Jewish Children Research Articles

Going To and Fro and Walking Up and DownMeets “I Do This, I Do That”: Reconnecting Charles Reznikoff and Frank O’Hara

AbstractThe poems of Objectivist Charles Reznikoff and the New York School’s Frank O’Hara insist that marginalized experiences—both their own and others’—belong in America’s public spaces and discourse. Reznikoff records New York’s streets as the Jewish child of immigrants in collections including Going To and Fro and Walking Up and Down (1941), while O’Hara records these streets from a queer experience in his famous “I do this, I do that” poems. There is limited scholarship connecting these poets, however, because the categorization of Objectivists as second-wave Imagists—and the resulting erasure of their Jewish heritage—has inhibited their inclusion in postmodern discourse. Repositioning Objectivists as postmodern forerunners reveals what’s concealed when poets are separated too insistently into different avant-garde “schools.” This article argues that the Judaism of Objectivist writers is a liminal lens through which to explore the New York School’s queerness and vice versa. This comparative examination of the walking poems of Reznikoff and O’Hara constructs new avenues for exploring the urban poetics of outsiders in experimental poetry by reading across and not just through minority experiences.

Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire by Emily Baughan

<i>Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire</i> by Emily Baughan

Risk factors for hospitalization at the pediatric intensive care unit among infants and children younger than 5 years of age diagnosed with infectious diseases.

Children hospitalized with infectious diseases may develop severe, life-threatening conditions, often requiring admission to pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The objectives of this study were to identify independent risk factors for PICU hospitalization with an infectious disease in children <5 years of age. In southern Israel, two populations live side by side: the middle-high income Jewish population and the low-income Bedouin population, both receiving equal and free medical care at the only tertiary medical center in the area. The study population included all children born in southern Israel and hospitalized at PICU with an infectious disease during 1991-2012. Risk factors for PICU hospitalizations were retrospectively studied by Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazard survival analyses. 9951 Jewish children and 18,002 Bedouin children were enrolled; overall, 1135 episodes of PICU hospitalizations with an infectious disease were recorded (879, 77.4% Bedouin and 256, 22.6% Jewish patients). Bedouin children had a higher risk for PICU hospitalization with an infectious disease compared with Jewish children (adjusted Hazard Ratio [adj. HR] 1.7, 95% CI 1.5-2.0); maternal multiparity and low-birth weight (<2500g) were additional risk factors for PICU hospitalization with an infectious disease compared to firstborns (adj. HR=1.2, 95% CI 1.0-1.5) or to children with a birth weight ≥2500g (adj. HR=1.5, 95% 1.2-1.9). Older age was a protective factor for PICU hospitalization (adj. HR=0.98, 95% CI 0.97-0.99). Children hospitalized with a central nervous system infection had the highest risk of PICU hospitalization (adj. HR 6.8, 95% CI 5.5-8.4), followed by those with urinary tract infections (UTI, adj. HR 3.1, 95% CI 2.5-3.8) and those with lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI, adj. HR 2.9, 95% CI 2.4-3.4). Bedouin ethnicity, low birth weight, maternal multiparity and younger age were significant risk factors for PICU hospitalizations with an infectious disease. Among the infectious diseases analyzed, CNS infection had the highest risk for PICU hospitalization, followed by UTI and LRTI.

Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust by Joanna Sliwa

Reviewed by: Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust by Joanna Sliwa Melissa R. Klapper Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust. By Joanna Sliwa. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021. ix + 204 pp. When Debórah Dwork published Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe in 1991, neither the history of childhood nor, obviously, Holocaust studies were new fields. But both were about to see an explosion of interest in the academy and they continued to intersect, as seen, for example, in the 2004 publication of papers from a symposium on children and the Holocaust at the United States [End Page 317] Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and then the 2011 volume Children During the Holocaust, edited by Patricia Heberer for the same institution. The perennial, global appeal of The Diary of Anne Frank has also kept the Holocaust experiences of young people in the spotlight, as has the Children's Memorial at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a monument to the approximately 1.5 million children who were murdered. Joanna Sliwa's book Jewish Childhood in Kraków explores the circumstances and stories of the children of just one city in Poland, but by doing so she provides a multifaceted, deeply researched account that functions simultaneously both as an important contribution to scholarship and also, inevitably, as a moving memorial. Sliwa approaches her topic from various perspectives, focused largely on the different types of literal spaces where Jewish children lived in and around Kraków before, during, and just after World War II. The first chapter explores Jewish children's life in the city when it was under German occupation but before the ghetto was established at the relatively late date of 1941. Chapter 2 follows the Jewish community into the new ghetto by highlighting the extreme dislocations experienced by children who lost any remaining access to the spaces of their former lives. In the third chapter, Sliwa uncovers various sites of Jewish children's agency as seen in what she calls "clandestine activities" such as engaging in smuggling and black market trade, sneaking in and out of the ghetto, and taking on adult work assignments. Chapter 4 shifts the focus away from children themselves toward the relief efforts aimed at them by adults inside and outside the ghetto, who tried to preserve some remnants of childhood education, entertainment, and play under dire circumstances. Though there were not supposed to be any children in the Plaszow work camp adjacent to Kraków, chapter 5 documents their presence in a place that also served as a concentration camp and killing site. Chapter 6 examines the experiences of hidden Jewish children who either never went into the ghetto or stayed only briefly before going into hiding. Finally, in the epilogue, Sliwa traces the postwar experiences of Jewish children in Kraków who somehow had to find a way to rebuild their lives, both literally and metaphorically, despite the devastation and a persistent anti-Semitism that made it nearly impossible for most of them, with or without their families, to stay. Jewish Childhood in Kraków is a slim volume but one that deals with some of the basic questions of the history of childhood. For one, who counts as a child? Age was a major factor in children's Holocaust experiences. As an example, it was often easier to hide infants and toddlers outside the ghetto, but some of those children were then lost to the Jewish community if they grew up not knowing who they were and no family survived to come back for them. The Germans classified fourteen-year-olds as adults old enough to work. This put [End Page 318] an enormous physical strain on young bodies but also resulted in a (limited) sort of protection for those deemed useful. Many Jewish children lied about their ages and presented themselves as older than they were in an effort to avoid seeming immediately expendable. This was particularly important in Plaszow, given that no children were allowed in the camp. Another central issue to the history of childhood is the intersection of age with class...

Heroism, Silence, and Erasure: Jewish Children in Holocaust Cinema

ABSTRACT: The stories of the many Jewish youngsters who actively resisted Germany and its collaborators are virtually absent in Holocaust cinematic representations of children. Such erasures stem from two main sources. First, political efforts to discount Jewish heroism in the Holocaust, and second, such representations are increasingly considered incompatible with culturally acceptable notions of youth that privilege narratives of childhood innocence and vulnerability. Numerous feature films, shorts, and documentaries employ the theme of silence to describe suffering and/or murder of victims, persistence of post-Holocaust trauma, intergenerational transmission of trauma, and coverup and suppression of atrocities and crimes. But the silences addressed in this article are not those surrounding the murdered victims, they are rather the silences surrounding Jewish resistance, especially by child resisters. The omissions and distortions of the Jewish contribution to Holocaust resistance seem to violate the most minimal standards of representation. Because of the popularity of historical films, the erasure of a Jewish child's identity can have an outsized effect on audiences' understanding of the Holocaust. Because of their mass appeal, films become almost a consensual version of history itself. Further, the false inventions discussed in this paper exacerbate this phenomenon specifically by erasing the contributions and perils of Jewish children during World War II. In a world where the very existence of the Holocaust is sometimes called into question, the importance of these erasures cannot be understated.

Unheard voices of children on child abuse and neglect

Child abuse and neglect is a serious public health problem affecting millions of children around the world. Over the years enormous efforts have been made globally to define this phenomenon, but those efforts have been based solely on adults‘ perspectives and knowledge. Children have been excluded from the discourse. This article addresses this gap in the scientific knowledge by examining children's own views on child abuse and neglect, taking into account differences in ethnic group, gender, age and level or religiosity. The study included 1,475 Jewish and Arab children in Israel aged 9–13 years. They were asked to assign degree of severity to each of 34 items describing abusive behaviors against children.. Arab and Jewish children differed in the severity they assigned to different kinds of abusive behaviors: Arab children perceived neglect as more severe than Jewish children, whereas Jewish respondents perceived physical and emotional abuse as more severe than Arab children. While no differences were found with regard to level of religiosity, some variance was found with respect to gender and age/grade level.

Geographies of immigration: Samuel Rawet's Rio De Janeiro and Moacyr Scliar's Porto Alegre

ABSTRACT The work of Moacyr Scliar and that of Samuel Rawet have at least one aspect in common. Scliar, born in Porto Alegre and the son of immigrants, and Rawet, born in Poland but no less “carioca,” dedicated to their cities – hometown or host – a prominent role, giving them, in their writings, almost the position of characters. Scliar's A guerra no Bom Fim and O exército de um homem só, and Rawet's “Reinvenção de Lázaro” and “Madrugada seca,” are eloquent examples of this protagonism. Other authors of Jewish ehtnic origin, immigrants or children of immigrants, such as Ronaldo Wrobel in Traduzindo Hannah and Eliezer Levin in Bom Retiro, followed this path. This article seeks to deepen the analysis of the relationship of the chosen authors with their cities of residence, trying to follow the geographical displacements of Jews who immigrated, notably from Eastern Europe, and their concentration in specific neighbourhoods.

Des colonies de vacances juives au service de la régénération physique : l’exemple de la Colonie scolaire (1927-1939)

As early as 1927, the directors of the association &#8220;La Colonie Scolaire&#8221;, of Zionist sensibility, organized vacation camps in Berck-sur-Mer for needy Jewish children. Hygienism and eugenics, in vogue in French society during the interwar period, were the main objectives of these camps, which were also oriented towards the transmission of Jewish culture. Physical activities and collective games in the open air, accompanied by abundant food and regular medical care, were used to form a healthy generation that was aware of its origins.

Apartheid’s paradox: Impossible borders, unspeakable intimacies

Johannesburg, 1956. A photograph of a bench marked ‘Europeans Only’, a woman is seen with a child who is in her care, but beside whom she is forbidden to sit. The bench forms a hard border between them, transgressed by a tender gesture. In a meditation on this image, weaving together a number of theoretical threads, I reflect on the maniacal proliferation of ‘borders’ and boundaries under apartheid, and on their impossibility. This approach, using specific psychoanalytic concepts to address the complex intersection between the unconscious and the social world, opens up a space in which to begin to explore the habitually unspoken, troubled intimacy between such a woman and such a child; and, in alluding to my own experience as a Jewish child in South Africa at that time, contributes to the unsettling of notions of racial fixity.

In the Shadow of Babyn Yar: Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Eyewitness Account of the Betrayal and Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in Kyiv

Abstract The article explores the motivation for betrayal and rescue of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv. Unfortunately, significantly more gentiles betrayed Jews during the occupation of the city than rescued them. The motivations for betrayal varied: traditional anti-Semitism reinforced by Nazi propaganda, some gentiles desired to enrich themselves on the account of Jewish property, to occupy Jewish apartments and to demonstrate their loyalty to the Nazis. Betrayal of Jews was encouraged and rewarded by the Nazis, while rescue of Jews put under mortal risk the gentiles who helped them. Only a few hundred Jews survived in Kyiv during the occupation. Some of them lived under bogus identities, which listed their nationality as Russians or Ukrainians. Others were hidden by their friends, neighbors and gentile spouses. In several cases Jewish children were adopted by gentile families. The article is based on scholarly and memoir literature, and archival materials. Anatoly Kuznetsov provided the most complete eyewitness account of the Nazi occupation of Kyiv and the Babyn Yar massacre in his book Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, which is one of the main sources for the article.

Arab and Jewish mothers’ decisions regarding treatment of their children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A qualitative study

The use of medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) differs globally. Stimulant prescriptions for ADHD among Israeli Jewish children are four times higher than among Arab children. This qualitative study aimed to identify mothers and teachers’ attitudes regarding ADHD and what affects mothers’ decisions on whether to medicate their child diagnosed with ADHD. In-depth interviews were conducted with 23 Arab and Jewish mothers of children diagnosed with ADHD and 12 elementary school teachers. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Four themes were revealed, describing different perceptions of ADHD in the two ethnic groups: (1) medicalization of ADHD; (2) between guilt and sympathy: Mothers’ feelings toward ADHD; (3) social pressure and social norms; (4) stigmatization: Jewish mothers and teachers tended to perceive ADHD as a medical problem, whereas Arab mothers and teachers perceived it more as a childhood social behavior. Arab mothers reported guilt feelings relating to ADHD, whereas Jewish mothers felt sympathy toward their child. The social environment influenced Arab mothers more than Jewish mothers. Stigmatization was reported only by Arab mothers. Ethnic differences in ADHD perception may explain the differences in diagnosis and treatment. Educators and school psychologists should consider cultural factors when advising parents and planning educational programs for children with ADHD.

Reading Friedländer in Auschwitz

ABSTRACT Internationally acclaimed artist, Michal Rovner, writes about her works on the Holocaust and the influence of Saul Friedländer’s book The Years of Extermination on her work. Rovner’s Living Landscape is the opening exhibit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, and it deals with the subject of the Jewish world that was lost. Rovner was faced with massive amounts of documentation, and she conveys her challenge to connect fragments of these materials into one coherent piece that represents the different dimensions of Jewish life, both religious and secular, and how it was spread over a vast physical geographical space, a world that is hard to comprehend. From this vantage point, Rovner looks at the immense challenges of the historian Saul Friedländer, standing in front of an overwhelming, seemingly impossible mission, trying to cover and document the years of war and extermination, being brave enough to face the horrors, the almost blinding subject, and forming the most important road map for humanity. Rovner’s acknowledgment of Friedländer’s significant decision to give weight and presence to the experience and voice of the individual is emphasized here. Rovner goes on to describe how Friedländer’s book The Years of Extermination accompanied her and drew her even deeper into the subject of the Holocaust while she was creating Traces of Life, an installation in Auschwitz dedicated to the Jewish children murdered in the Shoah.

Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire by Emily Baughan

Reviewed by: Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire by Emily Baughan Aisling Shalvey Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire. By Emily Baughan. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. xii + 300 pp. Cloth $85.00, paper $24.99, e-book $24.95. This book was a joy to read, each of the six chapters evoking a different era in the history of humanitarian work with children. It begins with the foundations of the Save the Children humanitarian aid organization in 1919 in Britain, when aid work was a status symbol of the social elite. Baughan does not remain focused on the European situation, though; she emphasizes the link between the expansion of humanitarian aid for children, neocolonialism, and imperialism involved in the Save the Children campaigns. The author artfully combines previously under-used archival sources with a well-informed and carefully articulated criticism of these sources, seeing beyond the dominant narrative and highlighting the injustices committed under the guardianship of the Save the Children organization. This book begins with the origins of British humanitarian efforts in upper-class circles, moving on to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1924. In the third chapter, Baughan explains the expansion of Save the Children to the British Empire in Africa and Asia, then goes on to describe the organization's role in protecting children during the war, along with the transition to a postwar humanitarian environment without the support of the League of Nations, and then finally, the move to humanitarianism in a decolonized world. [End Page 164] Baughan critically explains the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and how it was constructed in an idealistic manner, noting that in practice it expected nation-states to protect these rights for its citizens, while those who did not ethnically or racially "fit" were left without protection (72–75). She also notes that Save the Children did not renounce its policy of family separation from prior to 1945 but in fact leaned into it, despite the psychoanalytic theory that underpinned most postwar aid, emphasizing that it was family structure and emotional attachment that improved child welfare. The terminology used by Save the Children did begin to shift, though. While they did not change their methods, they began to highlight juvenile delinquency and the removal of children from negative influences. Baughan intelligently notes that "the funds success in the postwar years did not lie in its innovation or adoption of new child rearing methods, but its ability to repackage and rebrand its existing work and prejudices in line with the concerns of the era" in relation to making juvenile delinquent reformatories sound like British public school, so that fundraisers could make this repackaged system of family separation sound appealing to their upper-class council members (149). Beginning with a description of the eugenicist and classist apolitical ideas of the Save the Children organization, this book goes on to explain the central role of this organization in using exploitative images of naked, starving children in marketing and the view of children not as individuals but as a product for later economic growth. One example of the organization ignoring glaring inequalities, while simultaneously claiming to be at the center of child welfare, was the 1942 visit of Gregory Thelin (president of the International Union of Save the Children) to Berlin to investigate German child welfare during World War II. He noted that their well-being generally seemed excellent, and while he had not come across any Jewish children, and he did not see this absence as a problem (133). Baughan then notes that while the Save the Children organization was predicated on an apolitical mission statement, thus refusing to criticize fascist governments of the time, not all organizations held such beliefs—for example, the Peace Pledge Union (134). The book addresses the involvement of humanitarian aid by Save the Children in the postwar era as a bid to retain colonial influence in the rapidly decolonizing continent of Africa. This resulted in imprisonment of children, as well as colonial violence, being used as opportunities to create loyal British subjects by an organization that claimed to protect the welfare of the child. She explains...

Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context by Golan Moskowitz (review)

Reviewed by: Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context by Golan Moskowitz Dainy Bernstein (bio) Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context, by Golan Moskowitz. Stanford UP, 2021. In Wild Visionary, Golan Moskowitz reads Maurice Sendak's works through the Jewish and queer identities of the celebrated children's [End Page 224] author, making a convincing argument for these identities as essential to understanding Sendak's body of work. The book is organized both chronologically and thematically. Each chapter provides a comprehensive overview of one stage of Sendak's life, drawing from a variety of sources to piece together the narrative of the author's life. Since Sendak ordered all his papers destroyed upon his death, Moskowitz relies on newspaper and magazine profiles, published interviews, letters from Sendak surviving in the collections of those he wrote to, and interviews with those who knew Sendak. In addition to Sendak's personal life, each chapter delves into the social and cultural landscapes of the era, providing rich context within which Sendak's work can be understood. Throughout the book, Moskowitz traces queer history, American Jewish history, and the development of American children's literature. The first chapter, narrating Sendak's parents' histories as well as his own childhood, analyzes the effects of growing up in interwar Jewish Brooklyn on the author and artist's work. The chapter discusses the shifting models of childhood in early-twentieth-century America, as well as the shifting models of childhood in European Jewish culture, both of which provided the context for Sendak's upbringing as the child of European Jewish immigrants. The structure of the family and the child's sense of home and safety were affected as the American government and culture attempted to "loosen parent-child bonds in order to cultivate pliable citizens and consumers" (28), and Sendak's parents, like many immigrants, put their hopes for American success on their children. At the same time, relatives newly immigrating to America arrived and kept "Old World" Jewish sensibilities alive in the Sendak household. Moskowitz traces the effects of all these factors on Sendak's work, particularly his grappling with parental figures. The second chapter opens with Sendak's bar mitzvah at age thirteen against the backdrop of the Holocaust in Europe and his parents' worry over relatives and old friends as news of deaths came through via Jewish organizations. In many American Jewish homes, the specter of dead relatives affected the way family was perceived, and children were often viewed as both the continuation of a lost line and a reminder of all those children who did not survive. Moskowitz describes Sendak's tumultuous adolescence and his reconceptualization of the family unit. As his parents mourned dead relatives, their children were put into the position of comforting them, and Sendak's relationship with his brother and sister deepened to near-inappropriate levels. With his queerness becoming undeniable during this same period, Sendak's [End Page 225] ability to understand himself, platonic affection, and romantic affection became troubled. Later in life, Sendak would apologize "for his inability to understand boundaries between himself and those with whom he formed close relationships" (91). Moskowitz draws connections between this period of Sendak's life and his portrayal of sexualized parent-child and sibling relationships. The third chapter follows Sendak from Brooklyn to Manhattan as he begins his adult life and his career as an illustrator. Moskowitz begins with a deep dive into the postwar explosion of American children's literature and the vibrant culture of Jewish children's periodicals, contexts which shaped Sendak's early interaction with the world of publishing, especially as a Jewish artist illustrating Jewish children's books. Sendak became part of the queer Manhattan community, and his sphere grew to include both Jewish and queer friends and mentors who encouraged him to be more confident and embrace his own voice. Layering onto the previous chapters' discussions of Sendak's views of childhood emotion and parent-child relationships, Moskowitz argues here that "[t]hrough a focus on early childhood and his own coming of age, Sendak's creative vision increasingly blared and demanded dignity for queer truths that he could not always speak...

Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation [Catholic Aid to Jews under the Occupation] by Limore Yagil

Reviewed by: Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation [Catholic Aid to Jews under the Occupation] by Limore Yagil Rebecca Moore Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation [Catholic Aid to Jews under the Occupation]. By Limore Yagil. (Montrouge: Bayard. 2022. Pp. 359. €21.90. ISBN: 9782750914448). French-Israeli historian Limore Yagil is well-equipped to write about how Catholic Christians under the Occupation helped Jews living in France. The author of at least eight books about World War II, she has examined Christian resistance to Nazism, both Catholic and Protestant, in numerous venues. The present volume concentrates specifically on Catholic efforts undertaken in France. Examinations by other authors have highlighted Protestant endeavors, so Yagil’s focus on Catholic interventions is a welcome addition to the literature about righteous gentiles—those non-Jews who came to the aid of Jews during World War II. Yagil begins by noting the paradox of Jewish survival in France compared to other European nations. Although almost a quarter of the Jews in France—especially foreign-born Jewish refugees—were deported to death camps, an astounding 75 percent survived. This is in contrast to neighboring countries like the Netherlands (with 80 percent deported) and Belgium (with 45 percent deported). Although part of the explanation may lie in France’s topography and politics, a large part of Jewish survival according to the author was due to the efforts of bishops, priests, seminarians, men and women religious, and lay Catholics. An important distinction that Yagil makes throughout the book is between public pronouncements condemning anti-Jewish laws, internment camps, and deportations, and the secret—and more important in her view—actions that occurred in church sanctuaries, behind convent and monastery walls, and with church approval. These covert undertakings required formal church involvement, such as issuing baptismal certificates, work permits, enrollment documents, identity cards, and travel authorizations. While the creation of paperwork may appear trivial, these documents were required for employment, education, travel, and obtaining basic necessities under the Nazi Occupation. Other activities, which frequently required church oversight and funding, included offering housing, providing schooling, hiding refugees, and, on occasion, smuggling Jews out of the country. The heart and soul of the book comprises seven chapters that recount the actions of each and every diocese before and during the war. This is a monumental body of research, which Yagil obtained by scouring diocesan records, ledgers, letters, [End Page 215] speeches, and other documents. She begins in the south of France, on the border with Spain along the Pyrenees. This was the most dangerous location for rescue given the fact that most of the French internment camps were located here, and the Gestapo patrolled the border for those in flight. Networks of clerics, religious, and lay Catholics, working with Jews, Protestants, and Communists, ran large and small operations. She concludes with consideration of the diocese of Paris and dioceses in the west. Yagil discusses the question of conversion, especially of Jewish children, throughout the book and asserts that ecclesiastical leadership strongly condemned conversionary efforts. The historian could find no directive to convert in any of the archives she examined, and takes pains to reiterate the claim that a false baptismal certificate was not considered a conversion. She states that no more than forty or fifty children were converted, out of 10,500 rescued. Like the issue of baptism and conversion, the question of Pope Pius XII’s role during World War II is also addressed. According to Yagil, the pontiff provided financial help and tacit support to the dioceses of France. The pope’s silence, she writes, “hides concretely the many discreet initiatives of rescue and mutual aid” that occurred in Italy, other European countries, and in particular, France (p. 333). The great strength of Des catholiques au secours des Juifs sous l’Occupation, however, is its detailed presentation of the actions of ordinary, and extraordinary, Catholics in every diocese in France. Limore Yagil relates countless stories of heroism, based on meticulous research. One comes away from this book with deep appreciation for the leadership shown at all levels of the Church. It is to be hoped, therefore, that an English translation of this valuable...

Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe ed. by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood

Reviewed by: Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe ed. by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood Loretta Dolan Childhood, Youth and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Tali Berner and Lucy Underwood. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. xiii + 362 pp. Cloth $149.99, paper $149.99, e-book $109.00. This volume assembles eleven chapters that examine religious division and conflict as experienced by children and young people in early modern Europe. The extensive chronological coverage of the book starts in the 1420s and continues to 1800. This length of time is deemed necessary by the editors, who suggest that such an expanse is useful for highlighting continuity and change across the centuries. The eleven chapters are divided into three sections, although recurring themes of religious conflict are evident throughout the book. The first section focuses on how beliefs about childhood affected the religious ceremonies and rights of children as well as the lived religious experiences of children within minority communities. Tali Berner identifies the roles of children in important Jewish religious rituals, such as Passover preparations. Tali argues that these rituals were reserved specifically for children and highlight the place of religious education in the home. Anna French considers baptism in post-Reformation England. Key to French's discussion is the intersection of Protestant and Puritan beliefs on babies, childhood, and women regarding the act of baptism. A particular concern of the "Godly" puritans was the practice of emergency baptism by women, usually midwives. "Morally slippery" women were permitted by the Church of England to "deliver salvation to dying infants" (95). Children's agency can also be seen in this section, particularly in Naomi Pullin's discussion of the early Quaker household. Despite physical and mental persecution, children continued with meetings during their parents' imprisonment. Agency can also be seen to a lesser degree in Mary Clare Martin's chapter on children's denominational identity in the long eighteenth century. [End Page 162] Religious plurality is key here, with many children exposed to a number of religions throughout their childhood. The plight of persecuted families and their reaction to such persecution is discussed in the second section. As Lucy Underwood argues in her chapter, persecution shapes religious identity. In addition, the persecution can be observed in families through the recollections of earlier generations, as well as "unofficial persecution" by name calling (239). Both Susan Broomhall and Fiona McCall examine family separation, Broomhall through religious affinity and McCall through political loyalty in clerical families. Both authors emphasize the fragmentation of nuclear families and the challenge to paternal authority that occurred through children living without parents or in households other than their own. The final section considers how religious conflict and conversion directly impacted children's upbringing. Joel Harrington points out that in interfaith marriages, it was not uncommon for the boys to be baptized in the religion of their father and girls in the religion of their mother. Baptisms could be "amicable ecumenical moments" with godparents from different faiths (265). Conflict arose when children were placed with family or friends due to the death of parents and brought up in the religion of that household. This is a phenomenon discussed by Jesse Sadler, although her subjects appear to willingly adopt their new religion, unlike Harrington's, who were forced to accept religious conversion. Ahuva Liberles notes that forced conversion had grave consequences for inheritance rights. Converted Jewish children denied their inheritance would never return to the Jewish faith. Not all conversions were forced, as highlighted by Bernard Capp, but adolescents moving away from their childhood religion did lead to a challenge of parental authority. One of the strengths of this book is the variety of the sources used, which allows for a greater insight into how the religious upheaval of early modern Europe affected children across different religions. Berner, for example, examines a series of images intended for Yiddish books of customs known as Minhagim, which clearly demonstrate the importance of children in religious ceremonies. Additionally, letters such as those used by Broomhall convey not only the emotional cost of forced separation for religious minorities, but also the practical considerations of child-rearing. What could be more...

Self-Portrait with Parents and Footnotes: In and Out of a Postwar Jewish Childhood by Annette Aronowicz (review)

Reviewed by: Self-Portrait with Parents and Footnotes: In and Out of a Postwar Jewish Childhood by Annette Aronowicz L. Scott Lerner Annette Aronowicz, Self-Portrait with Parents and Footnotes: In and Out of a Postwar Jewish Childhood. Boston: Cherry Orchard Books/Academic Studies Press, 2021. 152 pp. 17 b&w photos. Hardcover $119. Paperback $22.95. ISBN: 1644696207, 978–1644696200, 9781644696217, 978–1644696217 Annette Aronowicz, a scholar in the field of Jewish and Religious Studies, has written an exquisitely original memoir, a book that invites and inspires our questions rather than delivering pronouncements or giving conventional answers. The text is divided into two sections, a narrative account of the first sixteen years of her life, followed by “a series of meditations on the engagements and puzzlements that stemmed from that period, in the light of the moment in which I am writing.” The latter are organized under the headings: “Communism,” “Jewish,” “Mental Illness,” “Money,” “Russian Friendships,” and “Theological Fragments.” Missing from this synopsis are her parents, yet they appear in her title and loom so large that there would be no book without them. Their absence in her synopsis of the book may evoke the concept of what is missing, along with its counterpart, what is inherited, both of which course through these pages as essential themes. A great deal of Aronowicz’s Self-Portrait calls to mind another book about Paris, the War, and the deportation: Georges Perec’s W, or the Memory of Childhood (Paris, 1975). Both Aronowicz and Perec write from the perspective of the French-speaking child of Polish Jews. Like W, which moves between two distinct realms, autobiographical and fictional, in alternating chapters and contrasting type, Aronowicz’s memoir may best be read with attention to the movement, as she calls it, not only between the narrative of her formative [End Page 261] years and the thematic chapters that follow, but also between Parents and Footnotes. The latter designates the many intertexts, the books and ideas of her intellectual life (Charles Péguy, Romain Gary, Sarah Kofman, Emmanuel Levinas, Blaise Pascal, I. B. Singer, and others), while the former refers to the voices that are lost in this intellectual mode and that she revives through the act of writing-remembering. Neither realm can stand of its own accord. The “footnotes” help her read the stories inherited from her parents, while the parents ground the intellectual discourses, opening a space for subjectivity and voice as a complement to analysis. Why is this necessary? Because, as she illustrates time and again, truth and theology, the transcendent, the human, reside in the density of the bonds formed with other human beings, the bonds formed in primis with one’s parents. Near the heart of the memoir lies the story of faithfulness and betrayal in the search for one’s parents and for oneself. Aronowicz summarizes the soul-wrenching story of Sarah Kofman, who, as a Jewish girl in hiding in Paris during the Occupation, was “saved” by a Christian woman (Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, 1996). Kofman struggled tragically with questions of faithfulness and betrayal in relation to her mother, as well as her father, whose pen she inherited and whose legacy she was determined to live up to by writing. Like Kofman, Aronowicz wrestles with her father’s faithfulness, in this case, to a Communist ideal, and with her own faithfulness to the lone adjective that stands as a chapter title, “Jewish.” She reflects on her father’s likely infidelity to her mother, describing the resentment she felt toward her mother for corralling her, as a child, into becoming an instrument to punish her father. Her mother, who spoke to her of the death camps at a tender age, never intentionally broached with her the question of her father’s infidelity. Aronowicz turns the question round and round, addressing it no more directly than she receives, and writing about it from an emotional and intellectual distance. Then something happens. A key character in the story turns out to be her parents’ friend Boris, whom she visits as a young woman. When she recounts his role, her story unfolds, much as in her reading of Singer’s “A...

Jewish Identity and American Acceptance: Welcoming a Firstborn Son in Two Classic Children's Books

Jewish-American-themed children’s fiction often includes descriptions of ritual observance. Yet, although ritual circumcision (brit milah, or bris) is a requirement in halacha (Jewish religious law) for all newborn males, this event is virtually absent from Jewish children’s books; the incorporation of a surgical procedure would create obvious narrative difficulties. Sydney Taylor and Sadie Rose Weilerstein, two of the most important twentieth century Jewish-American children’s authors, each wrote a series of books including a newborn son. Instead of a bris, they both included the less common, nonsurgical ritual of pidyon ha-ben. Thus, they eluded a problematic description, while informing readers about a lesser-known Jewish practice.

Pogroms in Kraków in 1918 and 1945: Historical analysis

AbstractWhat can a temporal comparison of two pogroms in the same city in the wake of two vastly different military conflicts reveal about context and function of anti‐Jewish violence? What can it tell us about historical continuity and change? These questions frame the history below which focuses on two pogroms in the city of Kraków on April 16, 1918, and August 11, 1945. This article argues that in both cases perpetrators perceived the state as failing to meet their basic economic, national, and moral expectations after the wars which left political and social chaos, economic ruin, and dismal law and order. To address the state's failings and restore the “moral balance,” the perpetrators targeted the Jews whom they perceived as the state's beneficiaries. After the Second World War, the violence only intensified when the medieval myth of ritual murder reemerged, and Jewish women and children became the targets of aggression. This change can only be explained by the specific context of WWII when redemptive antisemitism of Nazi propaganda and the daily practice of genocide stripped Jews of the remains of their humanity thus marking them as the ultimate threat to Polish survival.

Jewish Religious Schools in Sarajevo until 1941: The Sephardic Yeshiva of Sarajevo (La Yeshiva De Saray) and the Jewish Secondary Theological Seminary in Sarajevo (El Seminario Rabbiniko Saraylisko)

In Sarajevo, since the formation of the Jewish religious community, the religious education of children has developed simultaneously. First, four-grade elementary schools, where mostly male children went, came forward. Later in the 17th century, Talmud-Torah secondary school was developed, while Yeshiva was only formed in the second half of the 18th century. Until the establishment of the Belgrade Yeshiva by Rav Yehuda Lerma in 5395 (1635) and the Sarajevo Yeshiva by Rav David Pardo in 5528 (1768), there were no rabbinical schools in the territories of the Western Balkans and neither rabbis. In the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, there was a need for qualified personnel for the religious education of Jewish children and youth according to general laws, in lower and secondary schools. On June 13, 1928, the Jewish Secondary Theological Seminary was opened, which began operating on November 25, 1928. The Seminary operated until 1941, when it was closed on April 6 by Nazzi Germans. The paper aims to present the development of Jewish religious education from the arrival of Sephardim to Sarajevo in the 16th century until 1941. To show the importance of the development of rabbinic and Talmudic studies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the reputation of Sarajevo's Jewish religious schools in Europe and the world.