Jewish Studies Commons^™

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 …

'James', Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

‘James,’ born 1951, grew up on Narragansett Avenue in the Bronx. He remembers the neighborhood as heavily Italian, with a sprinkling of Jews, Irish, and others. It was primarily small, private homes, many attached like their own. Their own neighbor expressed a dislike of living next door to Jews, directly to his parents’ faces. Yet, James grew up to become friends with the non-Jewish neighbors. He describes their own practice of Judaism as less prosperous and traditional than other parts of the Bronx.

James attend PS 108 with many of the Jewish kids in the neighborhood, as …

Levine, Louis, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Louis Levine was born in 1940 on the Grand Concourse to immigrant parents. His mother came to the United States from Poland at three years old, in 1906, and his father came from Vilna at 28 years old, in 1931. Both worked in manufacturing, making and selling women’s garments and gloves, respectively, before his father opened a small glove making factory of his own. Levine grew up on 168^th Street and Walton Avenue. He attended Yeshiva Salanter from the time he was five years old and then Bronx High School of Science, which was also predominantly …

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 …

Brecker, Andrea, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Andrea Brecker’s maternal grandmother came to the United States from Russia in the late 1800s, marrying on the Lower East Side. The family had been kosher butchers in the old world, and continued the tradition on the Lower East Side and when they moved to the Bronx. Her paternal family also escaped the Tsar and came to the United States in the early 1900s, moving to the East Bronx. Her grandfather was an ironworker, who helped in the construction of Temple Emanu-El. Brecker’s father was a house painter, and supported the family on a modest income on Davidson Avenue between …

Jewish Fantasy Worldwide: Trends In Speculative Stories From Australia To Chile, Edited By Valerie Estelle Frankel, Gabriel Salter

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

In Jewish Fantasy Worldwide, edited by Valerie Estelle Frankel, authors examine a wide variety of speculative fiction written by Jewish authors. Particular emphasis is given to understudied authors and cultures (such as Jewish speculative fiction published in Australia and Eastern European countries). Several essays deal with the nature of Jewish identity (Holocaust remembrance's role for post-WWII Jewish writers, changing identity markers as agnosticism or secularism becomes more popular among Jewish authors).

Playing With Time: Writing History In Neo-Zionist Hebrew Literature, Huiruo Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The term neo-Zionism can be used to group ideologically much of contemporary Hebrew literature. However, since neo-Zionism shares similar critical tools with post-Zionism, while also sharing a common political vision with Zionism, it has been difficult to find the definitive signifiers of neo-Zionist writing. This paper offers a way to determine the nuanced ideological inclination of Hebrew literature: the presentation of time. First, this paper recognizes the metamorphosis of time in Israeli literary history that reflects the writers’ historical view of the Zionist agenda. Zionist Hebrew literature was engaged in re-establishing Jewish historical time by emphasizing the relationship between time …

"Robin", Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

“Robin” was born in 1944. Her parents were both born in the United States, with her mother’s family immigrating from Ukraine. “Robin” grew up on 205th street in an apartment until she turned 12 and her family moved to a two-family home on 208th street. While the 205th street area was both Irish and Jewish, the 208th street neighborhood was mostly Jewish. She attended PS 56, which was considered experimental because they learned Spanish in 6th grade. “Robin” remembers biking, playing basketball, and taking ballet classes.

“Robin” traveled with her family to beaches such as Fire Island, Rye Beach, and …

Morris, Craig, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Craig Morris, born in the Bronx in 1945, was raised in the Parkchester planned community. There, most of his friends were Jewish, although he did meet some nice kids who were Irish, Italian, and Protestant. However, he also had some violent run-ins with different ethnic groups, in particular the Irish. Morris discusses areas of Parkchester he couldn’t enter for fear of being attacked, and different incidents that occurred throughout his childhood. Overall, however, he describes Parkchester as a nice place to grow up, with good playgrounds, community spaces, and opportunities for children to walk around and explore.

Morris describes his …

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023

Seeking Sabbath In Annie Dillard's Holy The Firm, Olivia Grace Dycus

English Theses & Dissertations

Annie Dillard’s third-ever publication, Holy the Firm, asks why an omniscient God allows natural evil to occur. In this deeply poetic and mystical series of essays, Dillard explores the relationship between time, artistry, and God in the face of devastating chaos. This thesis argues that Dillard’s emphasis on the importance of time reflects a Jewish notion of Sabbath as defined by Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel. Dillard offers time and creation as medium through which to commune with God just as Heschel does in his book, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Heschel defines Sabbath as the coming …

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 …

The Sephardic-Mizrahi Moment: Cultural Renewal, Jewish-Arab Rapprochement And Zionism In The 1920s, Boaz Israel Levy

PANDION: The Osprey Journal of Research and Ideas

This study examines the Sephardic-Mizrahi nationalist strategy in the British and French mandates of the early 20th century. Scholars including Abigail Jacobson, Moshe Naor, and Yitzhak Bezalel indicate this community developed a unique approach to nationalism. Utilizing Alex Winder’s conceptual framework for violence, Yehuda Shamir’s conceptual framework for culture and Rashid Khalidi’s analytical framework, this study broadens the research on Sephardic-Mizrahi communities, the development of 20th century nationalism, and the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Drawing on correspondences, reports and newspapers, this paper argues a Sephardic-Mizrahi Moment began by 1925, employing institutions— such as activist organizations and the press—to simultaneously …

An Analysis Of Individualism In Historiography Through Mark Gilderhus And Hannah Arendt, Abigail M. Stanger

The Cardinal Edge

Typically, the works of Mark Gilderhus and Hannah Arendt would not draw comparison or likely even be referenced in defense of the same argument. However, in the context of historiography and historical analysis, Gilderhus’ History and Historians and Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil explore the role of the individual in the agency of historical events and the nature of historical analysis itself. Gilderhus utilizes a variety of anecdotes from significant historical individuals to frame his historiographical introduction. Arendt capitalizes on her position as a subjective party in retelling the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a …

Gurock, Jeffrey, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Jeffrey Gurock’s parents, his father, originally from Harlem and his mother from Brooklyn, were among the first people to move into Parkchester when it opened. His father was a firefighter and his mother was a bookkeeper. Gurock was born in 1949 and lived in Parkchester until he married in 1974. After living briefly in Cincinnati, Ohio, he returned to the Bronx and has been living in Riverdale ever since.

Gurock remembers Parkchester as predominantly Irish Catholic with many Italian and Jewish children. No Hispanics or African Americans were allowed to move in until 1968. While he recognizes this segregation now, …

Jacobs, Jack, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Jack Jacobs’ parents, both born and raised in Poland, moved to the Bronx after surviving WWII and spending time in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. Jacobs was born in the 1950s in the Bronx, and grew up in the West Bronx, first on Creston Avenue near Burnside Avenue and then on Harrison Avenue near Tremont Avenue. He remembers living in the same building as other members of his extended family and the neighborhood being majority Jewish, particularly with many Holocaust survivors. This meant an intensely strong Jewish environment in terms of stores, education, and synagogues.

Following his mother’s socialist, …

Publishing The Pan-Jewish: The First Hebrew Newspaper And Its Modernities, Philip E. Keisman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Publishing the Pan-Jewish emerges from a question about sites of synthesis between claims of sacred continuity and novel forms of communication. It centers on the first ten years of Hamagid (1856-1866), acknowledged within the historiography as history’s first Hebrew-language newspaper. Eliezer Lipman Silberman, an Orthodox butcher founded Hamagid in East Prussia as a bulwark of his vision of traditional Judaism. The first chapter of this dissertation examines the formal elements of the newspaper as a medium, demonstrating the myriad ways in which it presented novel experiences for its reading public. Chapter two narrates an untold history of the newspaper’s early …

Klein, Hilde, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Hilde Klein, born 1945, lived on Monroe Avenue, near Claremont Park, before it became part of the Cross Bronx Expressway and her family would move to Mount Eden Avenue. Klein remembers playing games in the street, roller skating and picnicking in the park. In addition to being an avid reader, she was a singer throughout school and in the synagogue choir and was recruited to be a part of the Ed Sullivan Show, but her parents said no.

Her family kept kosher, and on weekends would go to a dairy restaurant or delicatessen. Klein describes many experiences spent with her …

Braunstein, Beth, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Beth Anshen Braunstein was born in the Bronx 1954. Both sets of her grandparents immigrated from Russia, with one grandmother stopping in Alexandria, Egypt along the journey and learning Italian, which she used to communicate with Italian families in the Bronx. Her mother’s family lived and had a children’s clothing store on Bathgate Avenue. His father had a store next door and, after they were married, her parents had a health food store off of Pelham Parkway. Braunstein first lived on Bathgate before the family moved to Thieriot Avenue, near Parkchester. In her teenage years she became more religious, attending …

Josephus And The Law, Stacey Kaliabakos

Parnassus: Classical Journal

No abstract provided.

Konig, Irene, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Irene Konig’s mother was born in Ukraine, coming to the United States at 2 years old, while her father was born on the Lower East Side. Konig grew up with her parents and brother in a one bedroom apartment on Morris Avenue across from Taft High School. At 15 years old, they moved to East 180 St near Tremont Avenue because their apartment building was sinking and condemned by the city, before moving to the Highbridge neighborhood, later. She recalls the Bronx deteriorating, with burning buildings and trash on the streets, as she got older.

On Morris Avenue, the neighborhood …

Chavez, Robert, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Robert Chavez, born 1945, lived on Undercliff Avenue in the Bronx after his family settled there from Eastern Europe. His maternal grandparents immigrated from Russia, where his grandmother was adopted into the Tsar’s court. They bought a farm in Rockland County, where Chavez’s uncle was hidden for fear of getting drafted into WWII. His father, a traveling salesman, came from Brooklyn and joined the close knit family. Chavez remembers his building being a filled with first and second generation Jewish families, and became friendly with Puerto Rican peers in school. Being a middle child, he remembers playing with his brother …

Seperson, Susanne, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Reyna Stovall

Susane Seperson was born in Germany to Polish Holocaust survivors, Annie and David Bleiburg. Due to sponsorship from extended family living in New York, Seperson’s family immigrated to the United States. The family’s first home was on Tiffany Street and Seperson remembers being taken in a carriage to Crotona Park as a young child. Later, the family moved to an apartment above Seperson’s father’s cleaning store on 355 East 187th Street off Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse.

Seperson’s family remained in the 355 East 187th Street apartment through her elementary and junior high school years in …

Koppel, Mark, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Mark Koppel was born in October 1942 at Bronx Hospital. He first lived on 245 East Gun Hill Road before moving to Chicago with his family while his father served in World War II. Following the war, Koppel’s family moved back to the Bronx and settled in an apartment on 167th Street and College Avenue. He remembers the enighborhood he grew up in being predominantly Jewish and the close friendships he made with the other kids in his neighborhood and the street games they would play together.

Koppel’s family was not religiously observant growing up. However, Koppel had a Bar …

No Place Like Home? A Dialogical Journey With Shlomo Biderman, Daniel Raveh

Comparative Philosophy

This paper aims to think or rethink the concept of home as the contemporary avatar of the age-old question of self-identity. In dialogue with Shlomo Biderman, a comparative philosopher without borders who feels at home both in Jewish and Indian sources, the author assembles a philosophical jigsaw-puzzle made of different materials from different thinking traditions in attempt to reveal a new picture of home (and self) compatible with the changing world of immigration, relocation, dislocation and displacement, a world of emigrants, refugees and exiles, in which we live. The puzzle pieces include Plato’s cave, Isaiah Berlin’s “inner citadel”, Shmuel Yosef …

Rotman, Diana, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Diana Rotman was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrant parents who migrated from what was Poland in the 1920s. The youngest of three children, Rotman grew up on Teller Avenue and remembers the demographics of the street being overwhelmingly Jewish until the Bronx’s demographics began shifting and more black and Hispanic families started moving in. This prompted Rotman’s family to move to Mosholu Parkway when she was twelve years old, where she lived until moving to Manhattan after graduating high school.

Rotman was raised in an Orthodox, Yiddish-speaking household, and her family attended shul, kept kosher, and changed dishes …

Wolfthal, Diane Fialkow, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Diane Wolfthal was born in the Bronx in 1949 and lived on Pelham Parkway. However, shortly after her birth, Wolfthal’s family moved to the Amalgamated Housing Corporation. She remembers the co-op being an idyllic utopia. The co-op, from her memory, was very homogenous, with almost every family in the compound being Jewish, socialist, or communist, and either first or second-generation migrants. Additionally, most of the Jewish families at the Amalgamated Housing Corporation were secular. Wolfthal remembers observing Jewish holidays and going to Bar Mitzvahs but never having her Jewish practices tied to a notion of God. Instead, her Jewishness was …

Rifkin, Howard, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Howard Rifkin was born in the Bronx. His grandparents, both maternal and paternal, were Orthodox Jews. However, Rifkin and his parents were not, although he was bar mitzvahed in an Orthodox synagogue, the Mount Eden Jewish Center. While Rifkin’s mother was a homemaker, she eventually worked as a bookkeeper for Maurice Ratner. His father worked as a truck driver.

For his education, Rifkin attended PS 70, Wade Junior High School, and Taft High School, all of which were within several blocks of his childhood home. Rifkin attended university for a few years at Pace College. However, he dropped out and …

Brandon, Alfred, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Alfred Brandon was born on Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx in 1941 to second-generation Polish immigrants. Both sets of Brandon’s grandparents had immigrated to New York in the late 1800s/early 1900s, and his mother’s family owned a store before leaving New York for Los Angeles in 1942. Alfred’s paternal grandfather was trained as an upholsterer and likewise had his own store. When Alfred was nine months old, his family moved from their Bathgate Avenue apartment to White Plains Road, where he lived until he was nine.

Brandon grew up attending Congregation Brothers of Israel and attended Hebrew school in addition …

The Limits Of Solidarity: Leftist Jewish Israeli Activism For Palestine In The 1960’S And 2010’S, Ryann M. Hubbart

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

What does it mean for Jewish Israelis to engage in Palestinian solidarity? How do they navigate their positions of privilege in their activism? To explore these questions, I begin with a historical trajectory of the rise and fall of leftist Jewish Israeli activist organizations in response to global and local developments. I focus on two periods and their organizations: The Israeli Socialist Organization in the 1960’s and 1970’s and Ta’ayush and Physicians for Human Rights Israel in the 2010’s. In both cases the individuals in question are a very small minority of Israelis. From there I analyze these organizations and …