History Of Jewish Community Research Articles

Джерела з єврейської генеалогії Наддніпрянщини кінця ХVІІІ – початку ХХ ст.: історіографія

This article focuses on the analysis and critique of scientific literature devoted to the sources of Jewish Genealogical Sources in Dnieper Ukraine at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 20th century. The methodological basis of the article is the generally accepted principles of historicism, objectivity and systematicity, as well as the historiographical analysis and synthesis, historical-genetic, comparative-historical, typological, and other methods. The scientific novelty lies in the creation of a historiographical model which includes an analysis of the conditions for the development of historical science and the activities of historians who worked in the field of Jewish history and genealogy. Conclusions. The architecture of the historiographical model for studying the sources of Jewish genealogy from the point of view of periodization covers the imperial (until 1917), Soviet, and Ukrainian Independence periods. A separate segment is foreign historiography (in this work - with no division into periods) focused on the study of sources in the archives of Ukraine not only by foreign researchers but also by institutions. In the imperial period, historians not only studied Jewish history but also engaged archives by discovering and publishing documents. Soviet historiography of the 1920s and 1930s is represented by writings about the history of Jewish communities in certain regions and the role of Jews in social and political processes. Scholars also concentrated on collecting and researching Jewish archives. The anti-Zionist policy of the USSR government and the persecution of Jews during the Stalinist repressions (1930s) and later in the 1950s and 1980s made further research of Jewish history impossible. With the Independence of Ukraine, research on Judaica became significantly more active: articles, monographs, and theses on various topics appeared, conferences were held, and scientific journals and centres were founded. People from Ukraine and abroad searched for Jewish roots in Ukrainian archives. The activation of scientific and practical interests prompted the description of archival documents, the creation of historical and genealogical directories, including those on Jewish topics. Large-scale publishing projects were implemented, and later the digitization of genealogical sources began. Foreign scholars also described Jewish documents in Ukrainian archives. The National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, FamilySearch International, and others joined the projects of digitization and indexing of Jewish documents in the archives of Ukraine.

The History of the Jewish communities in the Mamlūk Sultanate (1250–1517): approaches and discourses

The article discusses the main approaches and discourses that are used in writing the history of Jewish communities in the Mamlūk Sultanate (1250–1517). The review on the topic includes the classics of the Jewish history, studies of contemporary authors in English, Arabic and Hebrew. Two main approaches are distinguished. There are two approaches. The first is the “theory of decline,” which characterizes the reign of the Mamluks as a period of systematic decline of the entire Mamluk society, which subsequently influenced the state of the Jewish community itself. approach that describes the period as time of oppression and isolation of the community. The second approach defines the period as a time of oppression, discrimination and isolation of the community.The criticism of A. Mazor and N. Hofer on the “theory of decline” and oppression of the community is considered there. That historical approaches are placed in certain discourses. Among them, might be highlighted the Jewish national, Zionist, orientalist, Islamic discourses, M. Cohen's «neo-lacrimous concept», as well as the reaction on them among Arab historians. The conclusions identify problems associated with the historical period under study, and also discuss issues related to expanding the methodological base in historical research. The works of modern researchers who apply methods from other social sciences, for example, discourse analysis, narrative analysis and case study, are presented. The identification of typical approaches, theoretical and ideological frameworks will allow to reconsider the period under study in the history of Jewish communities.

Le goût de l’histoire et de l’hébreu : une aventure à deux

Born into a Catholic family, Danielle Delmaire is a specialist in the history of Jewish communities in France and Jewish Catholic relations. Her interest in these fields of research was aroused during a vacation in Israel in 1966, after which she decided to live for two years in a kibbutz and to learn Hebrew while continuing her studies in history at the University of Lille. Upon her return to France in 1968, she enrolled in a Hebrew studies program at the same university, where she met Jean-Marie Delmaire, who played a major role in her life both professionally and personally. In this article, she looks back on their careers and their contribution to the development of the history of the Jews and Hebrew in France. Notably, for example, the historian recalls her husband’s efforts to develop Hebrew studies at the University of Lille. He created the Institute of the History of Religions (IHR), where the history of Jewish communities and Judaism is taught, in the early 1990s and founded the scholarly journal Tsafon, Revue d’études juives du Nord in 1990.

Проблемы истории еврейских общин Сибири ХХ - начала XXI в. в оценках современных отечественных исследователей

Проблемы истории еврейских общин Сибири ХХ - начала XXI в. в оценках современных отечественных исследователей

Historical Research and Forgeries in the Age of Nationalism: The Case of the Russian Empire Between Jews and Russians

ABSTRACTThe nineteenth century saw the beginning of modern historical research and methodology as well as intense development of historical thought in the Russian Empire. This century was also marked by the emergence of the Haskalah, which reached its peak in Russia in the 1860s and introduced a new area of scholarship – Wissenschaft des Judentums, or Hokhmat Israel. It included, inter alia, research endeavors to trace the history of Jewish communities in the territories that became part of the Russian Empire. The first Jewish researchers, both maskilim and Karaites, tried to employ research methods used by their European and Russian counterparts. Simultaneously, there appeared multifarious forgeries of historical documents – manuscripts, colophons, tomb inscriptions, as well as forged chronicles and “folklore” texts, both in Jewish and Russian educated circles and in the scholarly world more broadly. This article examines historical forgery in the Russian Empire as a socio-cultural phenomenon in a wider temporal context. It proposes a number of factors that contributed to the coexistence of the two, apparently conflicting, parallel processes – the emergence of modern science and the rise of historical forgeries.

Regina Jonas: forgetting and remembering the first female rabbi

Regina Jonas (1902–44), who was ordained in Germany in 1935, is now widely recognised as the world's first female rabbi. However, for almost 50 years after her death at Auschwitz in 1944, she was given very little, if any, public recognition. Based on archival research, interviews and critical engagement with secondary literature, this paper investigates a range of explanations why Jonas was nearly lost to historiography. It also considers the circumstances of the rediscovery of this controversial figure in the early 1990s and explores how she is remembered today. This paper raises important issues in relation to historiography and the connection between processes of remembering, forgetting and identity formation, particularly in relation to the history of the ordination of female rabbis and the history of Jewish communities in Germany.

Pertenencia y alteridad: Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios (review)

Reviewed by: Pertenencia y alteridad: Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios Naomi Lindstrom Leonardo Senkman, Judit Basker Liwerant, Haim Arni, Sergio Della Pergola, Margalit Bejarano, coordinators, Florinda F. Goldberg, translator and text editor. Pertenencia y alteridad: Judíos en/de América Latina: cuarenta años de cambios. Madrid/Frankfurt: Iberoamericana Vervuert / Bonilla Artigas Editores. 2011. 870 pp. Paper € 48.00. ISBN 9788484895183. The interdisciplinary collection Pertenencia y alteridad is broad indeed in scope. It treats numerous aspects of Jewish life in Spanish America, Brazil, and, in one article each, the United States, South Africa, Europe, and Spain; in addition, many of the primarily Latin American essays include comparative discussion of Israel, Europe, and the United States. The editors define the timeframe that the essays cover as 1967-2007, the forty years since the creation of the Division of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Judaism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which was involved in the making of the volume, and the Six-Day War of 1967, which altered the landscape in many ways. In practice, though, many of the essays range further backward in time. At 870 pages, the volume offers two introductions (a general introduction by all the editors and Haim Avni's overview of scholarship in Latin American Jewish Studies); twenty-nine essays; and a works cited list. The authors come from a number of academic disciplines, including history, demography, sociology, anthropology, political science, and literary studies; in addition, some represent community leadership and the rabbinate, Jewish education, and literary life outside the universities. The contributors range from very senior scholars, such as Avni, the founder of the Division of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal at the Hebrew University and by any reckoning the dean of Latin [End Page 137] American Jewish studies, through a number of highly prominent mid-career figures, to junior researchers. Most of the contributions are, to varying degrees, research essays, relying on documented sources, though there is one notable and worthy exception. "Testimonio," by the late Jacobo Kovadloff, is a personal reminiscence of the era of the Argentine military dictatorship. Kovadloff was targeted as the Director of the South American office of the American Jewish Committee and first he and then his family were forced to flee the country, an experience that the author reconstructs in detail. Also listed as a testimonio, though it also contains the results of research, is Daniel Goldman's account of the years 1959-1984, which Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer spent in Argentina. Goldman is widely recognized as Meyer's foremost intellectual and spiritual heir, so his essay is the admiring homage of a disciple, yet it also reflects research into the history of Jewish community and religious leadership in Buenos Aires over the period that Meyer was active there. Goldman explains the schism, in large measure a generation gap, within Argentine Conservative Judaism that led Meyer to found, in 1962, the breakaway congregation Comunidad Bet-El (since 1992 led by Goldman). This essay also touches briefly on such topics as the relations between Meyer's model of Judaism and the Liberation Theology of some contemporary Catholic clergy; certain aspects of Argentine society that puzzled or disturbed the U.S.-born rabbi; Meyer's founding of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano; his interfaith projects and human rights advocacy; the sensitive issue of Argentine Jewish institutions vis-à-vis the military dictatorship of 1976-1983; and how Zionism and religiosity fit into Meyer's vision. While the compiling of statistics is not often viewed as an exciting topic, one of the volume's most interesting essays is "¿Cuántos somos hoy?" by Sergio DellaPergola, the preeminent demographer of Jewish populations. In a user-friendly exposition accessible to non-specialists, DellaPergola explains the principal controversies and shifts that have occurred in recent decades in the estimation of Latin American Jewish populations. In particular, he clarifies why and how certain figures were revised downward in the 1960s. The most striking example is the once well-accepted estimates of 400,000 to 500,000 for the Argentine Jewish community. DellaPergola explains how a team of demographers from the Institute...

The beginnings of Jewish historiography in Russia

In 1891 expulsion from Moscow resulted in emigration, an enquiry commission in America, and a multitude of books in the West presaging bad times for the Jews of Russia. The most important Jewish literary organ for these Jews, the monthly Voskhod, was closed for six months by the censors and warned to mend its ways.1 When the magazine reappeared in Autumn 1891, it contained a major article of over ninety pages by the young historian Simon Dubnov (1860-1941 ).2 Investigating Jewish historiography in Russia, Dubnov finds nothing to be proud of; in fact, he finds it practically nonexistent. Three books in Hebrew pamphlets would be a better word have been published on the history of Jewish communities: Vilna, Grodno, and Brisk (Brest Litovsk);3 and only the first, i.e., the history of Vilna, has some merit. Haim Jonah Gurland's small book deserves praise4 and yet this promising attempt is ended by the author's death. Another historian, the non-Jewish Bershadskii, diligently collects documents, but the Society for Propagation of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia prints only one third of the material.5 Other so-called historians are actually lawyers, publicists or philologists. In a rhetorical crescendo Dubnov decries the lack of order and system as an inherent defect of the House of Israel, and compares the Jews' neglect of historical documentation with the ways of primitive tribes. Or, as he states in his first Hebrew article published shortly thereafter: "We are like Negroes, like desert savages who have no history at all."6 The motto for his Russian article is Cicero's epigram: "He who knows no history, will remain a child all his days."