Jewish Studies Commons^™

Haggadah And History, Fordham University

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Latteri On Weiss, 'Sefer Yesirah And Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices', Natalie Latteri

Theology & Religious Studies

Book Review by Natalie Latteri on Tzahi Weiss' Sefer Yesirah and Its Contexts: Other Jewish Voices. This review was originally published in the Journal of Medieval Worlds, Vol. 1, Number 1, pp. 117-120.

Ijcs News, Volume 7, The Institute Of Judaeo-Christian Studies

Newsletters

The 2019 issue of IJCS News, the Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies' annual newsletter, Vol 7.

Kline Collection Finding Aid, Casey Bush, Robyn Conroy

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection was purchased in 1997 through the generosity of the following donors: Michael J. Leffell ’81 and Lisa Klein Leffell ’82, the Sheftel Family in memory of Milton S. Sheftel ’31, ’32 and the proceeds of the Carole and Michael Friedman Book Fund in honor of Elisabeth “Lisa” Friedman of the Class of 1985

The collection contains books, pamphlets, magazines, guides, journals, newspapers and screenplays related to Jewish history, German history, World War II, and the Holocaust. Of the at least 3,600 volumes, valued at approximately $300,000, 60% are in English, 30% in German, and 10% in other languages …

January 2019, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Tu B'Shavat; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; MLK Day; Announcements; Dr.Elcha Buckman Happiness and Humor; Community Notices

Review Of Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation, Carol A. Leibiger

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Holocaust In Film, Roy Mittelman

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Neuman, Tamara. Settling Hebron. Jewish Fundamentalism In A Palestinian City. Philadelphia, Pa: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2018., Ilana Maymind

Religious Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Tamara Neuman's Settling Hebron. Jewish Fundamentalism in a Palestinian City.

The Americanization Of The Holocaust: Reconsidered Through Judaic Studies, Brie Green-Rebackoff

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This article explores how the Americanization of the Holocaust is in part responsible for the paradigm that the mention of the Holocaust is vital for a Jewish writer of postwar fiction to be taken seriously. In keeping with the need for people to find meaning in catastrophe, to derive humanity from inhumanity and order out of chaos, Jewish literature's apparent 'success' or international reach often depends on reflecting on the Holocaust as an empowering movement that pushed survivors and other Jews to feel a sense of unity and inclusiveness. By using the Holocaust to generate interest in audiences as opposed …

‘Pa-Jew-Cah’: Reclaiming The History Of Paducah’S Jewish Community, Hannah Newberry

Posters-at-the-Capitol Presentations

When imagining Kentucky’s religious heritage, most people picture churches, not synagogues. Yet historian Lee Shai Weissbach demonstrates that Kentucky’s first synagogue was built in Louisville in 1849, and Jews had been living in the Commonwealth almost as long as it existed. Kentucky’s Jewish heritage is rich and varied as illustrated by Arwen Donahue’s This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak, Deborah Weiner’s Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History, and Amy Shevitz’s Jewish Communities on the Ohio River: A History. While each of these texts refers to Paducah as an early and important Jewish settlement, none offers exclusive …

Colonial Identity In The Jedaniah "Archive" At Elephantine, Lisa J. Cleath

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This study will consider the materiality of the Jedaniah collection from Elephantine through the lenses of process theory of identity and temporal-spatial discourse. The Jedaniah collection is composed of ten Aramaic documents, spanning at least twenty years in the mid-fifth century BCE. The documents include copies of letters sent and received by members inside of the “Jewish” community as well as Persian-backed authority figures. Since these texts were discovered in 1907, many scholars have discussed their content in relation to their “Jewish” themes, but few have questioned the theoretical frameworks employed for examining the material nature of the documents. A …

Mobilizing Jewishness, Gabriella Foster

Honors Theses

As a dance practitioner and self-identified Jew, I am deeply committed to social action through performance. Over the course of the past year, I explored the capacity of contemporary dance practices to support Jews in reflecting on and conceptualizing their Jewish experience. Through literary and creative research, the designing and facilitating of movement workshops in mid-Maine Jewish communities, and the creation of an evening-length performance piece titled, Shelanu (Ours), I discovered the numerous ways in which these two aspects of my identity could enrich one another. In the wake of several anti-Semitic incidents both nationally and locally this year, this …

On Writing And Righting History: The Stakes Of Holocaust Interpretation And Remembrance In Poland And The United States, Noa Gutow-Ellis

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the ways in which American Jews - and Americans more generally, by way of the Americanization of the Holocaust - have come to think about and understand Poland and how Poland has subsequently rejected their narratives. Historically, American Jewish cultural works have placed Poland as a geographic space, nation, and people at the center of stories of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust and World War II. In its quest to right and correct historical misunderstandings, this project looks at the ways Poland has worked to completely revise the historical narrative.

Through tracing historiographies of separateness between Jewish …

Decreasing Voluntary Employee Turnover In The Hospitality Industry, Andrew Anderson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore the strategies general managers of full-service hotels used to reduce voluntary frontline employee turnover. The conceptual framework for this study was Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory. The 3 participants were hotel general managers in the midwestern region of the United States. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with 3 purposefully selected hotel general managers and by reviewing company documents. Data analysis consisted of gathering the data, coding for emergent themes, compiling the data into common codes, organizing the data into themes, interpreting the meaning, and reporting the themes. Four themes emerged …

Was Yosef On The Spectrum? Understanding Joseph Through Torah, Midrash, And Classical Jewish Sources (Introduction), Samuel J. Levine

Scholarly Works

The story of Yosef (Joseph) presents some of the most challenging questions of all biblical narratives. Yosef’s behavior, interpersonal relationships, and personal journey and development are often difficult to understand, and at times seem to defy explanation. Leading commentators are repeatedly puzzled both by Yosef’s actions and by the events that surround him. This book attempts to achieve a coherent and cohesive reading of the story that offers a plausible understanding of Yosef’s behaviors toward others and those of others toward him, while at the same time accounting for both his successes and his failures. Toward that goal, the book …

Louisville Jewish Hospital’S “Tikkun Olam”: A Case Example Of Continuity For American Jewish Hospitals, Hannah Thompson

Libraries Award for Undergraduate Scholarship

According to Mary Wagner, the author of Jewish Hospitals Yesterday and Today, Jewish Hospitals emerged in the mid-19th century in the U.S. for several reasons: the Jewish American community’s need to combat anti-Semitism, to provide services for its large and then-growing immigrant population, and to establish a place for Jewish medical professionals to work, since anti-Semitism prevented them from being employed elsewhere. Although, American Jews became increasingly more accepted as part of the broader American social and political milieu throughout the early 20th century, Jewish Hospitals persisted in cities across the U.S. until the 1970s. To date roughly 22 …

In Spite Of You, We Live On: A Commemorative Painting, Goldie Gross

Publications and Research

This painting is the product of a Yiddish language independent study with Professor Debra Caplan. It depicts a war portrait of Hitler with a stumbling stone inscribed with the words "אויף צו להכעיס דיר לעבן מיר נאך" (in spite of you, we live on) in the center of his face. It is accompanied by an explanation of the painting.

Apocalypticism In The Homiletic Text Of Pesiqta Rabbati: Catastrophic Events At The End-Of-Time, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Journal Articles

The rabbinic homiletic work Pesiqta Rabbati contains several apocalyptic topoi in its homilies that culminate in descriptions of divine intervention in history, total destruction followed by the messianic age at the end-of-time, and justice at the final judgment. Nevertheless, Pesiqta Rabbati does not present itself as an apocalypse, nor does it belong to the text-type “apocalypse.” It contains midrashic apocalypticism by interpreting scriptural passages, and relied on the existing language of apocalyptic sources to augment the midrashic statements. Previous scholarship relating to the apocalypse in Pesiqta Rabbati focused mainly on the apocalypses of 2 Baruch, Paralipomena Jeremiou, and 4 Ezra. …

From Talking Softly To Carrying A Big Shtick: Jewish Masculinity In Twentieth-Century America, Miriam Eve Mora

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation follows the progress of American Jewish men in the difficult and often backsliding process of acculturation into American life. Jewish men have historically been held to a different standard of masculinity, one which both Jews and non-Jews throughout American history have ascribed in both positive and negative ways, often depicting Jewish men as bookish, gentle, weak, and even effeminate. Those Jews who strove to attain American manhood engaged in masculine American endeavors to the extent of their access and ingenuity. Their struggle to enter institutions of American masculinity reveals a great deal about Jewish acceptance in the United …

Introduction: Connecting Histories: Jews And Their Others In Early Modern Europe, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

Introduction to edited volume Connecting Histories: Jews and Their Others in Early Modern Europe (ed. by Francesca Bregoli and David B. Ruderman)

Introduction To Unlikely Heroes: The Place Of Holocaust Rescuers In Research And Teaching, Ari Kohen, Gerald Steinacher

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

The aim of this collection is not to provide an all-encompassing work about "rescuers" or the phenomenon of rescue. The topic is too large to cover exhaustively, of course, but doing so is also not our aim. We use a few examples in this volume to illustrate research findings and teaching techniques related to Holocaust rescuers in order to show the issues at stake. We open with some new research on the phenomenon of rescue and resistance during the Holocaust.

Testimony, Objectivism, And Poetic Form In Charles Reznikoff’S Holocaust, Rachel E. Trnka

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This essay examines the gradual development of Charles Reznikoff’s testimony form Holocaust poetry, which ultimately rejected the traditional lyric forms of his earlier works in favor of a stark, Objectivist poetry that culminated in Holocaust (1975)—a poem based on the transcripts from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials. The WWI poems from Reznikoff’s first volume Rhythms (1918) underscore the importance of music to his early elegies in contrast to the blunt, impersonal testimonies in Holocaust. In Rhythms, Reznikoff employs traditional conventions ironically to convey war’s unpoetic reality while the poetic speakers in Going To and Fro and Walking Up …

Katharina E. Keim, Pirqei Derabbi Eliezer: Structure Coherence, Intertextuality, Rivka Ulmer

Faculty Journal Articles

Book Review, Pirqe deRabbi Eliezer

Gothic Identity And The ‘Othering’ Of Jews In Seventh-Century Spain, Erica Buchberger

History Faculty Publications

In 589, Reccared, king of the Visigoths in Spain, converted from Arian to Catholic Christianity. Arianism was banned, and after a brief period which saw the repression of rebellions, eliminated from the kingdom. All Goths were required to become Catholic. This watershed in Visigothic history both necessitated and facilitated a renegotiation of the parameters of Gothic identity. The entire kingdom was affected: the ruling Visigoths, the small population of recently conquered Sueves, and the Hispano-Romans who were left under the rule of the Goths when the Western Roman Empire fell apart.^[1] This Roman population also included some Jews. While …

Religion In Incarcerated, Jewish, Female Inmates, Marcia Janine Kesner

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the role religious belief and practice played amongst Jewish, female inmates during their incarceration. A group of ten correctional chaplains who work with Jewish, female, inmates and a comparison group of ten chaplains who work with Protestant, female inmates were interviewed. The study determined the reasons for and benefits of religious observance among these inmates and included assisting in dealing with fear, providing a sense of peace, and deceitful motives for personal gains. Religious practice also assisted inmate populations in healing from trauma, improving self-respect and self-esteem, building support systems, and additionally for Jewish, female inmates constructing …

Jewish Mysticism From Borges To Cirlot: A Transatlantic Approach To The Possibility Of A Non-Subject Subjectivity, Erika Martínez

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Jewish Mysticism from Borges to Cirlot,” Erika Martínez discusses the form in which some Latin American and Spanish poets of the twentieth century have experimented, in a disruptive way, with the subjective possibilities of stillness and of time capable of overflowing. Foucault defended, in his last lectures, the construction of a new governmentality of self and of others. Among the many possible technologies to achieve it would be that of the writing of a poetry without words, knowing the insurrectional potentiality of silence. This provides us with a possible starting point for reading the post-secular revision of …

Doing Business In America: A Jewish History, Purdue University Press

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

American and Jewish historians have long shied away from the topic of Jews and business. Avoidance patterns grew in part from old, often negative stereotypes that linked Jews with money, and the perceived ease and regularity with which they found success with money, condemning Jews for their desires for wealth and their proclivities for turning a profit. A new, dauntless generation of historians, however, realizes that Jewish business has had and continues to have a profound impact on American culture and development, and patterns of immigrant Jewish exploration of business opportunities reflect internal, communal, Jewish-cultural structures and their relationship to …

A Journey Into The Heart Of God: Darren Aronofsky’S Noah (2014) As A Subversive Kabbalistic Text, Lindsay Macumber, Magi Abdul-Masih

Journal of Religion & Film

The title of this paper reflects our interpretation of this film as a subversive mystical text, from within the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah. This interpretation is itself the product of a long journey of thinking about, and wrestling with this film in various ways. In this paper, we will outline this journey, concentrating on our first impressions of the film, some notable shifts in our thinking on this film that alerted us to the connection between the film and Jewish mysticism, and some concluding remarks about the implications of this reading.

A Newcomer's Guide To Kabbalah, Ernest M. Oleksy

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Kabbalah is a mystical and highly spiritual form of Judaism. Popularized by its endorsement by high-profile celebrities like Madonna, the average layperson knows enough about Kabbalah to recognize it as a vaguely familiar term, but not much else. This article strives to serve as an entry-point for both an intellectual and a popular audience to help familiarize readers with core components of Kabbalah and to help to begin fostering an appreciation for this very sophisticated faith. Matters of history, philosophy, science, doctrine, and more pertaining to Kabbalah will be discussed in this article

December 2018, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Mega-Chanukah Party; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book group; Anouncements; Community Notices