Descendants Of Jews Research Articles

Apulian New Christians in Venetian Dalmatia

Abstract This article’s subject is the migration of Apulian New Christians to Venetian Dalmatia in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. These New Christians were the descendants of Jews who had converted to Christianity at the end of the thirteenth century but who continued to constitute a group distinct from the rest of society until many had to flee Apulia due to growing repressions at the turn to the sixteenth century. Based on archival material from Zadar, Split, and Venice, this paper studies the Venetian ruled town of Split as an example of how close and multifaceted the contacts between Apulian New Christians and Venetian Dalmatia were, ranging from grain trade to permanent settlement. Although Venice tried to expel all New Christians from its territories, including Dalmatia, in the 1490s, they appear to have been tolerated in Split. How this was possible and how the Apulian New Christians integrated themselves into the local society is studied in this article.

Significant Hearing Loss Found in Ukrainian Refugees

Significant Hearing Loss Found in Ukrainian Refugees

Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change ed. by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett

Reviewed by: Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change ed. by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett Thomas M. Cohen Jesuits and Race: A Global History of Continuity and Change. Edited by Charles H. Parker and Nathaniel Millett. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2022. Pp. xi, 286. $65.00. ISBN 978-0-826-36367-1.) Jesuits and Race is an important and timely book. Catholic thinking about race has become a central concern of historians of the early modern and modern church in recent years. As leaders of the global missionary enterprise, members of the Society of Jesus developed close ties to racial and religious minorities in Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the time of the founding of the order in 1540. In the process, they produced a distinguished body of work on race and the global church. Six of the book’s nine chapters focus on the early modern Society. These include strong contributions by Liam Matthew Brockey, Emanuele Colombo, Susan Deeds, J. Michelle Molina, Andrew Redden, and Erin Kathleen Rowe. A common theme is the rejection, by some important Jesuit writers and missionaries, of the racism and anti-Semitism that pervaded the early modern Church and that caused deep and lasting divisions within the Society. Emanuele Colombo’s essay about Antonio Possevino (1533–1610) provides a perceptive analysis of these divisions, especially those surrounding the decision by the Fifth General Congregation in 1593 to prohibit the admission to the Society of men of Jewish or Muslim descent. In practice, this decision affected mainly New Christians, as men of Jewish descent were known (few men of Muslim descent sought admission to the Society). Many of the most distinguished Jesuits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—including Pedro de Ribadeneira, Juan de Polanco, José de Acosta, and Francisco Suárez—were New Christians. The campaign to exclude New Christians nearly provoked a schism in the Society. The prohibition was not rescinded until 1946, in the wake of the Holocaust. Discrimination against Jews and New Christians was inextricably linked to discrimination against Africans and people of African descent. Erin Rowe cites the seventeenth-century historian and bishop Prudencio de Sandoval, who asked, “Who can deny that the descendants of Jews . . . persist in the evil tendencies stemming from their ancient ingratitude and poor understanding, just as Black people are inseparable from the accident of their blackness?” Rowe analyzes a widely-circulated treatise by the Jesuit historian Martín de Roa, who rejected his contemporaries’ denigration of blackness and affirmed, in what Rowe notes is an “extraordinary passage,” that “Black Christians were as endowed with heavenly light as white ones.” Liam Brockey writes that although Jesuits throughout the Portuguese empire benefitted from unfree labor, they rarely referred to this labor in their writings, an [End Page 170] absence that he suggests is likely due to the pervasiveness of slavery in colonial societies, and to “the unquestioned assumption that owning slaves or indentured servants was permissible, even for members of religious communities.” Like the New Christian question, the question of unfree labor divided Jesuits in Asia. Alessandro Valignano, the Visitor who played a decisive role in shaping the Asia missions, tried to steer a middle course, insisting on the need for unfree labor but cautioning the Jesuits against the excessive use of such labor: “moderation was essential if the Jesuits were to avoid the appearance of pomp while still projecting autoridad y reputación.” Sean Dempsey, Nathaniel Millett, and James M. O’Toole contribute chapters on the restored Society. In “A Challenge to Our Sincerity: American Jesuits Discover ‘The Negro,’” O’Toole takes as his point of departure a circular letter that the Jesuit General Pedro Arrupe sent in 1967 to all American Jesuits. Arrupe acknowledged the Jesuits’ ownership of slaves before the Civil War, which is the subject of Millett’s chapter, “The Memory of Slavery at St. Louis University.” Arrupe then “laid out the political and religious case against any form of racism” and called on the Jesuits to expand their ministries to include not only the white Catholics whom they had traditionally served but also African Americans. Arrupe’s letter produced far-reaching changes. O’Toole...

The Image of Jews in Contemporary China - James Ross and Song Lihong

Reviewed by: The Image of Jews in Contemporary China ed. by James Ross and Song Lihong Noam Urbach The Image of Jews in Contemporary China. Edited by James Ross and Song Lihong. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2016. 256 pages. $32.00 (paper). This is an exciting collection of articles centered around a unique theme: the image of Jews in China. It is exciting because in most parts of the Jewish Diaspora the predominant religious culture is either Christian or Islamic. For both traditions, Jews and Judaism play a significant role in religious texts and culture. For Christians, there is the shared Bible and Jesus' origin as a Jew; for Muslims the heated polemic with Bani Yisraeel and el Yahud starts as early as the second sura of the Quran. For Christian and Muslim civilization, then, Jews have been omnipresent in either abstract or physical form. There is India, one could say, where Hinduism is void of theological links to Judaism; however, there too, Islam has been present for centuries. It is in the Sinitic sphere—consisting of China, Mongolia, Tibet, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan—where Jews and Judaism are a new import. It is this novelty that makes this collection so intriguing. The uniqueness of the Chinese case, in terms of the evolving image of Jews and Judaism, places many expectations on a book that sets out to study this subject. Of these, some are met, while others are not. The assumption that due to China being neither Christian nor Islamic in culture or religion, the image of Jews must be different from other parts of the world runs through the book, yet it is never explicitly discussed. Only Song Lihong points this out clearly, presenting the opposing views of two important writers, the late Irene Eber and Bernard Lewis. This reference deserves to have been placed at the heart of the introduction, offering a clear premise for the book. It is somewhat disappointing that most of the chapters drift outside the range set by the title; however, this is not to say they are not worthy on their own merit. I therefore divide the articles into two categories: those that cover the topic of the book and those that do not, starting with the latter. Zhou Xun, who authors the first chapter, has written a book that became the standard work in its field (Chinese Perceptions of the [End Page 424] "Jews" and Judaism: A History of the Youtai [Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001]). Surprisingly, her chapter "Perceiving Jews in Modern China" starts off with a long summary of this past book, and only at the end turns to the actual theme of the chapter—the Jewish presence in contemporary Beijing (17). This is a short but interesting description of the life of expatriate Jews living in or visiting the Chinese capital, as well as the community institutions they established. Her focus is placed on the experience of the founding members of this community rather than the image Chinese have of them. Future work on this subject is certainly necessary. Fu Youde is founder and head of the Center for Judaic and Inter-Religious Studies at Shandong University, a one-of-a-kind Chinese center focusing on Judaism as a religion, rather than on Jewish history, culture, or sociology. In his comparative discussion, Fu contrasts the Jewish drive for distinctiveness with the Chinese stress on uniformity. Fu is critical of the Chinese stress on "upholding uniformity" as it "killed the innovative spirit" and "imprisoned the thoughts of the people" (52), and concludes that "it is inspiring and significant for the Chinese nation . . . to review the Jewish characteristic of distinctiveness" (53). This is an intriguing glimpse into the way a Chinese scholar tackles the study of Judaism from the position of his own identity. Two of the book's chapters deal with the unique story of Kaifeng Jews, or "Jewish descendants" as they are generally characterized. Xu Xin's "Chinese Policy Toward Kaifeng Jews" is a reprint of a reprint, something that should have been stated clearly by the editors. Moshe Y. Berenstein, on the other hand, shares his in-depth interpretation of the unique way Kaifeng Jewish descendants negotiate...

Where Is the Home: Kaifeng Jews Descendants on the Road of Return

In order to better answer these questions, this thesis will be divided into four chapters. Chapter 1 “Theorising the Kaifeng Jewish descendants” reviews three bodies of literature: (a) Jews and China—a historical encounter, (b) conceptualising emerging Jewish communities, and (c) disputed Jewishness in Israel’s immigration policy, so that to situate the Kaifeng Jewry issue in a broader societal and academic discourse. Chapter 2 “Kaifeng Jewry in the PRC” traces the development of the community from the 1950s to the 1990s, revolving around the ethnic classification campaign that erased Kaifeng Jewry from China’s minzu picture and the modification campaign in 1996 that erased Jewish minzu on paper officially. Chapter 3 “To “return” or to stay, that is the question” invokes accounts of four Kaifeng Jewish descendants who made different choices regarding aliyah and concludes with their motivation either to “return” or to stay. Chapter 4 “Being Chinese in the promised land” investigates the Kaifeng immigrants’ mixed identity as being Chinese and Jewish simultaneously, proposing an examination of “Israeliness” as a competing, alternative socio-cultural awareness to “Chineseness;” it also looks into the racialisation logic and racism confronted by the Kaifeng immigrants that contain their integration into Israeli society.

Jewish existence in Indonesia: identity, recognition, and prejudice

The Jews’ arrival to the archipelago began acquainted in the 13th to the 20th century, although, much earlier, history shows the Jew’s traffic in the Southeast Asian region had eventuated. In this study, Jew accommodates several meanings, religion – Judaism and the adherents – Jewish or Jewish descendants. Practically, the beliefs’ differences are arduously accepted by a few Indonesians. Various stereotypes are imposed on this community as a form of othering. Moreover, radical ideological propaganda encompassing antisemitism incitement is presented conditionally. The absence of legal acknowledgement has impacted limiting Jews’ precious wiggle room in enforcing their religious freedom. As a further consequence, they will prefer to conceal their identity to hinder friction or disputes with the opposition. Misleading perceptions about Jews and Israel implicitly politicized identities. Aware of the rising negative sentiments, this paper provides an overview of the Jewish existence in Indonesia, from the historical journey, recognition, and prejudice to identity politics. Analysis of legislation and actual reality is carried out to find out the urgency of recognizing Jews’ identity. In the end, Indonesia endures the essential duty to fulfil religious freedom and nurture its diversity for peace.

DID PATRIARCH ABRAHAM FIGHT THE PERSIANS? NOTES ON JOHN CHRYSOSTOM’S INTERPRETATION OF GEN. 14:1–16

The article discusses the interpretation by St. John Chrysostom of the Old Testament plot which is contained in the Book of Genesis (Gen. 14:1–16), namely Abraham's attack on the army of foreign kings, which invaded Canaan and defeated the coalition of Canaanite rulers in the battle of Siddim. The main problem lies in the fact that commenting on this plot John Chrysostom without any seemingly objective reason identified the opponents of Abraham as the Persians. In addition, the anachronism allowed here by John Chrysostom is obvious, since the Persians first appear in the Old Testament only from the moment of the death of the Babylonian kingdom, i.e. in a fairly late era, more than a millennium distant from events described in Gen. 14:1–16. Adjacent to these issues is the problem of designating the homeland of the Abraham as Persia and Patriarch himself as a Persian. An analysis of the sources taking into account the peculiarities of the worldview of John Chrysostom and the principles of Orthodox-Christian exegesis of the Holy Scriptures shows that St. John saw in (a) Patriarch Abraham and (b) the Jews the prototypes, respectively, of (1) our Lord, Jesus Christ (as a descendant of Abraham in the flesh) and (2) Christians (as descendants of Jews by faith, "New Israel" living in the new "Promised Land" i.e. the Christian Roman Empire). The foreign troops with whom the Patriarch Abraham fought, are metaphorically called by St. John Chrysostom the Persians for the reason that in the 4th century AD the embodiment of the Old Testament prefiguration of the enemy of the "people of God" was the Persian Sasanian empire as the most powerful and dangerous adversary of the Roman Empire on east. A certain role in this was played by the fact that the Persians invaded the Roman provinces from the territory of Mesopotamia, which in the John Chrysostom’s worldview was strongly associated with Persia.

Los chuetas en tres novelas españolas: <em>Los muertos mandan</em> (Vicente Blasco Ibáñez), <em>Primera memoria</em> (Ana María Matute) y <em>Dins el darrer blau</em> (Carme Riera)

El objeto de este artículo es analizar la imagen de los chuetas en tres novelas españolas de tres épocas diferentes: Los muertos mandan (1908), de Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Primera Memoria (1959), de Ana Mª Matute y Dins el darrer blau (1994), de Carme Riera. Una cuestión llamativa es que los prejuicios se han prolongado hasta nuestros días, no por el hecho de ser descendientes de judíos, sino por ser chuetas, lo cual nos retrotrae a los acontecimientos sucedidos en el siglo XVII, cuando tuvieron lugar los célebres autos de fe.

Deskripsi Sejarah Konflik Horizontal Orang Yahudi dan Samaria

The Jews and Samaria involved in claiming one another's descendants of Abraham so that the dispute from the background of multicultural interests had an impact on the harmony of the two nations. During the intertestamental situation the upheaval still occurred. Historical studies of the feud that occurred during the intertestamental period also brought the message of harmony to trigger all the descendants of Jews and Samaritans to continue to be in hatred. That is what happened in Indonesia, there were many tribal, religious and customs sentiments which were contested so that the harmony of the plural society was tarnished. But learning from Jesus that brought change changed paradigms and teachings to love one another and live in harmony.

Judeoconversos y espiritualidad heterodoxa en tiempos de Carlos V

Cornered by the laws on blood purity, by virtue of which the conversos, by the mere fact of being descendants of Jews, were disqualified from holding positions of responsibility or administration in social and religious institutions. Having been the most dynamic sector, intellectually speaking, of the society of the fifteenth century, they accused this unjust discrimination as a blow difficult to fit. With the arrival of Carlos V, they dreamed that things could change, but soon they woke up to the sad reality of what they considered a “bobo emperor” in the hands of the traditionalist party. The most restless, having no place to take refuge and give rise to their high flights, retreated into themselves in search of an inner spirituality, which was their peculiar adventure in the first third of the sixteenth century. They illuminated a Christianity of inner court that fed many later mystical aspirations, orthodox and heterodox.

Israelologie: ’n Bybels-teologiese perspektief oor Israel se verlede, hede en toekoms

Israelology: A Biblical-theological perspective of the past, present and future of Israel. Israelology, the study of Israel, is necessary for any theological system. In the past, God made unconditional covenants and other promises to Abraham and his descendants through Jacob. Not all Jews appropriate these blessings from God in faith. There has always been, however, a faithful remnant in Israel who believed the revelation and promises of God. Despite idolatry and repeated failure, even the unpardonable sin, God is faithful and has not cast away – not even temporarily – his people whom He foreknew. During the Church Age, the Jewish remnant is not only part of the Church but also of the nation of Israel. New Testament revelation does not cancel, change, transcend, spiritualise, or idealise unconditional and still-unfulfilled promises of God to Israel. The term ‘the seed of Abraham’ has multiple senses, and the fact that it can refer to the spiritual descendants of Abraham of non-Jewish descent does not change or cancel the promises that God made to the believing Jewish descendants of Abraham. Because God is faithful, Israel has a future. The present worldwide regathering of Jews to their homeland is happening in preparation for the judgement of the Tribulation Period. Christ will not return to the earth, however, until a future Jewish generation repent and call on the Lord. Then, a second worldwide regathering of faithful Jews to Israel will take place, this time for the blessings of the messianic kingdom. During the Millennium, God will fulfil all outstanding covenant promises and prophecies, and in the same realm where both the first Adam and seventy nations once failed, the Last Adam will successfully rule over Israel and the nations to the glory of God. Israelology, the doctrine of Israel’s past, present and future, is the missing link in Biblical and Systematic Theology.

The Genetics of Bene Israel from India Reveals Both Substantial Jewish and Indian Ancestry.

The Bene Israel Jewish community from West India is a unique population whose history before the 18th century remains largely unknown. Bene Israel members consider themselves as descendants of Jews, yet the identity of Jewish ancestors and their arrival time to India are unknown, with speculations on arrival time varying between the 8th century BCE and the 6th century CE. Here, we characterize the genetic history of Bene Israel by collecting and genotyping 18 Bene Israel individuals. Combining with 486 individuals from 41 other Jewish, Indian and Pakistani populations, and additional individuals from worldwide populations, we conducted comprehensive genome-wide analyses based on FST, principal component analysis, ADMIXTURE, identity-by-descent sharing, admixture linkage disequilibrium decay, haplotype sharing and allele sharing autocorrelation decay, as well as contrasted patterns between the X chromosome and the autosomes. The genetics of Bene Israel individuals resemble local Indian populations, while at the same time constituting a clearly separated and unique population in India. They are unique among Indian and Pakistani populations we analyzed in sharing considerable genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations. Putting together the results from all analyses point to Bene Israel being an admixed population with both Jewish and Indian ancestry, with the genetic contribution of each of these ancestral populations being substantial. The admixture took place in the last millennium, about 19–33 generations ago. It involved Middle-Eastern Jews and was sex-biased, with more male Jewish and local female contribution. It was followed by a population bottleneck and high endogamy, which can lead to increased prevalence of recessive diseases in this population. This study provides an example of how genetic analysis advances our knowledge of human history in cases where other disciplines lack the relevant data to do so.

Noble House: Jewish Descendants of King David in the Medieval Islamic East. By Arnold E. Franklin.

Noble House: Jewish Descendants of King David in the Medieval Islamic East. By Arnold E. Franklin.

An Enemy Old and New: The Dönme, Anti-Semitism, and Conspiracy Theories in the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic

The main focal point in Ottoman and Turkish antisemitism is the figure of the Dönme—the descendants of Jews who converted to Islam along with their messiah Shabbatai Tzevi. The focus on the Dönme arises from the perception of the Salonikan-based Young Turks as a cabal of Dönme, or secret Jews. It was immediately in the wake of the 1908 constitutional revolution—which culminated in the dethronement of Abdülhamid II, and ultimately led to the construction of the secular Turkish republic—that antisemitic conspiracy theories centering on the Dönme were first voiced. These arguments were expanded after 1923 to claim that the man who abolished the caliphate and established the secular state, the Salonikan Atatürk, was a Dönme. Turkish antisemitism was fed by Nazism and Turkish anti-Zionism from the mid 1920s to 1945, and was more openly articulated after the creation of Israel, but it remained a retelling of the events of 1908. From 1908 to today, the Dönme character—a secret Jew hiding in the guise of the nation’s leader who surreptitiously aims to destroy Turkey on behalf of world Jewry—has been the stock figure in anti-government conspiracy theories promoted by Islamists dispossessed of their authority, extreme rightists, and secularists divested of their power. Antisemitic conspiracy theories gain traction among all elements of Turkish society based on the racist assumption that only a Turkish Muslim can have Turkey’s interests at heart, while a Jew—here the false convert, the secret Jew Dönme—can only serve foreign interests at odds with those of the Turks.

The Theology of the Chinese Jews by Jordan Paper (review)

Reviewed by: The Theology of the Chinese Jews by Jordan Paper Dr. Richard A. Freund Jordan Paper , The Theology of the Chinese Jews. Waterloo, Ontario: Laurier University Press, 2012. 175 pages. Hardcover, $85.00. ISBN-13:978-1554583720. I read The Theology of the Chinese Jews, 1000-1850 on my recent trip to China. I found it to be a valuable resource as I listened to different religious groups (Chan and Llama Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, and Confucianists, as well as the present "descendants" of the Jews of Kaifeng who are trying to make a comeback) in Kaifeng and in Xi'an. What they presented about themselves can be compared with Paper's training as a scholar of comparative religion and his expertise in Chinese religion. The Theology of the Chinese Jews is a slim volume at only 175 pages. This includes a two-page appendix of logographs for terms and translations, five pages of notes/footnotes, and five pages of bibliography/ [End Page 113] references. I wish the author had included an index, as I found myself flipping back and forth to find elements that needed to be clarified as I read the book. The book is a unique hybrid of comparative religions and theologies, history of religions, and the place of the history of the Kaifeng Jews in the religions of China. It is a valuable book for those who have little knowledge of the Jews of China and for scholars who struggle with the place of Chinese Judaism in the religions of China and the history of Judaism elsewhere in the world. For scholars who study the identities of the Jews in different time periods it is a must. The Kaifeng "descendants" of the Jewish families are perhaps, like the Crypto-Jews and the Ethiopian and Lemba Jewish descendants, a wonderful case study for anyone interested in how we define Jews and Jewish identity in the modern period. Paper's main contribution is the comparison between normative Jewish theology from the Middle Ages to the modern period with Chinese (primarily Buddhism and Taoism) theological views that are assumed to have affected the theological views of the Jews of China. Comparative theology is a very difficult subject to write about even when there are good written accounts of exchanges between the religious thinkers of the period. We can safely do comparative theology of the ideas from the writings of Maimonides, Ibn Sina, and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages because they actually cite one another in their writings and are using the same religious vocabulary. Paper's book proposes a much more difficult and speculative study of comparing known Taoist, Buddhist, and Confucian textual positions (from relatively the same time period) of the Jewish settlement in China and comparing them with a very limited series of Jewish textual material available from the Kaifeng Jews. To be sure, Paper is assuming that the Jews of Kaifeng possessed and used the writings of Sa'adia Gaon, Maimonides, the Talmudim, etc. To be fair, Paper knows how difficult the comparison is. He uses as a point of comparison, for example, major steles (standing stones) that stood in the courtyard of the synagogue until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the synagogue was destroyed by a flood. These steles were written for non-Jews in Chinese to explain what the synagogue and Judaism was. Steles are archaeologically well-attested features at archaeological sites all over the world. The standing stones, two of which are featured on the cover of the book, are perhaps the most emblematic symbol of Kaifeng Jewry and are today in the city museum of Kaifeng and unreadable. The transcriptions and translations of the steles are based upon the work of Charles William White. They stood at the synagogue in its last incarnation until it was destroyed by the flood of 1841. Thanks to illustrations done by Father Jean Domenge in 1722 and correspondence by Roman Catholic priests who visited the site, it is possible to understand the context of the synagogue and its eighteenth-century building and the place of the steles, although it is based on their own faulty understanding of what the rooms and building was used...

Turk and Jew in Berlin: The First Turkish Migration to Germany and the Shoah

AbstractIn this paper I critically examine the conflation of Turk with Muslim, explore the Turkish experience of Nazism, and examine Turkey's relation to the darkest era of German history. Whereas many assume that Turks in Germany cannot share in the Jewish past, and that for them the genocide of the Jews is merely a borrowed memory, I show how intertwined the history of Turkey and Germany, Turkish and German anti-Semitism, and Turks and Jews are. Bringing together the histories of individual Turkish citizens who were Jewish or Dönme (descendants of Jews) in Nazi Berlin with the history of Jews in Turkey, I argue the categories “Turkish” and “Jewish” were converging identities in the Third Reich. Untangling them was a matter of life and death. I compare the fates of three neighbors in Berlin: Isaak Behar, a Turkish Jew stripped of his citizenship by his own government and condemned to Auschwitz; Fazli Taylan, a Turkish citizen and Dönme, whom the Turkish government exerted great efforts to save; and Eric Auerbach, a German Jew granted refuge in Turkey. I ask what is at stake for Germany and Turkey in remembering the narrative of the very few German Jews saved by Turkey, but in forgetting the fates of the far more numerous Turkish Jews in Nazi-era Berlin. I conclude with a discussion of the political effects today of occluding Turkish Jewishness by failing to remember the relationship between the first Turkish migration to Germany and the Shoah.

The Impact of Assimilation on the Family Structure of Jews in Amsterdam, 1880–1940

Since the process of assimilation of Jews coincided with a fertility transition, this study examines the relation between changes in the household structure of families of Jewish origin and the process of assimilation. Data were gathered from the Amsterdam registry for 717 Jewish descendants born in Amsterdam between 1883 and 1922. Our research shows a decrease in average number of siblings at birth among successive birth cohorts. Moreover, especially those persons born outside the Jewish district had a significantly smaller number of siblings at birth. This result might indicate that the fertility transition among Jews started with families who had left the Jewish district. This study also shows that subjects who had a higher number of siblings produced more children themselves, whereas those who married a gentile had fewer children.

Abandoning Judaism: A life history perspective on disaffiliation and conversion to Christianity among prewar Amsterdam Jews

Abstract This study is framed by an assimilation perspective and examines the impacts of the religious contexts to which Jews were exposed and of institutional barriers on the likelihood that prewar Amsterdam Jews would abandon Judaism. To conduct a case–control study, samples taken from the German registration list of Amsterdam Jews in 1941 included 717 Jewish descendants born in Amsterdam between 1883 and 1922 of whom 293 did not belong to Jewish congregations. The collected data from the Registry allow us to analyze their life histories on religious affiliation from birth until 1940 using logistic regression. In the religious contexts, factors that impact the likelihood to leave Judaism include the religion of the parents and of the spouse, the death of the father, and the percentage of religious nonbelievers. As for institutional barriers, racial anti-Semitism, Catholic anti-Jewish sentiments, and the rate of intermarried Jews affect a Jew's predilection for abandoning Judaism. These effects differ when research subjects are divided into those who converted to Christianity and those who became religiously unaffiliated. While a higher percentage of religious nonbelievers and a higher rate of intermarried Jews during adolescence especially increased the probability of becoming religiously unaffiliated, a higher rate of intermarried Jews at any given time especially decreased the probability of becoming religiously unaffiliated. Whereas this latter effect might indicate that religious boundaries blurred, the former effects might indicate that Jews shared the process of church leaving in the Dutch society. Furthermore, these findings indicate that becoming religiously unaffiliated showed to be partly a different path of assimilation than conversion to Christianity.

‘Bendito sea A. que no me hizo indio ni negro’: Ethnic Paradigms in Menasseh Ben Israel's Esperança de Israel

This essay discusses a passage of Menasseh Ben Israel's 1650 text, Esperanca de Israel. The fragment that concerns us is in fact a transcription of a testimonial - apocryphal or authentic - given by a Sephardic converso, Antonio de Montezinos, who came to Amsterdam swearing in the presence of rabbinical authorities to the veracity of his experience. Montezinos claimed to have come across one of the lost tribes of Israel in 1644 living near what today would be Medellin, Colombia. The essay provides an overview of the long tradition of identifying American indigenous people as descendants of Jews, and shows how Menasseh Ben Israel's text marks a continuation of as well as a significant departure from the trajectory of this tradition. Another objective of the essay is to show how the ambivalence expressed in Ben Israel's text regarding the kinship of Jews and other ethnic groups in Latin America, namely indigenous people and those of African descent, prefigures similar such ambivalences in modern-day account...

Lebenswege jüdischer und aus dem Judentum stammender Urologen während des Nationalsozialismus

During the period of National Socialism (1933 - 1945) the society of urology, like other medical associations, adjusted quickly to the new political situation. Despite the high proportion of Jewish and Jewish descendants' urologists, this adjustment was nearly without any resistance. With the founding of the Gesellschaft Reichsdeutscher Urologen (GRU), the Gleichschaltung began as early as 1933, consequently ousting Jewish colleagues from practice, research and teaching. Up to now the biographies of the affected urologists are often not well known. Discovering the individual fates of the non-aryan medics is one aspect of researching urology during National Socialism.