the growth in Jewish population in Poland's larger towns during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the number of Jews grew faster than the non-Jewish authorities would allow the Jewish quarters to expand. This led to an increasing degree of crowding in the Jewish quarter as a whole as well as in individual houses. To illustrate this, some demographic data on the situation in the Jewish quarter of Poznan may be seen in the presentation.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Cracow Community Ordinance of 5355 (1595) …

Question Of The Eruv In Early Modern Europe, David Katz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Both the responsum of Rabbi Aboab and that of Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi reflect a feature of pre-modern kehillah life almost never dealt with in scholarly literature, namely, the urban eruv, a physical boundary delineating space in which one is permitted to carry items on Sabbath, erected by the kehillah.

This presentation is for the following text(s), available in the PDF file:

• Samuel Aboab's Responsum 257
• Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi's Responsum, She'elot u'Teshuvot Hakham Zvi no. 6 (1699)

Click here to view the video

The Boom Of Testimony After Communism: The Voices Of The Holocaust Survivors In Romania: 1989-2005, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

"In this article I intend to deal with the relation between Jewish survivors and Holocaust remembrance in post-communist Romania. Therefore I will investigate the consequences of the Holocaust experience on Jewish survivors from the perspective of how, when and why they remember the catastrophe. My investigation will not particularly focus on the level of the trauma and sufferings they have to live with, but rather on how the political, social and cultural factors have managed to influence the public recollection of the war sufferings and the survivors’ attitude towards Holocaust remembrance. I am interested in discovering mainly the way these …

Political Impetus, And Moral Imperative: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Karyn House

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Early Modern Jewries, Emw 2004

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2004 workshop’s goal was to look broadly at the early modern period, and develop a number of themes that might be pursued at subsequent workshops. At the workshop, a number of scholars worked together for three days trying to define the parameters of this chronological period in Jewish history. Participants have covered a broad, if still necessarily limited, range of geographic, thematic, and disciplinary topics, resulting in the first collection of impressive texts on early modern Jewish history. They include privileges granted by monarchs and lords to Jews (privileges granted to Jews of Great Poland in 1453, to a …

"Who Is Sleeping In The Bed Of Sodom?", Nancy Levene

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The question that I am left with from the extraordinary presentations over the conference's two days borrows from Rabbi Steve Greenberg's and Ludger Viefhues's discussion of the multiple images of the biblical "Sodom". Conventionally Sodom has signified a place of sexual deviance or, conversely, sexual censorship. But as Greenberg pointed out, in many traditional commentaries on the story of the condemnation of Sodom, the issue was not that the townspeople were engaged in forbidden sexual practices, but that they were violent and hostile to those in need of shelter and food.

Inmigración, Nacionalismo Cultural, Campo Intelectual: El Proyecto Creador De Alberto Gerchunoff, Fernando Degiovanni

Publications and Research

El final de la Autobiografía (1914) de Alberto Gerchunoff (1883-1950) constituye uno de los puntos de partida más significativos a través de los cuales es posible analizar la temática de lo judío-argentino en el marco de su producción textual. El autor de Los gauchos judíos (1910) se sitúa allí frente al campo cultural de la Argentina del Centenario por medio de una serie de operaciones ideológicas que plantean una opción no sólo intelectual sino también específicamente literaria en la construcción de su proyecto creador. La afirmación: “Yo no aspiro a cantar únicamente la vida judía: soy ante todo argentino y …

12/22/1991 Birthday Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

06/26/1991 Anniversary Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE.

Brief note from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein on the occasion of their anniversary.

The Future Of Jewish Monuments, Samuel Gruber, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Exhibition essay from first exhibition focused on the documentation, protection and preservation of Jewish monuments and historic sites. The exhibition opened in conjunction with the international conference "The Future of Jewish Monuments," organized by the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund. The exhibition focused on the needs of historic sites in Eastern Europe, North Africa, the united States and elsewhere, and made the case for international support.

05/13/1990 Mother's Day Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

Brief letter from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein for Mother's Day, 1990.

Freud's Dream Of Interpretation, Ken Frieden

Books

Frieden explores methods of dream interpretation in the Bible, the Talmud, and in the writings of Sugmund Freud, and brings to light Freud's Troubled relationship to his Judaic forerunners. This book reveals unfamiliar associations in intellectual history and challenges received ideas in biblical, Talmudic, and Freudian scholarship.

12/12/1988 Birthday Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

Brief note from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein on the occasion of her birthday.

12/22/1986 Birthday Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

Brief note from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein on the occasion of her birthday.

12/22/1980 Birthday Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

Brief note from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein on the occasion of her 52nd birthday.

Nathan Asch Papers - Accession 344, Nathan Asch

Manuscript Collection

The Nathan Asch Papers consist of personal and business correspondence, legal and financial papers, published short works of Nathan Asch, book reviews, unpublished manuscripts, notes, photographs, clippings, and a tape recording of the novelist. There is exclusive correspondence with many literary personalities including Malcolm Cowley, Josephine Herbst, James Farrell, Morley Callaghan, Stefan Zweig, Sholem Asch, Doris Lessing, Hart Crane, Hermynia Zur Mühlen, John Dos Passos, and Ford Madox Ford. There is also information pertaining to his work with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and his service in the US Army Corps during World War II.

12/22/1978 Birthday Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

Brief note from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein on the occasion of her 50th birthday.

The Changing Attitudes Towards The Jews Of England 1066-1660, Bernard Glassman

History Theses & Dissertations

Abstract unavailable.

8. Jerusalem: Summary, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section I: Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem: Background of Western Civilization

In this section an attempt has been made to sketch some of the most important developments of the first five hundred years of Christian history. By the year 500 the Church had been for more than a century the only legal religious institution in what remained of the Western Roman Empire, whose subjects were thus, nominally at least, Christians. The Church was an essentially new institution in the Mediterranean World, one with which no previous tribe, polis, nation, or empire had had to come to terms. Because of the position which it enjoyed, the Church had called into existence a …

06/26/1953 Anniversary Note, Sumner T. Bernstein

Rosalyne S. Bernstein Correspondence

For more information on the Rosalyne S. Bernstein Papers, please visit the finding aid HERE

Brief note from Sumner T. Bernstein to Rosalyne S. Bernstein on the occasion of their anniversary.