Jewish Studies Commons^™

Review Of Dumitru, Diana, The State, Antisemitism, And Collaboration In The Holocaust: The Borderlands Of Romania And The Soviet Union And Geissbühler, Simon, Ed., Romania And The Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

Reviews of The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union by Diana Dumitru and Romania and the Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath, edited by Simon Geissbühler.

Book Review: Representing Genocide: The Holocaust As Paradigm?, Emily Sample

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

September 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Shabbat in the Woods; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Community Notices

Text To Data: Wrangling Early Modern Sources Into A Spreadsheet, Shawn Hill

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Shawn Hill discusses how to turn historical sources into data. He provides tips for preparing a spreadsheet that can be used in digital humanities.

The Expulsion Of The Jews From The State Of Milan: Same Event With Views From Different Archives, Flora Cassen

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Documents presented here come from three different sources: the archives of Milan, the archives of Simancas, and Joseph Ha-Cohen’s chronicle Emek ha-Bakha. The document from Milan, dated from 1589, is a long defense of the Jews’ right to live in Milan sent to Madrid in response to a request by Philip II of Spain who was pondering whether or not to expel the Jews. The task of writing the report of Jewish life in Milan was given to the Spanish governor of Milan, but it was a collective work put together by the Senate of Milan, based on the opinions …

Founding Documents Of The Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora, Amsterdam, Anne Oravetz Albert

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 1638 founding document of the Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora of Amsterdam is well known as a “merger agreement” that brought three existing congregations together into one synagogue under one leadership council (Mahamad). It bears the signatures of 218 householding men of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish nation in Amsterdam, signifying their agreement to subject themselves to the authority of the new leadership. It is also well known that this document, along with the set of communal regulations drawn up later that year, granted nearly unfettered authority to the Mahamad. Looking at these two documents along with an …

Construction, Reconstruction And Deconstruction: Stories About Records From The Ottoman Heartlands, Shuki Ecker

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The texts were selected in light of the general question: what kind of records did Ottoman Jewish communities maintain as part of their regular communal activities. They were further chosen to reflect procedures, considerations and conflicts that accompanied record keeping and were not usually recorded in the actual records produced. In most cases the records kept by the communities before the 19th century are no longer available. While references to the existence of various records can be found in a variety of contemporary and later sources (some of which I will mention), the texts translated offer a short selection of …

Documents, Records And Early Modern Border Crossings, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In order to cross borders in early modern Europe, travelers were expected to carry proper documentation that both identified them and permitted them entry into the region to which they intended to travel. In the Electoral Palatinate, the Jews were issued a special type of safe conduct that was tied to a flat rate tax levied on the Jews of Worms. In response, Jewish communities developed both inter- and intracommunal systems to sell, buy, and keep track of these documents. This presentation examines the safe conducts and the records and systems that developed to regulate their use.

Counting And Recording Sins, David Myers

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The documents below, from a 1635 handbook on how to confess sins, reflect the intensifying practice in early modern European Catholicism of remembering and counting offenses in preparation for attending the sacrament of penance and receiving absolution from an authorized priest. Among the originals is an example of how the “technology” was intended to work easily, almost effortlessly.

Linguistic And Formal Aspects Of Jewish Record Keeping In Italy—A Comparative Investigation, Bernard Cooperman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

There is ample evidence for a flourishing Jewish documentary consciousness in 16th-century Italy. This is clear at many different levels—from the notarial to the constitutional, from the judicial to the legislative, from the personal and mercantile to the criminal and diplomatic. Maintaining documentary archives clearly became common, indeed normative, in a wide range of communities, apparently partly in response to pressure from the outside, partly because of an increasing level of institutionalization in the growing communities themselves. What were the models and norms for Jewish documentary and archival practice? How did existing traditions of terminological, conceptual, and linguistic practices among …

Taqqanot Qandiya And The Construction Of Crete’S Jewish History, Rena N. Lauer

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

During the first half of the sixteenth century, Elijah Capsali, community leader and rabbi of the Jewish community of Candia (the capital of Venetian Crete), collected the communal ordinances and other materials (including some lists and responsa) he deemed relevant. Capsali was a self-conscious historian who also wrote Hebrew histories of the Ottoman Empire and of Venice. Nevertheless, his Cretan collection has rarely been treated in the context of Capsali’s interest in history. Rather, it has been read as a collection of almost ad-hoc legal materials. I posit that Capsali edited these texts to construct an intentional record of his …

Strategic Record Keeping And Striving For Autonomy: Was There A Jewish Community Archive In Early Modern Frankfurt?, Verena Kasper-Marienberg

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The bombardment of Frankfurt am Main by Napoleonic forces in 1796 resulted in the almost total destruction of the so-called Judengasse, a narrow lane lined with wooden houses where the Frankfurt Jews lived. This ended nearly 350 years of oppressive living conditions that segregated more than 3,000 Jewish residents of Frankfurt and their guests from their Christian neighbors. For the most part, whatever might have existed in terms of archival records of the Jewish community was also a victim of the flames. It is mostly only through the survival of non-Jewish records of or about the Jewish community that we …

Unrecorded Justice: The (Non-)Archival Practices Of Medieval Jewish Courts, Rachel Furst

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In the summer of 1298, a wave of anti-Jewish violence incited by a German nobleman named Rindfleisch swept through Franconia and the neighboring vicinities. In Würzburg, local burghers joined gangs of murderous knights to massacre nearly 900 Jews. Among the victims was Simeon ben Jacob (R. Shim’on ben R. Ya’akov), a resident of Worms who had come to Würzburg to pay and collect business debts. Following the riots, three witnesses reported that they had seen Simeon’s dead body; and on the basis of these testimonies, the Jewish court in Worms declared Simeon’s wife a widow and granted her permission to …

Volume 14: Cultures Of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, And Use In The Early Modern Period, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2017 Early Modern Workshop's theme was "Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period." The workshop focused on the creation, preservation, organization, collection, translation, and use of records, evidence, and information. It also examined continuities and change between chronological periods --including medieval and modern, and different cultures and settings--Jewish and non-Jewish. Among themes addressed were: official record keeping, personal records, collection and organization of information.

Even more than in our previous topic--history of emotions/emotions in history--there is such an abundance of work on records, and record keeping in non-Jewish historiography, but exceedingly little on …

Card Tricks: A Workflow For Scalability And Dynamic Content Creation Using Paper2d And Unreal Engine 4, Owen Gottlieb, Dakota Herold, Edward Amidon

Presentations and other scholarship

In this paper, we describe the design and technological methods of

our dynamic sprite system in Lost & Found, a table-top-to-mobile

card game designed to improve literacy regarding prosocial

aspects of religious legal systems, specifically, collaboration and

cooperation. Harnessing the capabilities of Unreal Engine’s

Paper2D system, we created a dynamic content creation pipeline

that empowered our game designers so that they could rapidly

iterate on the game’s systems and balance externally from the

engine. Utilizing the Unreal Blueprint component system we were

also able to modularize each actor during runtime as data may be

changed. The technological approach behind Lost …

Lg Ms 042 Am Chofshi Archives, Anthony Marvullo

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Administrative Information

Provenance:

The Am Chofshi Archives were donated by Gail Kass and Susan Horowitz in 2004. Kass was Am Chofshi’s treasurer and as such these archives contain financial documents and fundraising materials, some of which are restricted.

Total Boxes: 3

Linear Feet: 4.25

August 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Kiddush Levana; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Announcements; Community Notices

Typography And The Evolution Of Hebrew Alphabetic Script: Writing Method Of The Sofer, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

Typography is the study of language letterforms, phonographic alphabetic characters that, when combined with additional characters, form words and/or sentences to express an idea and communicate a message to an audience. The history of typographic design dates back to early civilization and the invention of alphabetic writing systems, formulated and processed through the literary skills of the Hebrew Scribe Ezra whose knowledge and practice offered a significant contribution within a predominantly oral society. By examining the history of Hebrew typography through the discourse of biblical writing systems and alphabetic design, the article addresses the development of Hebrew scripts evolving from …

July 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Maine-ly Jewish Storytelling Festival; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Announcments; Inconvient Artifacts; Federation Report; Community Notices

Book Review Of, Embracing A Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849 - 1950 By Ellen Eisenberg, Natan M. Meir

Judaic Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Natan M. Meir is the Chair of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University. Here he reviews the book "Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849 - 1950" by Ellen Eisenberg.

The Helpers Of The Secret Annex: A Guide For Students, Elliot L. Hearst Dyson College, Pace University, Victoria Noriega, Research Asst.

Student and Faculty Research Days

No abstract provided.

Escape From The List: Courage, Sacrifice, Survival, Elliot L. Hearst, Angelica E. Roman, Research Asst.

Student and Faculty Research Days

Anne Frank has been described as Hitler’s most famous victim. By virtue of her diary, which was in fact a heavily revised memoir that today might be considered to belong to the genre of creative non-fiction, Anne Frank has attained a kind of immortality that the art form of writing frequently provides. This should not, of course, trivialize her fate, nor the suffering of the multitudes of other victims of the Nazi regime, a group comprised of Jews, as well as non-Jews. Some of these stories have been told in great detail, while many others have not. What follows is …

"The World Of Our Children": Jews, Puerto Ricans, And The Politics Of Place And Race On The Lower East Side, 1963-1993, Barry Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how Jewish political leaders on the Lower East Side responded to neighborhood change, particularly the influx of Puerto Rican migrants, from the 1960s through the 1990s. Utilizing untapped archival material, including congressional records, municipal papers, legal files, articles from the ethnic press, and quantitative voting data, I demonstrate that the Lower East Side remained home to an influential network of Jewish political leaders, institutions, and voters long after the early twentieth-century. Residing on Grand Street, largely Orthodox, and often descended from Lower East Side Jewish immigrants, this political base created, shaped, and implemented antipoverty, education, housing, and …

June 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Shabbat Together; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Announcements; Community Notices

Time Travel, Labour History, And The Null Curriculum: New Design Knowledge For Mobile Augmented Reality History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the 'null curriculum'. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to …

May 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Café Shalom; From the Rabbi; Presidents Message; Book Group; Announcements; Bissel of Maine; Community Notices

Love Sick The Musical - A Reflection Of My Undergraduate Studies, William Kelly

Senior Theses

No abstract available

A Nation Within A Nation: Tolerance Within The Dutch Identity, Madlyn Kaufman

Georgia College Student Research Events

When looking at a country like the Netherlands there is one characteristic that sets it apart from all other countries of Europe. The extent in which tolerance is displayed, or lack thereof, has shaped its history and people within ways that shows a unique identity. This oral presentation will take an in depth look at the kinds of tolerance being practiced within the Netherlands focusing on the Jewish population from the 17th century to World War II. The research that was conducted for this presentation is a method that incorporates at home study of the 17th Century Dutch Jews and …

53 People In The [Hebrew] Bible Confirmed Archaeologically, Lawrence J. Mykytiuk

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

This is a list, with end-note documentation, of 53 people in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament who are strongly identified in published inscriptions of known authenticity, in most instances from during or quite close to their lifetimes. It includes people from ancient Egypt, Moab, Aram-Damascus, the northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah, Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia.

The intent is to include only well-grounded, strong identifications that can be trusted.

Mykytiuk's publications firmly reject the haphazard, "flying by the seat of the pants" approach of numerous online lists which are created without explicit criteria or by suspect use of …

Summer Haven: The Catskills, The Holocaust, And The Literary Imagination (Jews Of Russia & Eastern Europe And Their Legacy), Holli Levitsky

Faculty Pub Night

No abstract provided.