73135 research outputs found
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Gay-valt: Queer performance and identity in twentieth-century Jewish-American literature, theater, and film.
No full textThis dissertation is the first major study of queer sexuality in Jewish American cultural production. This work complements the work of gender and racial theorists in Jewish Studies by considering the role that sexuality has played in the formation of the twentieth-century Jewish American subject. The dissertation is a comparative study of Yiddish and English texts, examining the ways in which each language system has engaged with and addressed the topic of sexuality. By comparing texts from both Yiddish and English, I argue that different paradigms for understanding homosexuality existed within the Jewish community, depending on which language was utilized.In order for Jews to become American and counter the perceived stereotypes that frequently conflated Jewish identity with homosexuality, all notions and references to queerness had to be repudiated by Jewish American cultural discourses. At the same time, I chart a parallel yet alternative trajectory for the Yiddish-speaking world in America, a community that engaged with sexuality in more fluid terms as it grappled with modernity. In approaching the multiple intersections between queer and Jewish identity, I primarily engage the topics of performance and language. I chart the relationship between performance and performativity, categories that despite attempts to keep them separate continue to reinforce each other. In particular, I look at how certain gender performances in Jewish texts signal queer sexuality.This project engages with a variety of genres and texts. In terms of Yiddish texts, I look at the 1907 play Got fun nekome, the cross-dressing films of Yiddish actress Molly Picon, and five short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, examining the sexual epistemologies of these Yiddish works. I then turn to Abraham Cahan's The Rise of David Levinsky (1917) and Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (1969) to examine how both texts construct Jewish masculinity and heterosexuality in an English-speaking context. This study thematically traces how issues such as performance, homoeroticism, masculinity, and queerness register in different historical moments and in different languages. The result is not just Jewish texts that are queered, but a rethinking of queerness itself, which is altered via its engagement with Judaism and Yiddish culture.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 2004.School code: 0036
The supply and distribution of food to the Lodz Ghetto: A case study in Nazi Jewish policy, 1939--1945.
No full textThis dissertation explores the German use of starvation as genocidal policy through a case study of the Lodz Ghetto. A detailed analysis of food supply and distribution in the Lodz Ghetto reveals that the Nazis, who ultimately controlled the amount of food that entered the ghetto, did not provide adequate sustenance to the Jews of the ghetto. Through the reduction of access to food, the Nazis perpetrated a slow genocide against the Jews of Europe. The Nazis were aware of the murderous effects of their food policies, and allowed those policies to continue resulting in the mass execution of the Jewish people in the ghettos. The basis for denial of sustenance adequate for survival was the low position of the Jews within the Nazi racial hierarchy. The mass starvation of the Jews of the ghetto, who were deemed by the Nazis to be "useless eaters," led to various coping methods, including a complex system of distributing what little food was allocated for the Jews in the ghetto. The various licit and illicit food entitlement schemas, however, that were manipulated by the German authorities ultimately failed to save the Jews from mass death from starvation. This dissertation examines Nazi and Jewish food entitlement, and the physical and mental effects of hunger and Nazi starvation policy on ghetto inhabitants. It concludes that although there might not have been an explicit order for mass extermination in the initial period of the ghetto, the result of Nazi food policy was a man-made famine leading to mass death, and thus it was de facto genocidal policy.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2004.School code: 0021
Kosher in the United States: An examination of American-Jewish adaptation.
No full textHundreds of thousands of American Jews follow the tradition of keeping kosher. Kosher practice arguably constitutes the oldest diet in the world, but while the rules of kashruth are static, the ways in which Americans have adapted kosher to fit shifts in the larger society are ongoing. Kosher, as a social practice, has both formed and reflected the American Jewish community, and traditional American Jews consistently have found ways to integrate kashruth in a changing world.Beginning with the first Jewish settlement in 1654, American Jews structured communities around maintaining cultural identities, with kosher food being a key component of that process. A ritual slaughterer was more important to a forming Jewish community than a rabbi.As Jewish communities formed and became viable, their presence was recognized. Cookbooks, from as early as the late 19th century, are viable documents that reflect Jewish adaptation to the United States. These cookbooks reflect immigration patterns, external trends, and changing product availability. As such, this study will examine kosher cookbooks, as well as other organizations and industries that have developed to support kashruth in the United States, as templates of the American Jewish experience.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Saint Louis University, 2004.School code: 0193
AHC Interview with Ruth Zimbler
No full textRuth Zimbler, nee Mondschein, was born in Vienna on February 22, 1928. She lived with her parents in the second district of Vienna. Her father worked for the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde in Vienna and her mother was a dressmaker. After the Nazi's rise to power in Austria in 1938, the Mondschein family had to flee from Austria. From 1938 until 1939, Ruth and her brother Walter stayed alone in a Dutch camp, while their parents were still in Vienna. In October 1939, the family was reunited in New York. Ruth Zimbler worked in the fashion business and is now active in the New York chapter of Hadassah
AHC Interview with Evelyn Konrad
No full textEvelyn Konrad was born in Vienna on December 28, 1928. Until 1936, she lived with her family at Praterstrasse 18 in the second Viennese district. Then they moved to Trieste, Italy. Their next stay was in Budapest, Hungary, where they arrived in March 1938. In May 1939, they fled to Lille, France. In February 1940, they left for Lisbon, Portugal. After three months they took the liner "San Miguel" to the United States. While in the United States, she went to school at Hunter College in New York City, then Stanford University (Master of Art in history, Bachelor of Arts in International Relations), and later to New York University, Stern School of Business for a doctorate. She worked as journalist at Sponsor Magazine, as public relations representative, and in a consulting firm. Very recently, she graduated from Cardozo School of Law. She still lives in New York City
AHC Interview with Edgar Grant.
No full textEdgar Grant was born under his prewar name Edgar Guensberger in Vienna, Austria, on August 29, 1921. He lived with his family on Wohllebengasse in the fourth Viennese district. She went to school up to 6th grade at Akademisches Gymnasium, and was for a short time a member of Makkabi Hatzair in Vienna. He fled from Vienna on 08/10/1939 to England where he was interned at Kitchener Camp until fall 1942. He came to Canada and then to the USA in 1948. He worked as a travel agent and lives in New York City.Austrian Heritage Collectio
Indexing and cataloging the Frankfurt a.M. Memorbuch.
No full textPaper presented at the 39th Annual Convention of the Association of Jewish Libraries in Brooklyn, NY, in 2004 with supplements.Tzvia Koren, December 2004Published in the the Proceedings of the 39th Annual Convention (Brooklyn, New York, June 20-23, 2004
Samuel Cohen and Augusta Spiro Levy and their families.
No full textSamuel Cohen (born in Graetz, Posen) and Augusta Spiro Levy were married in New York in 1875. After their marriage, they first lived in New York City; but later they moved to Fort Scott, Kansas.Graet
Transnationale Konzepte jüdischer Selbstorganisation im 19. Jahrhundert : Das Autonomiekonzept Simon Dubnows.
No full text‘Transnational concepts for Jewish self-administration in the 19th century’: MA thesis at the University of Leipzig about Simon Dubnow’s understanding of autonomydigitizedMagisterarbeitBibliography : p. 79-9