Jewish Studies Commons^™

How To Be A French Jew: Proust, Lazare, Glissant, Paul J. Fadoul

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation I use Auerbach's insights developed in his Mimesis to demonstrate that in A la recherche, Proust captures the political and racial concerns of his times, proposing as a solution a heterogeneous French society where cultural, ethnic, and religious groups live together in mutual respect and understanding. In his novel, Proust echoes ideas developed by Bernard Lazare in Le Nationalisme Juif (1897) as well as in the literary output of the first French Jewish Renaissance (early1900’s to the mid1930’s). These authors responded to the portentous mix of Nationalist and anti-Semitic politics by urging the creation of a separate …

Prejudice, Progress, And Preservation: The "Bertig Dynasty" Of Northeast Arkansas, 1870 - 1950, Elizabeth Elaine Johnson

Student Theses and Dissertations

This study is a multi-faceted examination of the historiographical representation of Jews in the American South using one family’s story to guide the historical analysis. With roots in the Austrian province Galicia, Adolph and Saul Bertig’s story challenges notions and erroneous historical claims regarding American Jewry’s national origins and identities. The narrative thus provides a more nuanced understanding of the historical circumstances central to many Jews’ decisions to migrate and stay in the United States. Jewish transplants into the predominantly Protestant culture of Northeast Arkansas, the Bertig brothers were key players in Greene County, Arkansas’s development and amassed a fortune …

September 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Selichot Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Women of Achievement Award; Community Notices

Emotions And Business In A Trans-Mediterranean Jewish Household, Francesca Bregoli

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

These five excerpts come from two letter books that belonged to Joseph Franchetti (ca. 1720-ca. 1794), a successful Jewish merchant of Mantuan origins based in Tunis. At the time of the correspondence (1776-1790), Franchetti was a chief partner in the Salomone Enriches & Joseph Franchetti Company, a family-based trading firm with interests in Tunis, Livorno, and Smyrna. In the 1770s and 1780s, the core of Franchetti’s business was the sale of Tunisian chechias. These hats, made in Tunis with European wool acquired from Livorno, were highly sought after in the Ottoman Empire, with Smyrna serving as key distribution …

Fear In The Archive: Police Dossiers And The History Of Emotions In Old Regime France, Jeffrey Freedman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following document is a police dossier drawn from the Y series of the Archives Nationales. Compiled by a neighborhood commissioner named Louis- Pierre Regnard, the dossier contains testimony pertaining to the case of François Fromard, a journeyman quarry worker who hanged himself in his apartment in a working-class neighborhood of Paris on 29 May 1750. According to the testimony of his wife and neighbors, Fromard saw police agents everywhere and, before taking his own life, had become convinced that he was going to be arrested and imprisoned. No one, however, gave any indication that the police were really pursuing …

The Quality Of Mercy Strained--Regret And Repentance In Early Modern Law, David Myers

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following texts come from a trial of Catherine Mundt, tried in 1693, for infanticide, and interrogated under torture. The records are preserved in the Stadt Archiv Braunschweig.

“For We Jews Are Merciful”: Emotions And Communal Identity, Elisheva Carlebach

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Assigning character traits to national groups was a key pastime in the early modern period, part of a process of consolidation of European national identities. This presentation examines the way emotional characteristics were assigned to emerging national groups. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Jewish communal sources employed language and terms of emotion to characterize Jewish communities. Internally the language often functioned to call notice to an ideal that the community was failing to live up to.

The following texts are excerpts from Jewish communal records, as noted for each excerpt

A Short History Of Horror: Early Modern Jews And Their Monsters, Iris Idelson-Shein

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following sources offer a short survey of one particularly troubling source of fear—and indeed horror—in the early modern period, namely—the womb. A mysterious, uniquely feminine organ, for centuries the womb has been the stuff of fantasies and nightmares. It has been imagined at one and the same time as a haven and a hell, a nest and a tomb, a source of pleasure and pain, life and illness.

The following excerpts come from different genres, spaces, and languages. The first two excerpts are taken from two medical compendiums written around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The …

For The Love Of God: Spiritual Purpose And Mastering Emotions In The Pietistic Writings Of Moses Hayim Luzzatt, David Sclar

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

During the early modern period, Jews lived with an assumed religious tenet to love their God. Biblical texts, including verses used in the liturgical Shema, explicitly commanded believers to wholly and actively do so. In the twelfth century, Maimonides had described a love of God driven by rational adoration of the Torah (and God’s works), which, appropriately realized, would result in a sense of intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Early modern kabbalists took the notion further by desiring to commune with the living God (devekut), channeling all of their faculties, including emotions, towards the spiritual. Both conceptions idealized love …

Rebbe Nachman Of Bratslav's Teachings On Melancholy And Joy, Lawrence Fine

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The several texts presented here are from the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810), great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and one of the very most significant figures in the history of early Hasidism. They are from part two (tinyana) of Nachman’s most important published collection of teachings, Liqqutei Moharan. These passages each address the subject of melancholy—marah shechora in Nahman’s language--as well as its antidote, joy, simchah. While the avoidance of sadness, and the cultivation of joy, are common motifs in classical Hasidism, Rebbe Nachman’s discussion of them deserves special attention in any …

Emotions In The Margins: Reading Toledot Yeshu After The Affective Turn, Sarit Kattan Gribetz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In 826 C.E., Agobard, bishop of Lyon, published a treatise entitled De Judaicis superstitionibus, detailing and ridiculing the ‘superstitions’ of the Jews. The details Agobard recounts make clear that the bishop is referring to a medieval Jewish parody of the story of Jesus’ life, known as Toledot Yeshu (Life of Jesus), composed in Aramaic sometime before the second half of the eighth century and later translated into Hebrew. Toledot Yeshu tells the story of Jesus’ life in a biting, vulgar tone. It was a text composed and used by Jews as an anti-Christian polemic, and as an internal document …

Emotions And Preaching, Sara Lipton

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Jacques de Vitry (b. ca. 1160, d. 1240) was one of the most famous preachers of the high Middle Ages. Born in northern France, he studied at the University of Paris, and in 1210 became a canon regular in the diocese of Liège. Jacques’s most popular collection, the Sermones vulgares vel ad status, contains sermons recorded in Latin but designed to be preached in the vulgar tongue to laypeople, and arranged according the social class and profession of the audience. The sermon transcribed and translated here appears in Jacques’s less popular collection—the Sermones dominicales et festivales. Less popular, because the …

Emw 2016: History Of Emotions/Emotions In History, Fordham University

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2016 Early Modern Workshop on “History of Emotions/Emotions in History” was held at Fordham University.

Alongside earlier “turns” such as the linguistic and the cultural, an “emotional turn” has provided historians with a fresh perspective to consider the past. Emotion structures human experience. But emotions are shaped by languages of expression that can have ramifications for human thought and behavior. Historians pursuing research about emotions tend to follow one of two tacks: either to explore emotions as an object of inquiry in its own right (did people in the past “feel” differently than we do today?) or to use …

August 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Kiddush Levana; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; L-A Jewish Federation; A Bissel of Maine; Community Notices

History Of Visual Communication Design: The Bezelel Academy Of Art, Jerusalem, Shayna Tova Blum

Faculty and Staff Publications

Supported by the modern European Zionist movement, the Bezelel Academy of Art, Jerusalem, was founded in 1906 by Lithuanian artist and Zionist Boris Schatz. In the early years of the academy, work produced by students exhibited the political complexities presented in the Jewish return to Eretz Israel. The expression of concepts addressed in modern Jewish identity and Zionist ideologies were utilized in creative processes of visual communication and design. As most faculty and students were immigrating to Mandatory Palestine from Europe, the academy’s curriculum was developed through the culmination of styles and materials reflective of both European art and design …

Eleven Non-Royal Jeremianic Figures Strongly Identified In Authentic, Contemporaneous Inscriptions, Lawrence J. Mykytiuk

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Using established criteria, this article identifies nine persons mentioned in the book of Jeremiah and two high priests in 1 Chronicles, all of whom were contemporaries of Jeremiah. These persons are identified with virtual certainty in inscriptions of known authenticity contemporaneous with that prophet. Some these inscriptions came to light as recently as 2005 and 2008.

Authentic bullae from excavations in the City of David refer to several Hebrew people named in the Bible. These are: Gemaryahu the king’s minister and his father Shaphan the scribe, Yehukal the king’s minister and his father Shelemyahu, Gedalyahu the king’s minister and his …

July 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Maine-ly Jewish Storytelling Festival; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Community Notices

A Boy In Hiding: Surviving The Nazis, Amsterdam 1940-1945, Stan Rubens

Zea E-Books Collection

A Boy in Hiding: Surviving the Nazis is a poignant, true-survival story of a young boy who hid for four years underground in Holland during World War II. A Boy in Hiding sheds a light on the difficult road that lay ahead for Anne Frank—had she survived. This book is written from the point of view of an eight-year-old boy growing up too fast during the five years of the war. Now, sixty years later, Rubens gives a voice to the young boy, who—despite the hard times and difficulties he encountered, never lost his positive view on life.

Review Of T. Alexa Linhard's Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory, Eva Núñez-Méndez

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Review of Linhard, Tabea Alexa. Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2014. Pp. 248. ISBN 978-0-80478-739-0.

A Postexilic Reading Of The Biblical Flood Narrative, Kyla Beckstrand

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Fashioning Desire At B. Altman & Co.: Ethics And Consumer Culture In Early Department Stores, Tessa Maffucci

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We live in an age of fast fashion. Clothing is produced in greater volumes than ever before and the lifecycle of each garment keeps getting shorter and shorter. Many items are manufactured to be worn only one time and then thrown away—as disposable as a cup of coffee. There is much to be learned about our current fashion ecosystem by looking into the past. Beyond the garments themselves we must understand the larger historical and sociological context in which these articles of clothing were produced. How does the shopping environment shape the buying habits and fashion trends of an era? …

Jud Ms 07 Casco Bay Tummlers Finding Aid, Natalie Hill

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Provenance: The Casco Bay Tummlers Archives represent materials related to the organization Casco Bay Tummlers from 1989-2008. The Archives was donated by Julie Goell of Peaks Island, ME in 2009.

Ownership and Literary Rights: The Casco Bay Tummlers Archives is the physical property of the University of Southern Maine Libraries. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the creator or her/his legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Head of Special Collections [email protected].

Restrictions on access: Some materials are restricted until the year 2076.

June 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Shavout; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Announcements; Communit Notices

May 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Lag B'Omer, From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Community Notices

The Scapegoat, Katherine Ludwig

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

This essay responds to a claim made in the aftermath of an Anti-Semitic attack. It discusses the treatment of Jews in Europe around the time of the Holocaust and what may have motivated this treatment.

Migration In Slavic Village, The History Behind The Cleveland Central Catholic Ironmen., Mary C. Brondfield Mrs., Matt Aber Mr.

Migration in Global Context Symposium

This presentation is a collaborative effort by two educators from the disciplines of art and history. The PowerPoint presentation documents the the cross curricular migration themed event that explored migration in Slavic Village, Ohio. Historical speakers and visits to historical sites engaged students throughout the event. Through oral history and the visual arts students engaged in project based learning.

April 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Community Passover Seder; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Community Notices

The Tragedy Of Deportation: An Analysis Of Jewish Survivor Testimony On Holocaust Train Deportations, Connor Schonta

Senior Honors Theses

Over the course of World War II, trains carried three million Jews to extermination centers. The deportation journey was an integral aspect of the Nazis’ Final Solution and the cause of insufferable torment to Jewish deportees. While on the trains, Jews endured an onslaught of physical and psychological misery.

Though most Jews were immediately killed upon arriving at the death camps, a small number were chosen to work, and an even smaller number survived through liberation. The basis of this study comes from the testimonies of those who survived, specifically in regard to their recorded experiences and memories of the …

March 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Purim Celebration; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Bissel of Maine; Community Notices

Commandant Of Lubizec: Fiction And The Holocaust In The Twilight Of The Survivor Era, Stephen J. Gaies

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Seventy years after the liberation of the camps, Holocaust scholarship remains as vibrant and self-renewing as ever. Important works have been published in recent years; many have helped to shift the spotlight onto topics to which too little attention had been paid. For example, researchers like Omer Bartov, Timothy Snyder and Robert DesBois have focused on the war in the East and mass murder in the western Soviet Union, where some one and a half million Jews were shot by firing squads in what is now often referred to, following DesBois and the title of his book, as the Holocaust …