Jewish Studies Commons^™

Bringing Political Upheaval And Cultural Trauma Into Order: A Document-Theoretical Approach To The Social Significance Of Bibliographic Classification Systems, Joacim Hansson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores the ability to define bibliographic classification systems as socially significant documents in a way that goes beyond their immediate function in the information retrieval process. It does so in dialog with theory on documents and documentality, and knowledge organization theory. Two examples show how development of new classification systems address social and cultural structures in periods of rapid social and cultural change and crisis. The first example discusses the design of a classification system for Swedish public libraries in the late 1910s, and the second addresses the re-formulation of the Holocaust experience in American Jewish library classification …

The Impact Of The Presidency Of Donald Trump On American Jewry And Israel, Steven F. Windmueller

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

The Trump presidency has resulted in a fundamentally disruptive moment in this nation’s political culture. Not only were there different policy options and directions, but the cultural artifacts of politics changed because of how this president dramatically challenged the existing norms of political behavior and action. As we have shifted from a period of American liberalism to a time of political populism, deep fissures are dividing Americans in general and Jews in particular.

The Impact of the Presidency of Donald Trump on American Jewry and Israel unpacks President Donald Trump’s distinctive and unique relationship with the American Jewish community and …

Adaptation Practices And Forms Of Struggle In Jewish Communities For The Preservation Of Religious Worldview In Soviet Ukraine (1920s-1930s), Tetiana Savchuk

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the ways of adaptation of the Jews to the Soviet anti-religious experiments and the definition of forms of counteraction to these attacks during the 1920s and 1930s. There is insufficient research in the historiography of the struggle of Jews for the preservation of their religious worldview. The development of historiography shows a certain imbalance in the studies of the methods and extent of anti- church policy while ignoring the reaction of believers to the Bolshevik experiments. Based on archival documents of the Soviet secret services (not previously introduced into scientific circulation) and …

Creating The Experience: Engaging Millennials In Museums With A Focus On Jewish Millennials And Museums, Sarah G. Drozda

Museum Studies Theses

In this research, I explore two main ideas: The relationship that millennials have with museums and what programming excites them into coming back to the museum. To do this, I did a background review of the motivations and passions of the millennial generation, as well as various programming that have engaged millennials in museums. As someone who is a millennial and passionate about Jewish museums and Jewish engagement, I focused my research on how museums can help to bring Jewish millennials closer to their heritage, culture, and Jewish identity. A good segment of Jewish millennials is not drawn to traditional …

“It Kind Of Shows The Terrible Morality Of This Scene": Using Graphic Novels To Encourage Feminist Readings Of Jewish Hebrew Texts With Religious Significance, Talia Hurwich

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

This study considers whether and in what ways graphic novel adaptations of traditional Jewish Hebrew texts can encourage adolescent Modern Orthodox girls to adopt autonomous critical responses when encountering narratives that present women in unequal roles vis a vis men. According to scholars, Jewish literacy should teach students to read traditional Hebrew texts reverently while forming autonomous interpretations and opinions. Instead, Jewish educators teach normative readings posed by approved rabbinic authorities. This is particularly the case when teaching issues relating to gender among Modern Orthodox Jews, a conservative Jewish denomination, strives to synthesize tradition with the values of modern, secular …

Jud Ms 26 Israel Bernstein Writings, Emily Margaret Newell

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Provenance: These papers were donated by Beth B. Schneider, on April 15, 2021.

Ownership and Literary Rights: The Israel Bernstein Writings Collection are the physical property of the University of Southern Maine Library. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the creator or her legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Special Collections Librarian.

Cite as: The Israel Bernstein Writings Collection, The Judaica Collection, Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine, Special Collections, University of Southern Maine Library.

Restrictions on access: This collection is open for research.

Bus Line 163: A Public Pilgrim Bus To Rachel’S Tomb In Jerusalem, Mustafa Diktaş

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Buses are networks for both physical and social mobility. They permit people to become part of temporary communities of individuals whose goal is to travel along linear routes, which connect multiple stops and reach certain destinations. Through an ethnographic case study of Bus No. 163, which is designated for Jewish pilgrims traveling to Rachel’s tomb in Jerusalem, this paper focuses on the interactions between travelers that took place on this bus during December 2019 and February 2020. The interactions of people on Bus No 163 helps us better understand this liminal phase of pilgrimage. The findings of the research, as …

Jews And Gender, Leonard Greenspoon

Studies in Jewish Civilization

Jews and Gender features sixteen authors exploring the history and culture of the intersection of Judaism and gender from the biblical world to today. Topics include subversive readings of biblical texts; reappraisal of rabbinic theory and practice; women in mysticism, Chasidism, and Yiddish literature; and women in contemporary culture and politics. Accessible and comprehensive, this volume will appeal to the general reader in addition to engaging with contemporary academic scholarship.

Strange Genre-Related Loops In A Novel-Short Story: The Tension Between The Genres And Their Cultural Context, Orna Levin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The goal of the current study was to examine the strange genre-related loops in the novel The Short Story Master, by Maya Arad (2009), through the tension between the two genres represented in the text and their cultural contexts. The plot of the novel tells of the professional and personal crisis of the master of the short story, who failed in his mission to write a novel. The text hints to the reader that the central conflict that moves the plot along is neither romantic nor existential, but rather genre-related, and thus the entire work is a manifestation of …

Jewish Mobile's Narrow Bridge, Deborah Gurt

University Faculty and Staff Publications

Mobile, Alabama, is home to a Jewish community formally established in 1841 when members purchased land for a burial ground. Approximately 1,000 in number, today’s Jewish residents are deeply entwined with the fabric of the city—in business, education, medicine, and civic life. Among them are Holocaust survivors and their descendants, families who have lived here for generations, Jews of color, transplants from the North, LGBTQ Jews, and converts to Judaism, unified primarily by their experiences as members of a religious and cultural minority in Alabama.

Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Sherry Coman

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Three Minutes: A Lengthening (2021), directed by Bianca Stigter.

Where Is Anne Frank, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Where Is Anne Frank (2021) directed by Ari Folman.

The Structural Grammaticalization Of The Biblical Hebrew Ethical Dative, Oliver Shoulson

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper offers a structural analysis of the evolution of a grammatical phenomenon in Biblical Hebrew known as the Ethical Dative (ED). My analysis is rooted in the grammaticalization chain proposed by Talmy Givón wherein the Ethical Dative evolves incrementally from other dative forms, accounting for its lopsided distribution across the Bible. Via its similarity to the Personal Dative in Appalachian English, I propose a derivation for the ED whose locus is the specifier of a high Applicative Phrase, allowing us to account for Givón’s progression through the gradual reduction of merge-operations and feature-valuation at that node. My analysis bolsters …

Jewish Ancestral Languages And Communicating The Sephardic Experience: The Judeospanish Of Tela De Sevoya, Julia Kahn

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Judeo-Spanish, the ancestral language of Sephardic Jews, enjoys fewer speakers, literature, and less scholarly attention compared to Yiddish, its counterpart spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. Nonetheless, Judeo-Spanish captures the rich experiences of its speakers through exile, persecution, and perseverance, embodying unique Jewish-Spanish culture and religious practice. It has received fresh recognition in the last two centuries from scholars and Sephardim themselves, and the quincentennial of the 1492 Jewish expulsion from Spain inspired a new Sephardic autobiographical genre, where Sephardic authors grapple with their heritages and language, dimming from assimilation and the Shoa. Myriam Moscona is one such author whose unique descent …

The Emotional Heschel, Maria Junttila Carson

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation asserts that Heschel's work ought to be viewed as affective and emotional. Understanding Heschel's work as both creating and encouraging particular affects enables a more robust and fuller understanding of American Jewish postwar life. Specifically, American Jewish postwar life was animated by a nostalgia for the shtetl, a desire to connect with the State of Israel, a longing to create meaningful Jewish ritual, and uncertainty about the place of American Jews in broader social justice movements. Heschel views humans as interconnected in a web of affects and emotions; through affects, humans are connected to God, history and memory, …

From Alsace To America: The Development And Migration Of Ashkenazi Jewish Cuisine From Its Origins In Eastern France, Angela Hanratty

Dissertations

This research examines the historical development of a distinctly Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine from its roots in the Alsace region of France, through the Jewish settlements in Eastern Europe, and the mass immigration to America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim of the research was to come to an understanding of how global perception of what is considered to be quintessentially Jewish food (as evidenced in American Jewish delicatessens, Jewish homes, and in popular culture) has been shaped by developments in Alsace. Long standing views were held that Ashkenazi food developed in Eastern Europe, specifically Poland and the former …

Assimilating To Art-Religion: Jewish Secularity And Edgar Zilsel’S Geniereligion (1918), Abigail Fine

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1918, Edgar Zilsel—a Marxist-Jewish philosopher who was soon to be exiled from Vienna—published a sociological study that later readers have found prescient of fascism. In Die Geniereligion (“The Religion of Genius”), Zilsel cautioned against the hidden dangers of elevating secular figures to the status of deities. As early as 1912, Zilsel was disturbed by how art-religion shaped music culture: his earliest published essay ruminated on timelessness and canonicity, on striving for heavenly tones while cast down to the earthly squalor of the concert hall. Indeed, in Zilsel’s Vienna, art-religion had come to dominate the music world—biographers made Beethoven a …

Review: The Art Of The Jewish Family: A History Of Women In Early New York In Five Objects, Jeanne E. Abrams

Center for Judaic Studies: Faculty Scholarship

Review of The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects by Laura Arnold Leibman.

Creating Cultural Capital: The Education Of Jewish Females At The Alliance Israélite Universelle (Aiu) School For Girls In The City Of Tunis, 1882–1914, Joy A. Land Phd

Published Articles

Based on rarely viewed images from the fin de siècle, this article will contribute to the burgeoning field of Jewish women in the world of Islam. At the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the city of Tunis, 1882–1914, after a seven-year course of study, Jewish and non-Jewish girls acquired certification of their academic or vocational skills through a certificate or diploma of couture. Such credentials, according to Bourdieu (1986), constitute “cultural capital.” Furthermore, “cultural capital … is convertible … into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications.” A young woman could create …

Life Is Beautiful, Or Not: The Myth Of The Good Italian, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Life is Beautiful illustrates a popular misconception about Italy's role in the Holocaust. The film features the good Italian and the warped view that Italy treated Jews kindly in the late 1930s and during World War II. Historians have proven this claim to be grossly exaggerated, arguing that Italians persecuted Jews vigorously. Yet popular representations of the past-films, novels, museum exhibits, and websites-continue to give credence to the notion that Italians were overwhelmingly good to Jews. Although France and Germany cultivated similar self-acquitting myths in the decades immediately after the war, they eventually moved on to accept the more …

Reading The World: American Haredi Children's Literature, 1980–2000, Dainy Bernstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children’s literature is an important force in building not only linguistic literacy but a literacy of the world, showing the child reader how to make sense of themselves in relation to the many people, objects, experiences, and concepts around them. Haredi children’s texts foster a mode of understanding the world around them as comprehensible through the texts, people, and events of the past. In Reading the World, I demonstrate that Haredi children’s textual culture between 1980 and 2000 fostered a literacy of language, text, time, space, morals, and general knowledge as inextricably intertwined, and that this literacy propelled further …

Civil Disobedience From A Biblical Perspective, Gabriel Reed

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

To say that civil disobedience is a complicated topic is to severely understate the topic. It is a subject matter that has derived many different and disparate opinions, points of view, and public policies. Specifically, within America today, we observe calls for civil disobedience from both sides of the political spectrum, over several divergent political ideals. These issues are, primarily, driven from both sides’ desire to provide protection and provision for the oppressed and those who cannot necessarily speak for themselves. The definition of who is necessarily oppressed and whom their oppressors are varies from person to person, regardless of …

The Communal Roots Of The Tree Of Life: The Performativity Of The Torah Scroll In Jewish Ritual, Joseph Maybloom

Theses and Dissertations

The Torah scroll’s materiality is central to its use in ritual and encourages a performance-based analysis. The object acts as a physical connection to the divine, a material embodiment of Jewishness. The congregation’s participation in the scroll’s lifecycle rituals fosters their communion with the object and with each other.

May 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Encounters a 20th Century Yiddish American Phenomenon; From the Rabbi; From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

Refuge Must Be Given: Eleanor Roosevelt, The Jewish Plight, And The Founding Of Israel, John F. Sears

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Refuge Must Be Given details the evolution of Eleanor Roosevelt from someone who harbored negative impressions of Jews to become a leading Gentile champion of Israel in the United States. The book explores, for the first time, Roosevelt’s partnership with the Quaker leader Clarence Pickett in seeking to admit more refugees into the United States, and her relationship with Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles, who was sympathetic to the victims of Nazi persecution yet defended a visa process that failed both Jewish and non-Jewish refugees.

After the war, as a member of the American delegation to the United Nations, Eleanor …

Jerusalem In The Stacks, Fordham University

Student Publications

Jerusalem in the Stacks

Highlights from the Fordham Collection

Spring 2021

Exhibition curated by and catalogue edited by

Sarit Kattan Gribetz

with contributions from

Students from THEO 4009 “Medieval Jerusalem: Jewish, Christian, Muslim Perspectives”

O’Hare Special Collections Walsh Family Library, Fordham University

The Aki Yerushalayim Corpus: A Study Of Loanwords In Ladino, Rachel Mccullough

College of Arts and Letters Posters

Ladino (or Judeo-Spanish) is a Diasporic Jewish language spoken by Sephardi Jews. There is little existing scholarly research on Ladino, nor does it have many language learning materials. These two factors compelled me to create the Aki Yerushalayim Corpus. The initial Aki Yerushalayim Corpus of Modern Written Ladino (currently ~7,000 words) was not created to act as a reference corpus of Modern Ladino. Rather, it was created to study the composition of Ladino prose and demonstrate the utility of this type project in the subdiscipline of language documentation. In addition, the project’s focus on cultural essays and narrative prose allow …

April 2021, Temple Shalom

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Celebrates Passover; From the Rabbi;From the President; Book Group; Community Notices

A Literary Analysis Of The Origin Of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Its Advancements, Philosophical, Ethical, Sociocultural, And Political Aspects; An Investigation Of The Underlying Attributes That Affect One’S Views On Hesc Research To Resolve Turkey And Brazil’S Hesc Policy, Religious, And Cultural Conflicts, Haleema Shamsuddin

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are cells derived from 5-day human embryos and are self-renewing cell lines that change into any type of cell in the body, a trait called pluripotency. hESCs have almost unlimited clinical and medical research potential. Despite the great therapeutic promise of hESC research, it comes with a controversial ethical debate due to its involvement with the destruction of the human embryo. The central argument revolves around the question of whether or not these human embryos should be ascribed equal moral status to fully developed humans. This thesis aims to analyze the origin and advancements of …

The Canonization Of The Books Of The Jewish, Catholic, And Protestant Scriptures, Kaleb J. Jung

Classical Conversations

The three Canons of Judaism, Catholic Christianity, and Protestant Christianity all claim more authority or consistency than what they have. Judaism puts too much authority on an unknown group in 200 CE that was not regarded until 400 years later in the Mishnah. Catholicism emphasizes the divinity of scriptures that the early church fathers almost universally disbelieved. Protestantism held that the Canon put forward by Calvin was entirely equal in its truth and that it should not be changed even in the face of changing beliefs or new discoveries. However, just because a Canon has been altered or closed in …