Jewish Diaspora Research Articles

Ante un horizonte tenebroso. Alfred Döblin en búsqueda de una Nueva Judea

El escritor Alfred Döblin (1878-1957), una de las más destacadas voces del modernismo alemán, se comprometió en los años treinta con el Neoterritorialismo en búsqueda de colonizar territorios para poner a salvo a la diáspora judía. El artículo traza las posiciones del exiliado frente al movimiento, en el que veía la oportunidad de una «renovación integral» del judaísmo. Para Döblin, esta renovación mediante la colonización de un nuevo territorio tiene un contenido utópico que –una vez finalizado su activismo político– llevó al ámbito de la literatura en su trilogía de novelas Amazonas (1937). El trabajo analiza sus escritos judíos para explorar el nexo entre una aguda consciencia de crisis y la imaginación de otra comunidad posible.

The Birth of a New Narrative: Jewish-American Autobiographical Writing

The Jewish diaspora quickly became one of the most notable immigrant groups in the American context. Faced with an arduous process of assimilation and acculturation, as exiles, Jews in America felt the pressure of the difficult choice between preserving their tradition and adapting to the new pragmatism and materialism that their new circumstances required. The issue of accelerated assimilation and loss of Jewishness became a real concern. As such, initiatives such as the one proposed by the YIVO Institute of a contest for autobiographical writing belonging to Jewish immigrants, dedicated to protecting Jewishness, offered a forum for personal written histories, submitted in different languages, but united through their English translations. Autobiography, as an essentially American genre, constituted an auspicious venue of expression, thus aiding the communal efforts of (re-)shaping and (re-)defining what it meant to be a Jew and what it meant to be a Jewish-American.

Administration of the Don Host and the Local Jewish Diaspora in 1860−1890

Administration of the Don Host and the Local Jewish Diaspora in 1860−1890

바울, 그의 반대자들, 그리고 그들의 박해자들 - 갈라디아서 5:11; 6:12-13을 중심으로

This study, through Galatians 5:11 and 6:12-13, aims to examine Paul before and after the conversion, Paul’s opponents in Galatia and the persecutors of whom the opponents were afraid, and to reconstruct their interrelationships. Before the conversion, Paul had supported strict Judaism as a zealot, but after the conversion, Paul was being persecuted by those zealot Jews following strict Judaism. Paul’s opponents, as Jewish Christians, encouraged the Gentiles of the Galatian Church to be circumcised in order to win favor over Jews who persecuted them. And their persecutors were those in the diaspora Jews of Galatia who were affected by Jerusalem’s nomistic campaign and the persecution of Jews communicating with the Gentiles. Based on this analysis, this study argues that: Paul insists, to the Jewish Christians forcing circumcision of the Gentiles in order to avoid persecution of the Diaspora Jews in Galatia on the lines of the strict Jewishness, that even if the opponents make the Gentiles full of Jews, they cannot prove their full Jewish identity.

Paul and Philo on the Psalms

Abstract Philo of Alexandria shares Paul’s Jewish Diaspora background and his use of the LXX. He also addressed Roman audiences just a decade or two before Paul wrote his Letter to the Romans. He thus enables us to analyze Paul’s approach to Psalms from a rigorous historical perspective, which highlights both their phenomenological similarities and Paul’s innovations on the path to develop a spiritual notion of Scripture.

From the History of Jewish Schools in Samarkand

This article describes the activities of Jewish schools in Samarkand region during the reign of the Russian Empire on the basis of archival documents. In Turkestan, the views and policies of the Russian government on Jewish education have been objectively assessed on the basis of sources. The author cited the number of Jewish schools in the province and the number of students in them on the basis of documents. The Jewish school in Samarkand, their educational system, their features are covered. Shortcomings and achievements in the education system of the Jewish diaspora were revealed.

Cradles of Diaspora: Bombay, Aden, and Jewish Migration across the Indian Ocean

Abstract During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, migrant communities of Middle Eastern Jews emerged across the vast space between Shanghai and Port Said. The present article points to two crucial knots in the creation of these far-reaching Jewish diasporas: Bombay and Aden. These rising port cities of the British Raj were first stations in the migration of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews, and they presented immigrants with new commercial, social, cultural and spatial horizons; it was from there that many of them proceeded to settle elsewhere beyond the Indian Ocean. Using the examples of two prominent families, Sassoon in Bombay and Menahem Messa in Aden, the article considers the role of these places as the cradles from which Jewish diasporas emerged.

Еврейская диаспора и её перспективы в глобальную эпоху

Еврейская диаспора и её перспективы в глобальную эпоху

Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine, written by Karel van der Toorn

Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine, written by Karel van der Toorn

Levantine Epigraphy and History in the Achaemenid Period (539–332 BCE)

Levantine Epigraphy and History in the Achaemenid Period (539–332 BCE)

Qualifying the Leading Theory of Diaspora Jewry: An Examination of Jews from the Former Soviet Union in Canada and the United States

The leading theory of the Jewish diaspora asserts that Jewish communities outside Israel are steadily shrinking and assimilating to dominant cultures, with the decline being especially advanced among Jews from the former Soviet Union. We test this proposition with data from the 2013 Pew Survey of American Jews and the 2018 Survey of Canadian Jews. Our findings suggest that Canada deviates from the global trend to a degree that affects even Jews from the former Soviet Union residing in that country. Although only about 25,000 Canadian Jews currently residing in Canada were born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated since 1970—a small fraction of the number who immigrated to Israel, the United States and Germany over the past five decades—the Canadian outpost is worth studying because its features require a qualification of the leading theory of the Jewish diaspora, namely that assimilation rates vary by identifiable features of national context.

Yiddish, Scholarship, and Neoconservatism

After World War II, interest in Yiddish literature, and in Yiddish culture more broadly, began to develop beyond immigrant and Yiddishist spheres in America. Encompassing both popular and academic works, and some in between, this interest was driven by various impulses, some political, from the Left, including from communists, fellow travelers, the labor Left, and others, and some only indirectly political. And there emerged, unexpectedly, a conservative strain of interest. This article will examine the conservative approach to Yiddish studies and some of the ways it manifested itself in scholarship and culture. I ask how this shift in interest in Yiddish is related to the decline of the Jewish Left and to the rise of Zionist thought among the major Jewish Diaspora communities. As a case study, I will explore how these trends in Yiddish scholarship were expressed in the writings of Isaac Bashevis Singer, particularly in his novel Shadows on the Hudson (1957–58).

The National, the Diasporic, and the Canonical: The Place of Diasporic Imagery in the Canon of Israeli National Art

This article explores Jerusalem-based art practice from the 1930s to the 1960s, focusing particularly on the German immigrant artists that dominated this field in that period. I describe the distinct aesthetics of this art and explain its role in the Zionist nation-building project. Although Jerusalem’s art scene participated significantly in creating a Jewish–Israeli national identity, it has been accorded little or no place in the canon of national art. Adopting a historiographic approach, I focus on the artist Mordecai Ardon and the activities of the New Bezalel School and the Jerusalem Artists Society. Examining texts and artworks associated with these institutions through the prism of migratory aesthetics, I claim that the art made by Jerusalem’s artists was rooted in their diasporic identities as East or Central European Jews, some German-born, others having settled in Germany as children or young adults. These diasporic identities were formed through their everyday lives as members of a Jewish diaspora in a host country—whether that be the Russian Empire, Poland, or Germany. Under their arrival in Palestine, however, the diasporic Jewish identities of these immigrants (many of whom were not initially Zionists) clashed with the Zionist–Jewish identity that was hegemonic in the nascent field of Israeli art. Ultimately, this friction would exclude the immigrants’ art from being inducted into the national art canon. This is misrepresentative, for, in reality, these artists greatly influenced the Zionist nation-building project. Despite participating in a number of key Zionist endeavours—whether that of establishing practical professions or cementing the young nation’s collective consciousness through graphic propaganda—they were marginalized in the artistic field. This exclusion, I claim, is rooted in the dynamics of canon formation in modern Western art, the canon of Israeli national art being one instance of these wider trends. Diasporic imagery could not be admitted into the Israeli canon because that canon was intrinsically connected with modern nationalism.

Переходы в романе «Промежуточные станции» Владимира Вертлиба

Автор романа «Промежуточные станции»[1] – австрийский писатель Владимир Вертлиб, родом из российских евреев. В своем описании эмиграции русско-еврейской семьи Вертлиб опирается на личный опыт. Лирический герой романа – молодой человек, единственный сын в семье – повествует о различных “промежуточных станциях” в жизни своей семьи и о своих собственных поисках идентичности. Реалистическое повествование Вертлиба, достигая временного завершения на уровне сюжета, структурировано таким образом, чтобы, сопоставляя голоса, времена и места, исследовать целый ряд современных проблем. Эти проблемы касаются эмиграции, памяти, европейской истории XX века и воспоминаний о Третьем Рейхе, еврейской идентичности и еврейской диаспоры. Взяв за отправную точку описанные Вертлибом состояния эмигранта, статья рассматривает историю, рассказанную в романе «Промежуточные станции», как символическое достижение транскультурного состояния par excellence. Согласно концепции транскультуры Майкла Эпштейна, это состояние можно описать как состояние внешней и не-принадлежности, которое является предпосылкой творческой свободы, парадигматически передаваемой решением главного героя по-настоящему посвятить себя писательскому труду.
 
 [1] Прим. переводчика: роман Владимира Вертлиба “Zwischenstationen” опубликован на русском языке издательством Симпозиум (2009) под названием «Остановки в пути», перевод с немецкого В. Н. Ахтырской. Я придерживаюсь своей версии перевода названия. Элина Саракаева.

The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel, and Germany ed. by Zvi Gitelman

The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-Speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel, and Germany ed. by Zvi Gitelman

A Jewish <em>Millet</em> to a Jewish National State-Within-A-State

The Jewish community of Palestine (the Yishuv) began its transformation to a semi-autonomous entity shortly after the arrival of the Second Immigration to Palestine, from 1900-1914. During those years, the building blocks of a secular national governing framework were organized, and as WW I began, Ashkenazi leaders attained hegemony over the millet. During the war, the Jewish Diaspora's munificent financial transfers underwrote the survival and development of the millet. By 1918, the Yishuv, as a state-within-a-state, was poised to further expand its economy and militarize under British auspices. In 1920, only two years after the end of the war, the Jewish community selected the members of its internal governing body, the Va'ad HaLeumi (National Council) and as it gained in political and economic strength, bolstered by waves of immigration, the Va'ad HaLeumi prepared to establish a Jewish State.

Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and Its Jewish Diasporas

Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and Its Jewish Diasporas

Jews under the Magnifying Glass: Judaism and the Jewish Community in Non-Jewish Detective Fiction

This article explores contemporary detective fiction written by non-Jews through the prism of Bauman's concept of allosemitism, examining the way in which Jews and Jewish communities are depicted as the ‘Other’. Analysing Irish Canadian John Brady's Kaddish in Dublin (1990; Dublin Jews through the eyes of Catholic police detectives), Polish Zygmunt Miłoszewski's A Grain of Truth (2011; anti-Semitism in contemporary Poland), and Finnish crime writer Harri Nykänen's series featuring Ariel Kafka (a Jewish detective character), it notes two central themes running through all three—ambivalent Jewish-Christian relations and strong bonds between the Jewish Diaspora and the State of Israel.

Jews’ entry into central asia and the formation of jewish diaspora

Jews’ entry into central asia and the formation of jewish diaspora

Other, not Hostile: On Allosemitism, Identitarianism, Marranism and the Two Visions of Jewish Diaspora

Other, not Hostile: On Allosemitism, Identitarianism, Marranism and the Two Visions of Jewish Diaspora