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Israel, "a light unto the nations"? Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem and the founding of the Jewish state.
No full textHannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, two of the 20th century's greatest German Jewish thinkers, are commonly regarded as antagonists. This perception reflects their diverging views on the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961, but represents a fundamental misreading of their political thought. While important ideological differences did indeed divide Arendt and Scholem, both shared a commitment to political radicalism and specifically regarded the Zionist movement as a revolutionary movement par excellence whose national-revolutionary potential could not, and, indeed, should not be exhausted in the creation of a state. In emphasizing the revolutionary dimension of Zionism, Arendt and Scholem thus both defined Zionism as a transformative form of politics, and consequently challenged both the liberal emphasis on individual rights and the nationalist emphasis on sovereignty. The task of Zionism, Arendt and Scholem argued against both paradigms, was not to adapt Jewish liberalism to its new transplanted surroundings in the Middle East, but to fundamentally transform the Jewish people from a victim of failed liberal assimilation in Europe into a "nation." While Scholem eventually accepted the idea of a Jewish state as a practical necessity, Arendt opposed it as a goal that was incongruous with the revolutionary mission of Zionism. Notwithstanding these differences, however, Arendt and Scholem's radically transformative understanding of Zionism represents a groundbreaking common effort to articulate a new theory of nationalism, and ultimately a new theory of politics.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Yale University, 2004.School code: 0265
The golem as metaphor in Jewish American literature.
No full textThis dissertation discusses the use of the golem legend in Jewish American Literature. Analysis of the fiction of Michael Chabon, Thane Rosenbaum, Nomi Eve and Steve Stern reveals the use of the golem as a metaphor for power and powerlessness, and for the complexities surrounding the act of creation. The introduction explicates the golem legend in traditional Jewish texts and folklore and reviews the critical literature. An analysis of Chabon's use of the golem in Kavalier and Klay illustrates the ideas of power and powerlessness, and an analysis of the self-reflexivity present in the works of the authors is introduced.Chapter one considers Rosenbaum's uses of the golem in his two novels, Second Hand Smoke and The Golems of Gotham. Based on art historian Dora Apel's articulation of "sites of resistance," the analysis considers Rosenbaum's fiction in the context of the legacy of the Holocaust for the second generation and theorizing about Holocaust representation, and argues that Rosenbaum creates three "sites of resistance" in his fiction.Chapter two analyzes Eve's novel, The Family Orchard in context of the Jewish exegetical tradition of PaRDeS, and of the complex relationship between fiction and auto/biography. The chapter argues that Eve uses the figure of the golem to complicate the reader's view of the historian's task, placing her text in the context of Linda Hutcheon's articulation of historiographic metafiction.Chapter three considers Stern's short fiction collection, Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven along with his children's book, Mickey and the Golem. The necessity for the centrality of the author is established, and the ethics of intertextuality are questioned through investigations of the folkloric, literary and oral history antecedents to Stern's work. Using the figure of the golem, Emmanuel Levinas' theorizing about the relationship between self and other is applied to Stern's relationship and responsibilities to his sources and his texts.The dissertation concludes with two original golem stories, "Mr. Goli" and "An Open Wound."Thesis (Ph.D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, 2004.School code: 0260
De madres, sabias y amantes: La construccion cultural de la mujer judia y musulmana en la literatura castellana medieval.
No full textLiterary texts function as social and symbolic acts that pose questions of identity and identification, reflecting sometimes the socio-cultural attitude of the dominant majority in a historical era. Thus, medieval Castilian works often contain a biased portrayal of Muslim and Jewish women, by depicting them as genetically lascivious, sexually accessible, and worthy only of casual relationships. The few gender-oriented critical studies hitherto published deal mainly with the depiction of these aspects in Muslim and Jewish maidens, but pay little attention to the roles that other categories of women (mothers, wives, wise women) played in medieval Castile.An examination of all categories of Muslim and Jews women (in works such as Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa Maria, Don Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor, some ballads and epic poems) reveals a Christian socio-political agenda of domination and appropriation. During the Iberian Reconquest, female Others are marginalized, treated as sexual objects, or integrated in the Christian culture through an acculturation process. Even their progeny, the result of sexual relationships with Spaniards, are appropriated by the dominant culture. Such a process foreshadows a concatenation between the Reconquest and later European colonialism: women are the first members of the Other's culture to be incorporated into the culture of the conquerors.Once Castile achieved the Reconquest (1492), literature ceased to produce texts depicting sexual contact between Christian men and women of marginal cultures. Instead, in later works such as EL Abencerraje the focus shifted towards an ethical parameter: the praise of the Christian man, capable not only of controlling his own sexual impulses, but also of canalizing similar impulses in the Other (the weak Muslim man and the still excessively erotic woman) towards matrimony. In conclusion, Christians had won also because they reconstructed the sexuality of the Others.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 2004.School code: 0093
Dachau concentration camp - a memoir /
No full textThis memoir provides a detailed description of daily life and misery in the concentration camp Dachau, May to December of 1938. The first eight chapters are missing which would cover Felix Klein's life in Vienna. The existing memoir then starts with his deportation to Dachau, and ends shortly before his transfer to Buchenwald concentration camp.Translated from the German by Sanda Vero.Felix Klein was born on January 17, 1911, in Vienna, Austria. He worked at his father's department store, when he was arrested after the "Anschluss". He was interned in Dachau for six months and then another six months in Buchenwald concentration camp. He was released through sponsorship of George Seibel, Director of the Carnegie Free Library of Pittsburgh and an active member of the National Coordinating Committee for Refugees. Klein immigrated to the United States in 1940 where he rejoined with his wife, whom he had married in Vienna. He studied watchmaking in New York and eventually bought a small jewelry store. In 1969, he began his career as a graphologist at Manhattan Handwriting Consultants, offering classes. Later, he was the founder and president of the National Society for Graphology. Felix Klein died in New York City in 1994.See also the Felix Klein Collection, AR 25356
AHC Interview with Trudy Shepard.
No full textTrudy Shepard, née Ellenberg, was born on February 8, 1926, in Vienna where she lived at Zieglergasse 84 in the 6th district of Vienna. She attended four years of elementary school (1929-33) at Raffaelgasse 13 in the 20th Viennese district, four years of "Hauptschule" (1933-37) at Jaegerstrasse 54, and 2 years at the Albert Gymnasium. After the Nazis’ rise to power she fled to Switzerland (Zuerich, stayed there for one week), then France (Paris, stayed for 3 days) and finally came to the USA in 03/23/1939. There she attended public school, high school, and Hunter College in New York.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Herbert Launer
No full textHerbert Launer was born in Vienna in 1925 where he lived in the second district. He joined a Zionist youth organization and went to school at "Zirkusgymnasium" from 1934 until 1938. He fled from Vienna on April 30, 1939, to Switzerland, then to France where he stayed in Paris for two nights. He then took a ship from Cherbourh to the United States where he arrived in New York City on 05/08/1939. Shortly thereafter he went to Cleveland, Ohio. He started as a newspaper boy, then became stock boy, machine operator, stockbroker and finally became a manager
The jazz singer's legacy: The racial role-play of African-Americans and Jews in twentieth-century American performance.
No full textThis study re-examines the racial role-play of African-Americans and Jewish-Americans to further understand how racial identity has been constructed in America and the ways in which these constructions overlap and affect one another. Although racial role-play is most often associated with blackface minstrelsy, I define it more broadly as an overt staging of a racial identity. Unlike passing---an attempt to assume another identity without being detected---racial role-play calls attention to its performance. Because of its negative association with blackface minstrelsy, racial role-play disturbs many Americans. Yet to dismiss or avoid the function racial role-play has had in America is to miss a key means of understanding the cultural formation of our country. Moreover, racial role-play has been used by performers of various backgrounds, including African-Americans, to undermine stereotypes, to cross racial boundaries, and to question racial definitions altogether.Chapter One discusses the history of minstrelsy and how this practice might have been used and viewed by both African-Americans and Jewish-Americans. Chapter Two follows this discussion with an in-depth look at both the play and the film of The Jazz Singer, including critical responses from the Jewish, the Black, and the mainstream press. In contrast to Whiteness scholars who argue that blackface was a means for Jews to distance themselves from Blacks in order to assimilate into White America, I argue that blackface was a form of identification with African-Americans in order to distinguish themselves from White Christians. Chapter Three focuses on the attempts of certain African-American artists in the 1960s to re-appropriate racial role-play and demonstrates how Jews functioned symbolically as a means of asserting an evolving Black identity. Chapter Four illustrates how Jews once again utilized racial role-play alongside of African-Americans in the 1990s as performance artists explored identity politics. In particular, I examine the work of Anna Deavere Smith, Sandra Bernhard, and Danny Hoch---who suggest that identities are not fixed, but rather can be continually questioned, challenged, and negotiated through performance. This fluidity, however, comes at the cost of losing or ignoring group distinctions, whether these distinctions are self-imposed or externally assigned.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2004.School code: 0054
A case study in the formation of a super-rabbi: The early years of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, 1713--1754.
No full textThe eighteenth century is usually thought of as the dawn of modernity in Jewish history. While this is true, it was also a time when pre-modern Jewish culture flourished and dominated Jewish life throughout Central and Eastern Europe. This culture was religious in nature, deriving its self-image, institutions, and norms primarily from Talmudic and post-talmudic teachings and literature. The most important group in this culture was the intellectual class, the rabbinic scholars. By the seventeenth century, an official and professional rabbinate had come into being throughout Ashkenazic Jewry. This rabbinate consisted of rabbinic scholars contractually employed by kehilot, official autonomous Jewish communities, in various offices. The highest office was that of communal rabbi or chief rabbi. The communal rabbi was the official religious leader, the guide and legal authority, of the community. Although lay elites held significant and often predominant power, the communal rabbinate was a position of much power and influence, particularly when it was held by a man of scholarly eminence and strong personality. Communal rabbis who gained reputation as men of preeminent scholarship and piety attained a unique authority that transcended the bounds of their communities and made them the unofficial but real highest religious figures in the Ashkenazic world. These "super-rabbis" were called Gedolim, "great ones." In spite of its importance in pre-modern Jewish history, the rabbinate as a group, particularly the communal rabbinate and the Gedolim, has not received adequate scholarly attention. The rabbinate had an intellectual, professional, and social world of its own. Historians cannot afford to ignore this phenomenon. My study of the early career of Ezekiel Landau (1713--1793), addresses these issues. Landau was one of the greatest communal rabbis and Gedolim of the premodern era, A preeminent public figure of the eighteenth century, Landau spent his life within the world of the rabbinate and reached the highest rungs of fame and achievement. His was a model rabbinic career. A study of his life reveals how one became a scholar, a communal rabbi, and finally a Gadol.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2004.School code: 0117
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
Trading diasporas and trading networks in the Early Modern period: A Sephardic partnership of Livorno in the Mediterranean, Europe and Portuguese India (ca 1700--1750).
No full textThis thesis is a historical study of a commercial partnership between two families of Sephardic Jews, the Ergas and the Silvera, which was based in Livorno (Tuscany) and Aleppo (Syria) and operated during the first half of the eighteenth century, when Livorno was the most important port of the Mediterranean after Marseille and the largest Sephardic settlement together with Amsterdam. Among a variety of primary sources, I drew primarily from 13,659 business letters written from Livorno by Ergas & Silvera between 1704 and 1746. Partnerships like Ergas & Silvera benefited from the privileges that had been granted to Jewish and New Christian merchants in Livorno since the 1590s. They became preferred intermediaries in the exchanges between Europe and the Ottoman Empire thanks to both their widespread presence on both shores of the Mediterranean and the diplomatic protection the French offered them in Ottoman ports after 1680. They largely controlled the exchange of Mediterranean coral and Indian diamonds through a heterogeneous network of Italian agents in Lisbon and Hindu correspondents in Goa until the 1730s, when the London-Madras route and the services of the English East India Company proved comparatively more advantageous.This study aims to illuminate the activities of a prosperous Sephardic merchant house in the Mediterranean while most scholarship for this period focuses on the commercial ventures of the Sephardim in the Atlantic and the economic expansion of northern European states. It contributes to the diverse literature on the history of European long-distance trade that emphasizes the cooperation between private merchants and state-emanated commercial institutions. It shows how in some instances stateless diasporas sought the protection of formal institutions and yet did not loose their diasporic identity. This study also makes an analytical distinction between 'trading disapora' and 'trading networks.' The latter refers to durable economic relations between groups of different ethnic and religious backgrounds sustained in the absence of overarching authorities and solely on the basis of reciprocal means of reputation control. It conceives trust in such horizontal cross-cultural business relations as the result of both rational calculation and social control.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2004.School code: 0024