Jewish House Research Articles

Christians in Jewish Houses: The Testimony of the Inquisition in the Duchy of Modena in the Seventeenth Century

This article concentrates on Modenese inquisitorial processi that investigated interactions between Jews and Christians that took place in their domestic premises, especially the more spacious dwellings in country towns and villages where there were no ghettoes. These investigations confirm that inquisitorial vetoes on socializing were blithely ignored, and that Jews and Christians often seemed to have no antipathy for or suspicion of each other. As will be shown, Christians went into Jews’ houses, but Jews seldom appeared to enter those of Christians. The reasons for this are suggested below.

Learning through Listening and Responding: Probing the Potential and Limits of Dialogue in Local and Online Environments

This article explores an age-old form of dialogical learning, havruta, which has been employed by Jews throughout the centuries to study the Torah and the Talmud, and evaluates the experiment of extending havruta from a couple of fellow students (haverim) to an international, multi-religious group reading philosophical texts together, and transferring the learning process from the Jewish house of study (in Hebrew: beit ha-Midrash, in German: Lehrhaus) to an online environment. Methodologically, the experiences from the online havruta are brought into a theory-practice feedback loop and are discussed from various theoretical angles: (1) The first section introduces how havruta was conducted traditionally and how Franz Rosenzweig, who in 1920 founded the Frankfurt Lehrhaus and invited Martin Buber to offer lecture courses, advanced havruta. (2) The second section explains how Rosenzweig’s pedagogical principles as distilled from his writings on education are applied and modified in the above-mentioned contemporary online reading group. (3) The third section draws on Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, Juhani Pallasmaa’s architectural theory and Michel Chion’s film theory in order to investigate the epistemological and pedagogical significance of different modes of listening, asking, and responding, and the role of trust for dialogical learning in local and online learning communities.

Erich Fromm und Das Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus in Frankfurt

This article examines Erich Fromm (1900-1980) within the context of the so-called “renaissance of Jewish religious thought” in Germany during the early 20th century. It is well known that Fromm was a member of the Institute for Social Research, later called the Frankfurt School. The focus of this study, however, is on what has received little attention in research, namely Fromm’s involvement in founding the Freies jüdisches Lehrhaus (the Jewish House of Free Study) in Frankfurt. Fromm participated in the founding of the Lehrhaus as a student and later as a lecturer. During this time, Fromm also wrote his dissertation on Judaism at Heidelberg University. Methodologically, this paper intertwines the historical-biographical axis, which deals with Fromm’s connections to several thinkers: Rabbi Nehemia Nobel, Rabbi Georg Salzberger, Baruch Salman Rabinkow, Franz Rosenzweig, Ernest Simon and others, and the philosophical axis, which focuses on his dissertation, The Jewish Law. The Freies jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt is primarily associated with Franz Rosenzweig and other thinkers who worked there, such as Gershom Scholem, Ernest Simon, Leo Löwenthal and Martin Buber, who wrote Ich und Du during the years he taught there. With the exception of Buber, the Lehrhaus was their first official teaching venue. The Lehrhaus was characterized by its dialogical atmosphere, and symmetrical relationships between teachers and students, which softened some of the rigidity that was the norm at German educational frameworks at the time. This atmosphere continued to influence Fromm in his adult life, in terms of his attitude towards religion, questioning of authority and his understanding of human nature. Finally, it later played a role in his departure from Freudian libido theory. This study presents some key ideas from his dissertation, including his position on religious dogma, particularly concerning the Karaite sect, a subject that he later taught as a lecturer at the Lehrhaus. Fromm’s dissertation expresses his preoccupation with his Jewish identity and his examination of the complex theopolitical reality in which the Jews of Germany found themselves at the beginning of the 20th century, including the debates between Orthodox Jews and reformers, and between Zionists and anti-Zionists. This article supports the claim that Fromm’s position that religious factors play a central role in the historical process, which he held throughout his life, was formed in these early years. The article strengthens the scholarly position that Fromm’s Jewish background is relevant to understanding his thought in general.

Otwieranie żydowskich domów modlitwy – rozstrzygnięcia prawno-administracyjne i pragmatyka urzędnicza w guberni piotrkowskiej (koniec XIX – początek XX wieku)

Opening Jewish Houses of Prayer: Legal and Administrative Arrangements and Clerical Pragmatics in the Piotrków Governorate between the End of the Nineteenth and the Beginning of the Twentieth Centuries The article shows a revision of the religious policy of the administrative authorities of the Piotrków Governorate Government regarding the initiative of opening new Jewish prayer houses. This change of attitude is best illustrated by archival materials, mainly of the Administrative Department of the Piotrków Governorate Government, stored in the State Archive in Łódź. A detailed analysis of historical documents revealed the actual attitude of the tsarist civil authorities to Jews residing in this area. While a relatively tolerant approach to the needs of Jewish communities was observed at the end of the nineteenth century, governorate clerks rigorously blocked their progression at the beginning of the next century. The ways used to legally restrict the opening of new prayer houses and the Jewish administrative struggle with the official interpretation of the Russian Empire law are discussed in the article.

Toward a Common Jewish House in the Body of Christ: A Response to Mark Kinzer's Review of Jewish Church

This article responds to Mark Kinzer's review of my book, Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism. First, I discuss Kinzer on the “accurate reading” of Scripture. I highlight the preconceived opinion underlying Kinzer's exegesis of Acts 21:20–26, which ascribes to Luke the portrayal of Paul as a Torah-observant Jew. Second, I point to the fundamental ambiguity of attempts to present halakhic Torah observance as an ideal to be pursued by all Jewish disciples of Yeshua. Third, I argue that the death of Yeshua has a salvific meaning for the whole people of Israel, even as “the whole people” has a responsibility for Yeshua's death. Through repentance, this collective involvement becomes the doorway to collective salvation, thus justifying the establishment of a Jewish Church. In conclusion, I argue that the adoption of supersessionism by the whole Constantinian Church had to do with the absence of ecclesial dispositions that would have stymied an otherwise ineluctable process of gentilization in the course of the first centuries.

Vera Salomons and the Kotel: reading international Jewish history through a Jewish country house

ABSTRACT Vera Bryce Salomons is best known as the founder of the L. A. Mayer Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem. Drawing on a privately published obituary volume, this article explores her involvement in attempts to buy Waqf property adjacent to the Kotel in the 1920s. The article brings to light a forgotten story with implications for our understanding of the role of British elites in Mandate Palestine. It demonstrates how private archives and unconventional sources can be used to illuminate the role of women in international Jewish history.

Interview with Michael Löwy (CNRS): Russian literature, philosophy and messianism

In the history of the Dostoevsky’s and Tolstoy’s reception in modern philosophical thought, a philosophical tradition of German-Jewish origin has a prominent role. Product of a singular “spiritual synthesis”, as observed by Michael Löwy, the thought of Franz Kafka, George Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and Walter Benjamin has appeared in modern times as the sign of messianic claim for a libertarian, radical, and revolutionary socialism. Bearing in common the experience of not being reconciled with the world and history, this generation of intellectuals from Central Europe had “Jewish messianism” and “German romanticism” as privileged sources of their world-view. The religious concept of redemption and the political notion of libertarian utopia were combined in the trajectory of this German-Jewish intelligentsia that promoted an unprecedented reconfiguration of philosophical thought. It is well-known that the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy traverse the messianic and utopian imagery of this generation of revolutionary intellectuals and, as professor Michael Löwy assertively stated, “the utopian Bloch finds in Dostoevsky elements that legitimize The Principle of Hope: Aliocha Karamazov would be a precursor to the ‘religious kingdom of justice’…”. Such an observation is at the heart of a critical fortune accumulated in the works of Löwy and opens paths of analysis that have yet to be made in relation to the reception of Russian literature in modern Jewish philosophy. Michael Löwy is director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS-Paris) and is one of the most significant and creative intellectuals of today. The Marxist philosopher’s work offers a rare intertwining of socialism and surrealism, and establishes a meticulous approximation between philosophy and literature. The acuity with which Löwy interprets the German-Jewish messianism and romanticism, the tragic negativity and the ethical and human claims brought to light by such a tradition presents us with a revolutionary and libertarian state of being that only has equivalents in the utopian-messianic glimpses we find in the great Russian novels. The concept of “Romantic anti-capitalism”, which made it possible to read the romantic tradition in a revolutionary way, can be interpreted as the fil rouge that connects the world of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to the messianic utopianism of modern Judaism. The reception of Russian literature in the philosophical thought of the 20th century was complex and polyphonic, and the example of Dostoevsky, a thinker who, for Löwy, “is clearly situated on the grounds of the romantic world-view”, becomes significantly emblematic. Although a conservative romanticism has found in the author of The Brothers Karamazov elements that could legitimize the nationalist desire for roots arising from a conservative tradition (Moeller van den Bruck, Goebbels, Heidegger), the utopian-revolutionary interpretation of the Russian writer made by “Jews of German culture” is among the most creative pages of modern philosophy. The set of analyses offered by Michael Löwy on the Jewish and neo-romantic tradition represented by authors such as Kafka, Lukács, Bloch, and Benjamin is an essential material for those who seek to better understand the reception and influence of Russian literature, especially Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, in the philosophical constellation of Judaism in the first half of the 20th century. The elective approximation carried out by the Franco-Brazilian philosopher between the “spiritual culture” expressed in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and the historical condition of Jewish intellectuals in Central Europe appears here as an essential element. An anecdote told by Emmanuel Levinas during an interview with François Poirié reveals that, during the visit of an Israeli from Eastern Europe to his home, the visitor noticed the complete works of Pushkin on the bookshelves and stated: “One immediately sees that we are in a Jewish house”. In the interview we present here and, above all, in the greatness of Michael Löwy’s works, we can find fundamental clues to interpret the spiritual proximity between a Central European Jewish tradition and the great Russian literature. This “attractio electiva”, coming from a neo-romantic Jewish intelligentsia in relation to the theological and utopian residues that are embodied in the works of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (residues that may be essentially Jewish), can be interpreted as the most explosive element of modern philosophical messianism.

Election to boards of Jewish houses of prayer and synagogues in Lithuania in 1927–1940

Election to boards of Jewish houses of prayer and synagogues in Lithuania in 1927–1940

Finding Oxford\u2019s medieval Jewry using organic residue analysis, faunal records and historical documents

Food is often one of the most distinctive expressions of social, religious, cultural or ethnic groups. However, the archaeological identification of specific religious dietary practices, including the Jewish tradition of keeping kosher, associated with ritual food practices and taboos, is very rare. This is arguably one of the oldest known diets across the world and, for an observant Jew, maintaining dietary laws (known as Kashruth) is a fundamental part of everyday life. Recent excavations in the early medieval Oxford Jewish quarter yielded a remarkable assemblage of animal bones, marked by a complete absence of pig specimens and a dominance of kosher (permitted) birds, domestic fowl and goose. To our knowledge, this is the first identification of a Jewish dietary signature in British zooarchaeology, which contrasted markedly with the previous Saxon phase where pig bones were present in quantity and bird bones were barely seen. Lipid residue analysis of pottery from St Aldates showed that vessels from the possible Jewish houses were solely used to process ruminant carcass products, with an avoidance of pig product processing, correlating well with the faunal data. In contrast, lipid analysis of pottery from comparative assemblages from the previous Saxon phase at the site and a contemporaneous site in the city, The Queen’s College, shows that the majority of these vessels appear to have been used to process mixtures of both ruminant and non-ruminant (pig) products. Here, the combination of organic residue analysis, site excavation and animal and fish bone evidence was consistent with the presence of Jewish houses in eleventh- and twelfth-century St Aldates, Oxford, hitherto only suspected through documentary information. This is the first identification of specific religious dietary practices using lipid residue analysis, verifying that, at least 800 years ago, medieval Jewish Oxford communities practised dietary laws known as Kashruth.

The modern country house as a Jewish form: a proposition

ABSTRACTAlthough the vast majority of modern country houses built or refurbished in the long nineteenth century were owned by non-Jews, Jews owned some of the most magnificent. Thus, these dwellings pose the same question that historians have raised about other aspects of diasporic Jewish practices: Was there anything particularly “Jewish,” about country houses owned by Jews? In this essay I propose a hypothesis – that Jewish country houses were the ideal-type of the modern country house. On the one hand, super-elite Jews took their capital, both cultural and real, their family networks, and their long experience interpreting and navigating the often-hostile worlds in which they found themselves and created country houses that were the model of the genre. On the other hand, I argue that Judaism itself mattered as much as the social and economic positioning of Jews produced by discrimination. Uniquely Jewish conceptualizations, and practices, of home, of time, and of space rendered Jews particularly comfortable with the complex interweaving of public and private intrinsic to the country house.

From pastoral to georgic: the Dutch Jewish country house as a rhizome

ABSTRACTScholars often analyze houses’ “Jewishness” vis-à-vis Jewish law and rituals. For Dutch Sephardic Jews during the long eighteenth century, however, identity is better understood using a model of rhizome in which “Jewishness” consists of the deliberate interbraiding of multiple traditions. Jewish identity was inextricable from the cultures in which Jews lived. Jewish homes along the Vecht River near Amsterdam exemplify the rhizome model. They embody the same braided pastoral ideal found in eighteenth-century Dutch Sephardic literature and material culture. As Sephardic Jews relocated to Netherlands Antilles, the rhizome present in country houses shifted, taking into account Jews’ new role as slave owners. Thus while buitenplaatsen along the Vecht embraced the Jewish pastoral ideal of a retreat from mercantile life, landhuizen in Curaçao evoked a georgic ideal that channelled the residents’ gaze not on rivers, gardens, and grottos, but on guard stations, slave huts, and enslaved workers. Leisure became redefined as an ability to watch rather than retreat from labour. Taken together, Dutch Jewish country houses along the Vecht and in Curaçao challenge the notion that Jewish material culture has a “single root system.”

Иудейское культовое строительство Тобольска в XIX в.: опыт источниковедческого исследования

Иудейское культовое строительство Тобольска в XIX в.: опыт источниковедческого исследования

The Paths of Books of Latvian Jews during World War II

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian]
 The aim of the research is to find out the influence of the Nazi regime on preservation of historical book collections, which were established in Jewish societies, schools, religious organizations and private houses in Latvia until the first Soviet occupation (1940/1941). At the beginning, libraries of Jewish associations and other institutions were expropriated by the Soviet power, which started the elimination of Jewish books and periodicals published in the independent Republic of Latvia. The massive destruction of Jewish literature collections was carried out by Nazi occupation authorities (1941-1944/45), proclaiming Jews and Judaism as their main “enemies”. However, digitized archives of Nazi organizations (mainly documents of the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) shows that a small part of the Latvian Jewish book collections was preserved for research purposes and after the Second World War scattered in different countries. Analysis of archival documents will clarify the Nazi strategy for Latvian Jewish book collections. It will be determined which book values survived the war and what their further fate in the second half of the 1940s was.

“The Path that Leads to the One God, Must be walked in Part Without God”

In her well-known review of The Star of Redemption, poet, cultural critic, and philosopher Margarete Susman characterizes Rosenzweig’s project as theology that has “gone beyond the zenith of atheism” and articulates her view of this unique piece of work as the crowning achievement of the philosophical project of that time. But Susman’s assessment also addresses another issue of great significance: the fact that the atheism addressed by Rosenzweig’s book is the atheism of Goethe, and that the redemption that lies beyond this atheism becomes clear and gains voice only in light of the words of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust, as we will see below. Susman’s assessment is consistent with Rosenzweig’s letter to Ehrenburg and identifies contending with atheism as a fundamental element of understanding The Star of Redemption. This article seeks a better understanding of Rosenzweig’s book based on Susman’s work. It also offers greater insight into Goethe’s significant role in the book and, in doing so, provides readers with a unique key for navigating the book that can also help understand the change in conception proposed by Rosenzweig in his Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus Lehrhaus (Free Jewish House of Learning). In this context, the word “free” has meaning on more than one level and can be understood as applying to both the House of Learning as an independent institution and to the freedom of human consciousness. This article is based largely on Susman’s review article on The Star of Redemption and her essay marking the celebratory publication of another installment of Rosenzweig and Buber’s German translation of the Bible. Here, however, I also seek to understand the deeper meaning of the claim regarding atheism’s role on the path to monotheism using the terms of Rosenzweig himself, as well as the language and thinking of Emmanuel Levinas.

Rediscovering Jewish Infrastructure: Showcasing Surviving Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Synagogues

Rediscovering Jewish Infrastructure: Showcasing Surviving Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Synagogues Mark W. Gordon (bio) This photographic essay illuminates a few of the ninety-seven buildings that were originally erected as synagogues in the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and still stand today. Calling attention to these structures illustrates how American Jews have maintained and preserved their houses of worship, while also showing how synagogues have been used for alternative purposes in changing urban landscapes. Often following trends in secular and ecclesiastical architecture, the look of US synagogues evolved over the decades. The Touro Synagogue, the only eighteenth-century Jewish house of worship still standing today, was designed in the Georgian style by noted Colonial architect Peter Harrison (figure 1). Beth Israel in Honesdale, PA is an example of the Greek Revival style, fashionable for houses of worship in the 1840s and early 1850s (figure 2). Romanesque Revival synagogues with round-arched windows became popular for several decades beginning in the 1850s as illustrated in Goldsboro, NC (figure 3) and Salt Lake City (figure 4), with Gothic Revival and Victorian styles in Leadville, CO (figure 5) and Charlottesville, VA (figure 6) becoming more common beginning in the 1870s and 1880s. Moorish Revival was used heavily for synagogues—but not much in secular architecture—from the 1860s to 1890s. Moorish synagogues often contained onion-shaped domes or minarets, horseshoe arches, and polychromatic decoration. One theory for their ubiquity is the nineteenth-century revival of Jewish popular and scholarly interest in the history of the Sephardic diaspora, including their Golden Age in Spain and Northern Africa.1 Additionally, congregations built Moorish buildings in part to differentiate them from Victorian-style churches.2 Examples of Moorish synagogues are those in Denver (figure 7) and Newark (figure 8). [End Page 563] At the turn of the century, synagogue architecture returned to the American architectural mainstream with a heavy emphasis on Classical Revival styles. The change is attributable to the interest in classical design at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and also to archeological discoveries of Galilean synagogues built during Roman times.3 This style was adopted by New York City’s Shearith Israel (figure 9). The small number of remaining nineteenth-century structures underscores the transitions that have taken place in Jewish life over the past 150 years. As Jews migrated out of small towns to large cities, and out of cities to suburbs, the religious spaces that they built have been purchased by new owners and used for new purposes. Historical preservationists, however, have built community support both within and outside the Jewish community in order to maintain these synagogues as emblems of the Jewish past. Those interested in learning more about nineteenth-century synagogues may consult the expanded web version of this article, its accompanying table, and a list of sources linked here (www.ajhs.org/rediscovering-jewish-infrastructure). The web table documents the location, style, and current use of all ninety-seven buildings originally erected as synagogues in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which are still standing. They are located in thirty-one states and the District of Columbia. This essay and the expanded web article are successors to articles published in American Jewish History in 1986 and 1996 (Volume 75, no. 3 and Volume 84, no. 1), which described ongoing efforts to identify and showcase these buildings. [End Page 564] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Jeshuat Israel’s Touro Synagogue of Newport, RI was built from 1759 to 1763 in the Georgian style. One of the oldest extant Jewish houses of worship in the Western Hemisphere, the synagogue was closed during much of the nineteenth century as the local economy declined and the Jewish community dispersed to other cities. It reopened in the 1880s. Photo by Mark W. Gordon. [End Page 565] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Beth Israel in Honesdale, PA completed its Greek Revival synagogue in 1856. Unusual for a purpose-built Jewish house of worship, the roofline features a steeple, which municipal officials required to grant approval of a building permit. Photo by Mark W. Gordon. [End Page 566] Click for larger view View full resolution...

دور البيوت التراثية اليهودية في تنمية السياحة في مدينة عقرة - كوردستان العراق (بيت هاشم احمد قاسم جوستةية)

دور البيوت التراثية اليهودية في تنمية السياحة في مدينة عقرة - كوردستان العراق (بيت هاشم احمد قاسم جوستةية)

Local congregations: Engaging neighbors of other faiths

When I was growing up in rural north Georgia in the 1950s and 60s, religious diversity meant there might be a Pentecostal church tucked in among the Baptist and Methodist churches. Today, congregations typically do not live in communities in which religious diversity is so narrowly experienced. Diversity no longer even signals that there are Protestant, Pentecostal, Catholic, and Jewish houses of worship present. The increase in the scope of diversity in almost every community means there are representatives of various non-Abrahamic religions present as well. Members of these different faith expressions live together in community, send their children to the same public schools, participate in local civic events, and serve one another as physicians, pharmacists, teachers, restauranteurs, hoteliers, and retailers. In short, people of diverse religions live, work, and worship in close proximity. How, then, do they form community in which the social fabric of the city, county, or state in which they live, and ultimately that of the nation, is strengthened by a commitment to the common good that secures for all the blessings of security, peace, and justice? In this multi-religious context, how are Christian congregations enhancing rather than hindering the building of community in diversity?

The influence of iranian islamic architecture on the jewish house (west sābāt house) of bam citadel

Iranian Islamic architecture beyond the evident typology is formed through a conceptual framework, which has a great deal of importance to show suitable and compatible-with-climate designs. Specifically in the hot and arid regions of Iran, vernacular architecture has frequently intimated the formation of cities and the architectural combinations. The ancient city of Bam by itself is a field, the origin of which can be considered as one of the first foci for the organization of civilization in the hot and arid environments of Iran throughout history, which shows traces of architecture that organizes spaces in such a way that they function as a medium to emphasize the relevance of human lifestyle. This article describes the history of Jewish House briefly, wherein the mansion was one of the loftiest traditional houses in Bam Citadel, and later classifies the effects of natural and cultural criteria in its climate- compatible architectural design. In fact, we can get a complete resource about the norms of Iranian Islamic architecture on the traditional Jewish House and the qualities and functions that encouraged this family tendency for utilizing Iranian Islamic architecture in their residence.

‘They Shall Not Keep Their Doors or Windows Open’: Urban Space and the Dynamics of Conflict and Contact in Premodern Jewish–Christian Relations

Jewish houses, and especially their apertures, were frequent targets of assault in premodern Europe. Were these attacks just a matter of Christians letting off steam, as some historians have argued, or were they signs that ‘Jewish life was a perennial struggle for survival’? This question leads into a much larger methodological issue – namely, how historians should approach and frame violence in premodern Christian-Jewish relations. This article argues that assaults committed by Christians against Jews may well be said to form a specific category of violence; but to assess and analyse this phenomenon properly, one must take into account the general backdrop of the dynamics of violence – especially urban violence – at the time. In the specific case of window-smashing, it is important to consider the symbolism as well as the complex function of liminal spaces such as windows in the everyday lives of Jews and Christians. The conclusion will outline how anti-Jewish window violence left an imprint on both cultural life and economic activities (such as glassmaking) in Jewish communities well into the twentieth century.

Courtyards, Balconies and Roofs

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Jews were conspicuous in Iraqi civic life and initially played a prominent role in building the new state, including the further development of the commercial, postal and judicial system, thus entering the state bourgeoisie of civil servants that was being formed in those early years. This study will focus on the interplay of tradition (and Jewish orthopraxy) with Jewish modernities: the latter are reflected both in the biographical circumstances of family members, and features of life inside a Jewish house in the Christian quarter of Baghdad. This study records Baghdadi Jewish domestic modernization, along with the retention of traditional architectural features, and the ways in which these processes were expressed spatially in this single Jewish household.