anti-Semitic Stereotypes Research Articles

‘You Survived? We Were Told All Jews Were Gassed’: Jews, Czechs, and the Memory of the Holocaust

ABSTRACT This article discusses postwar memory of the Holocaust in Czechoslovakia, with a focus on Moravia and Czech–Jewish relations. The case study explores the development during and after World War II in the town of Uherský Brod (Ungarisch Brod), which was home to a significant Jewish community before the war. Based on the archival sources, literature, and oral history testimonies, the paper addresses the wartime imposition of antisemitic measures and emergence of anti-Jewish stereotypes and illustrates the reactions of the non-Jewish local majority to the persecution of the town Jews. Memory of the Shoah is depicted based on the experiences of the individual participants and shows that some survivors encountered friendly acceptance from non-Jews while others experience hatred and refusal. Even among the educated and those of higher social strata, the article proves that antisemitic stereotypes remain in the majority society to this day.

The Decoding Antisemitism Project—Reflections, Methods, and Goals

Abstract This article introduces the pilot project “Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online.” The aim of the project is to analyse the frequency, content and linguistic structure of online antisemitism, with the eventual aim of developing AI machine learning that is capable of recognizing explicit and implicit forms of antisemitic hate speech. The initial focus is on comments found on the websites and social media platforms of major media outlets in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The article outlines the project’s multi-step methodological design, which seeks to capture the complexity, diversity and continual development of antisemitism online. The first step is qualitative content analysis. Rather than relying on surveys, here a pre-existing “real-world” data set-namely, threads of online comments responding to media stories judged to be potential triggers for antisemitic speech-is collected and analysed for antisemitic content and linguistic structure by expert coders. The second step is supervised machine learning. Here, models are trained to mimic the decisions of human coders and learn how antisemitic stereotypes are currently reproduced in different web milieus-including implicit forms. The third step is large-scale quantitative analyses in which frequencies and combinations of words and phrases are measured, allowing the exploration of trends from millions of pieces of data.

Grotesque Europe: The Gothic Grotesque and Anti-Semitic Stereotypes in Dead Europe

ABSTRACT Christos Tsiolkas’s Gothic novel Dead Europe (2005) has been criticised by some for its offensive representation of Jewish characters, and lauded by others as an unflinching interrogation of historical and contemporary anti-Semitism. The Gothic genre more broadly has a difficult history of rendering the marginalised Other as monstrous, and while contemporary writers often experiment with Gothic tropes to challenge and disrupt such representations, as a non-Jewish writer, Tsiolkas uses the figure of the monstrous Jew in problematic ways. This article analyses Dead Europe’s use of the Gothic grotesque in depicting Jewish characters, arguing that the novel engages in an ethical critique of anti-Semitic stereotypes using the grotesque’s ambivalence, overdetermination and ability to compel attention through shock and disgust.

«Проклятий антихрист»: стереотипізація єврейської ідентичності в романі «Михайло Чарнышенко, или Малороссия восемьдесят лет назад» П. Куліша

The article aims to study the representation of Jewish stereotypes in P. Kulish’s first novel “Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years ago” (written – 1842, printed – 1843) in the characterof the Cossack Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky. The literary image is considered in a three-dimensional plane: the attitude towards the Jewish converts during the events described by the writer in the 2nd half of the 18th century, as well as information known from historical sources and new facts from modern sources about Colonel A. Kryzhanovsky, and, finally, correspondence of historical truth with modeling of the literary image in the novel “Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years ago”. The article traces how the writer used the historical sources known to him and how the widespread ideas about the Jews of that time found a place in his novel. Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky, who is the only prototype of a real historical person in P.Kulish’s novel, is devastatingly described in the anonymous treatise “History of Ruthenians or Little Russia” and fully corresponds to the literary image in the text of the novel. The article shows how P. Kulish, using the completely false information of the “History of Ruthenians or Little Russia”, repeats the factual errors of the treatise author, since its text combines information about the conversion of Anton Kryzhanovsky’s father with the historical fact of the recruitment of Ukrainian “Holsteinians” by Colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky. However, the same inaccuracy can be traced in the works of Ukrainian scientists of the 19th century, for example, the historian-genealogist O. Lazarevsky and the historian D. Miller. The paradox of Kryzhanovsky’s image in the novel lies in the fact that being a consolidating character for others and an impetus for the unfolding of events, he almost always remains aloof as if deliberately emphasizing his mysteriousness and insidiousness, which are reinforced by a characteristic portrait. P. Kulish ignores the real history of the conversion of Jews in the Cossacks when with a change of religion yesterday’s Jew became a “Cossack’s friend” and had all the prospects for successful integration. In his first novel, P. Kulish produces the mythologeme of a Jewish convert, who selfishly and deliberately integrates into the Ukrainian Cossack community and gradually emancipates himself to the extent that he obtains a high military position thanks to the patronage of the Russian Emperor Peter III and irreparably harms the Cossacks, who are trying to balance thoughts about the glorious past and the present colonial time. However, this author’s position is at odds with real historical facts, including biographical data about Cossack colonel Anton Kryzhanovsky.

Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical by Sharon Aronofsky Weltman

Reviewed by: Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical by Sharon Aronofsky Weltman Sooyoung Chung (bio) Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2020), pp. ix + 321, $37.50 paperback. Sharon Aronofsky Weltman’s Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical examines the Broadway musical’s creative and critical engagement with Victorian literature and culture. Weltman focuses on the intertextual network surrounding Broadway adaptations and their Victorian sources and explores other adaptations including plays, films, and illustrations. Beginning with the musical theater adaptations of Victorian literature produced in the “Golden Age of Broadway” in the 1940s, Weltman follows the chronological development of American musical theater, from musical comedy to integrated musical to the megamusical (4). This chronological organization allows Weltman to analyze each Broadway musical adaptation in the historical and cultural context of both Victorian literature and American musical theater. [End Page 662] Weltman’s extensive research bolsters her analyses of the literary and musical texts, helping the reader gain “reciprocal insights” to both texts (227). The strength of Victorians on Broadway lies in its attempt to understand Broadway adaptations of Victorian literature within a larger network of texts and contexts. The first chapter sets the stage for Weltman’s intertextual exploration of Broadway adaptations by providing a history of the American musical theater; a historiography of Victorian studies with reference to scholars such as Virginia Woolf, F. R. Leavis, Kathleen Tillotson, Walter E. Houghton, Lytton Strachey, and Richard Altick; and an overview of the twentieth century’s reception of Victorian literature and culture. Weltman examines One Touch of Venus (1943) in this larger context and argues that the musical “is a precursor and an outlier, illustrating an important conjunction of intellectual and aesthetic changes occurring simultaneously in the 1940s and 1950s” (53–54). Chapters 2 and 3, examining The King and I (1951) and Oliver! (1968) respectively, illustrate how these musicals negotiate each Victorian source text’s commentary on race, gender, and class for its American audience in the mid-twentieth century. “In The King and I’s mythologized Victorian milieu,” Weltman argues, “the white British governess represents in part an idealized United States” (56). Weltman’s claim that these musicals “use their Victorian lenses to refract contemporary American concerns” is more clearly demonstrated in Oliver! (56). Oliver! carefully downplayed the Jewishness of Fagin to address concerns of post–World War II audiences and recreated him, “a virulent anti-Semitic stereotype, in a way that makes the character likable while still utterly recognizable” (92). Weltman rightly acknowledges that this is a great example of an adaptation affecting the public view of its source text. At the heart of Weltman’s argument is the contention that Broadway’s perception of the Victorian equals Dickensian. She not only discusses the musicals adapted directly from Charles Dickens’s works, Oliver! and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1985), but more interestingly finds influences of Dickens in other musicals based on Victorian texts, such as Sweeney Todd (1979) and Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical (1997). In chapter 4, Weltman provides insight into Sweeney Todd’s relation to Victorian cultural contexts based on her personal interview with the creator, Stephen Sondheim. When asked about his idea of Victorian literature and culture, Sondheim pointed to Dickens—both the novels and their film adaptations (109). Weltman also examines how Sweeney Todd enjoyed a successful afterlife in opera and film, which also employed Dickensian features to ensure their Victorianism. In chapter 5, Weltman examines Rupert Holmes’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood, adapted from Dickens’s unfinished novel of the same title. She pays particular attention to the show’s metatheatricality, in which “Dickens, Holmes, the performers, and the audience as well as the [End Page 663] characters all seem to participate” (134). The musical actively engages with the unfinished state of the novel’s narrative and offers a do-it-yourself ending where the audience votes for a desired conclusion. This meta theatricality illuminates the inherent musical theatricality in Dickens’s novel, Weltman argues, supporting her central claim that “adaptations indelibly affect our understanding of Victorian literature and...

Illuminating the Motives of Racism When Adapting and Directing The Merchant of Venice

ABSTRACT Based on my own experience of adapting and directing The Merchant of Venice, I discuss the challenges and responsibilities of portraying the Jewish characters, Shylock and Jessica in a twenty-first century production. Blending theory and practice, the rehearsal process and results in performance are expounded to provide a detailed account of how the context affects the practice and outcomes. Moreover, the motivations, intentions and distortions within the intricacies of interactions between characters is described and discussed to explore the myth of Jewish stereotypes.

The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century, edited by James Loeffler and Moria Paz

The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century, edited by James Loeffler and Moria Paz

The Anti-Israel Movement in Québec in the 1970s: At the Ideological Crossroads of the New Left and Liberation-Nationalism

Since the late 1950s, Third World nationalism in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Middle East had fascinated radical Quebec nationalists. Quebec nationalism’s militant arm, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), styled itself as a national-liberation movement fighting against Anglo-Canadian exploitation and oppression. After the Six-Day-War, the PLO became a significant source of inspiration for these elements. Quebec was their Palestine, as one prominent Quebec Nationalist asserted. This militant Quebec nationalism coincided and often overlapped with the rise of the New Left at Quebec’s universities and in its unions. Like its European and American counterparts, the Quebec New Left adopted the ideologies of anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, and in 1972, the Quebec-Palestine Association was established in this milieu. Anti-imperialism combined the Marxist analysis of class struggle with a nationalistic worldview, which saw the world divided between oppressor and oppressed nations. For the New Left, Israel became the epitome of an oppressor nation. It was associated with all the supposed vices of the West: Racism, capitalism, inauthenticity, and militarism. This paper sheds light on the founding years of the Quebec anti-Zionist movement in the early 1970 and discusses the themes and images it used to describe Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Furthermore, the paper investigates whether these articulations a genuine critique of Zionism and Israeli policies or whether they were, instead, a reflection of antisemitic stereotypes. Moreover, the paper compares Quebec anti-Zionism to parallel manifestations of New Left anti-Zionism in Germany, asking whether the cultural context in Quebec affected the message of anti-Zionism.

The downside of moralizing financial markets: Anti-Semitic stereotypes in German MTurkers

Society increasingly demands ethical motives from investors. Like other judgments, however, the moral evaluation of investments can be influenced by stereotypes. We investigate whether subjects’ evaluation of investments as immoral violates the commonly accepted principle of moral impartiality—the view that moral evaluations of actions must not depend on the actor’s arbitrary personal characteristics. Recently, the media discussed such a violation when criticizing an internal remark of a German financial regulator (BaFin), which stated that most short sellers of Wirecard stocks came from Israel was “striking”. Through a between-subjects experiment, we find that young German MTurkers with generally centrist political attitudes display behavior consistent with an anti-Semitic stereotype: They are much more likely to evaluate the very same investment as immoral if it is made by an investor with a name perceived as Jewish. The triggering of this stereotype should prompt us to consider the moral evaluation of investors with caution.

Wer schmarotzt an wem? Zur Umcodierung eines zentralen antisemitischen Stereotyps im Werk des slowakischen Schriftstellers František Švantner.

Who is parasitizing on whom? On the recoding of a central anti-Semitic stereotype in the fictionalwork of the Slovak writer František Švantner.The article deals with the peculiarities of literary anti-Semitism in the context of Slovak literature.Taking into account more recent approaches that emphasize the impermanence andchangeability of central anti-Semitic stereotypes, the transformation and philo-Semitic recodingof the stereotype of the ‘Jewish usurer’ in the work of the Slovak writer František Švantnerare worked out.

The Jews' Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America by David S. Koffman

Reviewed by: The Jews' Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America by David S. Koffman Jonathan Schorsch (bio) The Jews' Indian: Colonialism, Pluralism, and Belonging in America. By David S. Koffman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019. 276 pp. Considering the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the period of peak US expansion and national consolidation, Koffman sets out to understand encounters between Jews and Native Americans. [End Page 300] "How did American Jews make use of Indians, both real and imagined, as their ambitions in America as both Americans and Jews transformed? How did American Jews understand the place of Native Americans in their own quests for integration and advancement or for helping ensure justice and equality in America? How did Jews, a newly arrived 'clannish' group in a country celebrated for its diversity, openness, and meritocracy, see themselves as related to, distinct from, or refracted by those other quintessentially 'tribal' Americans? [H]ow did Jews put Indians to use in their efforts to remain Jewish or recreate Jewishness in America"? (3). Chapter 1 looks at "pioneer" Jews who moved to the western US, seeing themselves "as colonial whites and their own settlements, hardships, and accomplishments as heroic contributions to the winning of the American West." They "acted as unabashed agents of colonialism as a way of combatting anti-Semitic stereotypes that criticized Jewish men for lacking brawn or not pulling their weight in the nation's military operations…Western Jews cast themselves as recapitulations of the original pilgrims, clearing the path for commerce and settlement through their efforts at both engaging Indians in productive capitalism and subduing them through acts of violence. They viewed Indians as both impediments to and vehicles of their participation in the march toward civil progress" (15). In Chapter 2 Koffman discusses Jewish attitudes toward land, arguing that "immigrant Jews absorbed and fueled America's quest for imperial acquisition in the West, helping form part of its potent vision of expansionism and an equally martial vision of manhood. Nineteenth-century Jewish desire to feel existentially rooted in the new land fueled much of what Jews worked through in their imaginations of and encounters with Native Americans" (15). Chapter 3 presents Jewish merchants and the economic encounter with American Indians, the most prominent manifestation of face-to-face meetings between members of the different groups. Jews who "went west primarily as small businessmen to pursue wealth…constructed meaning out of their roles as traders and linked this Jewish occupational profile to the nation-building process," in which "Indians provided an intimate foil for Jews keen on having petty trade recognized as beneficial for expansion." One intriguing subset of the Jewish-Amerindian commercial interaction comprised the "Jewish Indian 'curio' dealers…who positioned themselves between red and white worlds as half Indian, half ethnographer experts, representing the Indians whose 'Indianness' they sold in the form of cultural objects" (16). In Chapter 4 Koffman turns to the "acculturated, enfranchised Jews of the urban east who devoted considerable efforts to justice for Native Americans" in the early twentieth century's climate of rising xenophobia (16). "American Jews and Native Americans fretted over their exclusion [End Page 301] from the mainstream American body politic; both feared that white America's assimilatory aspiration for them would lead to their cultural obliteration." Amerindians "provided Jews with a useful and malleable rhetorical tool for confronting tensions around assimilation and disappearance, naturalization, citizenship, and the idea of 'adoption' versus naturalization" (17). Chapter 5 describes a "cadre of Jewish pro-Native activists" in and beyond Washington, DC (17). Acting out of "Jewish enlightened self-interest," this set of "Jewish bureaucrats, lawyers, and philanthropists […] worked on behalf of Indian causes," finding "power and influence in the federal government for the first time in America under the Roosevelt Administration," playing a fundamental role in "drafting, passing, and implementing the 1934 [Indian Reorganization Act], consolidating federal case law on Indian affairs, and promoting Indian cultural, economic, health, education, and political interests" (17–18). At the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), Jews "consistently linked Indian uplift with an articulation of minority rights and cultural pluralism within the United States and on international stages that went beyond Indian...

"Pious Jew" Yakov Frizer and the Status of Jews in Siberia in the Early 20th Century

The present article analyses some documents concerning the legal and social status of Yakov D. Frizer (1869-1932), who was a Jew, a resident of Irkutsk, a merchant of the First Guild and one of the biggest gold miners of East Siberia. The story of his life in East Siberia describes religious tolerance along with manifestations of nationalism and antisemitism. On the threshold of the 20th century, Siberia was a colorful mosaic of numerous religious groups and confessions existing in the Russian Empire. Jewish communities of Siberia were characterized by openness and heterogeneity. In contras-distinction to the Jews from the Pale of Settlement, Jews of Siberia were successfully integrated into Siberian society. Being a son of a criminal exile, Yakov Frizer in a course of time became one of the biggest Siberian entrepreneurs. Diaries from Frizers private archive sometimes pointed out to the cases of religious and ethnic disaffection, thereby demonstrating the complexity and versatility of interfaith relations in East Siberia. Using the definition of Pierre Bourdieu, several generations of Siberian Jews succeeded to build a symbolic capital that became a part of their social status, ensured their social respect, and business connections built on mutual trust, making Jews as useful society members. East Siberia in general was tolerant to questions of religious faith. The so-called Jewish question in East Siberia did not have the same sharpness as it had in Western provinces of the Russian Empire. The Jewish question in Siberia was rather an echo of anti-Semitic stereotypes that traditionally have deep roots in the Russian society, and common people consciousness. The article is based on unpublished sources and diaries from Frizers private archive, as well as on archival sources from the Russian State Historical Archive and the State Archive of the Russian Federation.

“Am I a Jew?”: Soviet Jewish Youth and Antisemitism on the Home Front during the Second World War

Abstract In the wake of the Nazi invasion of June 1941, over one million Soviet Jews were resettled in Central Asia, Siberia, and the Volga and Ural regions for the duration of the war. Prewar antisemitic prejudices and stereotypes, as well as increasingly difficult living conditions, fueled further anti-Jewish sentiment. Children and teenagers were particularly susceptible to harassment because of their frequent contact with local youths at school or in the streets. Often unprepared to deal with these negative attitudes, their responses to and internalization of these early experiences with antisemitism constituted a critical, transformative moment, prompting them to grapple with the meaning of their Jewish identity within the Soviet context.

James Loeffler and Moria Paz, eds, The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century

James Loeffler and Moria Paz, eds, <i>The Law of Strangers: Jewish Lawyers and International Law in the Twentieth Century</i>

Antisemitism in a Renaissance Dialogue: The Ideological Role of Jews and Judaism in Viaje de Turquía

Despite being widely regarded by commentators as advocating cultural and religious diversity due to its ideological indebtedness to reformist and humanist thought and its largely flattering portrayal of Ottoman Constantinople, the anonymous sixteenth-century dialogue known as Viaje de Turquia is nevertheless reliant upon antisemitic stereotypes to facilitate the development of its plot and central characters. The analysis presented herein addresses the conspicuous gap in our current understanding of this seminal example of Spanish Renaissance literature by scrutinizing the crucial parallels it draws between two situations presented as broadly analogous: Christ’s persecution at the hands of the Pharisees and his subsequent crucifixion by the Roman imperial authorities, and the hero’s mistreatment by Sephardi physicians and the constant threat of execution held over him by the Ottomans. A fundamental aim of this study is therefore to challenge and ultimately alter scholarly perceptions of a text widely acclaimed for its espousal of Renaissance humanist ideals, and, by extension, to underscore the fact that those ideals were by no means unanimously concerned with achieving harmonious coexistence with the Other.

“The Jews love numbers”: Steven L. Anderson, Christian Conspiracists, and the Spiritual Dimensions of Holocaust Denial

From his pulpit at Faithful Word Baptist Church (Independent Fundamental Baptist) in Tempe, AZ, fundamentalist preacher Steven L. Anderson launches screeds against Catholics, LGBTQ people, evolutionary scientists, politicians, and anyone else who doesn't share his political, social, or theological views. Anderson publishes clips of his sermons on YouTube, where he has amassed a notable following. Teaming up with Paul Wittenberger of Framing the World, a small-time film company, Anderson produced a film about the connections between Christianity, Judaism, and Israel, entitled Marching to Zion (2015), which was laced with antisemitic stereotypes. Anderson followed Marching to Zion with an almost 40-minute YouTube video espousing Holocaust denial, entitled “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?” In this article, I analyze Anderson's Holocaust denial video in light of his theology, prior films, and connections to other Christian conspiracists, most notably Texe Marrs, I particularly show how Anderson frames the “Holocaust myth,” as he calls it, in light of a deeper spiritual warfare that negatively impacts the spread of Christianity.

Race and Relevance: Arthur Garfield Hays and the Integration of the American Bar Association, 1938-1943

Abstract This article explores the role of Arthur Garfield Hays and mostly Jewish lawyers in dismantling the American Bar Association’s prohibition of African Americans becoming members. By publicly resigning from the organization and encouraging others to do so over the ABA’s treatment of African-American applicant Francis Rivers, these lawyers made the color bar a public issue in the press. While earlier efforts in the late 1930s had failed, World War II contributed to the success of the activists’ campaign in the early 1940s, as the struggle against Nazi racism had begun to undercut American racial practices. In August 1943 the ABA changed its procedures governing admission that had previously functioned to exclude African-Americans. Other legal professional organizations soon followed its example. Thus the legal profession refashioned itself into part of the liberal order emerging in the wake of World War II.

Cultural Genocide and Restitution: The Early Wave of Jewish Cultural Restitution in the Aftermath of World War II

AbstractCultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered territories. After the war, the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin advocated for the recognition of the new crime of genocide and, in particular, its cultural dimensions. Jewish organizations also argued that cultural destruction should be seen as an integral component of the crime of genocide and that the remedy of cultural restitution should be part of the effort to rehabilitate the injured group, but their efforts to gain recognition in the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for the unique harm suffered by the Jews were unsuccessful. This article discusses an innovative approach developed by Jewish jurists and scholars in the late 1940s and 1950s, according to which heirless cultural property was returned to Jewish organizations as trustees for the Jewish people. Though largely forgotten in the annals of law, this approach offers a promising model for international law to overcome its statist bias and recognize the critical importance of cultural heritage for the rehabilitation of (non-state) victim groups.

STATUTE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE CARE OF POOR JEWISH CHILDREN IN KOLOMYIA (1908): HISTORICAL AND LEGAL ANALYSIS

The purpose of the article is to publish and analyze the Statute of the Society for the Care of Poor Jewish Children in Kolomyia (1908) as a source for the history of this Society and the legal culture of the Jewish community in the eastern cities of Eastern Galicia in the early 20th century. The research methodology – principles of scientific, objectivity, historicism, methods of external and internal critique of sources. The research novelty is that the Statute of the Society for the Care of Poor Jewish Children in Kolomyia (1908) was first published and analyzed as a historical and historical-legal source. The Conclusions. Thus, the Statute of the Society for the Care of Poor Jewish Children, which was formed in Kolomyia in 1908, is supposed to have been concluded by the Jewish lawyer H. Landau. After approval by the Governor, the Society published its Statute, which consisted of 29 articles. This document is known to researchers, but has never been published or analyzed as a historical and legal source. It is stored in the Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine in Lviv. The Statute had a bifunctional purpose, as it regulated the activities of the Society and the “Okhoronka” formed by it. Articles of the Statute can be divided into three groups: 1) the purpose and material principles of the Society and the “Okhoronka”; 2) tasks, rights and responsibilities of the members of the Society and the “Okhoronka”; 3) structural-organizational and managerial aspects of activity of the Society and the “Okhoronka”. We consider the Statute to be an important historical source for the history of Jewish public organizations of charitable orientation in Eastern Galicia, the history of Kolomyia in the early 20th century, as well as the history of domestic legal thought. The document is published in the original language (Polish) in compliance with the necessary archaeographic requirements.

The Importance of Agriculture in Medieval Jewish Life: The Case of Crete

This article describes how Jews in medieval Crete were involved in, and knowledgeable about, agricultural practices. It pushes back against a persistent view in the scholarly literature that medieval Jews were alienated from the land, and that their disproportionate involvement in trade hastened the Commercial Revolution. The study attempts to show that Cretan Jews took halakhic strictures on agriculture seriously, and that, as a result, they farmed differently from their Greek Orthodox and Latin Christian peers. By examining Jewish texts from the Hellenic territories of the Venetian Republic, the article makes the case that stereotypes of Jews as merchants betrays abundant evidence that medieval Jews were deeply engaged in cultivating the land.