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To 'bear witness where witness needs to be borne': Diary writing and the Holocaust, 1939--1945.
No full textThis dissertation examines Jewish diarists' attempts to comprehend the unimaginable genocide as it unfolded around them and of the meaning of their own lives in this radically altered world. It explores the function and meaning of diary writing within Jews' meaning-making struggles. Alternating between close analyses of individual diaries and larger thematic perspectives, it examines the different impulses---historical, theological, familial, and ethical---that compelled individuals to record their experiences. Moreover, it details how Jews' goals for their diaries changed over time, in response to mounting knowledge about the ensuing extermination. For most Jews, simply keeping a diary in the first years of the war demonstrated their participation in a widespread European trend, as well as their belief that their wartime experiences would be familiar and thus narratable. After 1942, however, when many diarists began to hear news of mass killings and extermination or had first-hand experience of the killings, they shifted their narrative frameworks. Thus, this study marks out what was particular to Jewish diary writing during the Holocaust as well as how it connected to the broader European histories of diary writing, of reading, of subjectivity, and of the family.Focusing largely on unpublished diaries, this study adds a wide range of victims' voices to Holocaust historiography, including those of Jews in hiding in Poland and little-known diarists from Germany and France. Beyond unearthing new individual stories, this dissertation creates new ways of categorizing Jewish wartime experiences based on their strategies of interpretation. Looking at the variety of ways that Jews attempted to make sense of the unimaginable gives us an alternative means of categorizing Jewish experiences from this period, one which highlights both the shared experience of being a Jew under Nazi occupation---as meaning-makers rather than passive victims---and the diversity of modern European Jewry in the mid-twentieth century. Furthermore, this study reveals the genesis of issues that would become central to postwar thought, including the limits of representation, the relationship of memory to history, the concept of a fragmented self, the potential impossibility of mourning trauma, and the moral fallibility of Western science and democracy.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2003.School code: 0031
All dear unto God: Saints, pilgrimage and textual practice in Jewish Morocco.
No full text"All Dear Unto God: Saints, Pilgrimage and Textual Practice in Jewish Morocco," is based on two years of ethnographic and archival research centered around annual pilgrimages to the shrines of deceased Jewish holy-men in Morocco. My approach to the these events combines: (1) a rich ethnographic account of pilgrimage as experienced by variously situated devotees with (2) sustained attention to ways in which shrine activity has been articulated with the historical forces of French colonialism, post-colonial nationalism, transnational capitalism, and Moroccan Jewish diaspora. The ethnographic core of my dissertation develops the argument, relatively absent in previous accounts of the phenomenon, that Moroccan Jewish hagiography and pilgrimage emerges as an extension of textual ideologies and practices that circumscribe Judaic experience in Morocco more generally. I demonstrate that saints and pilgrimage are situated within a phenomenology of Judaic torah in which sacred texts mediate an authoritative but open-ended domain of written and oral genres of production and transmission, mutually indexing liturgical practices, and shrine-based pilgrimage rituals. As such, my dissertation contributes to the anthropology of local religion, ritual experience, textual practice, and narrative performance. At a second level, my dissertation demonstrates the ways in which Moroccan Jewish pilgrimage has been represented and regulated in service of colonial, nationalist, and Jewish modernist projects. Specifically, I show how a range of colonial representations critically cast Moroccan Jewish pilgrimage as evidence of indigenous archaism, whereas post-colonial discourses have exploited the events as tourist attractions and celebrated pilgrimage as emblems of Moroccan national patrimony and Jewish cultural heritage. Finally, I argue that the hagiographic narratives and ritual performances creatively mediate contemporary Moroccan Jewish social transformations related to gender hierarchy, diasporic identity, and global capitalism. Rather than exploring pilgrimages only as sites for the expression of religious community, I attend to the competing forms of social hierarchy and identity that emerge and are displayed by Moroccan Jews who arrive at shrines from throughout Morocco and the Moroccan Jewish disaspora.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 2003.School code: 0127
The interplay of peshat and rabbinic traditions in the exegetical works of Rabbi David Kimhi.
No full textThe degree to which midrashic and talmudic traditions should shape one's approach to the biblical text is one of the principal questions with which the preeminent Jewish exegetes of the medieval period grappled. This dissertation examines the incorporation of rabbinic traditions in the commentaries of Rabbi David Kimhi, a renowned Jewish Bible exegete of the thirteenth century in southern France. The dissertation is written both from the point of view of the study of biblical exegesis and the point of view of cultural history.The primary accomplishment of this dissertation lay in the illumination of Radak's method in its multiple aspects and the extensive analysis of his incorporation of rabbinic traditions in his commentaries. Radak was situated at the intellectual crossroads of the northern French achievements in the literal study of the Bible and Spanish accomplishments in the study of linguistics. Even as he synthesized the work of those who preceded him, Radak's principal contribution lay in his dedication to the biblical text. To the extent that rabbinic interpretations aided him in explaining the text, he incorporated them into his commentaries. The precise synthesis of prior methods and interpretations was Radak's greatest innovation.Despite Radak's fundamental role in support of philosophy during the Maimonidean controversy and the well-documented influence of Maimonides on him, Maimonides' rationalist interpretation of aggadot is not evident in the vast majority of Radak's comments. By and large, Radak understood aggadot literally, just as they were understood by Rashi and the peshat exegetes of northern France in the twelfth century. The extent to which northern French exegesis influenced Radak is a fundamental result of our research.Chapter one characterizes Radak's intellectual milieu and the views of his important predecessors. Radak's global methodological statements are examined in chapter two. Chapter three treats cases in which Radak acknowledges the necessity of rabbinic interpretation. In chapter four, the juxtaposition of peshat and rabbinic traditions in dual interpretations (perushim kefulim ) is analyzed. In chapter five, Radak's objections to rabbinic interpretations are investigated. Chapter six probes the relationship between the original rabbinic passages and Radak's record of them in his commentaries.Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2003.School code: 0146
The Kaddish: A Jewish prayer in western art music.
No full textJewish music originated in the Middle East but has spent almost 2000 years in exile, developing amidst other cultures. The Jews of Europe, despite being restricted to ghettos for many centuries, were nevertheless influenced by the art and culture of their neighbors, and likewise contributed to the artistic development of their host communities, especially in Europe after the period of emancipation. Among the prayers that have attracted special interest for composers of western art music is the Kaddish. An integral and vital part of the Jewish liturgy common to communities of Jews around the world, the Kaddish is a prayer of sanctification that is mentioned as part of the prescribed synagogue daily prayers for the first time in tractate Soferim 10:7 ca. sixth century C.E. It is believed, however, that the first Kaddish was written several centuries earlier, maybe as early as 440 B.C.E.Many composers of western art music have chosen the Kaddish as the basis for a musical composition. A search of the music literature reveals several compositions titled Kaddish, and in each case, the connection is unique but not always clear. One explanation for this fact is that over the centuries the Kaddish has evolved as a prayer with diverse uses and associations, and many musical variants. Therefore, composers have been inspired to present the Kaddish from different perspectives. This paper will focus primarily on the works of three composers, Salamone Rossi, Maurice Ravel and Leonard Bernstein and will explore how the Kaddish functions within the musical structure and how it influences the artistic conception. Studying the old cantorial manuscripts and anthologies and the diverse collection of concert works led me to compose a Kaddish of my own.Thesis (D.M.A.)--University of Cincinnati, 2003.School code: 0045
The transformation of a city: Salonika, 1908--1922.
No full textThis dissertation is a case study of the transformation of the multi-ethnic city of Salonika during the first two decades of the twentieth century. One of the most cosmopolitan cities of the Ottoman Empire, Salonika was a thriving commercial center accommodating several ethnic groups, among them Turks, Jews, Greeks, Armenians and Vlachs. This cosmopolitan environment was dramatically affected by the Young Turk Revolution (1908), the Balkan Wars (1912--1913), World War One and its aftermath (including the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey), and the 1917 fire which destroyed the physiognomy of the city. A most decisive event in this process of transformation was the incorporation of Salonika into the Greek state in 1912. This was followed by a series of measures aimed at making Salonika, to the extent that this was possible, a homogeneous Greek city. Consequently, early twentieth-century Salonika proved to be a microcosm of the difficulties and challenges faced by cities with diverse political, social, and cultural backgrounds when they become parts of modern nation-states.Drawing upon the local press, official documents from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the papers of local activists and institutions, and a cross-section of the relevant historical literature, the dissertation explores the challenges faced by the Greeks as the latter sought to forge a single Greek national culture in Salonika after 1912. Implementing legal change of status did not automatically resolve the tensions that all societies experience while undergoing such transitions. The dissertation, then, illuminates aspects of national and ethnic politics in the era of World War One.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Minnesota, 2003.School code: 0130
The ambiguity of reason: Mendelssohn's writings on Spinoza.
No full textThe modern Jewish philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Moses Mendelssohn are a study in contrasts. While Spinoza was a religious heretic, excoriated by Jews and Gentiles in life and death, Moses Mendelssohn was a loyal member of the Jewish community, whose philosophical talents were celebrated by Jews and Germans alike. Yet despite these differences, Spinoza and Mendelssohn shared an important orientation---both were rationalists who believed in reason's ability to secure metaphysical truth.Scholars frequently cast Mendelssohn as a naive "Guardian of Enlightenment." I take issue with this characterization. By examining Mendelssohn's treatment of Spinoza, I argue that Mendelssohn moves from an unbridled faith in reason to a more complex attitude.Mendelssohn discusses Spinoza in his first and last writings. His attitude to Spinoza is conflicted and inconsistent. While in the early writings, Mendelssohn defends Spinoza, in the later writings he attacks Spinoza bitterly. Why?I argue that Mendelssohn's early defense stems from an unwavering faith in reason's ability to secure religious truth and ameliorate Jewish civil life. Against "enlightened" stereotypes of Jews as superstitious and vicious, Mendelssohn presents the metaphysician Spinoza as a shining example of the Jews' ability to be rational and ethical.But given reason's ability to prove universal religious truth, what place is left for religious particularity? Beginning in 1769, Mendelssohn's commitment to Judaism is repeatedly attacked by his enlightened contemporaries. At the same time, empiricism is making inroads in Germany making rationalist metaphysics seem less plausible.These threats come together in Jacobi's famous disclosure to Mendelssohn that rationalism culminates in Spinozism (i.e atheism). Mendelssohn's understands as a subtext of Jacobi's disclosure that Mendelssohn should abandon his faith in both reason and Judaism.In response to Jacobi, Mendelssohn distinguishes two forms of rationalism---amoral, atheistic rationalism and ethical, theistic rationalism. Mendelssohn presents Spinoza as the prime exponent of the first type of rationalism and attacks him as mistaken. Spinoza's main philosophical shortcoming is his inability to explain finite, empirical perception and the multiplicity in existence.In sum, Mendelssohn comes to realize that rationalism left to itself can yield dangerous moral and religious consequences and must be combined with attention to finite empirical perception.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, 2003.School code: 0093
The aesthetics of regeneration: The Zionist invention of the muscle Jew and the visual culture of the fin-de-siecle.
No full textThis dissertation is a study of the visual culture and aesthetic discourses of Zionism between 1890 and 1918. By focusing on Max Nordau's fraught invention of the "muscle Jew" and his paradoxical aesthetics of regeneration, I show how Zionism made use of the domain of the visual for re-imagining both the individual Jewish body and the body politic through various modes of representation and cultural dissemination. At the same time, I show how Zionist body culture emerged in collaboration with other dubious and contradictory discourses including decadence, eugenics, nationalism, and colonialism. Not only does the muscle Jew have to be seen as a figure for overcoming prevalent anti-Semitic stereotypes of the weak, degenerate Jew, but it also has to be evaluated as the product of this confluence of discourses and its attendant politics of regeneration.The first part of the dissertation, "The Art of Regeneration/The Regeneration of Art," examines how the late-nineteenth century belief that art is the expression of both the health of the nation and the vitality of its people bears on the reformation of the "artless" Jewish tradition. In chapter two I argue that Nordau's Zionist articulation of the muscle Jew is informed by the same aesthetic logic found not only in his earlier project of Degeneration but also in Julius Langbehn's decidedly more "volkisch" cultural criticism. The third chapter, "Martin Buber and the Origins of Jewish National Art," examines the role of Jewish artistic production in the creation of nationality by focusing on the art of Lesser Ury, Jacob Epstein, and E. M. Lilien. Part two, "Bio-Power," examines the ways in which the discourses of muscle Jewry moved between the regeneration of the individual body and the regulation of the body politic. Chapter four analyzes the visual culture of the muscle Jew in the journal Die Judische Turnzeitung as well as the public exhibition of Jewish hygiene and sexuality. In the last chapter, I turn to Zionist colonial fantasies, giving particular attention to the ways in which photography was deployed in imagining, representing, reconnoitering, and, ultimately, possessing both the territory and people of Palestine.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2003.School code: 0028
Holocaust: The reality of genocide in Southern Ukraine.
No full textThis study will concentrate on the Holocaust in Southern and Southeastern Ukraine, as carried out by Nazi Germany and Antonescu's Romania with the help of the local Ukrainians and ethnic German colonists. Topics such as the Jewish participation in resistance and opposition, collaboration among local inhabitants, and the interrelations of Jewish and non-Jewish population during the Holocaust will be emphasized.The topic of the Jewish partisan activities will come under careful scrutiny. The difference will be drawn between the actual and alleged Jewish participation in the Soviet partisan movement, since under the pretext of anti-partisan counterattack, Wehrmacht, SS units and Einsatzgruppen were deployed in Ukraine to perform killing sprees on the Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered in the Ukraine under the cover of anti-partisan activities.Two of the topics that I will especially concentrate on will be the Crimean and Transmstrian Holocaust, both of which are unresearched subjects. The situation there was different from the other cities and towns in the Ukraine and thus requires further investigation and research. In Crimea, the Tatar antisemitism as well as the existence of two or more different Jewish separate groups, Karaites, Krimchaks and Rabbinical Jews, created a unique environment, which will be analyzed in detailed discussion.The Holocaust in Odessa, on the other hand, was carried out by the Romanians and not by Germans. The Romanian example is the only example of its kind in World War II. Romania was the only independent country, which was directly involved in genocidal killing operations. The examination of the issues surrounding the willingness of Romanians to initiate and execute the killings will be included in the project. While the policies of the Romanian state were inspired by the widespread antisemitism, the petty bureaucrats were guided by greed and opportunity. The result of the latter led to the sufferings of many but also opened a door of salvation for many others.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brandeis University, 2003.School code: 0021
Hallowing days: The secular and the sacred for Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig.
No full textThe contested trope of "hallowing daily life" sparks fresh readings of Martin Buber (1878--1965) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886--1929). This dissertation maintains that these preeminent thinkers sought, though failed, to prove that modern Jewish culture renders the 'wholly other' God as holiness within daily life here and now. Notably, the trope organizes and complicates these thinkers' writings and debates on individuality and community, ritual and language, metaphysics and ethics, epistemology and ontology, politics and theology. For both thinkers, modernization and secularization exacerbate a problem in Jewish thought: how to separate and relate God and the world. While God seems removed from ordinary affairs even for observant sectors of modern Jewry, still other, often more 'profane' thinkers allegedly find God in proximity, amidst the sensuous and the corporeal. Indeed the focus on "daily life," so vital to Weimar German thought as (modest) consolation for intellectual crises and social dislocations, implies that conditional, limited realities affect, shape, realize or exhibit otherwise supreme ideals. Hence the "hallowing of daily life" suggests that the banal (trivial, taken-for-granted) is sublime (refined, exalted). But can and should reality properly guide or follow the ideal? Buber and Rosenzweig answer divergently, and tendentiously, that (a given, mutable) culture is either the fulcrum binding or the wedge dividing materiality and spirituality, finitude and infinity, temporality and eternity. I argue that the ambiguities of Jewry's involvement modernity, and of the self's engagement with others, enmesh these thinkers' positions in a tension. Cultural artifacts (history, performance, and text) equally align and fracture life's contents, erect and demolish life's boundaries. This evidences a double paradox: holiness is separate from and whole for, whereas everydayness is integral with and partial to life. I conclude that any attempt to portray concrete, mundane life as if it entails ultimate meaning and absolute value founders theologically even as it serves agendas politically.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2003.School code: 0212
Attitudes and experiences of Persian American Jews in Jewish education.
No full textThe purpose of this study was to ascertain whether there were differences in attitudes and behaviors related to education, background, practices, and values of two ethnic groups of Persian American Jewry, in New York. One hundred forty-two Meshedi and Teherani Persian Jews made up the sample population.Responses to a questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS. In-depth interviews of families, and faculty members at a Yeshiva day school helped explicate the findings and provide additional insight into Meshedi and Teherani beliefs and practices. Further insights were collected by discussions with Persian communal leaders in the geographic area of the study as well as a psychologist who practices in the Persian community.Six research questions were assessed using descriptive statistics comparing the attitudes of Meshedis and Teheranis on Jewish communal life, religious observances, intermarriage, Maimonidean principles of faith, the importance of textual study, and formal Jewish education. Additional analysis of selected areas of Persian Jewish education was undertaken to compare Meshedis and Teheranis with respect to their attitudes concerning the Jewish faith. The additional analysis was carried out using t-tests, with a level of significance of .05.Results suggested that for the preponderance of Jewish education attitudes and practices, Meshedis and Teheranis reported similar beliefs. Teheranis tended to be more secular in their views, while Meshedis reported themselves to be more traditional and closer to Orthodox practices and their attitudes suggested by employment patterns within their families and community, religious observances, socialization patterns related to friendships, meeting people and opinions toward marriage, converts and intermarriage.In contrast, Meshedis were more likely to consult with a rabbi than Teheranis. Teheranis, unlike Meshedis, did not separate meat and dairy dishes. Additional analysis revealed that Meshedi males had significantly higher mean Maimonidean principle scores than either female Meshedis and or male Teheranis.Meshedis were more likely to live in a Jewish locale, near a synagogue, attend synagogues, consult with and seek guidance from their rabbis, and to provide formal Jewish education for their children.Conclusions, implications, and suggestions for research were identified and discussed providing valuable insight into many facets of Persian American Jewish culture.Thesis (Ed.D.)--Yeshiva University, 2003.School code: 0266