Jewish History Research Articles

Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV by Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16 th century) by Martina Mampieri

Reviewed by: Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV by Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16 th century) by Martina Mampieri Alessandra Veronese Martina Mampieri . Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew Chronicle of Pope Paul IV by Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16 th century) . Leiden : Brill , 2020 . xx + 400 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000574 Martina Mampieri provides scholars with a source of great interest, which helps better understand the complex period following the election of Pope Paul IV Carafa from a Jewish perspective. This is undoubtedly an important book that contributes to the advancement of our knowledge regarding that historical moment. The volume consists of three sections. Section 1 ("The Work and Its Context") is divided into two chapters: the first treats the history of the Jewish community of Civitanova Marche between the late Middle Ages and the early modern age, and the second examines Benjamin Neḥemiah ben Elnathan's Hebrew chronicle. Section 2's ("A Reading of Pope Paul IV's Pontificate, 1555–1559") four chapters are dedicated respectively to Paul IV's policy toward the Jews, both at the center and periphery of the Papal States; the arrest and the imprisonment of the Jews of Civitanova Marche; the final period of the pontificate of the "evil pope"; and the election of Pius IV "the Merciful." Section 3 consists of a revised edition of the chronicle, with an annotated English translation. The volume also includes the facsimile of Ms. Heb.8 ° 984, preserved at the National Library of Israel; a documentary appendix; the chronology of the events reported in the chronicle; notes on currency, measures, and times; a list of maps and plates; and a rich bibliography. Unlike authors such as Joseph ha-Kohen and Gedalyah ibn Yahyah, Benjamin provides a long and detailed description of the events linked to Pope Paul IV's [End Page 192] election and the issuing of the Cum nimis absurdum bull. Even though the text of the chronicle was already known thanks to the pioneering work of Isaiah Sonne, the omissions and mistakes of his first edition make a restored edition of the Hebrew text advisable. While Mampieri's edition and the translation of the chronicle is very good, the historical introduction is not always completely convincing. A few examples from chapter 1: Jewish and Christian moneylending is not sufficiently problematized (15–16); the question of marriage between Jews from different cultural and ritual traditions (namely, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Italkim) could have been treated in greater detail (21); the author speculates about the title of magister , but most of the time (and only in the case of the Jews) the title indicates someone who was a physician (22); a synagogue certainly did not exist before the establishment of a Jewish settlement, since there was no tradition of Jewish presence (26), and certainly (not probably) the synagogue had a modest exterior. Mampieri's calculation of the population of the Jewish community of Civitanova is quite unrealistic: one cannot use notarial deeds to speculate on the number of men and women living in a certain place, which the author herself admits (28). Regarding dowries, the single citation of Gasperoni's work (29) does not take into account many past contributions by scholars who studied Jewish dowries between the Quattrocento and the Cinquecento in the regions of northern and central Italy. Incidentally, when discussing the amount of the dowry, the author seems not to be aware of the differences often linked to the origin of the bride. Ashkenazic women were usually more independent than Italians, and their status was often reflected in the dowries granted by their families, as well as in their last wills (32). A few mistakes likely reflect a lack of care in proofreading, like the statement on p. 86 that the Tisha be-'Av fast commemorates the destruction of the First Temple (86), while at p. 144 the author correctly states that Jews fast to remember the destruction of the First as well as Second Temple, and other calamities in Jewish history. At p. 87 the author affirms that the Jews were expelled from Castile in 1492 (and...

Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran by Lior B. Sternfeld

Reviewed by: Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran by Lior B. Sternfeld Ariane Sadjed Lior B. Sternfeld . Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran . Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press , 2018 . 208 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000677 Lior Sternfeld refreshingly departs from mainstream accounts of modern Iranian Jewish history by pointing out the multiple ways through which the [End Page 213] Jewish community engaged with its broader Iranian environment. This makes it a very important voice in the sometimes-static discourse about Middle Eastern Jewish identities. Sternfeld focuses on the decades 1920–1980, during which massive transformations in social class and political agency unfolded in Iranian society, and among Jews as part of it. By assessing how Jews started to take part in the political life of modern Iran, the author refutes one-sided identity concepts that pit "Jewish" and "Iranian" identities against each other. Chapter 1 deals with demographic changes in Iran during and after World War II. Reza Shah (reigned 1925–1941) introduced new ideas of nationalism to Iran, and we learn about the country's ensuing struggle to remain neutral in the face of the emerging Second World War and the conflicting interests of the Great Powers. Sternfeld describes the arrival of Jewish refugees to Iran, mostly from Poland, in 1942–43. Together with the later influx of Iraqi Jews, who increasingly arrived in the 1950s, he portrays aspects of a diverse culture, in which many parallel and interacting worlds of "Jewishness" were possible. The second chapter discusses the Iranian political sphere after 1941 and the shaping of national identity. Sternfeld focuses on Jewish participation in the leftist Tudeh Party, including the different reasons that led Jews to join it, as a way to enter local society as patriots or to rebel against tradition, family, or religion. He is careful not to overemphasize communist ideology, as many leftist Jews supported local goals, decoupled from Marxist ideologies, and prioritized Iran's interest over Soviet ones "in order to become more Iranian" (46). Besides well-elaborated interviews with individuals who were members of the Tudeh Party, Sternfeld bases his analysis on two leftist Iranian Jewish newspapers: Nissan and Bani Adam . However, not enough context is provided about the newspapers and their readership to determine how representative they were. Both were published for a short period, and these publications' status within the broader Jewish community in Iran must be clarified. Chapter 3 deals with Zionism and Iran's relationship with Israel during the Pahlavi era in more detail. It is remarkable that Jews had "multiple identities" (65), that is, it was possible to be an Iranian nationalist, Jew, communist, and Zionist. Zionism was an opportunity to escape oppressive political and economic hardships, rather than an ideological commitment. This explains why predominantly poorer segments of the Jewish community moved to Israel, while those who had experienced upward mobility did not see any reason to leave Iran or chose other destinations for emigration. Sternfeld manages to describe the significance of Zionism and related patterns of migration in a nuanced way. The author concludes that in the 1950s, the image of the Jew in Iranian society was positive. Chapter 4 discusses the years leading up to the revolution in 1978/79. Sternfeld tackles the seeming contradiction between Jews having reached "full integration" in the public sphere under the Pahlavi monarchy, while they still "overwhelmingly did not appear to support the continuation of the monarchy" (93). Such generalized statements must be questioned, for neither can one speak of the same degree of integration among the different strata of Jewish society at the time, including the conflicts resulting from these differences, nor is there [End Page 214] sufficient evidence provided to describe the political inclinations of an overwhelming majority. The chapter introduces the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (AJII) as the main venue for Jewish leftist activities. The bylaws of the AJII mirror the political discourse of the time, envisioning a model society in which universal values of solidarity would yield a just and open community where Jews would be equal citizens. Sternfeld furthermore discusses the activities of the SAPIR hospital during the revolution of 1979 and argues that...

America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today by Pamela S. Nadell

Reviewed by: America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today by Pamela S. Nadell Rachel Kranson Pamela S. Nadell . America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today . New York : W. W. Norton , 2019 . 352 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009420000653 The publication of The Jewish Woman in America in 1976 signaled the emergence of a subfield that would revolutionize the study of American Jewish history. Scholars of American Jewish women opened up new areas of investigation, training their lens on unexplored topics such as the home, clothing, food-ways, marriage, divorce, sexuality, reproduction, and childrearing. At the same time, they uncovered the stories of remarkable women who made their mark on [End Page 209] institutions that did not always welcome their contributions, such as America's unions, courtrooms, and synagogues. In America's Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today , Pamela Nadell weaves together more than forty years of scholarship. The resulting narrative—the first synthesis of American Jewish women's history to be published since Hasia Diner and Beryl Lief Benderley's Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present , in 2002—testifies to the ongoing richness of this vital area of inquiry. In all, America's Jewish Women is the rare volume that serves as a scholarly contribution, a teaching tool, and an engaging read for an interested popular audience. Nadell synthesizes major contributions of the field without ever sacrificing readability and accessibility. Replete with insights from the scholarship and peppered with stories of fascinating American Jewish women, it offers a valuable resource to readers both inside and outside the academy. The volume begins with a brief discussion of what it might mean for American Jewish women to have a history distinct from other American women, in spite of their diversity and the manifold ways they have engaged with their Jewishness. While always attuned to religious, political, and economic differences, America's Jewish Women successfully demonstrates that significant groups of American Jewish women often shared a common set of concerns and circumstances, though they certainly did not all respond to these conditions in the same ways. That being said, America's Jewish Women does not engage more complex questions of definition, such as what it means to write women's history at a moment when we can no longer assume that gender is static or binary, or what complex legacies Americanness may have conferred upon Jewish women apart from relative religious freedom. This strikes me as appropriate for a synthetic volume aimed at a cross-over audience and does not prevent America's Jewish Women from being an excellent tool for anyone interested in a comprehensive overview of the field. Those looking for a denser theoretical discussion of the intersections of Americanness, Jewishness, and womanhood, however, may have to search elsewhere. The bulk of the volume takes us chronologically from the early years of the republic through the present moment, tracing challenges, accomplishments, and changes in the lives of American Jewish women. Nadell circles back to similar themes in each successive chapter, demonstrating the shifting ways in which American Jewish women tackled issues such as marriage, reproduction, childrearing, education, work, religion, and culture. Building on a long-standing feminist commitment to personal politics, the narrative moves deftly between the home and the workplace, domestic rituals and the synagogue, courtship and the courts. Implicitly, America's Jewish Women reminds readers that the public and private have never really been separate spheres, and that human lives are shaped as much by personal circumstance as by public achievements. Each of these chapters reflects not only Nadell's mastery of American Jewish women's history, but also her immersion in the broader field of American women's history. For instance, while most studies of American Jewish history begin their analyses of the early twentieth century with the immigration restrictions of 1924, Nadell takes her cues from women's historians and starts her [End Page 210] discussion with the ratification of women's suffrage in 1920. And instead of introducing her post-1945 chapter with reflections on the Holocaust, Nadell opens with the conservative gender dynamics of...

Early Reactions to Raul Hilberg’s History of the Holocaust, 1961–7

Raul Hilberg’s landmark study of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews, was published in 1961. This article tells the story of the early response to Hilberg’s book. For the first time, journalists, scholars, intellectuals and representatives of Jewish communities engaged in a debate about the history and political significance of the Holocaust. This debate preceded the controversy surrounding Hannah Arendt’s articles on the trial of Adolf Eichmann and had more far-reaching consequences. Countless reviewers in the American press praised Hilberg’s analysis of the bureaucratic administration of genocide. They noted his conclusion that all of German society was involved in the ‘destruction process’ and its implications for the contemporary West German leadership. Scholars also lauded Hilberg’s book, although some of them criticized his inclusive perpetrator category and argued that he overlooked the importance of Nazi ideology and dictatorship. Hilberg’s claim that Jewish victims abetted their persecutors gave rise to a debate in Jewish journals and newspapers. Writers and historians objected to Hilberg’s purported ignorance of their experiences and of Jewish history. As this article shows, the reception of Hilberg’s work marks a crucial step in the formation of the Holocaust as part of historical consciousness.

The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory. By Joshua EzraBurns. Pp. ix, 293, Cambridge University Press, 2016, $82.41.

The Christian Schism in Jewish History and Jewish Memory. By Joshua EzraBurns. Pp. ix, 293, Cambridge University Press, 2016, $82.41.

Beyond the Scope of Philosophy and Kabbalah

The turn of the thirteenth century is a formative period for the historiography of medieval Jewish thought. These years saw the dissemination of the Hebrew translations of the Maimonidean corpus, alongside the simultaneous appearance of the first Kabbalistic treatises, in the same geographical regions. This concurrent appearance led scholars to examine Jewish theological discourse mainly via two juxtaposed categories: “Philosophy” and “Kabbalah”. In this paper, I will return to that formative moment in order to demonstrate that exploring Jewish history of ideas beyond the scope of these categories could be very advantageous in improving our understanding of both categories and the Jewish theological inner-dynamics in this period as a whole. I will draw attention to a contemporary theological attitude, which is neither Kabbalistic nor philosophical, which I will define as a medieval form of Jewish binitarianism. My argument in this paper will be composed of two parts—first, outlining the nature of this medieval Jewish theological trend, and second, showing how a precise definition of this belief within its context alters crucial notions and understandings in the common scholarly historiography of medieval Jewish thought.

German Jewish Soldiers and the Celebration of Yom Kippur in Wartime: Patriotic Images and Jewish Aspirations

One of the enduring themes in German Jewish history has been the deep-seated desire of Jews to be fully accepted as equals by other Germans, including the right to worship freely. Their conscription and voluntary service in the military during both the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and World War I (1914-1918), provided an opportunity for Jews to demonstrate their fealty to the nation. Moreover, their requests for Jewish military chaplains were granted, enabling them to celebrate their traditional High Holy Days services. This article tells the story of Jewish religious worship on Yom Kippur during both wars as depicted by German artists. We examine contemporaneous accounts of the scenes depicted, and find that while some were accurate with respect to venue and mood, the most popular images of throngs of Jewish soldiers worshiping on open air battlefields were fictionalized images of events that never took place. These pictorial images, exaggerated, romanticized, and idealized, portrayed Jews as patriotic Germans, fully engaged with the wartime goals of the German government while practicing their unique forms of worship. German Jews and Jews throughout the diaspora clung to these images which became widely available on postcards, lithographs, and cloth wall hangings. They continued to be proudly displayed in Jewish homes as symbols of Jewish patriotism, until the end of World War I when blatant antisemitism falsely blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat.

Zoya Cherkassky’s Collection Judaica: Immigration and the “Making Strange” of Jewish Art

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes Zoya Cherkassky’s early project, first presented in 2003, titled Collection Judaica (Kolektziyat yudaikah). I examine Collection Judaica not only in relation to Jewish art history, but also in the context of immigration studies. Collection Judaica aimed to explore Jewish self-perception “through an antisemitic gaze.” By means of defamiliarization (ostranenie), Cherkassky enables her viewers to feel a strong sense of alienation, as experienced by immigrants, from common Jewish practices. Her combination of Jewish and antisemitic visual materials complicates the attempt of creating “pure” Jewish art by stressing the visual danger and unattainability of such efforts.

Futures of Jewish Exemplarity

Futures of Jewish Exemplarity Jakob Egholm Feldt Georg Simmel's "The Stranger" (1908) might be considered an exemplar for the processual relationship between the particular and the general in history. As Elizabeth Goodstein notes in her book on Simmel, the stranger exemplifies Simmel's social theory, holding that over time and across various events, particularities can evolve into general forms or abstractions, and they may become a lens through which we see what has happened and what will happen in a different way.1 Of course, such processes do not constitute a rule; not all particulars become exemplary of an abstraction, a concept, or a historical and social form—but it can happen. This is the reason that, I claim, Simmel makes the example of Jewish history as the classic through which we can understand the meaning of the stranger.2 Strangeness happened to the Jews not because of something essential to Judaism or Jewishness, or because of divine missions, but because of the events, historical processes, and categories that we use, a posteriori, to illuminate the boundaries of present and historical experiences. The Jews and Jewish history became a historical and social form with which to think, to predict, and to make sense of experiences. This is not an organic, essential aspect of Jewish history; yet it has been acted upon as such many times. The Jewish stranger is itself both specific and general. It is a deeply contextual modernist form, ingrained into the historical and social imaginary of Simmel's time, as well as a new way of understanding the becoming of historical and social forms—abstractions that are both contextual and transcendent. With Simmel's framework, we can think of the relation between Jewish history and the stranger as an analogy to the relation between process [End Page 311] and form; we might even paraphrase Simmel and say that the stranger is an inorganic appendix to Jewish history—but is nevertheless treated as an organic part of it.3 Recently, research into the histories and possible futures of cosmopolitanism has revisited this conception of Jewish history, demonstrating how it opens up new expectations for the future.4 Seen from the perspective of its uses by scholars from Simmel to Zygmunt Bauman—who arguably took the stranger the furthest into Jewish history—the stranger has something to say about Jewish history.5 It is productive. Simmel was not the first to see Jewish history in this way, or the last, as Goldberg and others have discussed.6 Since the Enlightenment, historians and philosophers had considered the Jews and Jewish history an anomaly vis-à-vis general historical progress or, more specifically, an entity contributing to universal values such as "justice." Often this "anomaly" was associated with Spinozism—not as a strict following of Spinoza's philosophy but as an outlook on historical and social processes: secular yet prophetic, "one" yet diversified, contingent yet teleological.7 In this context, the example of Jewish history plays a particularly significant role. The example is not "a case," in the sense of "one among many," nor is it unique, as if unrelatable to other instances, but the exemplar is more than itself. It reveals a potentially novel prospect that follows from the dialectic between the example and the generalities that the example represents. Jewish history becomes an entity with more meaning attached to it than its plain example suggests.8 This conception of Jewish history as a theory-practice nexus has had defining impacts on modern Jewish history, from Zionism to cosmopolitan philosophies, which appropriate Jewishness as a central resource for diasporic or nomadic politicocultural ethics. [End Page 312] While Simmel considered Zionism to be unfeasible and unnecessary and his personal association with Jewishness involuntary, his writing nevertheless offers an explanation for one understanding of the trajectory of Jewish history.9 The stranger relies on a German-Jewish indexicality and an already well-established historical and social imagination in which Jewish strangeness played a significant part, but it is also much more than that. Simmel's stranger teaches us that historical events—what happens and has happened—precede the being, the subject, who becomes what it is only after...

The Stranger as a Threshold Figure

The Stranger as a Threshold Figure Amos Morris-Reich Given its subject and Georg Simmel's background, one would think that Simmel's excursus "The Stranger" (1908) and Jewish history could easily be brought into sustained conversation. Widely thought to be the most original social thinker of the turn of the twentieth century in Germany, Simmel was of Jewish descent. In "The Stranger," he refers to European Jews as the "classic example" of this social type. The excursus became a landmark in twentieth-century social theory and sociology. In practice, however, "The Stranger" and Jewish history have developed along two separate intellectual trajectories, and attempts to bring them together are frequently met by indifference or resistance by Jewish historians and Simmel scholars alike. While the former have no need for Simmel's short and indirect account to confirm the association between Jews and strangers, anyone minimally versed in Simmel's writings recognizes the impervious border between the social type of the stranger and actual Jews. Any suggestion to the contrary betrays an elementary misunderstanding of Simmel's perspective.1 Even when contextually expected or required—perhaps due to what each side takes as implied—this barrier remains impenetrable. Bringing the two together can nonetheless reveal a "Spinozist moment" with regard to Simmel and "The Stranger" as a subversive threshold figure. Possibly more than any of Simmel's other writings, "The Stranger" can be read as a queering of his own sociological theory, revealing a moment [End Page 314] of liminality in Jewish history. "Queering" is a helpful term here because, while the mental image of the stranger subconsciously fixed in the cultural imagination is generally not gender-neutral, the subversive quality of "The Stranger" stands out prominently in light of contemporary discussions of sex and gender. This liminality is evinced when we read "The Stranger" with the question of Jewish "strangeness" in mind. Of what does the "strangeness" of the stranger consist? Rather than embodying Christian theological supersessionism, racial/antisemitic doctrine, the gaze of the Other and its internalization by Jews, or Zionism's rejection of Jewish exile as an unnatural anomaly, the stranger belongs exclusively to society (in the singular) due to the interaction between individuals. Simmel's epistemology rules out any reduction of Jews as strangers to essentialist, naturalist terms.2 "The Stranger" appears to destabilize this orthodox Simmelian reading, however. Given that Simmel was the first to establish a notion of sociology free from reliance on preexisting collectivities such as nation, race, or ethnicity, Simmel scholars have learned to ignore or explain away moments that contravene this reading. The most famous lines in the excursus, for example, characterize the stranger by contrasting him—and thereby tying him together—with the wanderer: "The stranger is thus being discussed here, not in the sense often touched upon in the past, as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the person who comes today and stays tomorrow."3 These playful, poetic, and deeply ironic lines not only suggest a social "in" and "out" but also hint at organic differences between autochthonous members of society and late arrivers, granting the latter a degree of permanency. They also seem to imply that another society, place, and time exist where the stranger was, is, or could be more naturally at home. From an orthodox point of view, this is pure blasphemy. Simmel scholars who have noted these tensions and ambiguities tend to explain them in terms of the essay's history. Forming part of the ninth chapter of the Soziologie (1908), it constitutes a short and hastily written detour [End Page 315] in a chapter dealing with space and the spatial dimensions of social organization.4 For no obvious reason, it was translated into English (and other languages), whereupon it gained a life of its own. Reprinted numerous times, it has become a social-theory classic, serving as the cornerstone of the sociological paradigm known as the "marginal man," developed by scholars at the University of Chicago. The tensions can also be read as puncturing a purified interpretation of Simmel's sociology. Although a social type, organic—racial, biological, genetic—elements irreducible to the formal theory...

Hero and Outcast: César Tiempo and the History of Jews in Argentina

Hero and Outcast:César Tiempo and the History of Jews in Argentina Raanan Rein (bio) Keywords Argentina, Jewish-Argentines, Peronism, César Tiempo, Israel Zeitlin In the 1930s, the writer César Tiempo (whose pseudonym was Israel Zeitlin) was a hero of Argentina's organized Jewish community. At the age of 29, Tiempo led the campaign against the antisemitic director of the Biblioteca Nacional, Gustavo Martínez zuviría, the hugely popular novelist known as Hugo Wast. In 1935, Tiempo published his La campaña antisemita y el director de la Biblioteca Nacional (The antisemitic campaign and the director of the National Library), denouncing the bestselling books El Kahal and Oro, in which Martínez Zuviría had woven the plot of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into a Buenos Aires context.1 The young Jewish-Argentine author instantly became a celebrity in the local Jewish community and was flooded with invitations to numerous events and conferences in a variety of community institutions. Twenty years later, however, Tiempo had become a persona non grata in the community. There were no more invitations to give talks, no reviews of his books, barely any mention of him in the Yiddish or Spanish Jewish press. The change of status from hero to pariah came as a result of Tiempo's acceptance of the editorship of the cultural supplement of La Prensa, the daily newspaper by then highly identified with the Peronist government. Jews—and especially Jewish intellectuals—were not supposed to support the plebian movement headed by Colonel Juan Domingo Perón. César Tiempo's position annoyed many Jewish Argentines as it challenged the image of a homogeneous, unified community opposing the supposedly fascistoid politics of Peronism that served the interests of the working and not the middle class. I was intrigued by this remarkable intellectual many years ago when I came across his first book of poems, Versos de una …, published in 1926 [End Page 512] under the feminine pseudonym Clara Beter.2 This slim volume pretended to be the poetic diary of a Jewish prostitute with social concerns. Tiempo's identification with this humble character led him to include an element of his own family history in the book. Back then, Tiempo had collaborated with the so-called Boedo writers, characterized by their sense of social commitment. This tendency kept drawing him toward "the underdogs" (los de abajo). Members of the Boedo group loved this type of social literature by Clara, who was simultaneously separated from her community of origin (Ukraine) and her host society (Argentina): I give myself to everyone, but I belong to no one;To earn my bread, I sell my bodyWhat must I sell to keepMy heart, my sorrows and my dreams intact? … SometimesI am even ashamed to cryThinking how small my distress isCompared with the enormous universal sorrow.3 Reading these lines, one can easily understand what would later lead Tiempo to embrace Peronism, the self-proclaimed movement of Justicialismo (from the word justicia, justice). Years later, I decided to use the trajectory of César Tiempo as a lens to discuss several issues that either have not been previously addressed or that were studied in traditional ways and therefore warranted a fresh new look. Many history books tell us that despite Juan Perón's efforts to eradicate antisemitism and his cultivation of close relations with the state of Israel throughout the Peronist decade of 1946–55, he failed in his attempts to enlist the support of significant sectors of Argentina's Jewish community. Historians and commentators assert that most Jewish-Argentines remained hostile to Perón, and that Perón's attempts to ingratiate himself with the community—for example, by setting up the Peronist Jewish organization known as the Organización Israelita Argentina (OIA—the Argentine Jewish Organization)—were all to no avail. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, as the extent of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe became clear, Jewish-Argentines, who were mostly of Eastern and Central European origin, were understandably wary of a leader who had supported Argentine neutrality during the war. The support that Perón had...

ЄВРЕЙСЬКІ ПОГРОМИ КІНЦЯ ХІХ – ПОЧАТКУ ХХ СТ. У СУЧАСНІЙ УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ ІСТОРІОГРАФІЇ

The article analyzes modern tendencies in Ukrainian historiography of XIX – and early XX century Jewish pogroms. General works on the history of Ukraine, special works devoted to anti-Jewish violence, and the study of the similar problems, that has been published in the last two decades, are considered. The general context of works, their sources, previous researches influence, conclusions of which the authors came, etc. are analyzed. Reading the intelligence on the pogroms, we can see, that the pogroms were largely the result of modernization, internal migration, the relocation to Ukraine of workers from the Russian provinces of the Romanov Empire and so on. Pogroms are also viewed in the context of social and revolutionary movements. That is, the violence, according to researchers, led to the emergence of Zionism. Also, Jews were actively involved to the left movement, while falling victim to extreme Russian nationalists and chauvinists - the Black Hundreds. We have special works dedicated to the pogroms of the first and second waves, which, however, are not so many. Their authors find out the causes and consequences of the pogroms, the significance of violence for the Jewish community and Ukrainian-Jewish relations, the attitude of the authorities and society to these acts of violence, and so on. Some Ukrainian historians research the problem of pogroms on various issues. Among them are works on the history of Jews from different regions of Ukraine, communities of individual cities, Ukraine as a whole; the history of the Ukrainian peasantry, the monarchical and Black Hundred movement in Ukraine, the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, migration processes in Ukrainian lands, the formation of modern nations, the life and work of prominent figures and more. The authors conduct full-fledged research using a wide source base, including archival materials, which, however, are often factual in nature. This is a disadvantage, because historians are "captured" by the sources on which they rely. We also have conceptual research that refers to a broad historiography of the problem, including foreign. These works often draw the reader's attention to a broader - the imperial, modernization or migration context. It is important, that researchers see actors of Ukrainian history in the Jewish population. Because of this, they are much less interested in the future of the Jews who left the Ukrainian lands than in the researchers of Jewish history.

Maimonides: Flexible Leadership

A leader’s flexibility can be expressed via a multi-dimensional structure containing a variety of dynamics and context-dependent adaptations. Leaders who possess these abilities can inspire a wide range of people to trust and follow them. This article focuses on the leadership style of Maimonides, a medieval scholar who became one of the most influential figures in Jewish history. His success in appealing to and influencing vast and varied populations can be explained through the flexible leadership model. The model of flexible leadership demonstrated by Maimonides will serve as a model for research on other leaders in various fields. In addition, the potential of the model, as well as how it is demonstrated by Maimonides’ leadership style, can inspire leaders in a complex and changing reality.

Siberian Myth in the Jewish History: Jews of Siberia as a Religious Group

The present article aims to analyze the religious practices of Siberian Jews in a broad Jewish context. It presents a review of the religious life of the Jews isolated from traditional centers, with a focus on the models they were guided by in developing their communal life and the ways in which they maintained their connection with the Jewish world. The research is primarily based on the analysis of Jewish periodicals and the material culture of Siberian Jews (synagogue buildings, Jewish cemeteries, and ceremonial objects). The authors contest the view of Siberian Jews as a unique group, widespread in historiography, as untenable. Siberian Jewry developed within the framework of the modernized model, common in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities outside the Pale of Settlement as well as among Jews in large cities of the Pale. The forms of religious observance in Siberia are similar to those typical for regions and cities with a rapid pace of modernization of the Jewish population.

Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew “Chronicle of Pope Paul IV” by Benjamin Nehemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16th Cent.). Martina Mampieri. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 58. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xx + 400 pp. €168.

Living under the Evil Pope: The Hebrew “Chronicle of Pope Paul IV” by Benjamin Nehemiah ben Elnathan from Civitanova Marche (16th Cent.). Martina Mampieri. Studies in Jewish History and Culture 58. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xx + 400 pp. €168.

Żydowskie aktorki z Polski w rolach szekspirowskich w teatrze jidysz

Jewish Actresses From Poland in Shakespearean Roles In the Yiddish Theater The article aims at analyzing the role played by Jewish actresses in the development of the Shakespearean Yiddish theater. The paper includes the profiles of artists coming from Poland and/or working in the Polish lands: Bertha Kalisch, Miriam Orleska, and Ester Goldenberg, who contributed to popularization of Shakespeare’s works among the Jewish community. Moreover, the article illustrates their contribution to the changes in the perception of Jewish theater from the “jargon drama” enterprise to an ambitious cultural institution with a Shakespearean repertoire. Among those discussed are the characters of Hamlet performed by Kalisch, Portia (The Merchant of Venice) played by Orleska, Jessica (The Merchant of Venice), and Ariel (The Tempest) interpreted by Goldenberg, and their assessment. The reception of these stage creations of Shakespearean heroes is analyzed on the basis of press materials published in daily newspapers and weeklies in Yiddish, Polish, and English. Some academic studies on the premieres of Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest with participation of Jewish female artists have already been conducted, but their authors did not analyze the roles performed by those actresses and did not refer to the sources in Yiddish at all. The article discusses not only the artistic activities of Kalisch, Orleska, and Goldenberg, but also attempts to analyze the reception of the characters created by the latter two artists from the perspective of the social and political relations in the Second Polish Republic. Moreover, efforts were made to show that Jewish actresses, by impersonating heroines and heroes of Shakespeare’s plays, proved with their style of acting, professional preparation, and understanding of the nuances of the performed characters that Yiddish theater definitely deserved to be called a temple of art. Their creations became an inherent part of the history of Jewish, and thus the world’s Shakespearean theater.

Trends in the Study of Antisemitism in United States History

Trends in the Study of Antisemitism in United States History1 Britt P. Tevis (bio) Identifying trends in the study of antisemitism in American history is a complicated task because historians have mostly focused their attention on other aspects of the American Jewish experience.2 Further, by and large, those works that examine antisemitism in the United States posit that anti-Jewish animus has been relatively fleeting and generally marginal to United States history and the American Jewish experience. Indeed, antisemitism in the United States has most often been framed as an outlier and premodern relic. According to this argument, America's [End Page 255] commitment to religious freedom, democracy, and pluralism has deterred the state from perpetuating anti-Jewish discrimination or bigoty. Thus, understanding antisemitism in America requires studying social spaces and parsing personal interactions between Jews and non-Jews.3 Systemic forms of discrimination such as university quotas, violent incidents such as the lynching of Leo Frank, and the dissemination of anti-Jewish propaganda by influential Americans such as Henry Ford appear as outliers. Simply stated, to the extent that American Jewish historians have examined antisemitism, it has been largely to dismiss it as a serious, lasting problem woven into the fabric of US history. The tendency to present antisemitism in the United States as atypical, momentary, and confined to private realms is especially noteworthy in several important surveys of American Jewish history.4 Trends in scholarship on antisemitism in the United States must be understood in the context of how American Jewish historians have promoted the idea that antisemitism in the United States has been a relatively insignificant aberration.5 As this article shows, conceptualizations of antisemitism as irregular, relatively harmless, and primarily social originated in the 1950s, when academic historians first took an interest in studying American antisemitism in the context of a larger debate about populism, exceptionalism, and objectivity. The essential voices to emerge from this discussion were those of immigration historians Oscar Handlin (1915–2011) and John Higham (1920–2003). Their conceptualizations of anti-Jewish animus became touchstones for discussion of antisemitism in subsequent decades. Though Handlin and Higham disagreed on certain details, they agreed on antisemitism's limited significance and short-lived nature, seeing in it a vestige rather than a manifestation of modernity. Since the 1970s, some historians have advanced an understanding of anti-Jewish animus [End Page 256] that recognizes it as both a persistent force, which existed beyond social realms. Still, Handlin and Higham's ideas (especially Higham's) remain influential, and many American Jewish historians continue to present antisemitism as largely insignificant, momentary, primarily social. Recognizing the weight of Handlin and Higham's claims in American Jewish historical scholarship from the past seventy years renders the state of the field and its attendant trends understandable. Because most historians who have published on the history of antisemitism in American history have done so either as dissenters within the field of American Jewish history or as historians from other fields interested in examining anti-Jewish animus in passing, collectively, existing scholarship presents antisemitism as episodic. Periodic surges in interest have proved short-lived and thus pertinent research has appeared haphazardly. Research exploring given incidents or themes have materialized here and there yet the dynamics and nature of antisemitism in the United States have yet to be sufficiently theorized or explained. At the same time, despite the diffuse nature of relevant scholarship, collectively it suggests that anti-Jewish animus constitutes an integral feature of American history, rather than a momentary and relatively innocuous phenomenon that is unrelated to the state.6 Accordingly, this article concludes by offering some suggestions for future researchers. FORMATIVE SCHOLARSHIP ON ANTISEMITISM IN THE UNITED STATES Academic historians first took interest in antisemitism in the United States in the 1950s just as American Jewry came to the discipline's attention.7 American historians considered anti-Jewish animus in the United States as they engaged in contemporaneous debates about populism, the late nineteenth-century political movement of farmers and laborers, and reassessed 1930s scholarship.8 As they developed their narratives of American history, scholars such as Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, and [End Page 257] others articulated divergent views on...

Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825 by Aviva Ben-Ur

Reviewed by: Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825 by Aviva Ben-Ur Sarah Phillips Casteel (bio) Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651–1825. By Aviva Ben-Ur, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. 358 pp. Aviva Ben-Ur's brilliant new history of Suriname's Portuguese Jews not only illuminates the colonial formation of a major Atlantic Jewish community but also maps important new methodological and conceptual directions for the nascent field of Caribbean Jewish studies. Within the Jewish Caribbean, the Surinamese community is a particularly rich subject for the historian because of the unique legal status it enjoyed—one that is reflected in its abundant records. While the exceptionality of Surinamese Jewry has long been recognized, Ben-Ur recasts the terms of that uniqueness, pointing not only to the community's territorial and legal autonomy but also its inclusion of Eurafricans. Only in Suriname did Eurafrican Jews "emerg[e] as a distinct and separate class" with cultural and institutional independence (261). Moreover, Ben-Ur reframes the exceptionality of the famed Jewish agricultural village of Jodensavanne ("the Jews' Savannah"), which she presents less as a haven of religious freedom than a frontier settlement that contained Jewish difference while advancing the interests of empire. Historical scholarship on Caribbean Jewry has grown steadily over the past two decades, often positioning itself against Jewish historiographies that relegate the Caribbean to the margins. In a sign of the field's maturation, Ben-Ur instead largely presents her study as a corrective to previous Caribbean Jewish scholarship. She argues that such scholarship's focus on Jewish identity and perspectives has tended to marginalize enslaved peoples or construct them as passive observers of Jewish life. By contrast, Ben-Ur adopts an Atlantic history model in which the story of Surinamese Jewry becomes inseparable from that of enslaved peoples. With its emphasis on contact and exchange, the Atlantic history lens enables Ben-Ur to attend to the voices of the silenced and to explore the implications of Surinamese Jewish history for the study of Africans in the Americas. This paradigm shift is reflected in the book's structure, which devotes two chapters to Eurafrican Jews and a third to enslaved people. Ben-Ur reminds us that Suriname's status as one of the largest slave societies in the Americas was the fundamental condition of the Jews' presence there. The opening chapter debunks the idealized image of Jodensavanne as a [End Page 431] "new Jerusalem" that can be traced back to Surinamese Jewish historian David Nassy's Essai historique sur la colonie de Surinam (1788). While Nassy described Jodensavanne as a peaceful haven, Ben-Ur emphasizes that the majority of Jodensavanne's inhabitants were enslaved Africans whose labor sustained the village. Situated on the frontier, Jodensavanne "serve[d] as a human bulwark against Indian and Maroon attacks" and later as a military outpost (77). Its synagogue square was the designated site for the violent punishment of enslaved people. The central paradox, captured in the book's title, is that Jewish autonomy in Suriname was bound up with the unfreedom of enslaved Africans. The second chapter further nuances previous accounts of Surinamese Jewish autonomy by examining internal and external challenges to Jewish communal authority, while the third chapter addresses Portuguese Jewish rootedness in Suriname. Ben-Ur shows how Jewishness became "nearly synonymous with settler society" through the community's longevity, demographic presence, and deepening interaction with the African-descended population (136). The subsequent two chapters are devoted to the Eurafrican Jewish population that resulted from sexual exploitation of enslaved women and slave concubinage. Eurafrican children were routinely converted to Judaism and sometimes manumitted and inherited by their Jewish owners, practices that enabled Judaism to survive in Suriname. As Eurafrican Jews grew in number and status, they became increasingly activist, forming their own society, Darhe Jesarim. While Darhe Jesarim's quest for ritual equality has previously been documented, Ben-Ur resituates this episode as part of a larger struggle of free people of color to obtain rights. She further makes the case that Judaism needs to be recognized as a significant religious presence in the lives of...

Antisemitism, American Jewish Historians, and their Publics

Antisemitism, American Jewish Historians, and their Publics

State of the Field: The Animating Tensions of Canadian Jewish Historiography

State of the Field:The Animating Tensions of Canadian Jewish Historiography David S. Koffman (bio) and Pierre Anctil (bio) On November 7, 2018, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered an apology for Canada's 1939 federal government decision to deny entry to the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner that had carried 937 Jewish refugees. The ship would eventually return to Germany and 227 of its passengers would ultimately be caught in the Nazi death dragnet. The refusal of multiple countries to accept these refugees (Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands each accepted asylum seekers) helped solidify the Nazis' confidence that the western world didn't care much for the plight of Jews, already apparent at the Evian Conference a year prior. In Canada, the MS St. Louis became shorthand for the country's abysmal wartime record regarding Jewish refugees. Canada accepted the fewest Jews of any refugee-accepting nation in the world: all told, a meager 7,400 souls.1 Credit for the fact that Canadians remember the St. Louis episode and that Canada's prime minister would acknowledge its dismal Naziera policies on immigration and refugees, is largely due to the scholarly work of the Canadian Jewish historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper.2 None is Too Many became and remains essential reading for Canadian political leaders, academics, and public intellectuals. The book has been credited with influencing humanitarian and immigration policy decisions [End Page 403] since it was first published in 1983.3 (Curiously, it has not yet been translated into French.) Rarely have historians of Canadian Jewish life reached so far into Canadian national public consciousness, but the case allows us to see something of the impact that Canadian Jewish historical scholarship has had on Canadian life.4 This essay aims to introduce readers to the literatures of and debates within the field of Canadian Jewish history, a field we characterize as maturing, if segmented, and one that has remained publicly engaged since the 1980s. WIDE-ANGLE LENSES For a relatively small field, Canadian Jewish history has received an outsized share of attention. There have been several attempts to capture, qualify, and quantify output within the field. A 1992 annotated bibliography by Stuart Schoenfeld and Dwight Daignault5 was soon followed by Morton Weinfeld's sociological analysis of the features that distinguish Canadian Jewry from its American counterpart.6 Weinfeld predicted that the two Jewish communities would ultimately converge into one indistinguishable, continental Jewry. These two works complement Gerald Tulchinsky's 2008 Canada's Jews: A People's Journey, a synthesis of his two previous volumes.7 Until his death in 2017, Tulchinsky was widely [End Page 404] recognized as the preeminent historian of Canadian Jewish life. His long-standing interests in political, labor, and business history shaped his view, and that of others, of the Canadian Jewish past as a history that focused on the social life of Jews as the community developed an institutional grounding for self-preservation and defense. According to this view, immigrants and their descendants worked to integrate into local and national cultures, and to safeguard their interests in the realm of politics, both domestic and international. Other historians have treated areas that Tulchinsky's work ignored or deemphasized, including religious transformation and accommodation; developments in Jewish culture, language and letters; and the histories of non-Ashkenazi, non-Orthodox Jewries. Richard Menkis and Ira Robinson have published important studies on the history of Judaism. Menkis has worked on the history of Conservative and Reform Judaism;8 Robinson has published on the Eastern European rabbinate in Canada;9 and the two together cut an innovative path using sermons as sources for interrogating the ideological, contextual, and circulation of religious ideas.10 Yolande Cohen has published extensively on the Sephardi experience in Canada11 —a sub-field that remains understudied—and Rebecca Margolis, Pierre Anctil, and others have published works on the history of Yiddish culture in Canada.12 [End Page 405] Tulchinsky's efforts in writing wide-angle work have been emulated by others over the past decade and a half. One collection foregrounded studies of Canadian Jewish subjects from disciplines largely foreign to Tulchinsky's social history, including visual arts, literature...