Jewish Studies Commons^™

Paul Celan And The Processes Of Survival In Post-Shoah Jewish Writing, Ari Savage

Theses

The following is a study of the poetry of Paul Celan as a representation of psychological and social processes present in the written works of Shoah survivors. It begins with an analysis of the place of writing in Jewish culture, then identifies three primary processes which operate in sequence: alienation, individuation, and integration. By examining Paul Celan’s highly personal and autobiographical texts in the context of his life experience as a Shoah survivor it is possible to discern the social and psychological forces at work which compel survivors to express their traumas in written form, and to gain a better …

Antisemitism & Vampires: The Surprising Roots Of A Popular Cultural Monster, Hannah Ross

English

This essay was for Justin Shaw’s fall 2023 English major capstone class. The essay examines antisemitism and vampires, specifically Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, John Polidori’s short story The Vampyre; A Tale, and the episode “Monster Movie” from the TV show Supernatural through the lens of antisemitic stereotypes. By looking at the literary history of the vampire one can trace its physical antisemitic stereotypes and the influence of fear of the “other” with reverse-colonization by Jews. Starting with historically classic 19th century texts and ending with a modern day television show, it is evident that the antisemitic physical stereotypes …

Lost & Found (Game Series) [Book Chapter], Owen Gottlieb

Articles

Description of game series for use in the classroom with best practices.

Frank Knauer Apology And Forgiveness Survey, Sam And Pearl Oliner

Apology and Forgiveness Survey

No abstract provided.

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Creative Work, and Performance

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Moral Exemplars Of Note - Horst-Klaus Hofmann, Sam And Pearl Oliner

Moral Exemplars Study

Moral Exemplars of Note - Horst-Klaus Hofmann, Sam and Pearl Oliner

Anita Brenner’S Vision: A Transnational Search For Mexican Jewish Identity, Gina Malagold

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation traces U.S.-Mexico cross-border networks during the cultural Renaissance of early 20^th century influenced by artistic and intellectual encounters in post-revolutionary Mexico. I explore from a transnational perspective the representation of Mexican-Jewish identity in post-revolutionary Mexico through the lens of Mexican-American Jewish anthropologist, artist, and journalist Anita Brenner (1905-1974). In my dissertation, Anita Brenner’s Vision: A Transnational Search for Mexican Jewish Identity, I expand on the notion of mexicanidad and reframe the cosmopolitanism of the time and its manifestation in the United States, arguing that Brenner’s contributions were instrumental in linking Mexico to the larger map of …

Imagining The “Day Of Reckoning”: American Jewish Performance Activism During The Holocaust, Maya C. Gonzalez

Masters Theses

Scholars of American Jewish history have long debated the complicity of the American Jewish community in the loss of six million Jewish lives in Europe during the Holocaust. After Hitler took power in 1933, American Jewish leaders took to the streets to protest the Nazi Party’s abuse of German Jews. Two central figures in this history are Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise and Revisionist Zionist Ben Hecht because of their wide-reaching protest movements that operated in competition with each other. Although the historiography presents Wise and Hecht's inability to unite as the product of difference, my examination of their protest performances …

The Sephardic-Mizrahi Moment: Cultural Renewal, Jewish-Arab Rapprochement And Zionism In The 1920s, Boaz Israel Levy

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This study examines the Sephardic-Mizrahi nationalist strategy in the British and French mandates of the early 20th century. Scholars including Abigail Jacobson, Moshe Naor, and Yitzhak Bezalel indicate this community developed a unique approach to nationalism. Utilizing Alex Winder’s conceptual framework for violence, Yehuda Shamir’s conceptual framework for culture and Rashid Khalidi’s analytical framework, this study broadens the research on Sephardic-Mizrahi communities, the development of 20th century nationalism, and the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Drawing on correspondences, reports and newspapers, this paper argues a Sephardic-Mizrahi Moment began by 1925, employing institutions— such as activist organizations and the press—to simultaneously …

An Analysis Of Individualism In Historiography Through Mark Gilderhus And Hannah Arendt, Abigail M. Stanger

The Cardinal Edge

Typically, the works of Mark Gilderhus and Hannah Arendt would not draw comparison or likely even be referenced in defense of the same argument. However, in the context of historiography and historical analysis, Gilderhus’ History and Historians and Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil explore the role of the individual in the agency of historical events and the nature of historical analysis itself. Gilderhus utilizes a variety of anecdotes from significant historical individuals to frame his historiographical introduction. Arendt capitalizes on her position as a subjective party in retelling the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a …

Publishing The Pan-Jewish: The First Hebrew Newspaper And Its Modernities, Philip E. Keisman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Publishing the Pan-Jewish emerges from a question about sites of synthesis between claims of sacred continuity and novel forms of communication. It centers on the first ten years of Hamagid (1856-1866), acknowledged within the historiography as history’s first Hebrew-language newspaper. Eliezer Lipman Silberman, an Orthodox butcher founded Hamagid in East Prussia as a bulwark of his vision of traditional Judaism. The first chapter of this dissertation examines the formal elements of the newspaper as a medium, demonstrating the myriad ways in which it presented novel experiences for its reading public. Chapter two narrates an untold history of the newspaper’s early …

The Limits Of Solidarity: Leftist Jewish Israeli Activism For Palestine In The 1960’S And 2010’S, Ryann M. Hubbart

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

What does it mean for Jewish Israelis to engage in Palestinian solidarity? How do they navigate their positions of privilege in their activism? To explore these questions, I begin with a historical trajectory of the rise and fall of leftist Jewish Israeli activist organizations in response to global and local developments. I focus on two periods and their organizations: The Israeli Socialist Organization in the 1960’s and 1970’s and Ta’ayush and Physicians for Human Rights Israel in the 2010’s. In both cases the individuals in question are a very small minority of Israelis. From there I analyze these organizations and …

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, …

Shifts In French Jewish Citizenship, 1789-1840s, Jourdin Wilson

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

The citizenship of Jews became more discussed as a result of changes from the French Revolution of 1789. There were a variety of perspectives between non-Jews and Jews, and between different groups of Jews. The research methodology involves the analysis of qualitative primary sources including government texts and debates, groups of everyday Jews, and French Jewish literature and journal excerpts. The theoretical framework of nationalism will guide how citizenship is analyzed in the research, based on Dean Kostantaras’s book Nationalism and Revolution in Europe, 1763-1848. Results show that the way French Jews fit into or engaged with society is quite …

Landscape Into Legend: Tracking Lost Tribes And Crypto-Jews Across New Mexican Terrain, Judith S. Neulander

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

The essay traces the “Lost Tribes of Israel” legend to the purported academic discovery of lost and hidden “crypto-Jews” in contemporary New Mexico. The essay explores perceptions and beliefs of Jewish diasporic survival and identity in folkloristic, religious, historical, and genomic contexts. Analysis exposes pseudo-ethnography and pseudoscience as the basis for New Mexican claims, influenced in part by habitual association of the regional landscape with lost, hidden, and/or “wandering” Jews.

The Rise Of Judaic Calligraphy In The Twentieth Century, Stephen Michael Cohen

Jewish Folklore and Ethnology

Excluding religiously required safrut (e.g., handwritten Torah scrolls, mezuzot, tefillin, gittin), artistic aspects of Judaic calligraphy declined after moveable type was invented in the fifteenth century. Rediscovery of medieval calligraphic techniques in late nineteenth-century Britain, plus contemporaneous typographical studies in Germany, spurred revival of artistic calligraphy. The first Arts and Crafts movement, pre-World War I German research into aesthetic letterforms, and the Bezalel Academy sparked a rise of secularized Judaic calligraphy. Growth of folk arts and ethnic pride in the 1960s and accessible photocopiers in the 1970s allowed nonspecialists to become expert calligraphers.

In A Condition Of No Light, Alana Perino

Masters Theses

In a Condition of No Light is an autofictional investigation into lineages of familial domesticity. The performances therein circumnavigate one family in one domestic environment, yet are in dialogue with repertoires learned and rehearsed within legacies of myth, literature, theater, film, music, and image; as well as through the otherwise untraceability of embodied memory and inherited trauma. The methodologies used are primarily photographic but also encompass practices reaching towards sculpture, installation, and performance. The line of questioning reserved for this inquiry is how a home, its objects, and inhabitants generate, spacialize, and embody the conditions of wealth, whiteness, and gender. …

Du Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Caitlyn Aldersea, Justin Bravo, Sam Allen, Anna Block, Connor Block, Emma Buechler, Maria De Los Angeles Bustillos, Arianna Carlson, William Christensen, Olivia Kachulis, Noah Craver, Kate Dillon, Muskan Fatima, Angel Fernandes, Emma Finch, Colleen Cassidy, Amy Fishman, Andrea Francis, Stacia Fritz, Simran Gill, Emma Gries, Rylie Hansen, Shannon Powers, Jacqueline Martinez, Zachary Harker, Ashley Hasty, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Kathleen Hopps, Adelaide Kerenick, Colin Kleckner, Ci Koehring, Elijah Kruger, Braden Krumholz, Maddie Leake, Lyneé Alves, Seraphina Loukas, Yatzari Lozano Vazquez, Haley Maki, Emily Martinez, Sierra Mckinney, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Audrey Mitchell, Kipling Newman, Audrey Ng, Megan Lucyshyn, Andrew Nguyen, Stevie Ostman, Casandra Pearson, Alexandra Penney, Julia Gielczynski, Tyler Ball, Anna Rini, Christina Rorres, Simon Ruland, Helayna Schafer, Emma Sellers, Sarah Schuller, Claire Shaver, Kevin Summers, Isabella Shaw, Madison Sinar, Claudia Pena, Apshara Siwakoti, Carter Sorensen, Madi Sousa, Anna Sparling, Alexandra Revier, Brandon Thierry, Dylan Tyree, Maggie Williams, Lauren Wols

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

DU Undergraduate Showcase: Research, Scholarship, and Creative Works

Invoking The Holocaust At The Border: Holocaust Museums, Commemoration And Community Activism In The Southwest., Mayra A. Martinez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis is a localized study that engages with the literature on Holocaust memory and memorialization in the U.S. and asks how the themes and methodologies of those scholars elucidate Holocaust memorialization and education along the U.S.-Mexico border. During 2018-2019, the U.S. witnessed migrant Caravans from Central America, Haiti, Africa, and South Asia as migrants fled violence, displacement, and extreme poverty to cross multiple borders and perilous terrain to seek refuge at the U.S.-Mexico border. During these same years, Holocaust analogies and Holocaust memory were instrumentalized by human rights advocates, descendants of survivors, and public officials who either linked migrant …

To Have Sex Or Not To Have Sex: An Exploration Of Medieval Christian And Jewish Sexual Values, Rachel Zaslavsky

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of Medieval Jewish and Christian conceptions of sex and aims to challenge the notion of Judeo-Christian values. Medieval Judaism and Christianity are at odds with each other in their understandings of sexuality. By considering Judaism, the belief that medieval religion was averse to sexuality and sexual pleasure is disproven. An analysis of religious works, such as those produced by Christian theologians and Jewish rabbis, yields the following conclusion: medieval Christianity restricted sex on the basis of abstinence, while medieval Judaism restricted sex on the basis of ritual impurity but mandated sex for procreation and female …

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 …

Between Faith And Nation: The Complexities Of Jewish Identity In Interwar Austria, Sarah E. Townsend

Honors College Theses

During the period between the First and Second World Wars, the people of the newly established Austrian Republic faced many changes: the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Habsburg Monarchy, economic hardships during and following the First World War, and the question of German ethnic nationalism and unification with Germany. The question of national identity was relevant to the entire Austrian population and Austrians had to make an important decision about their nationality: Austrian or German? For Austrian Jews, the dilemma was more complicated. Zionism promoted the idea of Jewish statehood and a solely Jewish identity. This thesis explores the …

Redefining The Agency Of Jewish Communities Through Ghetto Humor, Addison E. Lomax

Student Publications

While the Holocaust is remembered by historians and victims as a time of suffering and genocide, Jewish ghetto survivors recall numerous occasions in which humor was used to combat the oppression of Nazi authorities. Although many historians emphasized the physical hardships and tragic conditions faced by Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the existence of jokes throughout Eastern European ghettos articulated the legitimacy of humor within the greater context and discussion of coping, resistance, and unification for the preservation of Jewish life and identity in the post-war period. Rather than depicting Jews as solely victims, humor returns agency to the Jews …

Stolperstein/Stumbling Stone For Holocaust Survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hymann, Bochum/German, Toronto/Kanada Und New York, Ny, Usa, Courtney Conte, Mona Eikel-Pohen

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The documentation tries to capture the life of Holocaust survivor Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman who spent his youth in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, and was forced by the National Socialists to leave parents, home, and country. The documentation does not claim to give a full picture, just an insight into Otto Heimann's/Bob Hyman's life.

It will be read out on June 6, 2023 in Bochum, Germany when a Stolperstein, a stumbling stone, will be place near Alte Bahnhstraße 6 in Bochum-Langendreer, Germany, to commemorate Otto Heimann/Bob Hyman, so that we and future generations may learn from history.

Diese Dokumentation versucht, das Leben Bob …

Resisting Nazism Within Hitler’S Germany, Patricia M. Mische

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Wikipedia’S Intentional Distortion Of The History Of The Holocaust, Jan Grabowski, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame …

Community Oral History To Widen The Path: The Jewish Mobile Oral History Project, Deborah Gurt

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article presents the case study of the Jewish Mobile Oral History Project of the McCall Library at the University of South Alabama as an example of a participatory archival practice. With goals to build a collection centered on a minority experience, to engage with community members, and to foster inter-communal dialogue, the project highlights affect as one vital consideration for archival record keepers, users, and subjects.

Soviet Commemoration And Myth-Making Of The Nazi Extermination Camps: Case Studies On Treblinka, Sobibór, And Majdanek, Isaac Bluestein

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Nazi extermination camps of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Majdanek, all located in Eastern Europe, are understudied, underdiscussed, and undermemorialized in public and scholarly memory. In this paper, I seek to conduct case studies of these three camps, their histories, and their commemoration efforts. Ultimately, four main factors prevented these camps from achieving the solemn recognizability they deserve and from having their victims’ stories adequately told; little remains of these camps compared to concentration camps in Germany, fewer individuals survived them to emphasize their importance, the Soviet Union possessed near complete control of their study and commemoration, which allowed for them …

Jewish Presence In The Venetian Empire: A Challenge To Venetian Mythology, Avery Rosensweig

Honors Theses

This paper attempts to explain the significance of Jewish presence in the Venetian Empire in the context of the myth of Venice. Jews were officially permitted to settle in Venice in 1516, but their connection with the Venetian Empire goes further back. Jews were important for the success of the Venetian Empire, particularly from the sixteenth century onward. The permanent settlement of the Jews in Venice directly impacted the very ideology of the Venetian Empire.

Although the phrase "myth of Venice" was developed by twentieth-century historians, Venetians perpetuated the myth and wove its ideals into the foundation of the Venetian …

The History Of Teaching The Holocaust In Public Secondary Schools In The United States, From The 1960s To The Present, Julia Highbury Spenser

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.