Jewish Studies Commons^™

Wv Bully Pulpits, Robert Ellison

English Faculty Research

This presentation is grounded in Theodore Roosevelt’s notion of the “bully pulpit,” defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a “public office or position of authority that provides its occupant with the opportunity to speak out and be listened to on any issue” (in this context, “bully” is used in its 19th-century sense of “very good” or “excellent,” not in its modern sense of someone who likes to intimidate, threaten, or actually harm others).

Roosevelt used the term metaphorically, but my presentation will focus on literal pulpits, specifically those occupied by ministers whose sermons challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of a …

Marc Chagall And The Jewish Experience: A Personal Modernism In The Parisian Avant-Garde, Samantha Desanctis

MA Theses

Marc Chagall and the Jewish Experience: A Personal Modernism in the Parisian Avant-Garde examines the interplay between Marc Chagall’s Jewish heritage and his engagement with the Parisian avant-garde of the early twentieth century. Chagall’s upbringing in the Russian Empire deeply informed his visual language, which persisted even as he explored the techniques and innovations of modernist movements. This thesis analyzes Chagall’s early works alongside close readings of key paintings such as I and the Village, 1911, Homage to Apollinaire, 1911–12, Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers, 1912–13, and Green Violinist, 1923–24, considering symbols, colors, compositions, and recurring motifs drawn from religion, tradition, …

Christianity In Relation To Judaism: Historical Memory And Polemics In Constructing The Story Of Christian Faith, John Merkle

The Journal of Social Encounters

Throughout most of Christian history, Christians have told a replacement story: Christianity has replaced Judaism and is the one valid pathway to God. As both Judaism and Christianity are based on historical events, the story of Christian faith is inevitably told with reference to events in Jewish history, especially events recounted in the Hebrew Bible (or the Christian Old Testament) that contextualize the emergence of Christianity and situate events concerning Jesus of Nazareth within a Jewish context. But over the last seventy years or so, a growing number of Christian scholars and church leaders have acknowledged that traditional Christian ideas …

Holy Day Surveys And Political Attitudes In Israel, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Researchers regularly use large survey studies to examine public political opinion. Surveys running over days and months will necessarily incorporate religious occasions that can introduce variation in public opinion. Using recent survey data from Israel, this study demonstrates that giving surveys on religious occasions (e.g., the Sabbath, Hannukah, Sukkot) can elicit different opinion responses. These effects are found among both religious and non-religious respondents. While incorporating these fluctuations is realistic in longer-term surveys, surveys fielded in a short window inadvertently drawing heavily on a holiday or holy day sample may bias their findings. This study thus urges researchers to be …

Eleven Are The Stars Of Joseph’S Dream; His Coat, Many Colors, Alexander B. Bloom

Capstones

At the Conservative synagogue where I attended Saturday school for part of my childhood in the 90s I recall the teachers’ reimagination of the popular Michael Jackson song “We Are the World,” taught to the seven and eight year-olds who were made to sing it in chorus at some holiday celebration that year.

“We are the Jews,” we bleated out, in concert, “We are the Chosen.”

From my place among them I remember the unsettled feeling I had, to consider my non-Jewish friends at school, teachers and babysitters who knew not of tefillin, my maternal grandparents in the pews of …

Jewish Nationalism In Israel: A Measurement, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

Since Israel’s founding, being a “Jewish state” has been central to its self-representation. However, Israel has struggled to identify what that means. This article examines the strength of Jewish nationalism in Jewish Israeli public opinion. It draws on a recent survey of 200 Jewish Israelis for a qualitative and quantitative investigation of public responses to religious nationalist statements. These findings offer a utilizable survey short scale for measuring Jewish nationalism and to understand how Jewish Israelis are interpreting these statements. This study is a necessary step to empirically evaluating religious nationalism in the “Jewish state”.

Recent Trends In The Development Of Jewish Life And Heritage Tourism In Trani, Italy, Andrea Corsale

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

This paper focuses on the recent revival of Jewish religious and cultural activities in the coastal town of Trani, in Southern Italy, after several centuries of substantial interruption. The specific events which led to the re-establishment of an institutional Jewish community and the restoration and reclamation of the local synagogues, along with the renewed visibility of the well-preserved Jewish district, of Medieval origins, are unique to this case study. However, at the same time, they reflect similar phenomena of restoration of Jewish sites and revival of Jewish communities in southern and eastern Europe, and beyond. As the case study analysis …

Radical Hospitality: Height And Excess Of The Other And The New Host Self, Diako Alikhani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical framework and its emphasis on the “height and excess” of “the Other,” this thesis explores and develops a sense of “radical hospitality” in Levinas and across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In particular, the thesis explores how encounter with the Other is not only marked by an overwhelming excess, but one which transforms the subject into what I call a “New Host Self:” Where the self is the host who greets the stranger with hospitality, it is ultimately the stranger—the refugee, the migrant—who transforms the host into someone new. Here, the host ultimately receives a gift …

New Paths In Jewish And Religious Studies: Essays In Honor Of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, Glenn Dynner, Susannah Heschel, Shaul Magid

Purdue University Press Books

The work of Elliot R. Wolfson has profoundly influenced the fields of Jewish studies as well as philosophy and religion more broadly. His radically new approaches have created pioneering ways of analyzing texts and thinking about religion through the lens of gender, sexuality, and feminist theory. The contributors to New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson, many of whom are internationally renowned scholars, hearken from diverse fields. Each has learned from and collaborated with Wolfson as student or colleague, and each has expanded the new scholarly directions initiated by Wolfson’s groundbreaking …

Judaism, Conversion, And The Limits Of Christian Orthodoxy: The Jewish Identities Of Joseph Wolff And Michael Solomon Alexander As Detailed In Their Memoirs And Missions To Palestine, Michael Iodice

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the Jewish identities of the Anglican missionaries Joseph Wolff and Michael Solomon Alexander by examining their conversion memoirs and evangelical missions to Palestine. It argues that they used Protestant biblical exegesis to emphasize their Jewish heritage and its importance in Christian prophecy.

“The Scepter Shall Not Depart From Judah”: Jews And Imperial Power In Benjamin Of Tudela’S Book Of Travels, Azriel Elul

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

This paper, written as a final project for Professor Shay Rabineau's class “Walking the Land,” examines the relationship of medieval Jews to the imperial powers to which they were subject, as expressed in Benjamin of Tudela's Book of Travels. It focuses on the two imperial cores of Rome and Baghdad, and contextualizes the representation of these two cities within the world of imperial power in which the text was produced. As a work of medieval travel literature, I analyze the Book of Travels not as a factual account of history, but rather as a discursive and imaginative text which …

Between The Temples, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Between the Temples (2024), directed by Nathan Silver.

Change Is Tradition: An Analysis Of The Passover Seder, Aviva Miller

Scripps Senior Theses

Through an examination of the origins of the Passover Seder and the Seder’s section on the four children, I argue that change and adaptation are essential components of the Passover traditions. These traditions have previously had to adapt, and must continue to adapt to the demands of changing historical circumstances. Creative adaptation that maintains roots in past iterations of the tradition will ensure that each generation feels the desire to continue passing down the Passover traditions.

The New Antisemitism, Edgar G. Soto

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Following the Second World War, antisemitism appeared to be on a decline. Presently, however, there is an uptick in antisemitic hate crimes, worldwide. Modern-day Islamic antisemitism in particular is in large part recycled European Christian antisemitism adapted for Islamic audiences and intensified by the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. This iteration of anti-Jewish bigotry is not the same as the “old,” but neither is it different. As will be explained, antisemitism has, throughout history, amounted to an anomaly in Islamic culture and in what may be called “normative” Islam.

Indeed, Muslims and Jews lived together amicably for centuries. In fact, within dar-al-Islam, …

Music Of The Divine: Interweaving Threads Connecting Contemporary Chant-Based Piano Repertoire, Jeremy D. Duck

Glenn Korff School of Music: Dissertations, Theses, Student Creative Work, and Performances

The purpose of this document is to prove chant remains an important source of inspiration among living composers, and, despite the number of piano works already incorporating chant, composers today are still finding unique ways to include chant in their music. To achieve this objective, representative works have been selected for research and analysis for four of the major chant traditions. Connor Chee’s The Navajo Piano, Victoria Bond’s Illuminations on Byzantine Chant, and Hayes Biggs’ E.M. am Flügel: Poem-Étude for Piano Solo, though the chants from which they are inspired are diverse in concept and style, they …

Gordon, Ina, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarized by Kathryn Amend

Ina Gordon grew up on Morris Avenue, just east of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. She describes her childhood with two siblings in a tiny apartment, and her happy upbringing despite her family’s economic struggles. She reminisces on summers spent renting bungalows in the Catskills and childhood joys such as roller skating, visiting the library, and playing tennis.

Gordon explains the importance of education in her family, and describes how she ended up traveling to the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree. She and her brother both received scholarships to attend. They had a …

Material Culture In The Mediterranean: An Exploration And Examination Of Anti-Judaic And Antisemitic Spanish Medieval Cultural History, Madison Elizabeth Tarleton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Author Gavin Langmuir produced two monographs during his career, both published in 1990. Across both texts, one a proper monograph and one a compilation of essays, he offers a bifurcation of anti-Judaism and antisemitism. These texts illuminate his definitions of the terms and his differentiations on the basis of reason and rationality. Using the bones of these theories, I propose a different kind of bifurcation of these terms as it relates to Mediterranean (medieval) material culture using a cultural historical lens. By applying Gavin Langmuir's theoretical model of nonrational anti-Judaism and irrational antisemitism to material culture, I argue that visual …

Entre La Exclusión Y La Empatía: Conocimientos Y Sentimientos De La Juventud Judía De Buenos Aires Sobre La Memoria Colectiva De “La Comunidad Judía” En La Última Dictadura Argentina (1976-1983) / Between Exclusion And Empathy: Knowledge And Sentiments Of Jewish Youth In Buenos Aires About The Collective Memory Of The “The Jewish Community” During The Argentine Dictatorship (1976-1983), Rachel Colson

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

La última dictadura cívico-militar en Argentina es tanto parte del pasado como del futuro. El “Proceso de Reorganización Nacional” instalado por las Fuerzas Armadas trajo opresión política y violencia extrema hacia la gente en contra del régimen. Desde su fin, la sociedad ha enfrentado el problema de cómo recordar esta época. La memoria forma parte importante de la identidad social argentina, pero es complicada debido a la experiencia de determinados grupos durante la dictadura. En estos años, los judíos sufrieron una victimización especial dentro de los campos clandestinos de detención—los sitios de tortura y desaparición—de las Fuerzas Armadas. Mientras algunos …

Josephus And The Law, Stacey Kaliabakos

Parnassus: Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Dancers Of The Book: Yemenite, Persian, And Kurdish Jewish Dance, Quinn Bicer

Anthós

Despite the cultural significance of dance in Jewish communities around the world, research into Middle Eastern Jewish dance outside of the modern nation-state of Israel is sorely under-researched. This article aims to help rectify this by focusing on Yemenite, Persian/Iranian, and Kurdish Jewish dance and explores how these dancers have functioned and been received within the societies they have been a part of. The methods that have gone into this article are a combination of analyzing primary source recorded dances and existing secondary source research into the dance of these communities. Through these methods, this article reveals how Yemenite, Iranian, …

The Jews Of Harlem, Dimitry Ekshtut

Open Educational Resources

This is a syllabus for JWST 31919 - The Jews of Harlem, offered by the Jewish Studies Department at City College of New York. "The Jews of Harlem" is an interdisciplinary class focusing on the story of Jews in the neighborhood of Harlem, New York, their historic connection to the neighborhood (when it was the 3rd largest Jewish community in the world), and the flowering of new Jewish life in Harlem today.

Under G-D, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Under G-d (2022), directed by Paula Eiselt.

Beyond Film: #Mejew: Antisemitism, Authentic Representation And Jewish Identity In Hollywood, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a report on the Sundance Film Festival panel from the BEYOND FILM program: "#MeJew: Antisemitism, Authentic Representation and Jewish Identity in Hollywood" which occurred in Park City on January 22, 2023.

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 …

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.

"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.

"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 …

From Handmaids To Princesses: How Identity And Politics Impact Definitions Of Biblical Rape, Gabrielle R. Isaac-Herzog

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

The politics of sex in the Bible are complex. They are impacted and limited by the time of the stories, as well as the political landscape and laws of the region. However, since many modern religions have emerged from the text of the Hebrew Bible, it is important for scholars to continue the work of critically examining the texts in the contemporary context. This paper offers a textual analysis of several biblical stories through a feminist and decolonial lens. Through the generation of a taxonomy by which these stories can be categorized, this paper posits that the biblical definitions of …

"Becoming Jewish, Believing In Jesus: Judaizing Evangelicals In Brazil" [Review]/Carpenedo, Manoela, Rodrigo Galiza

Andrews University Seminary Studies (AUSS)

This is a book review by Rodrigo Galiza.