Judaism and Liberalism

This chapter asks what being Jewish may mean in contemporary Finland by examining interviews of members of the Jewish congregations, collected in 2019 to 2020 in the research project Minhag Finland. The chapter first offers a brief assessment of the history of the Jewish community in Finland from its origins until present day, followed by a review of previous research on Nordic Jewish identities. Jewish identities in Finland are observed from three topical perspectives: how the informants negotiate their membership in an Orthodox Jewish congregation while living in a secularized society; how the elusive concept of “Finnishness” (national identity) interplays with just as elusive “Jewishness” (ethnic/religious identity); and, finally, the informants’ confrontations with antisemitism and racism in Finland. The chapter shows that during the last 30 years the Finnish Jewish community has evolved from a homogenous Ashkenazi (East European Jewish) community into a multicultural community. The community embraces many elements of “Finnishness” (national symbols and narratives), while the “difference” inherent to their Jewishness is not forgotten or suppressed. The chapter also shows how differently the mechanisms of antisemitism and racism in Finland influence the members of this diverse community.

Ireland’s Jewish community has long been in a state of demographic decline. The recognition accorded to the ‘Jewish Congregations’ in Eire’s 1937 constitution was removed in 1972, and the most rece...

In the Name of the Community: Populism, Ethnicity, and Politics among the Jews of Argentina under Perón, 1946–1955

Reviewed by: Law's Dominion: Jewish Community, Religion, and Family in Early Modern Metz by Jay R. Berkovitz Ronald B. Schechter Jay R. Berkovitz. Law's Dominion: Jewish Community, Religion, and Family in Early Modern Metz. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 60. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xv + 404 pp. Once upon a time, historians of eighteenth-century French Jewry believed that the Ashkenazic Jews of eastern France were isolated from the surrounding gentile society, that their institutions, laws, and attitudes separated them from their non-Jewish neighbors. I was one of those historians. Jay Berkovitz, in his magisterial Law's Dominion: Jewish Community, Religion, and Family in Early Modern Metz, has shown that we were wrong. The reason is that we relied on a corpus of published French and German sources, written by Maskilim—Jewish exponents of the Enlightenment—and gentile reformers, including prominent figures in the French Revolution, who fought for Jewish civic equality and citizenship. Berkovitz was in the highly unusual position to delve into a different kind of source, namely the pinkas of the beit din, or rabbinical court, of Metz, a city in [End Page 167] eastern France that was unique in having a legally authorized Jewish community, or kehillah. (The community of Nancy was effectively a colony of the Metz kehillah.) A pinkas was a register, and there were various types: pinkasei kahal, or communal registers; pinkasei beit knesset, or synagogue registers; pinkasim containing information about confraternities, financial records, wills, etc. These tell us a great deal about internal Jewish life, but the genre most valuable to social and legal historians is the pinkas beit din, or register of the rabbinical court. There are extant examples of this last type of pinkas, notably for the communities of Hamburg, Prague, and Frankfurt, though none is nearly as complete as that of the beit din of Metz. Housed in the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, this manuscript had been almost completely neglected by previous historians, who lacked either the linguistic and paleographic skills, or the patience, to explore in any depth the two folio volumes of 241 pages containing roughly 400,000 words and covering 1663 cases from 1771 to 1789. Berkovitz first began working with this source in 2003, and in 2014 he did a great service for historians of early modern Ashkenazic Jewry by publishing a meticulously edited volume of it—Protocols of Justice: The Pinkas of the Metz Rabbinic Court, 1771–1789. The pinkas beit din provides a wealth of information about commerce, inheritance practices, social hierarchies, family disputes, religious beliefs and practices, marriage, divorce, and the history of women, gender, and sexuality. In Law's Dominion, Berkovitz combines it with other sources, internal to the community and external, to produce the most exhaustive possible account of Jewish life in Metz. Chapter 1 describes the legal sources available to historians of the Jews of Metz, namely: responsa, or questions posed to rabbis by other communities and the rabbis' responses; communal registers, including records of the lay leaders' legislation; and the pinkas beit din. Chapter 2 provides a brief history of the Metz kehillah, with an emphasis on "ritual and identity," material culture, and "economic integration." Chapter 3 introduces the governing institutions that constituted and guaranteed communal autonomy and shows how they provided for social welfare and poor relief, policed moral and religious conduct, and interacted with the French civil courts that decided cases between Jews. Chapter 4 discusses the sources judges relied on, chiefly the Talmud and legal codes deriving from it, especially the sixteenth-century Shulḥan ʿarukh, and gives an account of judicial procedure and delineates the functions of the beit din. Chapter 5 is a fascinating analysis of the impact of French courts, law, and judicial procedure on the rabbis' jurisprudence, and the acculturation and integration Jews experienced with the legal culture of the surrounding gentile society. Chapter 6 delves into the social history revealed by the court records, especially practices of guardianship and inheritance, two perennial sources of dispute, and the establishment and funding of charitable foundations through legacies. Finally, chapter 8 explores the much-underestimated power of women in the community's...

Reviewed by: The Jews of Beirut: The Rise of a Levantine Community, 1860s–1930s by Tomer Levi Dario Miccoli Tomer Levi. The Jews of Beirut: The Rise of a Levantine Community, 1860s–1930s. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. Pp. Xiv + 230. Cloth $82.95. ISBN 9781433117091. Among the Jewish communities of the modern Eastern Mediterranean, that of Beirut is probably the least known and researched. The Jews of Beirut: The Rise of a Levantine Community, 1860s–1930s by Tomer Levi takes on the [End Page 92] challenge of filling this gap, investigating the emergence of what he defines as a Levantine Jewish community in the period from the 1860s to the 1930s. The first chapter gives a historical overview of the Levant and of the Jews of Alexandria, Izmir, and Beirut in the late Ottoman era. Levi clarifies that starting from the mid-nineteenth century these three cities shared a phenomenal economic expansion, which in turn prompted the migration of Jews—and of many other people, too—from neighboring areas, leading to the formation of cosmopolitan and largely middle class Jewish communities. In the second chapter, the author focuses on the communal organization of Beirut Jews, noting that until 1908 a small and unorganized Jewish community lived in the city. It was only in the aftermath of the Young Turk Revolution, with the development of the port of Beirut, that the Jewish community increased in size and underwent a significant restructuring. With the advent of the French mandate over Lebanon in 1920, the Jewish leadership further consolidated its position, entering a period of prosperity and socio-political stability that continued into the late 1940s. As explained in the third chapter, during the French mandate the Jews of Beirut encountered three different ideologies: the French model of assimilation proposed by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Zionism, and the reformism of the B’nai B’rith, the American-based Jewish fraternal organization, that managed to become the most attractive one to Beirut Jews, thanks to its ideals of community progress and social activism. In the fourth chapter, Levi analyzes the scarce success of the Alliance and the attempts to merge its schools with the communal Talmud-Torah in the 1920s. The Alliance did not gain the favor of Beirut Jews for many reasons, in particular because of its hostility to Zionism. The local Jews tended to support Zionism and the yishuv even as Zionism adapted with some difficulty to an environment such as Lebanon in which the Jews lived as full citizens and as one among many different religious minorities. The final chapter investigates forms of charity and poor relief. Levi analyzes the financing of the Talmud-Torah school and the influence of the B’nai B’rith on the communal welfare system. He argues that in the period under study, the Jews of Beirut elaborated a secular model of philanthropy that substituted the older, religious-driven charity. However, the author aptly underlines that Eastern Mediterranean Jewish philanthropy retained both religious and secular components and eventually became a crucial factor in the socio-political evolution of the Jewish community of Beirut. While The Jews of Beirut makes a welcome addition to the field of Middle Eastern Jewish Studies through significant research on an understudied topic, the work contains several weak spots. First, in the introductory pages the author understands Levantine Jewry and that of Beirut in particular as a distinct kind of community, characterized by its middle class identity, influenced by European colonialism and the socio-economic dynamics of Eastern Mediterranean port cities and by a history that was, by and large, “different and unique.” (xii) But is this really the case? What about the many similarities that Beirut Jews had with fellow Jews not living in Eastern Mediterranean port cities, [End Page 93] like Tunis, Cairo, or even Baghdad? And what about the interconnections with the non-Jewish middle class of, for example, Aleppo or Istanbul? When addressing his object of study, the author seems to ignore the most recent advancements of Mediterranean and late Ottoman historiography. I am thinking in particular of seminal studies by Lois Dubin and David Cesarani on the notion of port Jews; by Keith Watenpaugh on...

In this study, attitudes towards “Ostjuden” both within Jewish communities in Sweden, focusing on Gothenburg, and the Swedish press are explored through the concept of Ostjudeophobia, coined by the historian Carl Henrik Carlsson, defined as a certain kind of antisemitism directed at Jews from Eastern Europe. Within the communities, negative ideas were expressed by some, while others emphasized the Jewish duty of helping co-religionists. Even though some “Western Jews” held negative views of “Ostjuden,” the immigrants received help with poor relief, schooling, and religious matters. I conclude that social distance was a factor in how “Polish Jews” were viewed. Those who met the immigrants through the Jewish poor relief, for example the members of the Women’s Association and the Chevra Kadisha in Gothenburg, were more positive towards their co-religionists from the East, while some concern was raised in community meetings and among the leadership about the consequences of the immigration of “Polish Jews”. In antisemitic rhetoric in the press, so-called “Polish Jews” were most-often described in a negative light and seen as the worst kind of Jews; reviled for being both Jewish and “Eastern”. Ostjudeophobia thus contains prejudices against both Jews and Eastern Europe.

Abstract: Jews were excluded from the common (Christian) poor relief in Lutheran Sweden until 1899. The law stated that the Jewish communities had to provide for their own poor. One recipient of poor relief was Rachel Marcus, née Raphael (1803–1849). Neither her nor her husband's businesses were able to provide for their family. I examine the nineteen letters she wrote to the directors of the community, seeking relief. As a mother responsible for the moral upbringing of her children, with a husband unable to provide and thus failing in his gender role as breadwinner, Rachel Marcus reflects the ideal poor relief recipient in the view of Swedish society at the time. This article explores her letters and shows how she worked tirelessly to provide for her family, thus providing insight into gendered ideals and the relationship between an impoverished individual and her community's poor relief.

Synagogues as buildings take on many roles. They are places of worship as well as sites of Jewish cultural heritage and representations of how congregations understand this Jewishness within non-Jewish society. Synagogues therefore symbolise many different identities. This article will explore how Jewish congregations in England today navigate these identities within their synagogue buildings through an exploration of four case studies. It argues that congregations use their synagogues as sites to create both Jewish communities and to forge connections with their neighbours.

During the early nineteenth century, many reform-minded Jews in Germany began developing ideas about a modernized worship service in line with the Jewish Enlightenment movement, called the Haskalah. The reforms applied not only to the aesthetic but also to the musical aspects of the service to appeal more to a public that was increasingly educated in Western art music. These changes brought about a new branch of Jewish music and marked the beginning of a new era of Judaism that eventually would divide the community into Orthodox and Reform. Throughout the next decades, several debates within the Jewish community erupted over whether the organ should be allowed in synagogues. Among the most notable ones happened during the Second Rabbinical Conference in Frankfurt in 1845 and the First Jewish Synod in Leipzig in 1869, as well as during the proposed construction of an organ in Berlin's New Synagogue in Oranienburger Straβe in 1861. The debates ended after the Jewish community in Cologne allowed the introduction of an organ in Roonstraβe synagogue in 1906. However, almost all of central Europe's synagogue organs would be destroyed during Kristallnacht in 1938 and during the war. Many of the organs were built between 1848 and 1871 when Jewish congregations were enjoying the rewards of liberal German economic policies. This period saw much innovation in organ building as the organ transformed into a synagogue instrument. Later in the nineteenth century, instruments with larger dispositions and many more stops began to appear as the organ gradually took on a solo role in Jewish observances until it eventually became a concert instrument. The placement of the organ in synagogues varied from congregation to congregation, indicating that the instrument was not bound by tradition and had become an expression of the social, cultural, and religious assimilation of Germany's Jewish population.

Henry Schuhl: The Wayward Rabbi of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El Richard F. Selcer (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution The only known picture of Henry Schuhl is a pen-and-ink engraving that appeared in the New York Herald at the time of his disappearance in 1898. It shows a handsome, distinguished-looking gentleman with strong features highlighted by a big walrus mustache. It is impossible to say what he looked like earlier, but by this date he did not wear the traditional full beard of most rabbis. Source: Boston Post, Nov. 26, 1898. [End Page 396] The name Henry Schuhl was in newspapers all over the country between 1881 and 1898, but today he is scarcely remembered. A history of Dallas’s Temple Emanu-El devotes less than four pages to his troubled tenure, making vague reference to a “rupture” in the congregation that was “shortly healed.”1 He was the golden boy of Cincinnati’s Jewish community, then he came to Dallas and turned the staid Temple Emanu-El on its ear. During his lifetime he was a religious seeker, a politician, a labor leader, a con man, and a fugitive from justice in addition to being a distinguished rabbi. He caused one of the great religious scandals of the nineteenth century, earning him comparisons to a notable contemporary, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the famed Brooklyn clergyman. In August 1881, Henry Schuhl stepped off a train in Dallas to start his tenure as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, considered by some at the time to be “the largest, wealthiest, and most important Hebrew society in Texas.” Five years later he was on a train out of town, leaving in disgrace amid accusations of adultery, “licentiousness,” embezzlement, and swindling. But he proved F. Scott Fitzgerald wrong by going on to a second act—and more—before his life was through. Constantly on the move and on the make, Henry’s story is an extreme version of the quintessential nineteenth-century [End Page 397] immigrant experience in America, full of self-invention and new beginnings.2 Henri Schuhl was born December 6, 1846, in France, probably in the border region of Alsace-Lorraine, an area claimed by both France and Germany, which would explain why he spoke fluent German and French. After immigrating to the United States, he Anglicized his given name to “Henry.” His wife, Brunette Nathan, was born in France on September 11, 1847. They were married on November 20, 1868, and moved to America together. They settled in New York City first, then moved to Montreal, where they lived for a short time. In 1870, they were living in California where their first child was born, a daughter they named Florette. They had three more children between 1872 and 1877, Aaron, Palmyra, and Caroline. In 1878, they moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where the Mound Street Temple hired Henry to lead singing and congregational prayers as chazzan (cantor). It was a prestigious position, equivalent to being deputy rabbi, and as a graduate of “the leading university” of Paris Henry was well-equipped for his duties. He was a dynamic public speaker who reportedly “possessed the sublime gift of oratory” to go along with his scholarly credentials. Still, he was not an ordained rabbi. The position of chazzan did not pay very well, especially for a person described by the American Israelite, the national Jewish publication out of Cincinnati, as a “gentleman of culture and refinement” who was supporting a family of six. Apparently, the job did not occupy “sufficient of his time,” either, because in 1880 he became “city agent” for the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company of Philadelphia. If Henry was good at anything, it was selling—especially himself.3 His detour into the insurance business did not last long, however, and in 1881 he arrived in Dallas to begin a new life at Temple Emanu-El. One scholar characterizes nineteenth-century Texas as one of the last “corners” of the historic Jewish diaspora. Dallas was one of seven Jewish congregations in the state in 1881. Although the town was struggling at this date, it still represented a golden opportunity...

Missionaries are people who operate on the border between their own community and another. The confessional frontier between the Christian and the Jewish communities in Prussia offers a privileged vantage-point from which to analyze the relationship between them. This study makes comprehensive use of the archives and publications of the various Prussian institutions and societies which set out to convert Jews to Christianity. Spanning over two centuries of Protestant missionary activity, this book examines the ways in which theological, social, and racial themes intertwined in the relationship between the Christian majority in Prussia and the Jewish minority in its midst. This study sheds light on a facet of Jewish-German history which has been overshadowed by the ultimate tragedy of the Holocaust.

Prior to the formation of the Italian national state in the nineteenth century, the term “Italian” applied to the compound “Jewish literature” designates a vast and multifarious corpus of texts produced by Jews living in the geographic area of the Italian peninsula rather than a culturally and politically coherent literary tradition. At the crossroads of the Mediterranean, exposed to different civilizations, Italy has been over the centuries the home for Jews of manifold origins, traditions, and languages, Iberian refugees as well as Ottoman subjects, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim as well as North African Judeo-Arabs. However, the continuous presence since Late Antiquity of an ancient Jewish community in Rome and other parts of the peninsula has determined the formation of a local Jewish community characterized by its own distinctive ritual and linguistic features. Its influence has been consistent well beyond the Italian peninsula, carried by the migration of Italian Jews to central and eastern Europe at the turn of the first millennium ce or fostered by the mercantile networks of Jews from port cities such as Venice or Leghorn, in the Levant, and in other regions under the sphere of influence of Italian states. Prompted by the rise of nationalism in Europe and in the spirit of the critical investigations of Jewish past of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, since the nineteenth century, the study of Italian Jewish literature has developed into a full-fledged field of scholarship. Scholars have traditionally depicted Italy as a land where Jews and Christians coexisted in a harmonious cultural symbiosis, focusing on those periods, such as the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when the exchanges between Jewish and Christian scholars were particularly intense and fruitful. This harmonistic vision has been challenged by recent scholarship uncovering the more complex dynamics of interaction with the Christian majority during the age of the ghettos (sixteenth to eighteenth century) and the involvement of Italian Jews in transnational frames of cultural communication within the Jewish diaspora. In the twenty-first century, the knowledge of Italian Jewish literature has enormously benefited from a growing number of studies devoted to leading authors, to different literary genera, and to specific periods. Also, a wide array of texts made available to the public in valuable and accurate critical editions has attested to the increasing interest in Italian Jewish culture. However, the literary output of the Jews in Italy still waits to be fully integrated in the general narrative of the history of Italian literature, and there is a consistent lack of studies dedicated to the legal and homiletic production of the Jews, which has been neglected in favor of scholarship devoted to their poetry and thought.

Contemporary Anglophone Jewish congregants prize participatory worship and enjoy singing portions of the liturgy to a selection of familiar, beloved melodies. Hymnals are not used in synagogue worship; instead, congregants learn these melodies by ear, singing liturgical texts as “the song that goes like this.” Most do not know the origins of their favorite melodies, believing them to be much older than they really are. This chapter analyzes the cultural work that this group of liturgical melodies does in Jewish congregational life. Drawing on ethnographic research in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as the sociology of nostalgia and Jewish history, author Rachel Adelstein argues that these melodies help to express “Jewishness” in worship. Adelstein positions congregational reliance on “the songs that go like this” as a response to the legacy of migration, the challenges of modernity, and the re-centering of Jewish life following the Holocaust. She argues that the veil of nostalgic anonymity placed over these songs gives Jewish congregations a sense of tradition upon which to construct a modern social and religious life. She also examine the threat that this anonymity presents to Jewish communities’ understanding of and reckoning with their own recent history and community structure.

Endowments for charitable purposes, including schools, have existed for centuries, usually in former times associated with religion, as in the Christian and Islamic worlds, in Jewish communities, and doubtless elsewhere. Most often under older conditions they consisted in the right to receive income from land, or from land and buildings, under whatever provisions for tenure and ownership might prevail from one place to another. They have generally been perpetual, that is, intended to pass unchanged from one generation to the next. Much has been written on the origins of such endowments or foundations. Less attention has been given to how they may end. In France in the 1790s the accumulated philanthropies of four or five hundred years were suddenly liquidated. Income-producing properties meant to finance hospitals, poor relief, and education since the thirteenth century were taken over by the state, on the understanding that the public authorities would provide for these needs more effectively. My own knowledge relates only to education within this general category of welfare. This paper will thus present some information, and a few ideas, on the process and consequences of a general disendowment of education.

Honor and Its Meaning Among Ottoman Jews Yaron Ben-Naeh (bio) On his deathbed in Istanbul at the end of the sixteenth century, Shlomo Ashkenazi wrote a will in which he instructed "that his children and his children's children who inherit their share shall neither be able nor permitted to lease their share of the houses to any living soul in the world [whether] a Jew, or a Gentile, or an Ishmaelite." Some 60 years later, some of the houses he bequeathed to them were abandoned or served as the scene of "innumerable crimes" committed by one of the heirs. Members of the family claimed this heir was "an evil doer who committed transgressions in public... and this brings upon us and our entire family disgrace and shame to the state of ignominy when it becomes public knowledge."1 They were concerned that, apart from the damage to family honor, serious acts of crime might be committed that would endanger them. In view of the circumstances, they asked for permission to lease out the houses to strangers despite the oaths and vows in the will. Rabbi Yehoshua Benbenesht (1590–1668), one of the prominent sages in the capital, adjudicated the matter and scrutinized the wording of the will. Since the main intent of the testator was family honor, and yet upholding the will might cause "shame and disgrace" to the family, he permitted the requested change. Rabbi Benbenesht referred to the testator as someone whom we knew for his good name and fame, we found him prodigious in honor and virtues, we heard that all of his intentions were to attain honor, to in [End Page 19] crease the honor of his household and his excellent family...that all of his being and intent was for the honor and esteem of his name...that neither his sons nor descendants would be allowed to be known as multezim [a renter or a tax lessee; one who leases a tax collection concession], nor any of his servants because of the danger and because of the disgrace, that he not be disgraced in the eyes of the public to be the slaves of slaves.2 The honor of the deceased and family was therefore a sufficiently important value for the adjudicator (Heb.: posek) to overturn an explicit will and annul the strict sanctions that the testator had set down. My objective in this article is to analyze the role of honor in the consciousness of Ottoman Jews, reconstruct what it meant to different strata of Ottoman Jewish society, and clarify its role as a component in the shaping of their mentality. I will study the cultural context of the Jewish-Iberian heritage, on the one hand, and the circumstances of life in an Ottoman urban environment, on the other. Ottoman Jewry was an urban society in which, from the middle of the sixteenth century onward, the numerical and cultural dominance of Jews coming from the Iberian Peninsula was noticeable, particularly in the provinces of western Anatolia and the southern Balkans. Tens of thousands of Jews lived in the large urban centers such as Istanbul and Salonica. The population of medium-sized communities such as Izmir (Smyrna), Aleppo, Cairo, and sometimes Jerusalem numbered between one and five thousand, whereas in hundreds of small communities there were at most several dozen families. The economic pursuits of the Jews were diverse, constituting part of the fabric of urban life, a fact that influenced both their social structure (stratification, class) and their culture. They generally lived within an organizational framework known as a kahal (congregation), the Jewish community in every city comprising several congregations. The congregation was a social framework centered around the synagogue. It was governed by an elected oligarchic leadership that filled many roles, among them negotiating with the authorities and the provision of various services such as Jewish law court, education, poor relief, kosher food, a synagogue, and a cemetery. The subject of the current study is a group composed mainly of Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin and their descendants, a group that in itself was highly diversified. Lack of sources keeps us from discussing or even relating to the other ethnic...