Jewish Studies Commons^™

Shepherds And Hirelings In John 10: An Intertestamental Correction, Donald C. Mcintyre

Liberty Theological Review

This article will examine the Good Shepherd discourse attempting to analyze whether the Pharisees were in purview as false-shepherds as commonly assumed and finding that interpretation lacking. Given the events of inter-testamental history, septuagintal usage of μισθωτὸς, and the setting of the discourse occurring during the feast of dedication, this article will find that Jesus is drawing a contrast between the foreign false-shepherds found in the political rulers, as well as the hireling pharisee and himself as the true shepherds. Through a careful reading of the text, it becomes apparent that Jesus is not solely disappointed in the Pharisees actions, …

Musikah V’Ḥalil, “Music And The Flute”: The Use Of Jewish Prayer In Flute And Piano Music, Kathryn L. Rudnik

Dissertations, 2020-current

Music has been a part of Jewish life since Biblical times and remains an integral part of the culture. Within Jewish music, instruments have also played an important role historically. The flute has been traced through Judaism back to Biblical times; however, it has lost prominence in modern synagogue and religious services. As Western music has developed into the twenty-first century, composers, both Jewish and Gentile, have been exposed to the music of the Jewish communities, some of whom have utilized it in their own compositions. Compositions based on Jewish prayer melodies have brought up the question of whether the …

Ijcs News - December 2022, The Institute Of Judaeo-Christian Studies

Newsletters

The December 2022 issue of IJCS News, the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies' monthly e-newsletter.

Jud Ms 24 Frederic C. Weinberg Collection, Katelynn Paul

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Biographical Note:

Frederic Weinberg was born in Metuchen, New Jersey. He graduated from Metuchen High School and pursued a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Connecticut in 1969. After receiving his initial degree in English, he enrolled in the University of New Hampshire’s program in Library Science. In 1972 he was accepted into a special program in Educational Media at Boston University where he received a master’s degree in Education. In 1977 Frederic and his family joined the Beth Israel Congregation. He later assisted the congregation as a researcher and archivist. Currently Frederic is a regional coordinator for …

Jud Ms 25 Nathan F. Cogan Collection Finding Aid, Katelynn Paul

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Biographical Note

Nathan Franklin Cogan was born in Bath, Maine in 1937 and was the youngest of seven children. Nathan’s father, Morris Cohen, had originally arrived in Maine in 1914, following the outbreak of World War I. Nathan spent his childhood in Bath, where his father and family members assisted immigrants to Maine as a part of the Hebrew Benevolent Society. Nathan ultimately moved to Portland, Oregon in 1956 to attend Reed College. Nathan served two years in the U.S. Army, and upon ending service he pursued a doctorate in English at UC-Berkeley. Nathan became a professor emeritus of English …

Philosophers Of Catastrophe: Early 20th Century Jewish Proponents And Opponents Of Objectivity In Science, Steven Gimbel, Stephen J. Stern

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Second World War ended with the exposure of the Nazi death camps and the threat of global nuclear annihilation. The former disclosed the depths of human depravity and the latter warned us about the severity of the consequences that could await us as a result. The grimness of each, much less both, had the effect of shielding from our collective consciousness the equally dire warnings from the First World War that had occurred only a couple of decades earlier. [excerpt]

Tributes In Memory Of Rabbi Asher Finkel, Ph.D., Lawrence Frizzell

Selected Works of Lawrence E. Frizzell

Father Lawrence E. Frizzell, through the auspices of the Msgr. Oesterreicher Endowment, edited a booklet of tributes by colleagues and alumni of the Jewish-Christian Studies Graduate Program in the memory of Rabbi Asher Finkel.

Jewish Daily Life In Medieval Northern Europe, 1080-1350, Tzafrir Barzilay, Eyal Levinson, Elisheva Baumgarten

TEAMS Documents of Practice

Designed to introduce students to the everyday lives of the Jews who lived in the German Empire, northern France, and England from the 11th to the mid-14th centuries, the volume consists of translations of primary sources written by or about medieval Jews. Each source is accompanied by an introduction that provides historical context. Through the sources, students can become familiar with the spaces that Jews frequented, their daily practices and rituals, and their thinking. The subject matter ranges from culinary preferences and even details of sexual lives, to garments, objects, and communal buildings. The documents testify to how Jews enacted …

Revolutionary Visions: Jewish And Politics In Latin American Film, Mirna Vohnsen

Articles

Stephanie Pridgeon’s Revolutionary Visions, a book that deals with the intersection of Jews and revolutionary politics in films from Latin America, is a welcome addition to the growing scholarship on Latin American Jewish studies. As the author herself notes, the cinematic depiction of Jewish experiences with revolutionary movements in Latin America has not received, until now, the scholarly attention it deserves, a neglect that Pridgeon has set out to remedy in her volume. The book brings to our attention the significance of the Latin American revolutionary culture of the 1960s and 1970s not only to Jewish life in the region …

Shifting Paradigms, Pandemic Realities: The Reception Of Ishay Ribo’S Music In The American Hasidic Community, Tzipora Weinberg, Gordon Dale

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

The COVID-19 pandemic has irrevocably changed the landscape of social, communal, and religious life. Within the Jewish community, reactions to the virus have taken many forms. One of the most visible and criticized populations, the Hasidic community of Brooklyn, has been the focus of attention from the media and press, and has responded in unprecedented ways, both in political and social arenas. Our close study of the evolution of a particular instance of atypical musical permissiveness in the period preceding COVID-19, and its subsequent development during the pandemic period itself, follows this metamorphosis, limning the shift in communal norms as …

Fogelman, Charles, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Charles Fogelman’s parents came to New York City as children in the beginning of the 20th century. They were married in 1932, and his father became a doctor, fighting antisemitic quotas to go to medical school, and completing his residency at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. His father had a practice in the East Bronx, on Elder Avenue, when Fogelman was born in 1946 and he grew up in a semi-detached house nearby on Ward Avenue. He describes it as a lower-middle class, predominantly Jewish neighborhood, with Irish and Italian neighbors, and with many synagogues, so it felt very …

Is Superman Circumcised? The Complete Jewish History Of The World’S Greatest Hero By Roy Schwartz, Gabriel C. Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

In Is Superman Circumcised?, Russell Schwartz provides a historical overview of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation of the comic book character Superman, arguing that Siegel and Shuster's backgrounds in Jewish immigrants gives a particularly Jewish subtext to their character. Schwartz builds on this argument with a larger historical overview of American comic book publishing, showing how Judaism and Jewish-American immigrant experiences have informed that industry from its earliest days.

Collaborative Constructions: Designing High School History Curriculum With The Lost & Found Game Series, Owen Gottlieb, Shawn Clybor

Articles

This chapter addresses design research and iterative curriculum design for the Lost & Found games series. The Lost & Found card-to-mobile series is set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the twelfth century and focuses on religious laws of the period. The first two games focus on Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a key Jewish law code. A new expansion module which was in development at the time of the fieldwork described in this article that introduces Islamic laws of the period, and a mobile prototype of the initial strategy game has been developed with support National Endowment for the Humanities. The …

Critique Beyond Judgment: Exploring Testimony And Truth In The Classroom, Sean Sidky

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This essay offers a set of strategies for utilizing the words of survivors and of witnesses to genocide in the classroom. Including the voices of survivors and victims in our classroom conversations about genocide, its impact, representation, and the possibilities for its prevention is crucial to an ethical and wholistic pedagogy of genocide. Discussion of these events in the classroom often finds us confronting questions from students about truth, historical accuracy, authenticity, and authority. Addressing such questions requires careful framing that takes into account student assumptions and cultural discourses about memory and witnessing, as we work with students to develop …

Monster Theory And The Book Of Enoch: Angels And Giants As Chaos And Identity, Jordan C. Cerone

Student Publications

The Book of Enoch is a non-canonical text that is often referenced in later Judeo-Christian apocalyptic texts and mythology. Enoch scholarship is limited to the past two centuries due to its status as a “lost” work; research has only recently begun. Most prior scholars focused their research on examining the text through the lens of form and historical criticism. They sought to define the genre, to contextualize the book, to determine its authorship, and simply to translate the text from various languages. Though research focused on the Watchers as literary devices in the historical narrative, this study proposes using monster …

Confronting Hate Antisemitism, Racism, And The Resistance, Magda Teter

Faculty Publications

Antisemitism and anti-Black racism have often been viewed as separate issues. The exhibit “Confronting Hate: Racism, Antisemitism, and The Resistance,” a fruit of the work of students in HIST 4312: Antisemitism and Racism taught by Professors Westenley (Wes) Alcenat and Magda Teter in 2021-2022, seeks to open a conversation about historical and phenomenological connections between racism and antisemitism. The exhibit highlights the way popular culture, scholarly works, and art have served to construct ideas about race and racial identity. It explores how racist ideas became entrenched in European and American cultures and how Jews, Black people, and their allies strove …

Homosexuality In Leviticus: A Historical-Literary-Critical Analysis, Ian Jarosz

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

The book of Leviticus from the Hebrew Bible is often referenced when discussing the LGBTQ+ community and related topics. This project offers historical, literary, and etymological analyses of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, exploring cultural and thematic similarities between Leviticus, the Avestan Vendidad of ancient Persia, and the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch. The influential views of other ancient Near Eastern cultures and the growing Persian culture during the time of the Exile establish a tolerant cultural background for the Levitical authors and for the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, the exilic priests who finalized the laws within Leviticus did not …

Introduction To Jewish Life And Religion, Dimitry Ekshtut

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for JWST 10000 - Introduction to Jewish Life and Religion, a survey course covering a broad variety of topics in the Jewish Studies Department at City College of New York.

Jews In Film And Fiction, Amy W. Kratka

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

"Introducing The Pseudepigrapha Of Second Temple Judaism" [Review]/Gurtner, Daniel M, Rodrigo Galiza

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Rodrigo Galiza.

"Text And Ritual In The Pentateuch: A Systematic And Comparative Approach"[Review]/Nihan, Christophe, And Julia Rhyder, Eds., Roy Gane

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Roy Gane.

“I Held On At Any Price”: Victim Self-Preservation In The Sonderkommando In Auschwitz And Treblinka, Jessica Christina Foster

All Theses

Many Holocaust victims have expressed uneasiness or even shame regarding the actions they took to stay alive in the death camps. These acts of self-preservation were usually humiliating and often came at the expense of their fellow victims. This comes out most clearly in the testimonies of the members of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Writers such as Filip Müller, Zalmen Gradowski, and Richard Glazar recount how they survived the lethal environment of the camp by appropriating the food, clothing, and valuables of the people murdered in the gas chambers. Although most scholars have interpreted these testimonies, and the …

"The Antichrist Tradition In Antiquity: Antimessianism In Second Temple And Early Christian Literature" [Review]/Kusio, Mateusz, Rodrigo Galiza

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Rodrigo Galiza.

Mashiah: Messianism In Jewish Apocalyptic Literature Of The Second Temple Period, Fred R. De Leon

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This Thesis challenges notions that have dominated biblical scholarship for more than a hundred years. Up until the end of the twentieth century scholars uniformly believed that the concept of a suffering Messiah was not part of early first century CE Judaism. It was believed to a be a Christian creation. There is however startling evidence of messianic precursors to Jesus, including one who is introduced as the 'Prince of the Congregation' in recently published fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is not surprising since the authors of the Tanakh lay the groundwork for an evolving and malleable concept …

Classics Revisited Review Essay: The Prophets By Abraham Joshua Heschel, John C. Merkle

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Jakubovitz, Bruce, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Bruce Jakubovitz, born 1956, was the son of Bronx born parents and grandson of immigrants from Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland. He lived in a three bedroom apartment with his three siblings and parents across from St. James Park. The area was predominantly Jewish, Italian, and Irish, and the kids would play in the street and hang out along the stoops on 191st Street. Growing up in a kosher, Orthodox home, Jakubovitz would go to synagogue every Saturday morning and he could not go out to play with his friends on Shabbat. Yet, all the different ethnic and religious groups got …

Designing For Yiddish Drama, Naomi Marin

Theater Summer Fellows

"Designing for Yiddish Drama" explores the questions of the relationship between culture and design and what influences a design or designer. It also demonstrates two designs for a Yiddish play, "The Dybbuk," by S. Ansky.

Rudnick, Stuart, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Stuart Rudnick was born in 1951. His family had moved up from the Lower East Side to the Sedgwick Projects in the West Bronx. They lived there until 1968, when they moved to Co-op City because the demographics of the neighborhood were changing and they wanted more space. It was seen as a step up. When Rudnick was growing up there, he remembers it as very safe and no one locked their doors. There were many kids in the building to play games outside in the street, games that did not require buying a lot like stickball. The project is …

Malasky, Michael, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Michael Melasky, born 1957, grew up in the Marble Hill public housing project that was created for veterans of World War Two and their families, until his family moved to Co-op City in 1969. His grandparents immigrated from Poland and started their families on the Lower East Side then the South Bronx, but most of their family was killed in the Holocaust. Quoting Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Melasky describes growing up in a cramped and diverse environment in the turbulent 1960s. There were always other kids around to play with, …

Sweet, Harry, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Harry Sweet grew up on Boston Road and moved with his family to the public housing projects near Crotona Park and the Cross Bronx Expressway as a teenager. He remembers finding it impressive as a child that kids got to cross the street to Herman Ritter Junior High School, across from their apartment building, by themselves and how important it was when he got to do it. He walked to PS 50 and would walk home and back for lunch. Sweet remembers his elementary school class as mixed Jewish, Italian, and black, but as most of the Jewish and Italian …