Jewish Diaspora Communities Research Articles

Genocide in Esther: A response to a recent attempt to defend Haman

A 2021 article in HTS Teologiese Studies advances the thesis that in the book of Esther ‘lawlessness by the Jewish diaspora community triggered genocide in the Persian Empire’ and that ‘Jews provoked the Persian authorities by disobeying the laws of the land’. Much of that article is devoted to a defense of Haman in responding to what the author portrays as the ‘lawlessness’ of the Jewish diaspora community. This article offers a three-fold response: (1) a critical analysis of both Haman and his accusation of ‘lawlessness’ against the Jewish diaspora minority, along with that article’s affirmation of that lawlessness; (2) a critique of that article’s accusation of ‘genocide’ against the Jewish diaspora community along with a discussion of the alleged violent vengeance of that same community vis-à-vis Esther 8–9; (3) a warning that the attempted vindication of Haman is nothing new, but possesses a disturbing Wirkungsgeschichte.

Uncovering Names and Connections: The “Polish Jew” Periodical as a Second-Tier Record for Holocaust Remembrance and Network Analysis in Jewish Genealogy

This paper explores the Polish Jew journal as a pivotal second-tier record for advancing Holocaust studies and Jewish genealogy. Traditionally underutilized in academic research, this periodical provides a unique repository of names and narratives of Holocaust victims, filling crucial gaps in primary record collections. The investigation centers on the journal’s potential not only to contribute names to existing databases of Holocaust victims—many of whom are still unrecorded—but also to enhance genealogical methods through the integration of network analysis. By examining Polish Jew, this study illustrates how second-tier records can extend beyond mere supplements to primary data, acting instead as vital tools for reconstructing complex social and familial networks disrupted by the Holocaust. The paper proposes a methodological framework combining traditional genealogical research with modern network analysis techniques to deepen our understanding of Jewish community dynamics during and after World War II. This approach not only aids in identifying individual victims and survivors but also in visualizing the broader interactions within Jewish diaspora communities. This research underscores the significance of Polish Jew in the broader context of Holocaust remembrance. It offers a novel pathway for the future of Jewish genealogical research, advocating for the strategic use of second-tier records in scholarly investigations.

The evolution of home‐state positions towards diaspora formation: Israel and its two diasporas

AbstractHow do home‐state elites react to emigrants who form diaspora communities abroad, and how do these attitudes change over time? The article explores these questions through an analysis of the discourse and policies of Israeli elites towards emigrants who created distinct diaspora communities and established ties with local Jewish diaspora communities between 1977 and 2023. The article highlights the important role that ethnic and national identities and the prospects of emigrants’ eventual return play in such attitudinal shifts. The home state may initially see diaspora formation as harmful for precipitating emigration and obstructing repatriation and ethnic immigration. However, when it becomes clear that the return of many emigrants is unlikely, home‐state elites may come to support and even promote the formation of new diaspora communities and their ties with older diaspora communities to offset emigrants’ assimilation into their host society and increase their attachment to the home state.

The Most High God vs. Nabû: A God of Letters, Wisdom, and Fate Who Can(not) Read, Understand, or Foretell

A natural reading of Daniel 5 clearly depicts the Jewish deity as humbling an arrogant pagan king, Belshazzar, through the Judahite sage, Daniel. This article suggests that a second but not mutually exclusive interpretation is possible in light of the story’s Mesopotamian background. According to this reading, the author of Daniel 5 used the traits of Nabû to subvert the well-known Babylonian belief that Nabû was the tutelary deity for the Babylonian kings. By rendering Nabû completely powerless before the Jewish deity, the author exalts the Jewish deity as the Most High God (עליא אלהא‎) who effectively displaces Nabû. It is in this capacity that the Most High God weighs the arrogant pagan king’s deeds and then determines the length of his life. Such a theological message would serve to comfort the intended audience of the pericope, the Jewish diaspora community under pagan rule, and encourage them to faithfully obey their God.

Baghdad Twist

Baghdad Twist

A critical evaluation of causalities of the genocide in Esther 3:8–15: Lawlessness and revolt of the Jewish diaspora community

Rereading of Esther 3:8–15 depicts that lawlessness and revolt on the part of the Jewish diaspora community ignited the genocide in the Persian Empire. The narrative is explicit that Haman was not comfortable with two main issues concerning the Jews: (1) their laws were different from those of every other people and (2) they did not keep the king’s laws. In addition, some Jewish individuals were disrespectful to Persian superiors: Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman. Following Haman’s report, Emperor Xerxes endorsed the proposition of exterminating the Jews as a possible solution. The present study argues against a populist view that puts Haman in a bad light. Existing studies on the genocide narrative in Esther 3:8–15 appear to sympathise with the Jewish diaspora community in Persia in spite of their attitude that portrayed some rebellious tendencies. Examined from a security and defence perspective, Haman’s position should be given its merit because the Jews disobeyed the Persian laws and did not show respect to the Persian authorities. The study employs a narrative approach to argue that the Jewish diaspora community orchestrated the genocide by disobeying the Persian laws. It is further argued that Haman had correctly foreseen it coming and confided with Emperor Xerxes. The study will also discuss Haman as a strategist who speculated a possible Jewish revolt, which was confirmed by the massacre of 75 000 people including Haman’s children (9:1–10). This study will present to the academic readership a new dimension of reading Esther 3:8–15.Contribution: Previous studies variously provided some magnanimity on the book of Esther. The contribution of the present study to the readership and the academic community seeks to suggest a new reading of the book by arguing that the Jews provoked the Persian authorities by disobeying the laws of the land.

Yiddish, Scholarship, and Neoconservatism

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

The role of digital/online resources in the Jewish Diaspora communities

Globalization, in its earlier stages, was expected to erode national and ethnic identities. In contrast, ethnicity and ethnic affiliations persisted, growing socially and politically. This paper examines the role of the globalizing new communications technologies on this process, focusing on Diasporas. The study of trans-state networks based on ethnic solidarity, connections and affinities in the framework of social and political science is quite recent. Following a clarification of the distinction between classical and modern Diasporas we analyse a particular case study, that of the Jewish Diaspora. This diaspora was an early adopter of computer-based communications and the Internet for a wide range of purposes. Early events are described including the diffusion of the Internet to Israel, the planning of a Global Jewish Information Network, Israel 2020 macro scenarios for Israel and the Jewish People and the decision on Jewish Peoplehood through communication technologies. A survey of historical systems (Responsa, BBS, and Usenet) follows by a description of the Jewish population and the wide variety of Jewish Web based activities today. These include the Institutional landscape; Jewish media — press, radio, video and blogs; the impact on Jewish religious observance; Jewish genealogy; Online dating; Social networks; Jewish education; Online learning; Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities; Jewish memory. Judaica Europeana supports the activities previously described by aggregating and facilitating the access and the re-use of Jewish digital culture. Europeana is the leading global digital library for cultural heritage as well as a lively eco-system for relevant stakeholders.

Paulus und die antike jüdische Schriftauslegung

Summary The relation between Paul’s exegesis and that of his Jewish contemporaries still triggers a number of questions today. This contribution first illustrates the form and function of ancient Jewish exegesis, followed by the Pauline reception and application thereof. It can be shown that Paul was familiar with the contemporary methods and patterns of argumentation of Jewish exegesis. He derived his Hellenistic education in the first place from the Hellenic Jewish Diaspora communities in the Second Temple period. Nevertheless, one cannot simply claim that Paul must have received a formal Jewish education. Rather, one has to place him in a broader tendency of ancient Jewish philosophy which exhibits a keen interest both in Hellenistic as well as eschatological questions. Pauline exegesis is not original; yet its premises and results are. It is here where Paul arrives at a radically new interpretation of Torah and the Prophets. He combines early Jewish tradition with Christian appropriation: past, present, and future are approached from the central perspective of Christ’s cross.

Językowa kreacja rodziny żydowskiej w powieści "Meir Ezofowicz" Elizy Orzeszkowej

In her novel, Meir Ezofowicz, the author provides an insight into the social and culturalreality of a Jewish borderland town in the second half of the 19th century. The fourJewish families featured in the novel come from diverse cultural, socio-economic, andreligious backgrounds. The linguistic images created by Orzeszkowa reflect the stereotypicalperception of reality, and, at the same time, condemn all anti-social behaviour,including that observed within the Jewish diaspora community.

Australia and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry: 1961–1972

The plight of Soviet Jewry emerged as a major issue for World Jewry after the Second World War. Both Israel and Jewish Diaspora communities campaigned to give Soviet Jews either freedom of religion or the right to emigrate. The 1960s saw the promotion of the latter, with the slogan “Let My People Go”. Whilst geographically isolated and only being a medium power, the Australian government played a key role, with Australian politicians at times acting against the advice of the public service. The politicians were swayed by idealism, whereas department officials pursued a pragmatic, realist approach, being only concerned with what they saw as Australia's core foreign policy interests.

An Interplay of Loss and Hope: Analyzing Diaspora Consciousness in Arnold Zable’s "Café Scheherazade"

Diaspora is a term often used today to describe practically any population which is considered deterrito - rialised or translational - that is, which has originated in a land other than which it currently resides, and whose social, economic, and political networks cross the borders of nation states or span the globe. However the connotation of goes back in time and is a concept that referred almost exclusively to the experiences of the Jews, invoking their traumatic exile from an historical homeland and dispersal through many lands. The connotation of a situation was thus negative as they were associated with forced displacement, victimisation, alienation and loss. Along with this archetype went a dream of return. Nonetheless, not all forced migration suffered in loss and despair. This paper explores the new age concept of consciousness that according to James Clifford lives loss and hope as a defining tension in Arnold Zable's Cafe Scheherazade. The paper aims to portray the interplay of loss and hope in the lives of Jewish war stricken asylum seekers who, having migrated to Melbourne, a city alien to them, suffer both a longing for the past and a flickering hope of survival within the Jewish diaspora community, preserving the language and culture of their lot. The constant tussle between assimilating oneself within the foreign culture and feelings of dis - placement and haunting memories of the past that refrained one from absorption and acculturation is foregrounded in the research.

P.Duk. inv. 727r: New Evidence for the Meaning and Provenance of the Word Προσήλυτος

While it was common in the nineteenth century to interpret the word προσήλυτος in the LXX as referring to a “foreigner,” “stranger,” or “sojourner” in a place (meanings that cohere well with the contextual sense of the Biblical Hebrew word גר, the term that προσήλυτος consistently renders in the LXX), many scholars in the twentieth century argued for the view that the word was created by Jewish Diaspora communities, or perhaps even by the LXX translators themselves, as a technical term to name Gentiles who came over to (i.e., converted to) Jewish practice and belief. While some today take issue with this latter view, the debate over the provenance and meaning of προσήλυτος continues. This article reviews and assesses this debate. It then examines the presence of the word προσήλυτος in a recently published papyrus that likely dates from the mid to late third century B.C.E.—P.Duk. inv. 727r. This new evidence lends support to the position that the term προσήλυτος was not coined by LXX translators or their wider Jewish community to name the experience of Gentile converts living among them. Rather, the word was probably selected to render the biblical term גר by virtue of the fact that it was already in use in Ptolemaic Egypt to denote a foreigner or sojourner in a region.

The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people

Contemporary Jews comprise an aggregate of ethno-religious communities whose worldwide members identify with each other through various shared religious, historical and cultural traditions. Historical evidence suggests common origins in the Middle East, followed by migrations leading to the establishment of communities of Jews in Europe, Africa and Asia, in what is termed the Jewish Diaspora. This complex demographic history imposes special challenges in attempting to address the genetic structure of the Jewish people. Although many genetic studies have shed light on Jewish origins and on diseases prevalent among Jewish communities, including studies focusing on uniparentally and biparentally inherited markers, genome-wide patterns of variation across the vast geographic span of Jewish Diaspora communities and their respective neighbours have yet to be addressed. Here we use high-density bead arrays to genotype individuals from 14 Jewish Diaspora communities and compare these patterns of genome-wide diversity with those from 69 Old World non-Jewish populations, of which 25 have not previously been reported. These samples were carefully chosen to provide comprehensive comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish populations in the Diaspora, as well as with non-Jewish populations from the Middle East and north Africa. Principal component and structure-like analyses identify previously unrecognized genetic substructure within the Middle East. Most Jewish samples form a remarkably tight subcluster that overlies Druze and Cypriot samples but not samples from other Levantine populations or paired Diaspora host populations. In contrast, Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) and Indian Jews (Bene Israel and Cochini) cluster with neighbouring autochthonous populations in Ethiopia and western India, respectively, despite a clear paternal link between the Bene Israel and the Levant. These results cast light on the variegated genetic architecture of the Middle East, and trace the origins of most Jewish Diaspora communities to the Levant.

‘Colony’ and ‘metropolis’ in Philo. Examples of Mimicry and Hybridity in Philo’s writing back from the Empire?

Philo is often read as one who finds his position in general quite well situated in the diaspora, and as one who exhibits a very positive attitude towards the Roman Empire. At the same time, we also know that the Jewish Diaspora communities of Alexandria of his time underwent severe social troubles, and for some time in the late thirties C.E. even suffered from an anti-Jewish pogrom in the city. Two works of Philo in particular deal with these events: the Legatio ad Gaium (Leg.) and the In Fl...

Particularistic Education, Endogamy, and Educational Tourism to Homeland: An Exploratory Multi-dimensional Analysis of Jewish Diaspora Social Indicators

Two new indicators of Jewish identity—market penetration of educational youth tours to Israel and rates of participation in a second tour—are proposed, and considered together with three widely used indicators (endogamy rates, day school enrolment and tourism to Israel) to create a typology of Jewish Diaspora communities. Analysis of the data allows for creation of a three-dimensional typology along three axes: adult tourism to Israel, market penetration of Israel Experience tours, and endogamy. These indicators are useful in differentiating between Jewish populations in various Diaspora countries. Some Diaspora populations (including the large ones in the USA and France) seem to have a small but committed core, while much of the Jewish population is according to these indicators less involved. Other Diaspora populations (such as Mexico and South Africa) have broader participation according to the selected indicators. The Jews of the Former Soviet Union have weak participation according to all the indicators. These results provide a preliminary basis for comparison of Jewish life throughout the Diaspora.

Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. A different set of myths, perhaps even less rooted in the actual varieties of the East European Jewish and immigrant experience, obtains of course in Jewish diaspora communities. For the case of American Jewry's East European myths, see Steven Zipperstein Zipperstein, Steven J. 1999. Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity, Seattle: University of Washington Press. [Google Scholar], Imagining Russian Jewry, chap. 1. In Israel, arguably, such myths have been less total and more consistently disrupted by serious public interest and reflection on the actual, complex history of East European Jewry than their American Jewish counterpart. The most dramatic and lasting exception to this may be attitudes toward the Yiddish language and cultural expression, but even this seems to be changing. Two especially impressive recent examples of this change are the journal Davka: Eretz yidish ve-tarbutah and Shachar Pinsker's series of essays on “Batei kafeh sifrutiim” (literary coffee houses) in Eastern and Central Europe carried serially in the Literature and Culture supplement to Ha'aretz, April–May 2008. 2. Among the senior scholars who have long made such analysis a central part of their research agenda, we might include Israel Bartal, Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Dan Miron, Anita Shapira, and the late Jonathan Frankel. The recent revisionist work of Gur Alroey on the Second Aliyah should also be noted. Alroey Alroey, Gur. 2004. Imigrantim: Ha-hagirah ha-yehudit le-Eretz-Yisrael be-reshit ha-me'ah ha-esrim, Jerusalem: Yad Itzhak Ben-Zvi. (Immigrants: Jewish immigration to Palestine in the early twentieth century) [Google Scholar], Imigrantim. 3. This is paralleled by the larger disembedding of Israel studies from Jewish history; cf. Penslar Penslar, Derek. 2007. “Is Israel a Jewish State?”. In Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective, New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar], “Is Israel a Jewish State?” Here, it should be noted that those scholars who have continued to interrogate the relationship between East European Jewish and Israeli experience have sometimes come to similar conclusions about the primacy of the local. This can be seen in pivotal works like Jonathan Frankel Frankel, Jonathan. 1981. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]'s monographic chapter in Prophecy and Politics on the travails and transformation of Russian socialist-Zionist ideology in Palestine 1904–1914, Anita Shapira Shapira, Anita. 1992. Herev ha-yonah: Ha-tziyonut veha-koah, 1881–1948, Tel Aviv: Am Oved. Translated as Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force. Trans. William Templer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992 [Google Scholar]'s analysis of changing Yishuv attitudes toward the use of force and the inevitability of armed confrontation between Jews and Arabs in Herev ha-yonah (in English, Land and Power), and Dan Miron Miron, Dan. 1987. “Mi-yotzrim u-vonim le-vnei bli bayit”. In (From creators and builders to homeless children). In idem, Im lo tihiyeh Yerushalayim: Masot al ha-sifrut ha-ivrit be-heksher tarbuti-politi, Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad. (If there should be no Jerusalem: Essays on Hebrew literature in cultural-political context) [Google Scholar]'s packed examination of the changing status of the Hebrew writer in relation to Zionist politics in Russia and the Yishuv in “Mi-yotzrim u-vonim li-vnei bli bayit.” 4. This special issue stems from a conference on “East European Jewish Modernity: Legacies, Dialogues, Comparisons,” held on 5–6 June 2006, under the auspices of the Nevzlin Research Program in Contemporary Jewish Civilization at the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, Tel Aviv University. Organized by Anita Shapira, Derek Penslar, Meir Chazan, and myself, the conference brought together specialists in many facets of East European Jewish history with scholars of Jewish history in Palestine and Israel. Four of the five articles that follow grew out of conference presentations; the article by Marcos Silber was written especially for this volume. Other participants included Hamutal Bar-Yosef, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Chana Kronfeld, Olga Litvak, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Scott Ury, Seth Wolitz and myself, with responses provided by Daniel Gutwein, Ezra Mendelsohn, Penslar, and Shapira.

The New Filiopietism, or Toward a New History of Jewish Immigration to America

Pioneered by such mid-twentieth-century historians and social scientists as Rudolf Glanz, Jacob Lestchinsky, Elias Tcherikower, Oscar Handlin, and Moses Rischin, by economists Arcadius Kahan and Simon Kuznets, and memorably enshrined in world of letters by Irving Howe, for over fifty years reexamination of East European Jewish migration to America has developed into a relatively well endowed field. This is only fitting, as it was East European stream that transformed American Jewry from its once modest size of some 250,000 to largest Jewish diaspora community in world, over 5.5 million strong at its peak in second half of twentieth century. historical significance of that transformation remains self-evident, as witness constant output of new studies related to subject. Yet, I am prompted to raise some critical questions about social and his toriographical contexts in which immigration history and Jewish ethnic history have been nurtured over past generation. It is my contention that these contexts have, in main, encouraged emergence of what I will call the new filiopietism—a brand of boosterism akin to earliest endeavors in writing of American Jewish history more than a century ago. following brief analysis represents preliminary foreground of a new study of Jewish immigrant experience that I have undertaken, to be called, The Luftmensch and Laborer: Work, Class and Social Capital in Americanization of Jewish Immigrants (1881-1929). Immigrants generally, and members of minority religious, racial, and cultural descent groups in particular, did elicit a degree of academic attention from turn of century through 1920s,1 but a new

Paradoxes of Homecoming: The Jews and Their Diasporas

Introduction There can be little doubt that the paradigm has firmly entered into the contemporary social-science vocabulary. It influences the ways in which many social scientists, historians, as well as the variety of media specialists, presently conceptualize critical features of the modern world. According to the paradigm, attention is focused upon groups that migrated or were driven from their native land (the homeland), and subsequently found their way to other places (a diaspora) where, over lengthy time periods, they maintained their own distinct communities and dreamed of one-day returning to their Ancient Home. Based upon this formulation-and also propelled to the forefront by globalization, population upheavals, and the pulsating world-wide currents of immigration-a barrage of published research has carved out a new field labeled studies. These studies have focused upon, to cite several examples, Pakistani immigrants in England, Palestinians in Middle Eastern refugee camps and the Gulf States, Jews and Armenians in their respective diasporas, the Black Atlantic that grew out of the brutal slavery suffered by African populations, Turkish immigrants in Germany and other European countries, Indian immigrants in North America, and a great many others.1 As is apparent, a wide range of difference exists between these migrating overseas groups, just as the societies within which they reside are equally different. Nonetheless, the growing number of studies has generally succeeded in showing how diasporic communities retain a certain separation and internal cohesion while at the same time adjusting to their new host society, and also how they maintain interactive contacts and involvement with their real or imagined Now while this conceptualization has succeeded in providing fresh understandings of present-day migrations and their accompanying changes, the paradigm has also been subjected to various criticisms. Much of the critique has centered upon the difficulties encountered in employing a typological approach: Are all of what are labeled diasporas alike, and how can one account for the historically changing relevance or meaning of a homeland?2 Our own critique proceeds in a related, but quite different, direction. The problem is not only that the paradigm is overly general, but more important, that it is much too static and ignores the role nation-state rhetoric plays in defining, as well as constructing, diasporas. As we see it, a basic flaw in the is that it is typically phrased in terms of a single homeland and its diaspora, or, as is often the case, a number of diasporas. Irrespective of the scope or intensity of these relationships, the assumes that the perception and understanding of which place is homeland, and which is diaspora, is always clear and unambiguous. This is what Levy has recently called the solar system model of homeland-diaspora relationships: By this term I refer to the literature that depicts diasporic communities as constructing and cultivating longings for their symbolic center, which is often perceived as the cradle of their innermost being.. .These communities thus perceive themselves as structured symbolically like circulating around their cherished 'mother/father-sun' throughout history (Levy 2005:69).3 This has certainly been the accepted way of thinking, and it underlies much of the research in this field: diasporas are typically conceived to be satellites that maintain an unswerving, positive attraction to their homeland. This formulation has been challenged on at least two counts. First, not only is it simplistic, it also is unable to convincingly interpret the historically changing relationships between homeland-diaspora. For example, with regard to the Jews, the Boyarins argue that the various Jewish diaspora communities only paid lip-service to the dream of Return to Zion, while throughout many centuries they in fact maintained important creative relationships with one another, as well as enjoying a structural position that granted them a moral voice vis-a-vis their surrounding host societies (Boyarin and Boyarin 1993). …

Re-‘Femminising’ Diaspora: Contemporary Jewish Cultural Studies and Post-Zionism

This essay creates a conversation between diaspora theory, the New Jewish Cultural Studies, post-Zionism, and colonialism. In this conversation, I focus on Jonathan Boyarin and Daniel Boyarin's Powers of Diaspora (2002), new thinking about Josephus, the myth of Masada, and rabbinic Judaism in antiquity, and on Ephraim Nimni's collection The Challenge of Post-Zionism (2003). The essay discusses the question of gender in Zionist mythology. It also probes the question of what internal powers diaspora communities, in multicultural societies, should ideally possess; for example, should Jewish diaspora communities around the world possess internal legal powers?