Jewish Life Research Articles

Tablets Shattered: The End of the American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life

Tablets Shattered: The End of the American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life

“It Requires Privacy”: Sharing a House in Thirteenth-Century Paris

AbstractAnalysis of a legal ruling by Yehiel of Paris (d. ca. 1260) in a rental dispute between two Jewish men sheds light on aspects of Jewish life in a major medieval European city. Two Jews rented an apartment from a Christian owner, and a dispute arose when one of the tenants left mid-term and his replacement, also a Jewish man, tried to renew the lease directly with the landlord. The original tenant claimed the exclusive right to renew the lease and that he was unwilling to share the apartment with the new tenant as this would impinge on his privacy in use of the lavatory. This article attempts to unravel the legal and cultural dimensions of the dispute and the demographic and architectural realities underpinning it. The article maintains that the disputants’ legal arguments drew upon both Jewish legal tradition and the legal norms of the rental market in Paris. The legal and cultural significance of privacy in the medieval urban context also plays an important role in the case.

Settlement Policy and Competition in Towns: The Case of Anschel of Münzenberg

This article examines the complexity of Jewish life in rural regions in Germany during the late Middle Ages and underscores the importance of investigating micro-histories for a more comprehensive understanding of Jewish identity and experiences in these settings. Introducing the common practice of territorial lords to limit the number of Jewish households residing in the small towns of their domain, this article argues against the portrayal of Jews as passive recipients of such settlement policies. It highlights their active participation in selecting incoming community members, especially in cases in which Jews aimed to prevent the immigration of co-religionists. Focusing on the case study of Münzenberg, where the Jew Anschel solicited the expulsion of most of the local community, three main incentives of Jewish political and legal interventions come to light: tax distribution, economic competition and personal relationships and conflicts. The article explores these incentives through various examples of Jewish townspeople who skilfully navigated negotiations, leveraging the interests and concerns of territorial lords and various courts.

"Undoubtedly a race, but they are not human": Immuno-politics and the Recognition of the Jew as Pathogenic Nonself in Art Spiegelman's Maus.

This article engages with the immuno-political juxtaposition of the healthy self and the pathogenic other to critically examine the representation of Nazis and Jews in Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus (1996). Written as a postmemory narrative, Maus recounts the horrors experienced by the author's father Vladek Spiegelman as a survivor of the Holocaust that claimed an approximate six million Jewish lives. Beginning with the years leading up to World War II, Spiegelman's novel reimagines the discrimination, dislocation, and dehumanization suffered by Vladek and his family at various prison camps in Nazi-occupied Poland before being transferred to Auschwitz. Deploying an immuno-political reading of Maus, this article investigates how the Third Reich undertook a systematic extermination of the Jewish race by construing them as immunological nonself or pathogenic others. It further argues that Nazism's fantasy of constructing a racially aseptic German identity by eradicating the Jews as vermin or parasites was reinforced by the late nineteenth-century eugenicist ideologies of racial hygiene. This article finally considers how policies of excessive immunization thatwasdeployed by Nazi biopolitics against the Jewish community, as well as exercised by the Jews to survive the Holocaust, eventually assumed the form of an autoimmune pathology that culminatedwith the attempted destruction of the entire medico-juridical infrastructure of the German Reich on the one hand and the fostering of suicidal tendencies by the Jewish survivors on the other.

Cynthia Ozick Reframing Henry James: From “Publishing Scoundrel” to False Messiah

Abstract: This essay invites a dialogue between Henry James’s “The Aspern Papers” and Cynthia Ozick’s The Messiah of Stockholm through the notion of literary speculation. In both texts, the relations between the experiential and the literary are explored via Paul Ricouer’s theory of “threefold mimesis .” Jacques Derrida’s account of hauntology and secular messianism, moreover, underscores failures of justice, ethics, and hope. James’s poised tragi-comic narrative is juxtaposed with Ozick’s critique of imaginative self-indulgence. Both works culminate in the burning of manuscripts, figuring in turn the demise of personal or editorial yearnings, then the Holocaust’s merciless incineration of Jewish life and creativity.

Negotiating the Task of Translation: Modern Orthodox Students Read the Hebrew Bible

This paper speaks to translation as a powerful window into students’ developing religious literacy practices. It considers how 10- and 11-year-old North American Modern Orthodox Jewish students read and translate the Hebrew Bible refracted through their own cultural and religious expectations: in other words, how students use translation to negotiate their knowledge of biblical Hebrew with their lived experiences of family and gender in the context of modern Jewish life, ritual, and practice. In a Modern Orthodox Jewish school setting, Hassenfeld conducted interviews with 12 students. With each student, she used a task-based interview, asking the students to read and translate a single biblical verse (Genesis 16:15) into English. In completing the translation task, the students applied their technical knowledge of biblical Hebrew and their religious expectations of the ancient text. While translation is perceived in many Modern Orthodox educational contexts as primarily technical (i.e., the precursor to any interpretive activity), this case study suggests that student translation work cannot be separated from interpretive work. While the data set is small and the results only suggestive, the study raises an important theoretical question for future consideration: how can translation be better framed by religious educators who teach sacred texts in their original languages to allow students to understand the necessary interpretive demands it entails?

Jewish Spaces in Egypt as Sites of Memory

This article explores Jewish spaces in Cairo as repositories of memory and their role in shaping a collective understanding of the Jewish past among non-Jewish Egyptians. By examining these sites through the perspectives of engaged observers, it uncovers their multifaceted reflections of Jewish life and culture. Interactions with these sites reveal the intricate interplay of internal and external factors, such as the dynamics between Jews and Muslims, the reverberations of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and societal responses to Jewish culture. These sites evoke a sense of patriotism among Egyptian Jews and their fellow citizens, marked by the fusion of Arabic, Hebrew, Judaism, and Islam. Understanding this perspective necessitates considering the roles of various stakeholders, including the remaining Jewish community, state institutions, conservationists, and scholarly professionals. It also requires an examination of ongoing societal debates and official decisions regarding the preservation or demolition of Jewish sites. Diverse viewpoints emerge from these discussions, reflecting issues like anti-Semitism, anti-Israel sentiments, distrust of the Egyptian state, and prioritizing the preservation of inhabited spaces over abandoned ones. By shedding light on these contradictions within Egyptian public discourse, this article underscores the significance of acknowledging and celebrating Egyptian Jewish heritage, which continues to shape society today.

In the shoes of the other: an educational trip to Auschwitz Birkenau increases high-school students’ perspective taking and identification with Jews

ABSTRACT We investigated whether empathy and identification with Jews as a group is affected by a Holocaust education trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Data was collected before and after the trip and compared with a control group. The mean level of both perspective taking and identification with Jews as a group increased in the educational-trip group. Increased closeness to Jews as a group was related to increased perspective taking. We discuss the role for Holocaust education in fostering an understanding of Jewish life and culture and for stimulating perspective taking by providing an opportunity to put oneself in the shoes of the other.

Briefings

Department of Education's final Title IX rule blocked in conservative states Columbia administrators on leave after texts during Jewish life panel Biden's SAVE loan program on hold Butler College launches new program to help adult learners finish their degrees

Illustrating a Jewish Life: Portrait Photography, Biography and the Creation of a Jewish Public Sphere

Abstract Portrait photography is a fixed element in the history of German Jewry. This article asks what we can learn about a Jewish biography like that of the German–Jewish writer Sammy Gronemann by seeking to follow his life’s trajectories through the images he and others created of him and the appearances he coined. It argues that photography not only represented but also actively shaped his work as a writer and a Zionist politician and that it influenced the worlds he inhabited. It does so by situating Gronemann, the German Jew, in the history of German portrait photography, Gronemann, the Western Zionist, in the history of international Zionist image politics and Gronemann, the writer in the history of the creation of a visible cultural scene in the Yishuv and later Israel. Pondering Gronemann’s relationship with visual arts offers insights into the ways public visibility shaped German–Jewish realities both in Europe and in Palestine, both before and after the foundation of the State of Israel.

Israel, As Hurt‐Geography

In this autobiographical narrative, Nigel Rapport recounts how his time as a volunteer at Kibbutz Yas'ur in Israel in 1975 profoundly affected his identity and sparked a deep emotional connection to the country. Despite initial reluctance to visit Israel and engage with his Jewish heritage, Rapport's experiences living and working on the kibbutz ‐ including labouring in the citrus groves, bonding with the kibbutz youth and being embraced by the community ‐ instilled in him a strong sense of belonging, pride, and loyalty to Israel. The essay conveys Rapport's newfound understanding of the precariousness and preciousness of life in Israel, constantly under threat of war and violence. It also expresses his anxiety and protective concern for the country's survival against what he perceives as the hatred and prejudice of its enemies. Rapport's connection to Israel is further cemented by the normalcy of Jewish life there, a stark contrast to the marginalization he felt growing up in Britain. The recent Hamas attacks in 2023, with their devastating loss of life, underscore the enduring ‘hurt geography’ of Rapport's relationship with Israel. The essay ultimately presents a highly personal account of the author's transformative encounter with Israel and Zionism and the complex emotions and loyalties it engendered.

‘The Most Saving Slum in Glasgow, and the Most Abandoned’: Twentieth-Century Materiality and Twenty-First Century Virtuality in the Jewish Gorbals, Scotland

In 1905, Yiddish poet and Glasgow union activist Avrom Radutsky described the Jewish population of Scotland as ‘a mere drop in the ocean’. Nevertheless, by 1920 this drop had swelled to 20,000 people, centred primarily (though by no means exclusively) around the Gorbals in Glasgow. The area was characterised by vibrant community life, but also cramped low-quality housing, poor sanitation and harsh economic inequality. Many of Glasgow’s Jews began to climb a social ladder that would lead them out of the Gorbals and towards more spacious residences in the south-west of the city, but maintained regular contact with its streets, shops and places of worship. Large-scale demolition of the neighbourhood in the 1960s mean that the Gorbals looks very different today, and the Jews are gone. The Jewishness of this space, however, still remains: a remembered or imagined presence in the minds of second and third generations, celebrated through community outreach, or romantically evoked in popular narratives. Equally, an absence of Jewish life in today’s Gorbals has been paralleled by the emergence of wide-ranging and socially minded virtual networks of shared memory. Through analysis of contemporary accounts and archival sources, oral histories, fieldwork interviews, and lively online discussion groups, this article examines how this former densely populated Jewish neighbourhood now functions as an important lieu de memoire, but in a significantly different way to Eastern Europe’s pre-war Jewish spaces. At the geographical edges of more traumatic histories, the Gorbals instead provides an affective link for contemporary, assimilated Scottish Jews, while at the same time the area’s Jewish history becomes part of a wider virtual online community – signifying an emotional connection to immigrant narratives and grounding personal and social histories.

Migration, Exile, and Vocation in the Metropol: The Figure of Joseph in the Early Writings of Léon Askenazi

This paper considers the relationship between exile and migration as reflected in a case study of biblical exegesis in modern Jewish thought. I consider the place of the biblical figure of Joseph in an early text by Léon Askenazi (also known as Manitou), a North African kabbalist and French intellectual, and a key spiritual leader of Francophone Jewry in the second half of the twentieth century. The paper begins by locating Askenazi within the mass migration, or “repatriation”, of the Algerian Jewish community to metropolitan France. I then examine and analyze the reinterpretation of Joseph in an early and unpublished text by Askenazi. I show how Askenazi’s explication departs from a common reading of the Joseph story by recasting it as a positive diasporic narrative with direct contemporary implications. I argue that during Askenazi’s early years in Paris, he sought to offer a “Josephic” model for Jewish life in postwar France, a model which also functioned as an alternative to the Zionist ethos of the negation of exile. The paper’s conclusion reflects on how Askenazi’s ideas may speak to conversations on religion and immigration.

Traces of youth: reconstructing Hungarian women’s lives during the Holocaust

ABSTRACT This article reflects on archival, theoretical and methodological approaches to a set of prisoner registration cards from the Arolsen Archives. It argues that the cards make a unique contribution to the history of the Holocaust, which goes beyond their subjects’ experiences of the camp system. While historians have employed similar documents to chart the history of Jews in the concentration camps, this article suggests methodological ways for using the cards to tell a history of Jewish life, too. It reveals how the biographical nature of the cards provides personal information for those who would otherwise be dehumanized. In so doing, it builds on Dan Stone’s suggestion that it is possible to write a social history of the Holocaust using records from the Arolsen Archives, by identifying specific elements in the sources that achieve this. It also presents how digital humanities mapping tools can use data from the cards to visualize and analyse trends in their subjects’ lives and in the broader Jewish experience. Finally, it acknowledges the limits of the cards as sources and identifies how – when other sources are available – they can be combined with memoirs, testimonies and post-war documentation to illuminate archival silences and reveal personal agency. For many victims of the Holocaust, however, cards like these are the only remaining trace of their lives. As a result, this article suggests innovative approaches for using Arolsen Archive material to tell a social history of the Holocaust, thus challenging preconceptions about camp documentation.

Jewish Wit – In the Original, and in Translation

Abstract This essay, based on Prof. Hessing’s keynote lecture delivered at the opening of the Gronemann-conference in 2022, explores notions of “Jewish wit” in Sammy Gronemann’s German novel Tohuwabohu (translated as Utter Chaos). It focuses on the incongruities and comic potential of the tensions between German and Yiddish in the novel, questioning notions of “original” and “translation” as applied to the interrelationships between Eastern European and German Jewish cultures. By highlighting the linguistic and cultural shifts experienced by these Jewish communities, Gronemann’s novel serves as a focal point for dissecting the nuances of multilingual Jewish humor and the underlying tragedies of Jewish life, especially amidst historical upheavals like World War I and the Holocaust. The essay concludes with insights into Gronemann’s ironic perspective on Zionism and the thematic significance of “Tohuwabohu” as a metaphor for the modern Jewish experience.

Talking with images: collecting and displaying private photographs and testimony in Imperial War Museums’ Holocaust Galleries

ABSTRACT This article examines the Imperial War Museums’ (IWM) engagement with Holocaust survivors and their photographs. A key concern is photographs and testimonies' roles in the transformation of individual memory into the cultural memory of the Holocaust. Of concern is why and how private photographs are used as a significant resource in IWMs Holocaust Galleries and the impact that on the museum’s narrative of Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. The article acknowledges the challenges faced by curators as they strive to accommodate the expectations of stakeholders whilst simultaneously maintaining historical accuracy and engaging the reflective capacities of visitors.

Space and Place in the German-Jewish Experience of the 1930s – Introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction offers the theoretical and historical framework of the volume’s articles. In highlighting aspects of the German-Jewish experience during the 1930s, in Germany and in transit, it provides a starting point for the ensuing chapters’ discussions of the relationships between ‘place,’ ‘space,’ history and identity. It underscores the significance of ‘space’ as a category for the study of Jewish life during National Socialist persecution. It argues that the divergent interests and processes which constitute (the notions of) places, and the intricacies between places and identities, facilitate a reconsideration of German-Jewish experiences and self-perceptions in a time of extreme uncertainty.

Beyond the Secular-Religion Divide: Judaism and the New Secularity

In his 2018 survey of twenty-first-century American Judaism entitled The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Judaism Today, Jack Wertheimer references a 2015 Pew Research study that presupposes the secular-religion binary as the analytical metric for its determination that both the American public and American Jews are becoming less religious. Nonetheless, Wertheimer’s use of this analytical frame prohibits him from making sense of many details of the twenty-first-century American Jewish life that he seeks to describe. Indeed, any survey of the contemporary American Jewish scene is remiss if it does not discuss the rise of orthodox Jewish feminism, current trends towards substantial denominational change, and/or the emergence of a “post-ethnic” Judaism. Even so, recent historical-ethnographic accounts have outpaced analytical challenges to the secular-religion binary. Contemporary historians and ethnographers find themselves forced to choose between an analytically deficient model and a default rejection of analytical tools altogether. Arguably, the roots of the current impasse are derived from the influence of what scholars refer to as the secularization thesis. Therefore, to overcome this impasse, ethnographers and historians of American Judaism need access to a more refined categorical lens. In this essay, I argue that they may find the analytical support they need by turning away from the secularization thesis and turning toward far more complex accounts of the relationship between Judaism and modernity provided by the canon of modern Jewish thought. Such a turn yields an analytical category we may refer to as the “new secularity” which, when applied to studies in Jewish life in America (and potentially elsewhere) sheds light on communal realities that the secular-religious account misses.

When a yarmulke Stands for All Jews: Navigating Shifting Signs from Synagogue to School in Luxembourg

In the lives of students in Luxembourg’s Liberal Jewish complementary school, flexibility and mobility are highly valued as key characteristics of modern living. Complementary school students feel they easily meet these criteria—they are multilingual, cosmopolitan, and their approach to Jewish life is flexible, and equally importantly, they look, dress, and comport themselves “like everyone else.” These factors are understood to facilitate multiple movements and belongings in the contemporary world. The students directly contrast their ways of being with those of more observant Jews whom they refer to as “religious”; the material, embodied, and visible nature of observant Jewish life is perceived to be an impediment to participation and success in the secular sphere. However, when Jewishness appears in these students’ secular school classrooms, it is most often represented by Orthodox-presenting men—often a man in a yarmulke. Further, these men and their yarmulkes are taken to represent all Jews, framed as a homogeneous group of religious adherents. For many complementary school students, these experiences can be jarring—they suddenly find themselves on the “wrong” side of the religious–secular divide and grouped together with those from whom they could not feel more distant. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a material approach to religion, this article argues that the yarmulke comes to point to different levels and modes of observance and identities and enable different possible belongings in the secular public sphere as it travels across contexts that include different definitions of and attitudes toward religion and Jewishness.

Du Bois, Marx, and the Jewish Question Reconsidered

ABSTRACT W. E. B. Du Bois’s groundbreaking scholarship on race and racial prejudice was inseparable from his lifelong struggle for racial justice, Black liberation, and against social and political oppression. Both in his theoretical and in his historical-political work, Du Bois substantially and critically engaged with the “Jewish question”: with Jewish life, history, and politics, with the experiential perspective of an oppressed minority, and with the fight against prejudice and racial hatred. Throughout in life, and in particular in later years, Du Bois was influenced by Karl Marx’s critical analysis of social and economic life; Marx’s own discussion of the “Jewish question,” concerning the difference between political equality and human emancipation, proved substantial to his argument on civil rights and racial justice. In this article, I argue that Du Bois did not only draw from the Jewish experience and from Marx’s work on the “Jewish question” in his work on African American history and politics, but also that he, in fact, reconsidered the “Jewish question” from an African American perspective, offering his own reading and understanding of the “Jewish question,” thus applying his concept of double consciousness for rethinking it as a question of racial identity and racial consciousness, and as relevant and applicable to Black liberation and the fight against racism.