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AHC interview with Rosemary E. Feigl
No full textRosemary E. Feigl was born on July 2, 1926 in Vienna where she lived at Argentinierstrasse 20 in the 4th district. After the Nazis’ rise to power, Ms. Feigl fled to Italy where she stayed from December 1938 until February 1939, then to France where she stayed until December 1940. She was once arrested in France and sent to the country on a locked train. From Portugal, she went to the United States where she arrived in December 1940. She attended Parsons College, New York from 1945-1948 and became a commercial artist (decorative painter). She now lives in New York City, New York
Diaspora Jewish nationalism and identity in America, 1914--1967.
No full textThis dissertation examines diasporic definitions of Jewish nationalism formulated by four immigrant Jewish intellectuals who translated European conceptions of Jewish nationalism into an American intellectual and political context. During the first half of the twentieth century, Horace Kallen (1882--1974), Mordecai Kaplan (1881--1983), Hans Kohn (1891--1971), and Shimon Rawidowicz (1896--1957) invented novel vocabularies for negotiating the social, cultural, and political boundaries between Jews and general American society. This research traces the development of these conceptions, notions such as "cultural pluralism," "civilization," and "civic nationalism," through a close reading of published works and archival sources. These disparate notions of diaspora Jewish nationalism shared an attempt to re-imagine the fundamental categories of Jewish "otherness" in a world increasingly defined by the homogenous nation-state. Rehabilitating these formulations necessitates the reconsideration of a neglected aspect of Jewish nationalism that challenged the inherent connection between national identity and political citizenship.Scholars of Jewish and American history alike have much to learn by examining expressions of Jewish nationalism in America. These thinkers' embrace of America was far more contested than American Jewish historians generally acknowledge. While historians often illustrate the influence of intellectual acculturation, few trace the strategies by which Jewish thinkers attempted to alter the dominant political discourse. Jewish thinkers were far from passive adaptors of American intellectual currents. Working at the permeable semantic boundaries between categories of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, and race, Jewish intellectuals challenged many basic assumptions of American political life and played an integral role in the construction of the majority culture. In addition, this project reveals that these four thinkers' formulations prefigured many contemporary debates regarding ethnicity and multiculturalism. As more and more scholars puzzle over the factors that constitute transnational ethno-religious identities, as well as the nature of the relationship binding diaspora communities with their homelands, the pioneering work of these four thinkers will provide fruitful historical models for consideration.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2004.School code: 0265
Masked ball at the White Cross Cafe: The failure of Jewish assimilation in post-emancipation Hungary.
No full textNot many decades after the emancipation of the Jews in Western Europe, studies began to appear investigating the causes of anti-Semitism. This study is part of that body of work. However, it differs significantly from recent efforts in that it is situated within Western European history as opposed to Jewish history. This means that it will not be reliant upon Jewish sources. Furthermore, it does not look at anti-Semitism from the viewpoint of liberalism---which declared the illegitimacy of such sentiments---nor is it informed, as is so often the case, by the shadow cast by the Holocaust.After summarizing the centuries-long era of Toleration, I address in great detail Enlightenment discourse as it pertained to the Jews. Whereas the Church steadfastly offered only conversion in order to gain acceptance into the general society, the Enlightenment thinkers arrived at a new paradigm, based on Enlightenment ideals. However, it will be shown that their strategy had exactly the same impulse as that of Christianity: to erase all distinctiveness of the Jew. The discussion of this discourse forms the backbone of my study and, in the process, reconfigures the very definition of anti-Semitism.It throws into sharp relief a continuum---the rejection of the Jew as Jew---historically achieved through marginalization and reconfigured as a series of stipulated reforms by the Enlightenment thinkers meant to culminate in assimilation. It is the rupture of this continuum---the emancipation of the Jews, the vast majority of whom did not conform to these stipulations---which created the conditions that eventually led to the Holocaust.This study maintains that the non-Jewish context was a uniform one, modified only by national and local issues, an assertion many historians have recoiled from. As a first step in confirming uniformity, I have analyzed the response to the failure of emancipated Jews to assimilate in the prescribed ways in Hungary, and then inquired into the same phenomenon in Britain. The similarity of the responses outweighs the differences, demonstrating that the Jewish effort to reform, and thereby to assimilate into the host society was equally unsuccessful in both countries. Christian Europe responded uniformly to the presence of unreformed Jews in its midst.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto (Canada), 2004.School code: 0779
Through closed gates: Jews and illegal immigration to the United States, 1921--1933.
No full textThis dissertation is a history of the illegal immigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States that burgeoned after the passage of highly restrictive, nation-based immigration quotas in 1921 and 1924. I argue that the history of this illicit flow of people forces us to re-examine a central narrative of twentieth-century U.S. history, namely that 1924 saw the "closing of the gates" to European immigrants, and thus the end of an era in which European immigration was a matter of national urgency. I contend that the quota legislation escalated rather than settled struggles over questions of national inclusion and exclusion, and created new gray areas between alienness and belonging. The history of illegal immigration illuminates how the laws actually functioned on the ground, something we have as yet learned little about. The laws did reorder the rules governing the nation's literal and metaphorical borders, but this reordering happened unevenly, confusedly, and with much contention. Strategies Jewish migrants employed to enter the United States despite the quotas---forgeries, disguise, and surreptitious entry---challenged the laws' premise that it was possible to secure national borders against "undesirables," or to sort desirable immigrants from undesirable ones, and aliens from citizens. Jewish migrants, as a heterogeneous group coming from many countries and speaking many languages, particularly confounded the categories of ethnicity and nationality upon which the quota laws were based.Chapter One examines the genesis of the quota laws, focusing on the U.S. government's interest in counting and classifying, as well as the challenges Jews posed to such a project. Chapter Two considers U.S. Jewish leaders' responses to the illegal immigration of Jews over the Mexico-Texas border and to the plight of Jews stranded abroad with U.S. visas rendered defunct by the 1924 law. Chapter Three investigates Jewish alien smuggling and the criminalization of migration during the era. Chapter Four examines individual migrants' experiences of illegal immigration, especially their uses of disguises and forged documents. Chapter Five explores controversies over proposals for "alien registration," arguing that Jews escaped the specter of "illegal alienness" in part through their own political efforts.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 2004.School code: 0127
A stage for a bima: American Jewish theater and the politics of representation.
No full textThis dissertation examines how contemporary American Jewish playwrights and performers have presented Jewish identities in light of multiculturalism. Although American Jews have by large been supporters of the multicultural movement, in practice multiculturalism has been problematic for Jews because of its privileging of race and gender: are Jews different enough to be included in a multicultural portrait? Jews see themselves as outsiders to an American establishment, but are viewed as insiders. I investigate how contemporary Jewish voices in American theater have portrayed "Jewishness" as a permanent attribute of Jewish identity. In doing so, they articulate Jewish difference through the rhetoric of multiculturalism so that Jews are clearly positioned as distinct from an American mainstream. Contemporary Jewish playwrights have responded to popular culture's schizophrenic representation of Jews, questioning its portrayal of Jews as everymen figures while revisiting its stereotypical representations of Jews that were intended to mark Jews as different from mainstream America. Though Jewish American culture has sought to escape stereotypes, Jewish playwrights continue to evoke them, even as they debate the value of such tropes. If stereotypes disappear, does an articulated Jewish difference disappear with them? In chapter one, I discuss my theoretical approach and the difficulties in defining stereotypical "Jewishness." In chapter two, I discuss how Jewish playwrights and performers have responded to the shifting definitions of race in their presentations of Jewish identity by portraying contemporary Jewish identity through the model of the African-American experience. In chapter three, I look at how Wendy Wasserstein has presented complicated female Jewish characters by rooting them, ironically enough, in the gender-based stereotypes that have surrounded Jewish women, stereotypes initially designed to differentiate Jewish women from idealized genteel American women. In chapter four, I discuss how playwrights Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner have linked Jewish and gay stereotypes and experiences in order to complicate contemporary political paradigms that tend to lump all traditionally disenfranchised groups under the same umbrella. Finally, in chapter five, I discuss how stage portrayals of Judaism have been associated with the body, a connection that denotes the problematic nature of defining Jews solely as a religious group.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2004.School code: 0117
The place of the fifteenth-century Judeo-Persian religious epic 'Emrani's "Fath&dotbelow;nameh" in Iranian literary traditions.
No full textThe Judeo-Persian Religious Epic Fath&dotbelow;nameh,
written in the fifteenth century by `Emrani, reflects the intellectual life of
Iranian Jewry. Despite their long presence in Iran, the Iranian Jews have never been
recognized for their contribution to Iranian culture. Due to the use of Hebrew
characters in writing the Persian language, Judeo-Persian has been left out of the
mainstream of the Iranian literary tradition, depriving a large potential audience
access to the intellectual heritage of Iranian Jews.In writing Fath&dotbelow;nameh, `Emrani drew upon both
biblical and Iranian cultural sources. By focusing on a literary evaluation of
Fath&dotbelow;nameh, which compares Fath&dotbelow;nameh with other
Iranian epics, the stylistic evaluation of Fath&dotbelow;nameh, based upon
poetic arts and rhetorical biblical paraphrasing, and, a thematic analysis of
Fath&dotbelow;nameh, focusing on the literary adaptation of "Divine
Theme," "Divine Ethics" and "Divine
Law," Fath&dotbelow;nameh can clearly be identified as a religious
epic in the genre of Iranian epics. `Emrani's adaptation of the Prophetical
Characteristic of Joshua and the poet's medieval perspective of Holy War under the
theme of Fath&dotbelow;nameh, are two other pertinent subjects discussed
within the thematic analysis. `Emrani's Fath&dotbelow;nameh, as an example
of a Judeo-Persian literary work, claims the place of Judeo-Persian literature
within the Iranian literary tradition. Also as a representation of the literary
activity of Middle Eastern Jews, not well recognized in Judaic global literature,
Fath&dotbelow;nameh establishes itself as a significant Jewish literary
work.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles,
2004.School code: 0031
AHC Interview with Gerda Krausz.
No full textGerda Krausz, née Frei, was born in Vienna on April 3, 1917. She lived with her family at Taborstrasse 7 in the second Viennese district. From 1932-33 she went to school at the 'Fachlehranstalt fuer Bekleidungsgewerbe' [trade school for textile industry] in Vienna, and became a dressmaker. She lived in Vienna from 1917 until 1947, she spent the Nazi time under forced labor. She left Vienna on December 24, 1947, went to Bremerhaven, Germany, by train, and boarded a ship to the USA, settling eventually in Mount Sinai, NY.Austrian Heritage Collectio
Israel Scholarships (Box 113, Folder 10)
No full textThis folder of material was located in Box 113. Folder originally titled: Israel Scholarships - 2004.Digital ImageDigital finding aid
Geheimsache Schloss Hungen : Die Geschichte der geraubten Buecher in Hungen und Hirzenhain (1943-1946).
No full textBrochure for an exhibition in Hungen about the persecution of Jews and of freemasons and about the looting of their libraries.Erhard Eller, November 200
Jewish American identity: A grounded-theory model.
No full textJewish identity has only recently been a focus of research within the field of multiculturalism and racial/ethnic identity research. In spite of increased investigations, a comprehensive model of Jewish American identity that accounts for the range of factors that contribute Jewish identity had not previously been produced. This qualitative study examined the Jewish identities of 13 Jewish Americans in order to develop a model of Jewish American identity. Semistructured interviews were conducted with participants who represented a range of religious affiliation from non-practicing to Orthodox and who lived throughout the United States. Grounded theory methodology was used to generate a theoretical model of Jewish American identity. Five primary categories emerged to form the Jewish American Identity Model: (a) Jewish History, (b) Being Jewish in a Non-Jewish World, (c) Relations Among Jews, (d) Family, and (e) Being Jewish. Jewish History explored the impact of both individual family histories as well as the collective history of the Jewish people on the participants' identities. Being Jewish in a Non-Jewish World emerged from the participants' often contradictory experiences of being both assimilated and an outsider in American society and its profound impact on their Jewish identities. Relations Among Jews developed from the both the personal identity strengths and struggles that were related to the connections and issues among Jews. Family highlighted the immense impact that families had on the development and maintenance of the participants' Jewish identities. Lastly, Being Jewish emerged from the individuals' experiences of their Jewish identities, including their practice of Judaism and how being Jewish has influenced their worldviews and self-concepts. The five categories are conceptualized as concentric circles, with the outer circles representing more external factors and the inner circles representing more personalized and internal factors. This resulted in a nested design that captures both collective and individual influences on Jewish identity. The five categories are theorized to influence and inform each other, incorporating the complexity and interrelated nature of Jewish identity. The Jewish American Identity Model highlights the commonalities of Jewish American identity that exist across the varying religious affiliations and geographical locations of the participants in the study. Implications of the theoretical model for research and clinical practice are discussed.Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Utah, 2004.School code: 0240