Jewish Studies Commons^™

Finding Lost & Found: Designer’S Notes From The Process Of Creating A Jewish Game For Learning, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This article provides context for and examines aspects of the design process of a game for learning. Lost & Found (2017a, 2017b) is a tabletop-to-mobile game series designed to teach medieval religious legal systems, beginning with Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (1180), a cornerstone work of Jewish legal rabbinic literature. Through design narratives, the article demonstrates the complex design decisions faced by the team as they balance the needs of player engagement with learning goals. In the process the designers confront challenges in developing winstates and in working with complex resource management. The article provides insight into the pathways the team …

Introduction: Jewish Gamevironments – Exploring Understanding With Playful Systems, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

The study of Judaism, Jewish civilizationi, and games is currently comprised of projects of a rather small set of game scholars. A sample of our work is included in this issue.

Tastes Of Faith: Jewish Eating In The United States, Leah Hochman

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are," wrote the 18th Century French politician and musician Jean Brillat-Savarin, giving expression to long held assumptions about the role of food, taste, and eating in the construction of cultural identities.

Foodways—the cultural, religious, social, economic, and political practices related to food consumption and production—unpack and reveal the meaning of what we eat, our tastes. They explain not just our flavor profiles, but our senses of refinement and judgment. They also reveal quite a bit about the history and culture of how food operates and performs in society. …

December 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Calendar 2017

Italy’S Jews From Emancipation To Fascism, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

How did Italy treat Jews during World War II? Historians have shown beyond doubt that many Italians were complicit in the Holocaust, yet Italy is still known as the Axis state that helped Jews. Shira Klein uncovers how Italian Jews, though victims of Italian persecution, promoted the view that Fascist Italy was categorically good to them. She shows how the Jews' experience in the decades before World War II - during which they became fervent Italian patriots while maintaining their distinctive Jewish culture - led them later to bolster the myth of Italy's wartime innocence in the Fascist racial campaign. …

Gallaty's "The Forgotten Jesus: How Western Christians Should Follow An Eastern Rabbi" (Book Review), Lindsay Hallam

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

November 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Calendar 2017

Profile Interview With Pamela K. Sari, Keslee Diiorio

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

Pamela K. Sari is a PhD candidate in American studies at Purdue University. She also is affi liated with the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program and the Anthropology Department. Her research, teaching, and engagement interests relate to how individuals and communities navigate issues of “home” and “belonging.” Her dissertation research examines a transnational connection between a Charismatic megachurch in central Java, Indonesia, and its American church partners, particularly Indonesian immigrant churches in southern California. Through her experience living in Indonesia and the United States where religious practices are prevalent, she is interested in the intersectionality between religion and …

Olam Ha-Zeh V’Olam Ha-Ba: This World And The World To Come In Jewish Belief And Practice, Leonard Greenspoon

Studies in Jewish Civilization

Dining on Leviathan. Discoursing with Socrates. Debating the nature of existence in the afterlife. These are among the topics authors address in this wide-ranging account of how Jews have conceptualized the world to come and structured their lives in this world accordingly. Some authorities portrayed the afterlife as an endless round of feasting and drinking of chazerie that would put the fanciest Las Vegas buffets to shame. There were visionaries who mapped out otherworldly climes populated by monstrous creatures. Others, decidedly more staid, saw the world to come as a location where neither food nor wine would be consumed; instead, …

October 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Simchat Torah; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Rabbi Darah Lerner Visits; Community Notices

Entartete Kunst: The War Against Modern Art In The Third Reich, Zeynep Kazmaz

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

In July 1937, the Nazi Party exhibited a collection of modern artwork confiscated from museums throughout Germany. This display, entitled the “Degenerate Art Exhibition,” was organized to ridicule the artwork being presented. The events that led to such a breaking point had started forming around the early 20th century. In Germany, after the First World War, the blossoming of modern art had coincided with the forming of a racist ideology. Meanwhile, Hitler was also discovering his own racist views and dislike of modern art. An artist who delved into politics, Hitler integrated his artistic views into his political ideologies. Eventually, …

Review Of Dumitru, Diana, The State, Antisemitism, And Collaboration In The Holocaust: The Borderlands Of Romania And The Soviet Union And Geissbühler, Simon, Ed., Romania And The Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

Reviews of The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union by Diana Dumitru and Romania and the Holocaust: Events, Contexts, Aftermath, edited by Simon Geissbühler.

Exodus As New Creation, Israel As Foundling: Stories In The History Of An Idea, Christopher Evangelos John Brenna

Dissertations (1934 -)

This study surveys the development of two literary phenomena in early Jewish and Christian tradition. The first is the birth story of a portentous child, exemplified by the birth stories of Moses, Noah, Melchizedek, and Jesus in biblical and Second Temple period literature. The second is the mythical expansion of the exodus tradition, which interprets the crossing of the Red Sea as a recreation of the people of Israel. I examine the appropriation of these two phenomena in the late antique Hellenistic story, Joseph and Aseneth. I contend that (1) the early Jewish birth story paradigm is influenced by the …

Book Review: Representing Genocide: The Holocaust As Paradigm?, Emily Sample

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

September 2017, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Shabbat in the Woods; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Community Notices

Music In Haredi Jewish Life: Liquid Modernity And The Negotiation Of Boundaries In Greater New York, Gordon A. Dale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I seek to understand tensions regarding boundary maintenance, music, and cultural continuity among the contemporary Haredi (“Ultra-Orthodox”) Jewish community of Greater New York in the context of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity. While Bauman suggests that modernity has melted familiar institutions and created an unstable and rapidly shifting world, I argue that for Haredim, the non-liberal religious community and its cultural productions solidify social bonds. While many Haredi Jews strive to continue the musical practices of pre-WWII Europe, some Haredi musicians push or disregard the boundaries of accepted practice by experimenting with Western popular music …

Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility In Weimar Germany, Kerry Wallach

Gettysburg College Faculty Books

Weimar Germany (1919–33) was an era of equal rights for women and minorities, but also of growing antisemitism and hostility toward the Jewish population. This led some Jews to want to pass or be perceived as non-Jews; yet there were still occasions when it was beneficial to be openly Jewish. Being visible as a Jew often involved appearing simultaneously non-Jewish and Jewish. Passing Illusions examines the constructs of German-Jewish visibility during the Weimar Republic and explores the controversial aspects of this identity—and the complex reasons many decided to conceal or reveal themselves as Jewish. Focusing on racial stereotypes, Kerry Wallach …

Text To Data: Wrangling Early Modern Sources Into A Spreadsheet, Shawn Hill

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Shawn Hill discusses how to turn historical sources into data. He provides tips for preparing a spreadsheet that can be used in digital humanities.

The Expulsion Of The Jews From The State Of Milan: Same Event With Views From Different Archives, Flora Cassen

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Documents presented here come from three different sources: the archives of Milan, the archives of Simancas, and Joseph Ha-Cohen’s chronicle Emek ha-Bakha. The document from Milan, dated from 1589, is a long defense of the Jews’ right to live in Milan sent to Madrid in response to a request by Philip II of Spain who was pondering whether or not to expel the Jews. The task of writing the report of Jewish life in Milan was given to the Spanish governor of Milan, but it was a collective work put together by the Senate of Milan, based on the opinions …

Founding Documents Of The Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora, Amsterdam, Anne Oravetz Albert

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 1638 founding document of the Kahal Kadosh Talmud Tora of Amsterdam is well known as a “merger agreement” that brought three existing congregations together into one synagogue under one leadership council (Mahamad). It bears the signatures of 218 householding men of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish nation in Amsterdam, signifying their agreement to subject themselves to the authority of the new leadership. It is also well known that this document, along with the set of communal regulations drawn up later that year, granted nearly unfettered authority to the Mahamad. Looking at these two documents along with an …

Construction, Reconstruction And Deconstruction: Stories About Records From The Ottoman Heartlands, Shuki Ecker

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The texts were selected in light of the general question: what kind of records did Ottoman Jewish communities maintain as part of their regular communal activities. They were further chosen to reflect procedures, considerations and conflicts that accompanied record keeping and were not usually recorded in the actual records produced. In most cases the records kept by the communities before the 19th century are no longer available. While references to the existence of various records can be found in a variety of contemporary and later sources (some of which I will mention), the texts translated offer a short selection of …

Documents, Records And Early Modern Border Crossings, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In order to cross borders in early modern Europe, travelers were expected to carry proper documentation that both identified them and permitted them entry into the region to which they intended to travel. In the Electoral Palatinate, the Jews were issued a special type of safe conduct that was tied to a flat rate tax levied on the Jews of Worms. In response, Jewish communities developed both inter- and intracommunal systems to sell, buy, and keep track of these documents. This presentation examines the safe conducts and the records and systems that developed to regulate their use.

Counting And Recording Sins, David Myers

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The documents below, from a 1635 handbook on how to confess sins, reflect the intensifying practice in early modern European Catholicism of remembering and counting offenses in preparation for attending the sacrament of penance and receiving absolution from an authorized priest. Among the originals is an example of how the “technology” was intended to work easily, almost effortlessly.

Linguistic And Formal Aspects Of Jewish Record Keeping In Italy—A Comparative Investigation, Bernard Cooperman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

There is ample evidence for a flourishing Jewish documentary consciousness in 16th-century Italy. This is clear at many different levels—from the notarial to the constitutional, from the judicial to the legislative, from the personal and mercantile to the criminal and diplomatic. Maintaining documentary archives clearly became common, indeed normative, in a wide range of communities, apparently partly in response to pressure from the outside, partly because of an increasing level of institutionalization in the growing communities themselves. What were the models and norms for Jewish documentary and archival practice? How did existing traditions of terminological, conceptual, and linguistic practices among …

Taqqanot Qandiya And The Construction Of Crete’S Jewish History, Rena N. Lauer

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

During the first half of the sixteenth century, Elijah Capsali, community leader and rabbi of the Jewish community of Candia (the capital of Venetian Crete), collected the communal ordinances and other materials (including some lists and responsa) he deemed relevant. Capsali was a self-conscious historian who also wrote Hebrew histories of the Ottoman Empire and of Venice. Nevertheless, his Cretan collection has rarely been treated in the context of Capsali’s interest in history. Rather, it has been read as a collection of almost ad-hoc legal materials. I posit that Capsali edited these texts to construct an intentional record of his …

Strategic Record Keeping And Striving For Autonomy: Was There A Jewish Community Archive In Early Modern Frankfurt?, Verena Kasper-Marienberg

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The bombardment of Frankfurt am Main by Napoleonic forces in 1796 resulted in the almost total destruction of the so-called Judengasse, a narrow lane lined with wooden houses where the Frankfurt Jews lived. This ended nearly 350 years of oppressive living conditions that segregated more than 3,000 Jewish residents of Frankfurt and their guests from their Christian neighbors. For the most part, whatever might have existed in terms of archival records of the Jewish community was also a victim of the flames. It is mostly only through the survival of non-Jewish records of or about the Jewish community that we …

Unrecorded Justice: The (Non-)Archival Practices Of Medieval Jewish Courts, Rachel Furst

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In the summer of 1298, a wave of anti-Jewish violence incited by a German nobleman named Rindfleisch swept through Franconia and the neighboring vicinities. In Würzburg, local burghers joined gangs of murderous knights to massacre nearly 900 Jews. Among the victims was Simeon ben Jacob (R. Shim’on ben R. Ya’akov), a resident of Worms who had come to Würzburg to pay and collect business debts. Following the riots, three witnesses reported that they had seen Simeon’s dead body; and on the basis of these testimonies, the Jewish court in Worms declared Simeon’s wife a widow and granted her permission to …

Volume 14: Cultures Of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, And Use In The Early Modern Period, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2017 Early Modern Workshop's theme was "Cultures of Record Keeping: Creation, Preservation, and Use in the Early Modern Period." The workshop focused on the creation, preservation, organization, collection, translation, and use of records, evidence, and information. It also examined continuities and change between chronological periods --including medieval and modern, and different cultures and settings--Jewish and non-Jewish. Among themes addressed were: official record keeping, personal records, collection and organization of information.

Even more than in our previous topic--history of emotions/emotions in history--there is such an abundance of work on records, and record keeping in non-Jewish historiography, but exceedingly little on …

Card Tricks: A Workflow For Scalability And Dynamic Content Creation Using Paper2d And Unreal Engine 4, Owen Gottlieb, Dakota Herold, Edward Amidon

Presentations and other scholarship

In this paper, we describe the design and technological methods of

our dynamic sprite system in Lost & Found, a table-top-to-mobile

card game designed to improve literacy regarding prosocial

aspects of religious legal systems, specifically, collaboration and

cooperation. Harnessing the capabilities of Unreal Engine’s

Paper2D system, we created a dynamic content creation pipeline

that empowered our game designers so that they could rapidly

iterate on the game’s systems and balance externally from the

engine. Utilizing the Unreal Blueprint component system we were

also able to modularize each actor during runtime as data may be

changed. The technological approach behind Lost …

Holocaust, Memory, Second-Generation, And Conflict Resolution, Leslie O'Donoghue

Dissertations and Theses

Ten Jewish second-generation men and women from metro Portland, Oregon were interviewed regarding growing up in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The American-born participants ranged in age from fifty-one to sixty-four years of age at the time of the interviews. Though the parents were deceased at the time of this study the working definition of a Holocaust survivor parent included those individuals who had been refugees or interned in a ghetto, labor camp, concentration camp, or extermination camp as a direct result of the Nazi Regime in Europe from 1933 to 1945.

A descriptive phenomenological approach was utilized. Eight open-ended …