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Articles 1 - 20 of 20
Full-Text Articles in Jewish Studies
Contributors, Jewish Folkore & Ethnology Editors
Contributors, Jewish Folkore & Ethnology Editors
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Contributors to Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Volume 2
In Memoriam: Tamar Alexander-Frizer (1945–2023), Eli Yassif
In Memoriam: Tamar Alexander-Frizer (1945–2023), Eli Yassif
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Memorial Essay for Professor Tamar Alexander (1945-2023)
(Candle)Sticks On Stone: The Representation Of Women In Jewish Tombstone Art, Ruth Ellen Gruber
(Candle)Sticks On Stone: The Representation Of Women In Jewish Tombstone Art, Ruth Ellen Gruber
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Candles and candlesticks are a common and potent symbol on the gravestones of Jewish women because lighting the Sabbath candles is one of the three so-called “women’s commandments” carried out by female Jews; it is the only one easily represented in visual terms. This essay describes the author’s field research, photographic, and writing project, “(Candlesticks) on Stone,” carried out mainly in 2009–2011, to explore the variety of ways candles and candlesticks are depicted on women’s gravestones in Eastern Europe. It also questions the transmission of the candle-lighting tradition from her East European ancestors to later generations.
“In Proverbiis Non Semper Veritas”: Reflections On The Reprint Of An Antisemitic Proverb Collection, Wolfgang Mieder
“In Proverbiis Non Semper Veritas”: Reflections On The Reprint Of An Antisemitic Proverb Collection, Wolfgang Mieder
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
This article concerns the highly questionable 2016 reprint of Ernst Hiemer’s antisemitic proverb collection Der Jude im Sprichwort der Völker (1942, The Jew in the Proverbs of the People). It begins with a glance at earlier antisemitic proverb collections while also reviewing some of the superb Yiddish and Jewish/Hebrew proverb collections and serious studies on this rich repertoire of proverbs. This is followed by a discussion of the misguided antisemitic publications of the nineteenth century that were precursors of even more slanderous and prejudiced collections that appeared during the time of National Socialism. It is shown that both traditional …
Why Were There No Jokes After The 2021 Meron Crowd Crush? On Israeli “Joking Relationships”, Tsafi Sebba-Elran
Why Were There No Jokes After The 2021 Meron Crowd Crush? On Israeli “Joking Relationships”, Tsafi Sebba-Elran
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
The vast research literature on disaster jokes demonstrates that no calamity is too horrific to be followed by jokes that typically recontextualize traumatic events and channel the threatening voices that these events provoke. Why, then, did no jokes circulate after the deadliest civil disaster in Israel’s history, which occurred on Mount Meron during the Lag Ba’Omer celebrations in April 2021? Drawing upon the ethnographic concept of “joking relationships,” this essay documents representations of ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) in contemporary Israeli memes and explains the restraint that Israeli society shows toward this group with whom the Meron disaster is associated. …
The Besht As Ba’Al Shem: Magic In The Life And Legacy Of Israel Ba’Al Shem Tov, Elly Moseson
The Besht As Ba’Al Shem: Magic In The Life And Legacy Of Israel Ba’Al Shem Tov, Elly Moseson
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (the Besht), the purported founder of the Hasidic movement, achieved renown during his lifetime as a holy man and a ba’al shem—a magician and folk healer. This paper surveys the sources containing evidence pertaining to the Besht’s medico-magical activities, presents the variety of recipes and rituals that have been preserved in his name, and explores the implications these hold for understanding his life and legacy. It further argues that the centrality of magic we find in the life of the Besht did not disappear with his death but was maintained within the Hasidic movement that …
“Let Me Tell You Some Stories, And You Will Record Them”: Dan Ben-Amos And The Study Of Jewish Folklore And Ethnology, Simon J. Bronner
“Let Me Tell You Some Stories, And You Will Record Them”: Dan Ben-Amos And The Study Of Jewish Folklore And Ethnology, Simon J. Bronner
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Dan Ben-Amos (1934–2023) was associated with groundbreaking work beginning during the 1960s on concepts of context and performance and the paradigm shift in folkloristics with his groundbreaking essay “Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context.” His odyssey from Israel to the United States, including formative experiences as a youth absorbing ideas about social reality and Jewish folklore as counterculture, has a profound influence on an equally profound shift in the understanding of Jewish experience as well as on the globalization of folkloristics as a discipline. In addition to interpreting his culminating work of the Folktales of the Jews series of …
Contributors, Jewish Folklore And Ethnology Editors
Contributors, Jewish Folklore And Ethnology Editors
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Author biographies for contributors to this issue.
Yahrzeit ... Haya Bar-Itzhak (1946–2020), Simon J. Bronner
Yahrzeit ... Haya Bar-Itzhak (1946–2020), Simon J. Bronner
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Haya Bar-Itzhak was a driving force behind this journal and a shaper of the global study of Jewish folklore and ethnology. In her teaching, writing, and editing, she brought into relief the long lineage of work in periodicals devoted to Jewish folklore beginning in the nineteenth century (Bar-Itzhak 2010, 16–26) and inspired the editors of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology (JFE) with a vision for a journal that would go beyond an audience of Jews to become indispensable for all folklorists and ethnologists. The JFE editors, indeed all who care about understanding tradition, lost a friend and mentor when …
Yiddish Songs And Jewish Futures: A Besere Velt, Partisan Music, And Modern Performance, Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler
Yiddish Songs And Jewish Futures: A Besere Velt, Partisan Music, And Modern Performance, Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
A Besere Velt, the Boston Worker’s Circle community chorus, performs for a modern audience the music of Yiddish-speaking Jewish partisans and ghetto resisters. Through active transmission and re-interpretation of partisan and ghetto songs, A Besere Velt invokes East-European Jewish tradition and creates a liminal space ripe with new possibility. In the process, the chorus gives these old songs life for contemporary Jews. The analysis situates the songs within the genre of Yiddish music and investigates through interviews ways that members build meaning through the performance of partisan music, the construction of Jewish space, and the promise of Jewish futures.
Landscape Into Legend: Tracking Lost Tribes And Crypto-Jews Across New Mexican Terrain, Judith S. Neulander
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.
Gendered Foods And Traditions Among Argentine Jewry, Jacqueline Laznow
Gendered Foods And Traditions Among Argentine Jewry, Jacqueline Laznow
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Examining layers of meaning found in personal stories, folktales, memoirs, recipes, and cookbooks collected from interviewees in Argentina and in Israel, this essay interprets the women’s role in Jewish-Argentine identity formation and preservation in connection to processes of forming private and collective memory. Traditional Jewish foodways generally and gefilte-fish specifically in contrast to traditional Argentine foodways such as meat grilling are analyzed as a symbolic praxis that strengthens Argentine identity.
The Rise Of Judaic Calligraphy In The Twentieth Century, Stephen Michael Cohen
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.
Bird Spies And Poisoned Tomatoes: New Rumors And Legends In The Middle East, Steve Siporin
Bird Spies And Poisoned Tomatoes: New Rumors And Legends In The Middle East, Steve Siporin
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
New rumors and legends about spy animals, attack animals, and attempted mass poisonings, all purportedly the work of Israel, circulate in Middle Eastern newspapers, television, and radio. This essay answers two sets of questions regarding these narratives, one regarding belief and the other regarding antisemitism. The analysis shows that the rumors and legends express attitudes in addition to conveying information. Whether or not any, some, or all these transgressions occurred, the narratives ineluctably serve to assert and confirm the depravity of a constructed enemy. They reveal unexpected continuities with age-old antisemitic folklore.
“They Have Countless Books Of This Craft”: Folklore And Folkloristics Of Yemeni Jewish Amulets, Tom Fogel
“They Have Countless Books Of This Craft”: Folklore And Folkloristics Of Yemeni Jewish Amulets, Tom Fogel
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
The nineteenth-century voyager Yaakov Sapir published accounts of Yemeni Jewish amulets that provide significant historical and ethnographic sources for a study of Yemeni Jewish occult practices and the perception of them by non-Jews. The combination of blurred religious boundaries characterizing occult traditions, the prominent place of the Judeo Arabic language, and Arabic or pseudo-Arabic magical scripts constructed occult traditions as an essential social and cultural role for the Jewish minority, and simultaneously made these traditions the center of a polemical discourse.
Introduction: Jewish Folklore And Ethnology: What, Why, And Whither?, Simon J. Bronner
Introduction: Jewish Folklore And Ethnology: What, Why, And Whither?, Simon J. Bronner
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
The inspiration for and significance of field-based Jewish folklore and ethnology studies as a distinct branch of learning devoted to the understanding of tradition in relation to diasporic Jewish studies and folkloristics is traced back to the Talmudic directive to “Go out and see what the people do.” The shapers of the field include S. An-Ski, Max Grunwald, Yoysef-Yehude Lerner, and Dov Noy along with theoretical influences of Franz Boas and Erving Goffman heralding a shift from textual sources to analyses of practice and performance. The characteristic definition, content, method, and theory of Jewish folklore and ethnological studies since the …
Note On Transliteration, Jewish Folklore And Ethnology Editors
Note On Transliteration, Jewish Folklore And Ethnology Editors
Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
As a publication with an international scope and audience, JFE uses transliteration to maintain flow in the essays and make the pronunciation of languages accessible for readers of English.
From Talking Softly To Carrying A Big Shtick: Jewish Masculinity In Twentieth-Century America, Miriam Eve Mora
From Talking Softly To Carrying A Big Shtick: Jewish Masculinity In Twentieth-Century America, Miriam Eve Mora
Wayne State University Dissertations
This dissertation follows the progress of American Jewish men in the difficult and often backsliding process of acculturation into American life. Jewish men have historically been held to a different standard of masculinity, one which both Jews and non-Jews throughout American history have ascribed in both positive and negative ways, often depicting Jewish men as bookish, gentle, weak, and even effeminate. Those Jews who strove to attain American manhood engaged in masculine American endeavors to the extent of their access and ingenuity. Their struggle to enter institutions of American masculinity reveals a great deal about Jewish acceptance in the United …
Grafting Onto `The Jew': The Importance Of Being Jew-Ish To Early Modern English Christian Identity, Joan Blackwell Wedes
Grafting Onto `The Jew': The Importance Of Being Jew-Ish To Early Modern English Christian Identity, Joan Blackwell Wedes
Wayne State University Dissertations
The dissertation examines how Jewish figures in early modern plays, prose, and poetry moved beyond the uncomplicated medieval image of murderous villain and towards a more reasoned consideration of the Jew's position in Christianity as well as in English life. While there has been significant scholarship on early modern representations of Jews, particularly in drama, these studies have not examined how Paul's Letter to the Romans, in forming much of Reformation doctrine, was also crucial in forming attitudes towards and representations of literary and living Jews. My project uniquely combines history, biblical studies, and literary analysis to reveal how early …