Jewish Studies Commons^™

Eleff On Katz, 'Bringing Zion Home: Israel In American Jewish Culture, 1948-1967', Zev Eleff

Hebrew Theological College Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Review Of Muslims And Jews In France. History Of A Conflict By Maud S. Mandel, Bryan Turner

Publications and Research

The mood of European scholarship with respect to the recognition and integration of Islam is typically pessimistic. The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-Islam political parties – Golden Dawn in Greece, the Northern League in Italy, Marine Le Penn and the National Front in France, and the English defense league in Britain – have exposed a hitherto hidden or ignored under-current of resentment against foreigners. In the context of these developments, Maud Mandel’s study of Muslims and Jews in France is a welcome corrective to the dominant focus on anti-Islam in the academic literature and in the popular media. The historical …

The History, Memory, And Representation Of The Holocaust: Reflections On A Yearlong Freshman Seminar And Study Trip, Brian Vetruba, Cecily Hibbs, Talia Wazana, Abigail Wippel, Erin Mcglothlin, Anika Walke

WashU Libraries Presentations

Presented at the Lessons and Legacies conference on Holocaust Studies in November 2016, these posters document a year-long freshman FOCUS seminar held at Washington University in St. Louis in 2015-2016 that aimed to give incoming college students a sophisticated understanding of the causes, dynamics, representation, and memory of the Nazi genocide. Created and co-taught by Anika Walke and Erin McGlothlin, this intensive academic engagement featured two semesters of coursework focusing on the history and the literary and filmic representation of the Holocaust and a twelve-day trip to Germany, Poland and Lithuania. The group visited important Holocaust-related sites to deepen their …

B-2 Philological Problems In Isaiah 6 – An Investigation Of The Dead Sea Scroll Evidence, Rodrigo G. Barbosa

Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship

In this paper, I use Moshe Held-Chaim Cohen’s method to try to establish a preferable reading of Isaiah chapter 6 in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). The importance of the DSS for biblical textual criticism has not been rightly appreciated on the aspect that very few commentaries or critical study of a particular biblical text make use of it. So this work try to make the case of the relevance of the DSS textual evidence in order to establish a preferable variant of the Hebrew Bible.

Understanding The Hope Of Israel, Norm Mathers

Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Mishpachah: The Jewish Family In Tradition And In Transition, Leonard Greenspoon

Studies in Jewish Civilization

Dictionary definitions of the term mishpachah are seemingly straightforward: “A Jewish family or social unit including close and distant relatives—sometimes also close friends.” As accurate as such definitions are, they fail to capture the diversity and vitality of real, flesh-and-blood Jewish families.

Families have been part of Jewish life for as long as there have been Jews. It is useful to recall that the family is the basic narrative building block of the stories in the biblical book of Genesis, which can be interpreted in the light of ancient literary traditions, archaeological discoveries, and rabbinic exegesis. Rabbinic literature also is …

Mishpachah: The Jewish Family In Tradition And In Transition, Leonard J. Greenspoon

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Dictionary definitions of the term mishpachah are seemingly straightforward: “A Jewish family or social unit including close and distant relatives—sometimes also close friends.” As accurate as such definitions are, they fail to capture the diversity and vitality of real, flesh-and-blood Jewish families.

Families have been part of Jewish life for as long as there have been Jews. It is useful to recall that the family is the basic narrative building block of the stories in the biblical book of Genesis, which can be interpreted in the light of ancient literary traditions, archaeological discoveries, and rabbinic exegesis. Rabbinic literature also is …

The Crimes Of Love. The (Un)Censored Version Of The Flood Story In Noah (2014), Wojciech Kosior

Journal of Religion & Film

A swift survey of Noah reviews clearly shows that the audience’s sensitivity was challenged in several regards; Noah was portrayed as a “religious extremist” and “borderline psychopath”, the Creator proved to be a “distant—unaware or uncaring—overseer”, while Aronofsky himself was said to have a “sinister purpose of leading people to believe that Christianity and Judaism are something they are not.” On closer examination, however, the above summarized pleas are not entirely relevant for two basic reasons. First, the movie consists of ideas that have been in use since antiquity, rearranged and composed into a new-old story and all the arguments …

Risen, Katie Turner

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Risen (2016), directed by Kevin Reynolds.

October 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

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

The Star And The Stripes: A History Of The Foreign Policies Of American Jews By Michael N. Barnett (Review), Ann Lieberman Colgan

Interdisciplinary Studies and Academic Support Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Music And The Mind, Amanda K. Densmoor

Student Publications

How does music affect a work of literature? What does it reveal about the psychological state of the characters?

The Shepherd And The Exegetes: Hermeneutics Through The Lens Of Psalm 23., Richard M. Davidson

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Shelo Yigamer L’Olam: La Construcción De Identidades Compuestas En La Comunidad Judía De Iquitos, Perú / Shelo Yigamer L'Olam: The Construction Of Composite Identities In The Jewish Community Of Iquitos, Peru, Beatrice Waterhouse

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este informe trata de la comunidad judía en Iquitos, Loreto, Perú, y como compara al marco estándar de la identidad judía como diseñado por Simon Herman (1977) y Altman, Fine, Ritter, Inman, y Howard (2010). A través de observación a primera mano y entrevistas con una muestra de participantes en la comunidad organizada, analiza varias facetas de la identidad judía: etnia, religión, relaciones con la comunidad no-judía, nacionalidad, y sentimientos sobre el Estado de Israel. Este estudio de caso encuentra que la comunidad de Iquitos generalmente sigue ese marco con algunas diferencias claves, especialmente con referencia a la prominencia de …

How To Be A French Jew: Proust, Lazare, Glissant, Paul J. Fadoul

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation I use Auerbach's insights developed in his Mimesis to demonstrate that in A la recherche, Proust captures the political and racial concerns of his times, proposing as a solution a heterogeneous French society where cultural, ethnic, and religious groups live together in mutual respect and understanding. In his novel, Proust echoes ideas developed by Bernard Lazare in Le Nationalisme Juif (1897) as well as in the literary output of the first French Jewish Renaissance (early1900’s to the mid1930’s). These authors responded to the portentous mix of Nationalist and anti-Semitic politics by urging the creation of a separate …

Prejudice, Progress, And Preservation: The "Bertig Dynasty" Of Northeast Arkansas, 1870 - 1950, Elizabeth Elaine Johnson

Student Theses and Dissertations

This study is a multi-faceted examination of the historiographical representation of Jews in the American South using one family’s story to guide the historical analysis. With roots in the Austrian province Galicia, Adolph and Saul Bertig’s story challenges notions and erroneous historical claims regarding American Jewry’s national origins and identities. The narrative thus provides a more nuanced understanding of the historical circumstances central to many Jews’ decisions to migrate and stay in the United States. Jewish transplants into the predominantly Protestant culture of Northeast Arkansas, the Bertig brothers were key players in Greene County, Arkansas’s development and amassed a fortune …

Beatty, Beverly D. (Fa 884), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 884. Paper titled: “Jewish Folklore.” Project includes survey sheets and note cards with brief descriptions of various religious and superstitious beliefs. Survey sheets and note cards include a brief description of each belief or saying and informant’s name.

September 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Selichot Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Women of Achievement Award; Community Notices

The Subject Librarian Newsletter, Judaic Studies, Fall 2016, Richard Harrison

Libraries' Newsletters

No abstract provided.

America Abandoned: German-Jewish Visions Of American Poverty In Serialized Novels By Joseph Roth, Sholem Asch, And Michael Gold, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In 1930, Hungarian- born Jewish author Arthur Holitscher’s book Wiedersehn mit Amerika: Die Verwandlung der U.S.A. (Reunion with America: The Trans-formation of the U.S.A.) was reviewed by one J. Raphael in the German- Jewish Orthodox weekly newspaper, Der Israelit. This reviewer concluded: “Despite its good reputation, America is a strange country. And Holitscher, whose relationship to Judaism is not explicit, but direct, has determined that to be the case for American Jews as well.” The reviewer’s use of the word “strange” (komisch) offers powerful insight into the complex perceptions of America held by many …

Emotions And Business In A Trans-Mediterranean Jewish Household, Francesca Bregoli

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

These five excerpts come from two letter books that belonged to Joseph Franchetti (ca. 1720-ca. 1794), a successful Jewish merchant of Mantuan origins based in Tunis. At the time of the correspondence (1776-1790), Franchetti was a chief partner in the Salomone Enriches & Joseph Franchetti Company, a family-based trading firm with interests in Tunis, Livorno, and Smyrna. In the 1770s and 1780s, the core of Franchetti’s business was the sale of Tunisian chechias. These hats, made in Tunis with European wool acquired from Livorno, were highly sought after in the Ottoman Empire, with Smyrna serving as key distribution …

Fear In The Archive: Police Dossiers And The History Of Emotions In Old Regime France, Jeffrey Freedman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following document is a police dossier drawn from the Y series of the Archives Nationales. Compiled by a neighborhood commissioner named Louis- Pierre Regnard, the dossier contains testimony pertaining to the case of François Fromard, a journeyman quarry worker who hanged himself in his apartment in a working-class neighborhood of Paris on 29 May 1750. According to the testimony of his wife and neighbors, Fromard saw police agents everywhere and, before taking his own life, had become convinced that he was going to be arrested and imprisoned. No one, however, gave any indication that the police were really pursuing …

The Quality Of Mercy Strained--Regret And Repentance In Early Modern Law, David Myers

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following texts come from a trial of Catherine Mundt, tried in 1693, for infanticide, and interrogated under torture. The records are preserved in the Stadt Archiv Braunschweig.

“For We Jews Are Merciful”: Emotions And Communal Identity, Elisheva Carlebach

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Assigning character traits to national groups was a key pastime in the early modern period, part of a process of consolidation of European national identities. This presentation examines the way emotional characteristics were assigned to emerging national groups. In particular, it focuses on the way in which Jewish communal sources employed language and terms of emotion to characterize Jewish communities. Internally the language often functioned to call notice to an ideal that the community was failing to live up to.

The following texts are excerpts from Jewish communal records, as noted for each excerpt

A Short History Of Horror: Early Modern Jews And Their Monsters, Iris Idelson-Shein

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following sources offer a short survey of one particularly troubling source of fear—and indeed horror—in the early modern period, namely—the womb. A mysterious, uniquely feminine organ, for centuries the womb has been the stuff of fantasies and nightmares. It has been imagined at one and the same time as a haven and a hell, a nest and a tomb, a source of pleasure and pain, life and illness.

The following excerpts come from different genres, spaces, and languages. The first two excerpts are taken from two medical compendiums written around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The …

For The Love Of God: Spiritual Purpose And Mastering Emotions In The Pietistic Writings Of Moses Hayim Luzzatt, David Sclar

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

During the early modern period, Jews lived with an assumed religious tenet to love their God. Biblical texts, including verses used in the liturgical Shema, explicitly commanded believers to wholly and actively do so. In the twelfth century, Maimonides had described a love of God driven by rational adoration of the Torah (and God’s works), which, appropriately realized, would result in a sense of intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Early modern kabbalists took the notion further by desiring to commune with the living God (devekut), channeling all of their faculties, including emotions, towards the spiritual. Both conceptions idealized love …

Rebbe Nachman Of Bratslav's Teachings On Melancholy And Joy, Lawrence Fine

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The several texts presented here are from the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (1772-1810), great-grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov, and one of the very most significant figures in the history of early Hasidism. They are from part two (tinyana) of Nachman’s most important published collection of teachings, Liqqutei Moharan. These passages each address the subject of melancholy—marah shechora in Nahman’s language--as well as its antidote, joy, simchah. While the avoidance of sadness, and the cultivation of joy, are common motifs in classical Hasidism, Rebbe Nachman’s discussion of them deserves special attention in any …

Emotions In The Margins: Reading Toledot Yeshu After The Affective Turn, Sarit Kattan Gribetz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In 826 C.E., Agobard, bishop of Lyon, published a treatise entitled De Judaicis superstitionibus, detailing and ridiculing the ‘superstitions’ of the Jews. The details Agobard recounts make clear that the bishop is referring to a medieval Jewish parody of the story of Jesus’ life, known as Toledot Yeshu (Life of Jesus), composed in Aramaic sometime before the second half of the eighth century and later translated into Hebrew. Toledot Yeshu tells the story of Jesus’ life in a biting, vulgar tone. It was a text composed and used by Jews as an anti-Christian polemic, and as an internal document …

Emotions And Preaching, Sara Lipton

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Jacques de Vitry (b. ca. 1160, d. 1240) was one of the most famous preachers of the high Middle Ages. Born in northern France, he studied at the University of Paris, and in 1210 became a canon regular in the diocese of Liège. Jacques’s most popular collection, the Sermones vulgares vel ad status, contains sermons recorded in Latin but designed to be preached in the vulgar tongue to laypeople, and arranged according the social class and profession of the audience. The sermon transcribed and translated here appears in Jacques’s less popular collection—the Sermones dominicales et festivales. Less popular, because the …

Emw 2016: History Of Emotions/Emotions In History, Fordham University

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2016 Early Modern Workshop on “History of Emotions/Emotions in History” was held at Fordham University.

Alongside earlier “turns” such as the linguistic and the cultural, an “emotional turn” has provided historians with a fresh perspective to consider the past. Emotion structures human experience. But emotions are shaped by languages of expression that can have ramifications for human thought and behavior. Historians pursuing research about emotions tend to follow one of two tacks: either to explore emotions as an object of inquiry in its own right (did people in the past “feel” differently than we do today?) or to use …