Jewish Neighbors Research Articles

“We Are Victims of Our Past . . .”— Israel’s Dark History Comes to Light in New Documentaries

“We Are Victims of Our Past . . .”— Israel’s Dark History Comes to Light in New Documentaries

The Minister of Ministrations

The Minister of Ministrations Monica Black (bio) Part I: Reading Signs How can we explain Bruno Gröning’s explosive impact in post–World War II Germany, like a bolt out of the blue? People waited in the rain for days to catch a glimpse of him, prostrated themselves in supplication before him, tried to buy his bathwater, and believed he could raise the dead. What freighted his appearance with such intense outpourings of emotion? Had he emerged at any other moment, he might have remained a simple lay healer. He would have developed a local following, treated the sick in his community, and had no wider influence. Instead, he was hailed as a messiah. The secular imagination fails before scenes like those that greeted Gröning. One thing seems certain. His arrival would never have been so dramatic had it not been preceded by years of spiritual insecurity and wave after wave of apocalyptic rumors—an especially fervent round of which was just culminating as he shambled onto history’s stage in the spring of 1949. Suddenly, end-time rumors were [End Page 236] replaced by extraordinary reports of a different variety: a pious man of the people was healing the sick and helping the ailing. According to the rumors, Gröning had been sent by God, the forerunner of some final unveiling. To appreciate the magnitude of the reverberations he unleashed, we have to return to the war, and the kinds of questions it raised in some Germans’ minds—questions that, once posed, would never stop being asked. Click for larger view View full resolution Bruno Gröning, cover of Der Spiegel newsmagazine, summer 1949. [End Page 237] One day in July 1942, townspeople in Lemgo, in Westphalia, gathered to watch their elderly Jewish neighbors report for deportation. Some among the spectators warned that the nation was inviting divine wrath, treating old people that way. It was not a popular point of view, but there it was. At least for some, the way the war was being carried out—a merciless campaign that swept even the elderly into its vortex—presented spiritual dangers: the possibility that God would punish Germany, or that the war itself was a punishment. Though Germans as a group remained largely indifferent to their Jewish fellow citizens’ fate, some worried about retribution, and during the catastrophic latter stages of WWII, many wondered what was coming next. “Germans mixed anxieties about their culpability with a sense of their own victimhood,” writes Nicholas Stargardt. People found themselves listening to available hypotheses, sorting through possible outcomes. Nearly everyone got into the business of predicting the future, and became adept in reading signs. This pattern of mixing anxiety and self-pity, and of engaging in interpretive speculation, emerged after what Stargardt has argued was the turning point of the German war: the firebombing of Hamburg. For more than a week in late summer 1943, British and American bombers assaulted the city from the air. Thirty-four thousand people were killed and many sections of Germany’s second-largest city burned to the ground. The Allies called the campaign Operation Gomorrah, after the impenitent city razed by God in Genesis. Surely the Allies did not intend for the name to telegraph a message about methods or destructive capacity alone: “Gomorrah” was a claim about whose side God was on. It was prophecy. On some level, the Allies understood how to weaponize spiritual anxiety, understood that the war they were fighting was staggering not just in its scope, lethality, and tactics, but existentially and morally staggering, capable of provoking ancient fears of [End Page 238] vengeful gods. “Our hometown is dying,” a pastor told his congregation after Hamburg’s bombing. “Should we accuse the Royal Air Force?” No, he concluded; it was not the enemy’s hand in play now, it was “His hand!” Signs, the pastor clearly knew, have to be read. As barometers of fate, they are oblique, they require interpretation, deciphering. Auguries of every kind began to mount up as the war dragged on, but their meanings never became clear. Some Germans drew explicit connections between Hamburg’s bombing and the persecution of the Jews. The Nazi...

Jews in the texts of bishop Motiejus Valančius

This article aims to describe the attitude that the Lithuanian bishop Motiejus Valančius (1801-1875) had toward Jews. Up to now there was little written on this topic. Only in the diaspora (Vytautas Kavolis) and in contemporary Lithuania (Vygantas Vareikis) was Valančius’s anti-Semitism unambiguously identified or, alternately, vigorously denied (Vanda Zaborskaitė) as an erroneous opinion arising out of ignoring the context of most of his writings other than Paaugusių žmonių knygelė [Book for Grownups], Palangos Juzė [Palanga Joe], and Vaikų knygelė [Children’s Book]. Thus searching for an unbiased verdict requires looking at all of Valančius’s published texts, including his didactic tales, hymnals, catechisms, pastoral letters, political brochures, hagiographic writings, historiographic writings, letters, and his diary House Book written in Polish. It must be kept in mind that his texts intended for purely religious practice and catechesis had an even greater influence and therefore shouldn’t be ignored. An analysis of all of Valančius’s texts leads to the conclusion that the bishop did not transcend his epoch but held on to traditional anti-Judaist and anti-Semitic attitudes both in his didactic booklets and political brochures written for public education and in his books intended for catechesis and prayer: everywhere an attitude critical toward Jews shows through. This attitude undoubtedly merged with popular anti-Judaist stereotypes and even reinforced them in the Lithuanian consciousness; they began to fade only during the first period of independence as Lithuanians first encountered their modern Jewish neighbors. But Valančius was not radically antagonistic toward Jews; we see this very clearly in his House Book. His personal relationships with Jews were pragmatic, and during his Kaunas exile even friendly. In his private life he conscientiously observed the principles of Christian love.

The Return of Religious Antisemitism? The Evidence from World Values Survey Data

Background: This paper addresses the return of religious Antisemitism by a multivariate analysis of global opinion data from 28 countries. Methods: For the lack of any available alternative we used the World Values Survey (WVS) Antisemitism study item: rejection of Jewish neighbors. It is closely correlated with the recent ADL-100 Index of Antisemitism for more than 100 countries. To test the combined effects of religion and background variables like gender, age, education, income and life satisfaction on Antisemitism, we applied the full range of multivariate analysis including promax factor analysis and multiple OLS regression. Results: Although religion as such still seems to be connected with the phenomenon of Antisemitism, intervening variables such as restrictive attitudes on gender and the religion-state relationship play an important role. Western Evangelical and Oriental Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are performing badly on this account, and there is also a clear global North-South divide for these phenomena. Conclusions: Challenging patriarchic gender ideologies and fundamentalist conceptions of the relationship between religion and state, which are important drivers of Antisemitism, will be an important task in the future. Multiculturalism must be aware of prejudice, patriarchy and religious fundamentalism in the global South.

Swimming in Honey - Iddo Tavory, 2016. Summoned. Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016)

Swimming in Honey - Iddo Tavory, 2016. Summoned. Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016)

The Miniaturization of the World in Moacyr Scliar’s A Guerra no Bom Fim

This article analyzes the Moacyr Sciliar’s novel A guerra no Bom Fim, originally published in 1972. The narrative portrays the Second World War and its devastating effects on Bom Fim, the Jewish neighborhood of the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. From a child’s point-of-view, this space for fantasy and dream but also of nightmares and bad omens is shaped like “a small country,” which reveals in its shape the world miniaturized and brutalized by the war.

Luther against the Jews

Luther against the Jews

Mobilizing memory: collective memory schemas and the social boundaries of Jews in Toronto

ABSTRACTThis paper examines how collective memory informs residential choices by analysing the residential patterns of Jews in Toronto. Our study extends the literature on collective memory and ethnic boundaries to include understandings about how our socio-historical and cultural worlds shape our environment and give it meaning. We argue that collective memory functions symbolically within Jewish neighbourhoods to reproduce meanings about group status and belonging as well as to direct association patterns that manifest as durable residential enclaves. Our findings show how residential clustering patterns reflect the behavioural consequences of the group’s collective memory. Through an in-depth qualitative analysis, we identify four collective memory schemas for ethnic residential clustering which serve as prominent scripts that shape the Jewish residential landscape in Toronto.

Pamięć religijna społeczności lokalnych — przykład Jedwabnego

This article looks on Jedwabne and the debate on Polish involvement in the Holocaust from the perspective of the Jedwabians. The author shows that until the erection of the national monument to the murdered Jews in Jedwabne in 2001, the Jedwabians’ memory of their Jewish neighbors was a part of local memory. Jedwabians commemorated the Jews in accordance with their frames of memory. The point is that the people in Jedwabne are first of all a members of parish community, so their memory is religious in nature. This has a profound effect on their relationship to the past and their perception of the role of monuments and memorials. By reconstructing the history of the erection of selected monuments in Jedwabne, the author shows which events of the past Jedwabians want to commemorate and what social function is played by memory of the commemorated events. She also considers to what degree memory of the group’s past lies at the base of the Jedwabians’ contemporary identity.

A digital Jewish history?

Abstract How can we teach Jewish history in a modern and effective way? In Hamburg, Germany, a school project called Geschichtomat tries to find an answer to that question. With the help of digital media, students explore their Jewish neighbourhood. This one-of-a-kind German program permits students to experience the Jewish past and present life in their hometown. During the project, students explore their neighbourhood to understand its historical figures, places, and events. This way they engage with Jewish life. Under the supervision of experts in the disciplines of history and media education, the students will: research, perform interviews with cultural authorities and contemporary witnesses, visit museums and archives, shoot and cut films, edit photos and write accompanying texts. Finally, their contributions are uploaded to the geschichtomat.de website. Little by little a digital map of Jewish life from the perspective of teenagers will take shape.

Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood. By Iddo Tavory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 224. $85.00 (cloth); $27.50 (paper).

<i>Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood</i>. By Iddo Tavory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. 224. $85.00 (cloth); $27.50 (paper).

Gurock, Jeffrey S. The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Community. New York University Press, 2016, pp. 320. Price: $35.00 and Tavory, Iddo. Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood. University of Chicago Press, pp. 224. Price: $27.50

Gurock, Jeffrey S. The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline, and Revival of a Jewish Community. New York University Press, 2016, pp. 320. Price: $35.00 and Tavory, Iddo. Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood. University of Chicago Press, pp. 224. Price: $27.50

Summoned: Identification and Religious Life in a Jewish Neighborhood, by IDDO TAVORY

Summoned, by Iddo Tavory, is an excellent example of a contemporary symbolic interactionist ethnography. It rests upon a model that moves beyond tired debates about structure and agency to highlight the numerous ways by which people are active agents in the ongoing process of producing their lives through exchanges in particular social contexts. People live within, or choose to participate in, social institutions that provide them with opportunities for sustained interactions that will shape their identifications as a particular type of person within a group. It is through these ongoing, meaningful interactions with others that we become persons who can be called upon to fulfill various roles that further embed us in these communities. Tavory takes care to avoid the clichéd concept of identity, which can be used in ways that suggest it is stable and constant. I appreciated Tavory’s use of the term “identification” instead of “identity.” Identification emphasizes the contextual, situational, and contingent relations that shape people’s ongoing processes of becoming a member of a certain category of people. This term takes us away from the (false) assumption that we all “have” a consistent identity that is similarly manifested in multiple social contexts.

The Jewish Oregon Story, 1950–2010 by Ellen Eisenberg

OHQ vol. 118, no. 2 288 economic peer groups — and distant from the establishment politics of elite Jewish politicians — at important junctures patricians and immigrants drew together in what might be called a progressive Jewish politics. As the chapter 5 title suggests, “A Western Exception” documents why, unlike other western cities such as San Francisco, a strong anti-Zionist movement never emerged in Portland. Eisenberg points to the crucial role of Rabbi Stephen Wise, who served in Portland only briefly but left a deep imprint on communal sensibilities. The final chapter of the book explores Portland Jews’ relationship to the city’s racial minorities — Nikkei and African-Americans — arguing that “although Jewish Oregonians had a history of expressing support for civil rights in the abstract, negotiating local issues . . . continued to present challenges” (p. 215). Eisenberg’s vibrant prose draws in readers, and her authorial voice is not only persuasive but also evinces sympathy to her subjects. NATAN M. MEIR Portland State University THE JEWISH OREGON STORY, 1950–2010 by Ellen Eisenberg Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2016. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 336 pages. $24.95, paper. This detailed study of Jewish life and activities in Oregon focuses primarily on their experiences as an ethnic community in Portland where the vast majority of Jews in the state reside. The narrative takes the Jewish story from that of a small, fairly isolated group to its present position as an active and recognized force in Oregon society. Ellen Eisenberg traces how the community developed its local history and identity as a selfconscious social group in Portland. She gives particular attention to how women shifted their personal identities and actions from domestic to public spheres. Then she uses Jewish women’s ties to the non–sectarian League of Women Voters to demonstrate their shift to embracing the changes in the roles of middle-class American women during the past six decades. In Portland, the analysis posits two broad themes as changing the local social situation. First, it shows how the rising Black Power movement and calls for Black Nationalism pushed Jews and other liberals away from the broad national civil rights movement in the late 1960s. At the same time, but not necessarily related to that shift, an increase in young, collegeeducated Jews moved into the Pacific Northwest . This brought more secular people into the community, and by 2000, only one third of the Jews claimed to have any religious affiliation while nearly half of the community reported having only a cultural ethnic identity. This influx of outsiders nudged the staid, established ethnic leaders to shift their goals and tactics gradually in order to incorporate the newcomers. These two trends occurred while urban renewal destroyed most of the historic South Portland Jewish neighborhood. This forced the residents of that area to move into two other parts of the city, as they resettled in communities on the southwest and northwest sides of the city. As the renewal razed the long-established neighborhood, its citizens worked to gather and memorialize its history through reminiscences and interviews with long-time residents. The author uses much of this material to show how physical disruption of the traditional ethnic neighborhood and the increasing social changes brought a new acceptance of Jews in Portland. The author describes one phase in the story as looking outward and joining local reforms such as school desegregation, civic work with the League of Women Voters, and membership in formerly exclusively nonJewish clubs. Eisenberg then demonstrates that the 1967 Six Day War abruptly ended this move toward community involvement as the Israeli victory brought a wave of ethnic pride. The narrative notes that this event “came to represent a watershed in American Jewish history; in its wake Israel came to occupy the center of what it meant to be an American Jew” (p. 170). This brought a renewed interest in international ethnic matters, particularly the treatment of Soviet Jewry and 289 Reviews efforts to encourage and support immigration, which attracted many largely secular eastern European Jews less interested in religion than in social and economic opportunity to Portland. Throughout the narrative the author analyzes the Oregon Jewish experience clearly, and her data...

THE MINIATURIZATION OF THE WORLD IN MOACYR SCLIAR’S A GUERRA NO BOM FIM

This article analyzes the Moacyr Sciliar’s novel A guerra no Bom Fim, originally published in 1972. The narrative portrays the Second World War and its devastating effects on Bom Fim, the Jewish neighborhood of the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil. From a child’s point-of-view, this space for fantasy and dream but also of nightmares and bad omens is shaped like “a small country,” which reveals in its shape the world miniaturized and brutalized by the war.

Neighbourhood, community and residential change decisions in the Dublin Jewish community

The Dublin Jewish community has undergone numerical decline over the past thirty years. At the same time, there have been substantial changes in the residential locations of members of the community. This paper investigates the significance of the neighbourhood and the community in residential change decisions through an examination of social visiting patterns, friendship and family networks and the perception and importance of having Jewish neighbours. The results show that although contacts with non-Jewish neighbours have increased, there is still a tendency to choose residential locations close to other community members. While there is still a tendency to move to higher status suburbs in south-cast Dublin, there is an opposing trend back towards the area of second settlement in the south-west of the city.

Społeczeństwo holenderskie i los Żydów: skomplikowana historia

The percentage of victimization of Dutch Jewry during the Shoah is the highest of Western, Central and Southern Europe (except, perhaps of Greece), and close to the Polish one: 75%, more than 104.000 souls. The question of disproportion between the apparent favorable status of the Jews in society – they had acquired emancipation in 1796 - and the disastrous outcome of the Nazi occupation as compared to other countries in general and Western European in particular has haunted Dutch historiography of the Shoah. Who should be blamed for that outcome: the perpetrators, i.e. the Germans, the bystanders, i.e. the Dutch or the victims, i.e. the Dutch Jews? The article first surveys the answers given to this question since the beginnings of Dutch Holocaust historiography in the immediate post-war period until the debates of today and the factors that influenced the shaping of some basic perceptions on “Dutch society and the Jews”. It then proceeds to detailing several facts from the Holocaust period that are essential for an evaluation of gentile attitudes. The article concludes with the observation that – in spite of ongoing debates – the overall picture which has accumulated after decades of research will not essentially being altered. Although the Holocaust was initiated, planned and carried out from Berlin, and although a considerable number of Dutchmen helped and hid Jews and the majority definitely despised the Germans, considerable parts of Dutch society contributed to the disastrous outcome of the Jewish lot in the Netherlands – through a high amount of servility towards the German authorities, through indifference when Jewish fellow-citizens were persecuted, through economically benefiting from the persecution and from the disappearance of Jewish neighbors, and through actual collaboration (stemming from a variety of reasons). Consequently, the picture of the Holocaust in the Netherlands is multi-dimensional, but altogether puzzling and not favorable.

THE RELIC AND THE RUIN: EQUIVOCAL OBJECTS AND THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST INDANIEL DERONDA

Early in George Eliot'sDaniel Deronda, Daniel's life is set on a decisive new path by his fleeting attraction to an object in a shop window. He is turning into a side street off Holburn Road when:his attention was caught by some fine old clasps in chased silver displayed in the window at his right hand. His first thought was that [his aunt] Lady Mallinger, who had a strictly Protestant taste for such Catholic spoils, might like to have these missal-clasps turned into a bracelet; then his eyes travelled over the other contents of the window, and he saw that the shop was that kind of pawnbroker's where the lead is given to jewellery, lace, and all equivocal objects introduced asbric-a-brac. A placard in one corner announced –Watches and Jewellery exchanged and repaired. (344; bk. 4, ch. 6)Daniel then moves across the street to avoid the shopkeeper, and it is only from this new vantage point that he notices the name “Ezra Cohen” above the window – the name he's been seeking while wandering Jewish neighborhoods in London in the hopes of reuniting his protégée Mirah with her family. He will return to the pawnshop later and become acquainted with the Cohens, eventually finding through them his mentor and Mirah's actual brother, Mordecai. Although some discussion of the silver clasps ensues, they are neither purchased nor used in the space of the novel. Still, this seemingly inconsequential trinket proves to have a long history, one that raises questions about the lingering remains of the past, the equivocality of the object, and the dispossessions that hauntDaniel Deronda.

The Jewish neighbourhoods of Jaffa and the question of annexation to Tel Aviv at the end of the British Mandate

ABSTRACTOne of the most complex issues facing British rule on the local municipal level towards the end of the Mandate period was the problem of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods. This question, which emerged with the outbreak of the 1936 disturbances, engaged the government thereafter until the end of the Mandate. The demand by the residents of Jaffa's Jewish neighbourhoods for annexation to Tel Aviv – actually for municipal detachment from Jaffa – constituted the root of the problem. In this setting of the sharpening of relations between the authorities and the Jews and Arabs in 1945–1947, all three involved parties found themselves deeply immersed in it in the attempt to bring about its resolution. The annexation problem ceaselessly preoccupied the institutions of the Jewish Yishuv as a Zionist–Yishuv struggle of the highest order. This period gave rise to a series of unprecedented moves by the Jewish side, which were intended to influence the British government toward solving the problem. The article examines its development of the problem from the viewpoint of the three sides concerned in the years 1945–1947, with the focus on the policy line adopted by the Jewish side, its implications and its results.

Lila Corwin Berman.Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit.

Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit is a wonderful example of a “minority history” that illustrates how the group in question, in this case Jews, was more than merely an interesting sidebar to the “mainstream” American historical narrative. Instead, they were integral to this story as they participated in the construction and implementation of liberal urban policies. Between the end of World War II and the 1970s, Jews engaged with and invested in Detroit, Michigan, in order to preserve and improve Jewish neighborhoods encountering urban transformations like black in-migration and Jewish out-migration. Lila Corwin Berman argues that the city remained important to postwar Jews’ cultural, political, historical, and spiritual identity despite their ever more suburban location and their former neighborhoods’ transformation into increasingly African American spaces. To do this, Berman studies both the physical and imagined city in Detroit, which she calls a “typical” (20) city since suburban Jews had similar experiences elsewhere. Detroit Jews’ urban involvement was rooted in what Berman calls “liberal” beliefs that combined a progressive social agenda about fairness for individuals, including freedom from discrimination, with a classically liberal economic model that included protections for the free market and individual choice.