Jewish Studies Commons^™

Meir B. Elijah Of Norwich And The Margins Of Memory, Miriamne Ara Krummel

English Faculty Publications

"Meir b. Elijah of Norwich and the Margins of Memory" is a study of Meir of Norwich's use of acrostics to record his English Jewish identity. In the face of the 1290 Expulsion, which follows upon many episodes of anti-Jewish violence and antipathy, Meir attempts to have his name recorded in perpetuity. This essay details some of those moments of violence in order to give voice to Meir's world and to clarify Meir's desire to be remembered.

Triune God And Human History, Lawrence Frizzell

Department of Religion Publications

Cycle B liturgical readings for Trinity Sunday, June 7, 2009: Dt 4:32-40; Ps 33; Rm 8:14-17; Mt 28:16-20. This article was previously published in The Catholic Advocate.

Woman Has Two Faces: Re-Examining Eve And Lilith In Jewish Feminist Thought, Diana Carvalho

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the religious history of American feminism, Jewish feminist biblical interpretation shifted attention away from Eve as a viable example of women's identities. Instead, Lilith, the independent, "demon" and "first wife" of Adam is praised as a symbol of female sexuality for "Transformationist" Jewish feminists. Re-claiming Lilith as the "first Eve," "Transformationist" Jewish feminists turn scripture on its head. Eve's creation and her actions in Genesis are interpreted as a product of patriarchy and male dominance, while Lilith in the midrashic narrative, the Alphabet of Ben Sira, is used by Jewish feminists to reclaim their identities on religious and …

The Impact Of The Holocaust In America, Zev Garber

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

The contributions to this volume consider topics such as the immigrant experience in coming to America after the trauma of the Holocaust; how the Shoah has shaped more recent interpretation of the Hebrew Bible; the role that survivors have fulfilled in educating American youth not only about the Holocaust itself, but also about how values - especially in regard to tolerance - can and must be shaped by eye-witness testimony on the Shoah; the impact of Holocaust in film, especially in "third-generation" cinema; the issues and difficulties of presenting the Shoah in children's literature; the dialogue between Christians and Jews, …

The Religious Other As Neighbor, Lawrence Frizzell

Selected Works of Lawrence E. Frizzell

Many stories are told about antagonism between Christians and Jews, especially in countries with a large Jewish minority. The history of persecution should be told along with the lessons learned for our time. A brief review of examples whose participants were neighbors, either in reality or in principle, may be instructive. This paper will move through the centuries in a rapid survey, recalling friendly contacts or benign exchanges between Christians and Jews.

Gray Zones Of Modern Genocide, Megan Dale Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Italian-Jewish chemist and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi wrote in his work The Drowned and the Saved about the "Gray Zone," or holding place for all things difficult to categorize about his experiences in the Nazi camp Auschwitz. Because human tendency is to divide things in a rigid dichotomy, he argued, anything without a set role is brushed aside. I have extended this Gray Zone to include mutually shared situations from modern genocide including: the relationship of race/land to genocide, the "Forced Victim-Perpetrator" (victim forced to commit atrocities against his or her own people), and the complex international reaction to genocidal …

Anti-Semitic Folklore Motif Index, Sita Bell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Anti-Semitism, or Jew hatred, much of which is expressed and communicated through folklore, has a long history and continues unabated today. Incendiary opinions, deadly misconceptions, and insidious accusations have plagued Jews throughout history. Anti-Semitic expressions and incidents are scattered throughout countless texts, but no single comprehensive reference work that compiles all forms of anti-Semitic folklore motifs exists. This thesis attempts to fill that gap by supplying an index of anti-Semitic motifs.

To establish a baseline of already catalogued anti-Semitic motifs, all six volumes of Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folklore-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval …

Emerging Identities In Colonial Tunisia: "Alliancist" And Zionist Representations In Tunis Prior To World War I, Joy A. Land

Department of History - Stamford Publications

By 1900 the Jewish community of Tunisia witnessed the emergence of new competing identities: “assimilationist” of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, termed “Alliancist,” and Zionist. Strikingly, two members of the same family in Tunis, Raymond Valensi, President of the AIU Regional Committee, and Alfred Valensi, President of the Zionist Federation, led the struggle for their separate causes. In his discussion of identity in the modern world, Homi Bhabha asks, "How do strategies of representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities…where, despite shared histories of …discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities…may be profoundly antagonistic…?" …

An Exploration Of The Use Of Expressive Writing To Reduce Physical And Emotional Symptoms Associated With Stress In A Sample Of Orthodox Jewish Wives Preparing For A Religious Observance, David Jay Richels

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of a short-term expressive writing intervention using a value-laden topic and neutral topic on the physical and psychological well-being of a group of Orthodox Jewish wives preparing for a religious observance. Participants (N = 42) were assigned to the experimental group (n = 22) and to the control group (n = 20) on a rotating basis, in the order of which they first logged into the survey website. The physical well-being of participants was measured by reduced scores on the PILL for physical symptoms associated with stress. …

Dave Astor, David Astor

The Oral History Project of Documenting Maine Jewry

No abstract provided.

Interview With Michael Imlah, Congregation Shaarie Torah, 2009 (Audio), Michael Imlah

All Sustainability History Project Oral Histories

Interview of Michael Imlah by Dennis LaPrade at Congregation Shaarie Torah, Portland, Oregon on March 4th, 2009.

The interview index is available for download.

Ceremonial Objects From The Collection Of Rabbi David A. Whiman, Beth Mobley

Exhibits

No abstract provided.

Mary And The Jews: The Gospels And The Early Church, Lawrence Frizzell

Selected Works of Lawrence E. Frizzell

The intention of this essay is twofold; to extend the time period of my earlier essays on Mary and the biblical heritage and to sketch the developments in the early Church, in spite of their burdens of motifs relating to the Jewish people, so that we can understand our history with an insight into the Church's roots and prepare for a better future in Christian- Jewish relations.

The Church And The Jews In The Liturgy, Lawrence Frizzell

Selected Works of Lawrence E. Frizzell

The Second Vatican Council developed a number of profound theological insights which have influenced the liturgy of the Roman Rite and the spirituality of the faithful. The Church's relationship with the Jewish people has implications for each local congregation's call to be good neighbors; more profoundly, a proper understanding of the Church's roots in the Jewish heritage is integral to our own self understanding.

The Dynamic Concepts Of Resistance And Collaboration In Post-Holocaust Remembrance. Revisiting The Personal Narratives Of Jewish Survivors From Romania, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines how the Holocaust survivors from Romania represented and reinterpreted the notions of resistance and collaboration. Overall, it seems that the treatment of the Holocaust in post-WWII public opinion and scholarship influenced the way survivors represented the Holocaust. For many years, resistance was equated with ‘heroic’ armed struggle. Gradually, the perspective of the Holocaust began to change, and new interpretations enlarging the concept of resistance have since emerged. The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis has also triggered heated debates. Due to changing social and political contexts, new interpretations focusing on the difficulties and moral dilemmas faced …

Reclaiming The Prophets: Cohen, Heschel, And Crossing The Theocentric/Neo-Humanist Divide, Robert Erlewine

Scholarship

In this essay, I examine Hermann Cohen’s and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s respective accounts of the classical prophets of the Hebrew Bible, which contend with the Protestant biblical criticism of their day. Their accounts of the prophets are of central significance for their philosophies of Judaism, which mirror and oppose each other. This Auseinandersetzung addresses the often neglected topic of Jewish responses to German-Protestant biblical criticism and stresses the cogency of Heschel’s thought. Additionally, examining Cohen and Heschel together problematizes the polarization between theocentrism and neo-humanism currently dominating the landscape of modern Jewish thought.

My Iranian Sukkah, Farideh Dayanim Goldin

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Every year after Yorn Kippur, my husband Norman and I try to bring together the pieces of our sukkah, our temporary home for a week, a reminder of our frailty as Jews. Every year we wonder where we had last stored the metal frame, the bamboo roof, and the decorations. Every year we wonder about the weather. Will we have to dodge the raindrops and the wind once again this year for a quick bracha before eating inside? Will our sukkah stand up? Will there be a hurricane?

The Ghosts Of Our Mothers: From Oral Tradition To Written Words—A History And Critique Of Jewish Women Writers Of Iranian Heritage, Farideh Goldin

English Faculty Publications

Throughout the 2,000 years of Iranian Jewish history, women usually were either illiterate or silenced. Iranian Jewish women in exile have been making up for their foremothers by creating prose literature at a fast pace in the last two decades. Through their poetry, novels and memoirs, they validate the claim that with financial security, access to education, and freedom of speech—rarely accessible to Iranian women until the twentieth century—they can shine. This article explores the history and background of Jewish women writers of Iranian heritage.

Images Of Egypt In Early Biblical Literature: Cisjordan-Israelite, Transjordan-Israelite, And Judahite Portrayals, Stephen C. Russell

Publications and Research

This book suggests a regional paradigm for understanding the development of the traditions about Egypt and the exodus in the Hebrew Bible. It offers fresh readings of the golden calf stories in 1 Kgs 12:25-33 and Exod 32, the Balaam oracles in Num 22-24, and the Song of the Sea in Exod 15:1b-18 and from these paints a picture of the differing traditions about Egypt that circulated in Cisjordan Israel, Transjordan Israel, and Judah in the 8th century B.C.E. and earlier.
In the north, an exodus from Egypt was celebrated in the Bethel calf cult as a journey of Israelites …