Jewish Studies Commons^™

Jewish Presence In The Venetian Empire: A Challenge To Venetian Mythology, Avery Rosensweig

Honors Theses

This paper attempts to explain the significance of Jewish presence in the Venetian Empire in the context of the myth of Venice. Jews were officially permitted to settle in Venice in 1516, but their connection with the Venetian Empire goes further back. Jews were important for the success of the Venetian Empire, particularly from the sixteenth century onward. The permanent settlement of the Jews in Venice directly impacted the very ideology of the Venetian Empire.

Although the phrase "myth of Venice" was developed by twentieth-century historians, Venetians perpetuated the myth and wove its ideals into the foundation of the Venetian …

Oppression In American, Islamic, And Jewish Private Law, Rabea Benhalim

University of Colorado Law Review

American, Islamic, and Jewish law all limit the enforcement of private law agreements incases of oppression and exploitation. But each system uses a different justification. The common thread among the three legal systems is the opposition from jurists to enforce contracts with a fundamental aspect of oppression. The reasoning for preventing oppression within the law is distinct to each legal system. The American legal system roots the justification in preserving free will and ensuring actual consent to contract. Islamic l provides justifications based on the divine vision for an equitable and just society articulated in the Quran. Jewish law argues …

To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance: Jews In The American Revolutionary Period, Ziv R. Carmi

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

While Jews were a small minority in the American colonies, they nonetheless participated in the American Revolution on both sides. This paper aims to evaluate the role of Jewish people in the conflict, contextualizing the experiences of this small minority within the larger narrative of the American Revolution and establishing their importance in the development of religious freedom in the United States. Through the examination of these topics, this paper aims to explore the Revolutionary period from the perspective of the Jewish-American, discussing their often-overlooked experiences in this watershed period within U.S. history.

Introduction, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Why Did The Rabbinic Work Pesiqta Rabbati Include Apocalyptic Topics In Its Homilies?, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Final Dilemma: Cremation As A Form Of Jewish Burial In Slovakia, Peter Salner

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This paper seeks to answer the question of why, in the 21st century, Jews from the largest Jewish community in Slovakia have increasingly begun to prefer cremation over traditional Jewish burial. Importantly, Judaism views the act of cremation as a repudiation of faith in the afterlife, which incurs punishment in the form of exclusion from the resurrection after the prophesied coming of the Messiah. There is also a historical case against cremation, based on the Nazis’ burning of the bodies of murdered concentration camp inmates. Ethnological research shows that the main reason for this preferential shift is the Holocaust, one …

Analysis And Performance Of Osvaldo Golijov’S Hebreische Milonga, Gerardo Sanchez Pastrana

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov is one of the most important and well-recognized composers of the 21^st century. His works are unique because of the diverse mixing of styles due to the interculturalism present in his music. In the program notes of his Hebreische Milonga, Golijov mentions that this piece can connect his Argentinian and Jewish roots as well as the influence of Astor Piazzolla’s music. In addition, there is a connection between the tango and the Jewish people residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that is not addressed frequently when discussing the history of the tango. This research begins …

Ambush, Reprisal, Riot, Revolt, And Reform: The Transnational Evolution Of British Colonial Policing In Ireland And The Palestine Mandate, 1918-1948, Tyler Kickler Krahe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation looks at the changes in British colonial policing between Ireland and the Palestine Mandate from 1918 and 1948. This time period covers the duration of the Anglo-Irish War, as well as Britain’s mandatory control of Palestine. It is the argument of this work that from 1918 to 1936, between Ireland and the Palestine Mandate, British colonial police forces demonstrated a pattern of evolving police training, practice, and organization, spurred on by violent action and followed by attempts at reform. This pattern continued until the Arab Revolt of 1936 when the police forces in the Palestine Mandate abandoned attempts …

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 …