Jewish Reactions Research Articles

Building “Something That Lasts”

Abstract This article analyses Jewish reactions to post-Holocaust hostility and discrimination in Norway, through three case studies: (1) Trials against Nazis and Norwegian collaborators in the National Legal Purge of the immediate postwar years. (2) The 1960 ‘Swastika Epidemic,’ characterized by graffiti on properties and threats against Jewish individuals, which prompted Jewish community efforts to promote an anti-racist bill. (3) The trial against neo-Nazi high school teacher Olav Hoaas in 1976, among the first to be convicted in accordance with the new Article 135a of the law against incitement to racial hatred. Using archival records from the Jewish community and press material, this study explores how the actors defined and developed response strategies against antisemitism. The article explains the integrationist function of combatting antisemitism, as individuals asserted themselves as part of the national community by defending Norway’s democratic values. It highlights collective action and alliances in countering antisemitism, marking Norway as an early example legislating against racism in Europe after 1945.

“Who is my Neighbour? Interfaith Dialogue and Theological Formation” (Responses)

The following are three response papers that were presented at the “Who is My Neighbour? Interfaith Dialogue and Theological Formation Conference,” held on October 19, 2022, and are indirectly responding to Amy-Jill Levine's discussion on Christian-Jewish dialogue.
 The first response paper by Jean Duhaime, entitled “Christian-Jewish Dialogue and Theological Formation,” discusses how Christian-Jewish dialogue has been viewed and theologically negotiated in the Catholic tradition since Vatican II. By also addressing various Jewish reactions to the shift in Catholic attitudes towards the Jewish tradition, Duhaime illustrates the work still needed to be done for the Catholic Church to clarify its understanding of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism while simultaneously highlighting the value of including Jewish-Christian dialogue in the formation and training of religious leaders.
 The second response paper by Sherril Gilbert, entitled “Why Training in the Art of Interreligious Dialogue Is Necessary for Theological Education: Thinking About ‘Who Is My Neighbour?’ From a Jewish Perspective,” discusses her personal experience in the seminary and her work as a Rabbi in multifaith contexts. Rabbi Sherril Gilbert’s response shifts the focus from the dialogue of theological exchange to what interreligious dialogue theorists would call “the dialogue of life” – which is to say, she articulates the wholistic value of interfaith dialogue, and, in doing so, demonstrates why it is crucial to incorporate a concern for interfaith dialogue into modern theological education.
 The last response paper by Hassan Guillet, entitled “La Table interreligieuse de concentration du Québec: A Case Study” examines his personal experiences with interfaith dialogue during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a founding member of the Table Interreligieuse de concertation du Québec. He explains how this experience opened his eyes to the power of interfaith dialogue and collaboration, and also to the need to expand interfaith dialogue initiatives to include as many faith communities as possible, including Indigenous faith communities that are not as clearly demarcated as, say, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam

Conceptualizing Jewish Reactions: Between Amidah and Resistance

ABSTRACT This article examines the concept of amidah and its relevance as an effective conceptual category in Holocaust research. By examining the growth of the concept of amidah at the beginning of Holocaust research, discussing the many categories included in it, emphasizing its ahistorical character and detachment from broad contexts, the author argues that this term does not promote in-depth and critical discussion. In light of these obstacles, Bauer's early conceptions regarding the concept of amidah are analyzed while placing it in the context of the discussion of responses to the Holocaust. As part of those broader contexts of human reactions to extremist actions, Bauer's early reference to those actions called “amidah” opens the door to a comprehensive and in-depth discussion that is not possible within the original concept. This discussion obviates the need for a hierarchical catalogue of the responses under discussion, includes reference to the constant change that has taken place in these actions, and is based on the consciousness that underlies the response. Moreover, it connects amidah to the ability to analyze acts by Jews and non-Jews in the Holocaust, as well as those of a variety of individuals and communities who found themselves in the reality of genocide.

The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century by Mónica Manrique (review)

Reviewed by: The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century by Mónica Manrique Nitai Shinan Mónica Manrique. The Project of Return to Sepharad in the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Justin Peterson. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2020. 96 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400942100043X Contemporary Spain (1808 to the present) has dealt with two main "Jewish questions": the reevaluation or rehabilitation of the Jewish medieval past by historians and intellectuals, and the process of establishment, legalization, and legitimization of newly founded Jewish communities in a predominantly Catholic country, which until 1869 outlawed all other religious faiths. These questions were only on rare occasions investigated by academic research until the last two decades of the twentieth century. Historians of the Jewish people had not been interested in researching Spanish history of the period after the Spanish Crown burnt the last Judaizers in the second and third decades of the eighteenth century, which left the country without any trace of Judaism. Historians of contemporary Spain, on the other hand, have not viewed the Jewish question as vital to understanding the transformations and vicissitudes which befell the troubled state. In other words, nineteenth-century Spanish Jewish history has been neglected. More recently, the shift in academic research towards issues related to the representation of historical minorities in Spanish historical thought started to draw investigators to researching the place of Jews and Judaism in contemporary Spain. While considerable interest has focused on the contemporary Spanish reinterpretation of the Jewish medieval past, as much as to the history of the establishment of Jewish communities on Iberian soil, very few studies raised the question of how the changes in nineteenth-century Spain were interpreted by European Jewish communities. Apart from the pioneering articles of Joseph Lichtenstein, [End Page 505] which were published in Hebrew in the beginnings of the 1970s,1 I do not know of any study of the subject. Mónica Manrique therefore should be praised for her innovative decision to dedicate her research to an almost unknown subject. The author limited her monograph to a very short time period, no longer than two years (1868–1869), and for good reason. These two years hold great significance in Spanish history, as they were the first of the so-called Six Democratic Years, a period when Spain endeavored but failed to establish a stable liberal democratic regime. The overthrow of Queen Isabel II's regime in September 1868 encouraged the Spanish liberals to implement democratic and liberal reforms even before the Spanish revolutionary parliament (the Cortes) sanctioned them. The principle of religious freedom was thus fully implemented and the Protestant religion was exercised in public in the months following the revolution. Even the new conservative regime of 1876 did not relinquish the worship rights of other religions and only limited them to the private sphere. Noticing the changes in the Protestant camp, Manrique endeavored to find Jewish reactions to these political changes in Spain. Did Jewish communities or organizations seek to encourage Jewish immigration to Spain in light of this newly proclaimed religious liberty? Did they assist those Jews already in Spain to establish new communities, or were their reactions less enthusiastic and more cautious? In order to answer the questions, the author made extensive use of the main organs of the French and German Jewish press, mainly the periodicals Archives israélites or L'univers israélite, and to a lesser extent some archival material. Reading this interesting analysis leaves the reader disappointed. It seems that the new period of openness between the Spanish government and the Jews did not bring changes in the life of the Jews in Spain. After the revolution, enthusiastic or positive views of the political changes in Spain were expressed by commentaries in the Jewish press. However, as time passed the tone of articles became much more cautious and skeptical. While some authors speculated about the possibility of the Jews returning to Spain, later articles warned about the negative attitudes of the Spanish people towards Jews and their religious fanaticism. The author also encountered this opinion in an original letter written by an unknown French Jewish traveler, Agustín Schwob. He warned Adolphe Cremieux, president of the...

Ivan G. Marcus. “Sefer Hasidim” and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe.

Ivan G. Marcus’s “Sefer Hasidim” and the Ashkenazic Book in Medieval Europe is a rather unique book about a rather unique Jewish book from the Middle Ages. The Book of the Pietists [Sefer Hasidim], “written anonymously [in the thirteenth century] but attributed to Rabbi Judah b. Samuel he-hasid (the pietist) of Regensburg (d.1217),” has long been studied for its insights into the Jewish spirituality of a small circle of medieval rabbis and their students, and more recently for what the book reveals about contemporary social interaction between Jews and Christians in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Rhineland cities (1). Marcus himself has contributed significantly to scholarship on this latter aspect of the book. After efficiently recounting the evolving interest in Sefer Hasidim, Marcus heads in a new direction. This ability to see problems from a new angle is a characteristic feature of his scholarship; he has marked out new areas of research on Jewish education in the Middle Ages as well as Jewish reactions to Christian culture.

American Judaism and the Second Vatican Council: The Response of the American Jewish Committee to Nostra Aetate

During the Second Vatican Council, American Jewish community members impacted the drafting of the declaration on the Catholic Church's attitude toward Jews and Judaism. This article explores the American Jewish Committee's reactions to the drafting and promulgation of the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate) and its contribution to establishing interfaith relations. The varied Jewish reactions to the declaration provide insight into the internal Jewish discussions regarding Nostra Aetate, revealing that even though the declaration is assessed positively today, initial Jewish reactions were not enthusiastic.

»Die angesteckten Juden«. Constantin Brunners Antizionismus

Abstract The article analyses Brunner’s attitude towards Zionism from the time when he conceived »Der Judenhass und die Juden«, focussing on his writings on Antisemitism and on questions of German-Jewish belonging. There is something remarkable about the historical moment when Brunner engaged with the question of Antisemitism. Whereas the rise of Antisemitism in the 1870 s prompted a number of Jewish public reactions and analyses, there was a visible decline in their number after the turn of the century. On the other hand, it was by no means extraordinary that Brunner connected his critical reflections on anti-Jewish sentiments with a negative attitude towards Zionism. The radicalism of his position becomes evident, however, in the fact that he treated both the hatred of Jews and Zionism as just two aspects of the same tragedy. While after 1912 his explicit anti-Zionism was, to a certain degree, shared by many members of the »Centralverein«, his position with respect to nation and nationhood tended towards the more radical views of Max Naumann, who associated Jewish identity with German nationalism.

A Comparative-Informational Approach to the Study of Religion: The Chinese and Jewish Cases

AbstractThis article offers a “comparative-informational” approach to the study of religion. It demonstrates how historical transformations in religious traditions are frequently intertwined with shifts towards new strategies of managing information, or “informational orders.” The article shows how two unrelated schools of thought—Neo-Confucianism and Kabbalah—were responsible for the construction and institutionalization of new information strategies in their respective traditions. The innovative discourses Neo-Confucians and Kabbalists established were characterized by “analytic” qualities that were co-opted from competing foreign traditions. As part of the Confucian and Jewish reactions to Buddhism and Greek philosophy, respectively, Neo-Confucian and medieval Jewish mystical discourses underwent considerable rationalization. Moreover, from an informational perspective, a major factor in the dramatic cultural transitions that Neo-Confucians and Kabbalists facilitated was the ability of these schools to restructure the canonical literature of their respective traditions. Such rare modificiations in a tradition’s “informational core” are here interpreted as adaptive strategies that drive cultural systems towards greater complexity and long-term resilience.

Talking about Antisemitism in France Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher

This article explores tensions in French Jewish discourses about antisemitism in the post-2000 period. Drawing on commentary from French Jewish intellectuals, national Jewish organizations, and the French Jewish press from the mid-2000s until after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, I note a complex relationship between change and continuity in discursive characterizations of French antisemitism. While empirical manifestations of antisemitism were notably transformed by the Toulouse attacks of 2012, much French Jewish discourse insisted on continuity from the early 2000s onward. At the same time, Jewish narrative practices shifted rather dramatically. In a political context where Israel was often depicted as part of a history of violent settler colonialism, early 2000s Jewish discourse divorced French antisemitism from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (post)colonial racism in France. After 2012, some Jewish commentators linked Israel to French antisemitism by likening terrorism in Israel with Islamic antisemitism in France. These disjunctures between narratives and empirical violence suggest that the “structures of feeling” behind Jewish reactions to contemporary antisemitism cannot be reduced to empirical questions about safety and security. Social scientists thus need to move beyond an empirical analysis of antisemitism itself and attend to the cultural and affective work Jewish discourses about antisemitism do in any particular moment.

Bøger om jødisk historie i Danmark de sidste 15 år

I Danmark er der de sidste femten år udkommet en hel del bøger om jødernes historie, ikke mindst om deres trængsler. Morten Thing gennemgår i denne oversigtsartikel de vigtigste indenfor forskning og formidling. * * *Books on Jewish history in Denmark the last 15 years • The most spectacular work about Jewish culture is without doubt Martin Schwarz Lausten’s six-volume work about the attitude of the Danish Lutheran church towards the Jews and Judaism. It is a work of great precision and with the use of many new sources. Although it is a work on church-history it has a lot to say on Jewish reactions to the church and the state. The volumes are: Kirke og synagoge,De fromme og jøderne, Oplysning i kirke og synagoge, Frie jøder?, Folkekirken og jøderne og Jødesympati og jødehad i folkekirken. Antisemitism has also been in focus and Sofie Lene Baks work on the history of antisemitism in Denmark is probably the most central: Dansk antisemitisme 1930–45. The rescue of the Danish Jews in WWII is without doubt the most researched topic in Danish Jewish history. Many new works have been published. Sofie Lene Baks book on what happened to the Jews when they came back from Sweden I 1945, Da krigen var forbi. It turned out that the municipality of Copenhagen had taken care of many flats and possessions. The history of the Jewish minority has been more in focus than ever. Many new books have been published. Arthur Arnheim’s Truet minoritet søger beskyttelse is the biggest book on the history from seventeenth century until today.

Impact of destruction – Introduction to the Josephus Seminar, Theological University Kampen

This is an introduction to the contributions of Jan Willem van Henten and William den Hollander to the Josephus Seminar ‘Impact of destruction. Methodological questions in the study of Jewish and Christian reactions to the demolition of the Temple’ held at the Theological University in Kampen, the Netherlands. The introduction sketches the status quaestionis and the methodological issues in comparing the works of Josephus and the Gospels in reconstructing the impact of the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 on Judaism and Early Christianity.

Making Jews: Race, Gender and Identity in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation

Making Jews: Race, Gender and Identity in Barbados in the Age of Emancipation Laura Arnold Leibman (bio) and Sam May (bio) From the 1810s through the 1830s, calls for Jewish emancipation swept the Americas. In addition to Maryland’s so-called “Jew Bill” (1819–1826)—a move to allow Jews to hold public office by modifying the state constitution’s requirement that public officials take a Christian oath—Canada, Jamaica, Suriname, Curaçao and Barbados all experienced legislative attempts in the first three decades of the nineteenth century to change the status and rights of Jewish residents. Jewish reactions to the drive for emancipation varied. In Canada, the United States and Jamaica, Jews tended to respond positively to the proposed changes. Yet, in the Dutch Caribbean, Jews resented the fact that the Dutch government had tied emancipation to the elimination of Jews’ previous privileges. In Barbados, the Jewish community’s response to emancipation was mixed. Emancipation became a lightning rod for defining Jewish communal identity, and it threatened to rip the community apart. Class tensions ran beneath discussions of race and gender, and class was the greatest factor in encouraging the Jews of Barbados to argue against emancipation. Our analysis differs from many previous discussions of Jewish emancipation in early America that have relied upon non-Jewish sources—most commonly, the minutes from various state legislatures or letters exchanged with colonial governments. In this article, we turn instead to the records of the Congregation Nidhe Israel of Barbados and look at how Jews presented their own path to emancipation, both internally and to outsiders. In doing so, we reveal the important role Jews played in defining who and what is a Jew, even in an era in which Jewish identity was increasingly racialized. By focusing on Jewish perceptions of the emancipation, we challenge the way scholars have previously understood the construction of Jews as a “race” during this era. Previous histories of the racialization of early American Jews by historians Matthew Jacobson, Leonard Rogoff and Aron Rodrigue have tended to [End Page 1] see antisemitism as something done to Jews.1 In contrast, we argue that Jews played an important role in creating their own identities. To be sure, Jews did not construct these identities in a vacuum, nor were they immune to the attempts made by others to posit who and what is a Jew. As author Michele Elam puts it, “Autonomy is always limited.”2 Yet, Barbados’ Jews were not helpless victims of the machinations of others. Rather, Barbadian Jewish identity was the dynamic product of social transactions among Jews and a wide range of people and institutions, some of whom were Jewish, some of whom were not. Poor Jews had more to lose from the blurring of boundaries between Jews and people of African descent; hence, they were more protective of white privilege. Our Barbados example has wide implications for the study of the relationship between Jewishness and the rise of nations more generally. Since emancipation marks the point at which nations debated whether Jews—and other minorities—were deemed capable of becoming fully assimilated into the body politic, the nature of the bodies to be assimilated was often highly contested. In Barbados, Jewish emancipation was tied to the synagogue. Jews sought emancipation through the Jewish Vestry Bill of Barbados, which sought to provide them with access to civil rights previously held only by members of the island’s vestries. Prior to the bill only Anglican churches had vestries (legislative assemblies of parishioners), but the Jewish Vestry Bill of Barbados changed this by relabeling the legislative meetings of the island’s synagogue as vestries. This subtle change allowed Jews to participate in island politics more fully without having to convert first. Jewish emancipation in Barbados reflected the larger changes throughout the Americas in the status of Jews, women, and people of African [End Page 2] descent. When the bill appeared, the Jewish community of Barbados had recently undergone radical changes, and the debates surrounding emancipation reveal internal dissent about whether to redefine or retain the Jewish community’s previous hierarchical structure. As a consequence whiteness, manhood, and class were key factors in the emancipation debate. Rather than...

Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70: Apocalypses and Related PseudepigraphaJonesKenneth R. Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha BrillLeiden, 2011, xii, 308, €129.00ISBN 978-900-4210-44-8

Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70: Apocalypses and Related PseudepigraphaJonesKenneth R. <i>Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha</i> BrillLeiden, 2011, xii, 308, €129.00ISBN 978-900-4210-44-8

"The Best Pope the Jews Ever Had": Jewish Reactions to the Death of Pope John Paul II

With the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005, the world lost what was arguably the most prominent and respected voice in the Jewish-Christian relationship in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. John Paul was widely loved and appreciated by the Jewish community, for his life-long friendship with the Jewish people, and his consistent commitment to advancing Jewish-Catholic dialogue and uprooting antisemitism in all its forms. His death, therefore, sparked a torrent of eloquent tributes from Jewish leaders and spokespersons, both in Israel and throughout the Diaspora, highlighting his major accomplishments and historic gestures, and frankly acknowledging areas in which he had sometimes been at the center of disagreements, frictions and conflict with his “beloved elder brothers.” Through a re-visiting of a cross-section of published Jewish comments from the time of John Paul’s death, this article examines something of the complexity and challenges of the Jewish-Catholic relationship during his papacy, and discusses how, over the course of his nearly 27-year papacy, John Paul II became (at least for many people) “the best Pope the Jews ever had.”

The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions to Marian Devotion in the High Middle Ages

While discussing the rites and customs of burial and mourning in his bookTashbeẓ katan, the early fourteenth-century Rabbi Shimshon ben Ẓadok made the following remark:And the fact that we spill the water [that was in the presence of the dead man] outside [after the death] is because that when Miriam died the well ceased. For it is written: ‘And there was no water for the congregation [‘eda] since it was for her merit that the well traveled [with the Israelites] and we allude to it that he [the deceased] is a great man and he is worthy that water would cease on his behalf.

Periodicals and Collected Essays

Periodicals and Collected Essays Pamela Barmash, Shachar Pinsker, and Rick Painter ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES REVIEW. 36.2 (2012) Aaron Amit, “The ‘Halakhic Kernel’ as a Criterion for Dating Babylonian Aggadah: Bavli Ḥullin 110a–b and Parallels,” pp. 187–205; Natalie C. Polzer, “Misogyny Revisited: The Eve Traditions in Avot de Rabbi Natan, Versions A and B,” pp. 207–255; Debra Kaplan, “‘To Immerse their Wives’: Communal Identity and the ‘Kahalishe’ Mikveh of Altona,” pp. 257–279; Bracha Yaniv, “The Hidden Message of the Hares in the Talons of the Eagle,” pp. 281–294; Iris Idelson-Shein, “‘Their Eyes Shall Behold Strange Things’: Abraham Ben Elijah of Vilna Encounters the Spirit of Mr. Buffon,” pp. 295–322; Janet Handler Burstein, “Performing Holocaust Memory: Judd Ne'eman’s Zitra,” pp. 323–336. Book Reviews, pp. 337–369. ASSOCIATION FOR JEWISH STUDIES REVIEW. 37.1 (2013) Daniel Stein Kokin, “Toward the Source of the Sambatyon: Shabbat Discourse and the Origins of the Sabbatical River Legend,” pp. 1–28; David M. Goldenberg, “‘It Is Permitted to Marry a Kushite,’” pp 29–49; Ilana Sasson, “Gender Equality in Yefet Ben {Elī’s Commentary and Karaite Halakhah,” pp. 51–74; Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, “The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions to Marian Devotion in the High Middle Ages,” pp. 75–91; Nicham Ross, “Can Secular Spirituality be Religiously Inspired? The Hasidic Legacy in the Eyes of Skeptics,” pp. 93–113; Adam J. Sacks, “Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann Controversy as Destabilizing Transatlantic Text,” pp. 115–134. Book Reviews, pp. 135–176. ISRAEL STUDIES. 17.3 (2012) Special Section: Israel’s Foreign Relations: Asian Perspectives. Yiyi Chen, “China’s Relationship with Israel, Opportunities and Challenges: Perspectives from China,” pp. 1–21; Maina Chawla Singh, “Indians and Israelis: Beyond Strategic Partnerships,” pp. 22–44; Özlem Tür, “Turkey and Israel in the 2000s—: From Cooperation to Conflict,” pp. 45–66. Special Section: Literature and Music. Rachel Harris, “Samson’s Suicide: Death and the Hebrew Literary Canon,” pp. 67–91; Phillip Hollander, “Contested Zionist Masculinity and the Redemption of the Schlemiel in Levi [End Page 437] Aryeh Arieli’s ‘Allah Karim!’” pp. 92–118; Assaf Shelleg, “Israeli Art Music: A Reintroduction,” pp. 119–149. Articles. Dana Kachtan, “The Construction of Ethnic Identity in the Military—From the Bottom Up,” pp. 150–175; Meir Seidler, “Zionism’s Conflicting Founding Designs and Their Ideological Impact,” pp. 176–190. ISRAEL STUDIES. 18.1 (2013) Maya Balakirsky Katz, “The De-politicization of Israeli Political Cartoons,” pp. 1–30; Hizky Shoham, “From ‘Great History’ to ‘Small History’: The Genesis of the Zionist Periodization,” pp. 31–55; Abigail Jacobson, “American ‘Welfare Politics’: American Involvement in Jerusalem During World War I,” pp. 56–76; Jacob Tovy, “All Quiet on the Eastern Front: Israel and the Issue of Reparations from East-Germany, 1951–1956,” pp. 77–100; Hillel Cohen, “Palestinian Armed Struggle, Israel’s Peace Camp, and the Unique Case of Fatah Jerusalem,” pp. 101–123; Oded Haklai, “The Arab Minority in Israel: Challenges and Limits in Recent Disciplinary Approaches,” pp. 124–145; Batya Shimony, “Shaping Israeli-Arab Identity in Hebrew Words—The Case of Sayed Kashua,” pp. 146–169; Tamar Wolf-Monzon, “‘The Hand of Esau in the Midst Here Too’—Uri Zvi Grinberg’s Poem ‘A Great Fear and the Moon’ in Its Historical and Political Contexts,” pp. 170–193. ISRAEL STUDIES. 18.2 (2013) Special Issue: Shared Narratives—A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue. Ilan Troen and Natan Aridan, “Note from the Editors of Israel Studies,” p. v; Daniel Kurtzer, “Preface,” pp. vii–viii; Paul Scham, Benjamin Pogrund, and As’ad Ghanem, “Introduction to Shared Narratives: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue,” pp. 1–10; As’ad Ghanem, “Palestinian Nationalism: An Overview,” pp. 11–29; Moshe Maoz, “The Zionist/Jewish and Palestinian/Arab National Movements: The Question of Legitimacy—A Comparative Observation,” pp. 30–40; Yosef Gorny, “To Understand Oneself: Does It Mean to Understand the Other?—Reflections,” pp. 41–52; Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi and Zeina M. Barakat, “Israelis and Palestinians: Contested Narratives,” pp. 53–69; Dalia Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How?: The Memory of the Holocaust and the Israeli Experience,” pp. 70–85; Adel Manna, “The Palestinian Nakba and Its Continuous Repercussions,” pp. 86–99...

Cretan Jews and the First Sephardic Encounter in the fifteenth century

This article explores Jewish reactions to Sephardic settlement on Venetian Crete following the Spanish massacres of 1391, when a significant number of Sephardic Jews fled Iberia for the eastern Mediterranean. The Romaniot (Judeo-Greek) Jews native to Crete were heavily influenced by Sephardic intellectual traditions, and Spanish Jews had settled on Crete before 1391. The two Jewish communities commonly intermarried and accommodated one another. Yet, utilizing Taqqanot Qandiya, a collection of local Hebrew communal ordinances, this article argues that Crete's Jewish elite saw the Spanish newcomers as a threat to their long-held authority. Though the accusations are subtle, a close reading of this Hebrew source reveals a growing tension that provoked a self-defensive response on the part of the Cretan Romaniot leadership.

Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha. JSJSup 151

Book Review| January 01 2012 Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha. JSJSup 151 Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha. JSJSup 151Jones, Kenneth R. Daniel M. Gurtner Daniel M. Gurtner Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Bulletin for Biblical Research (2012) 22 (3): 435–436. https://doi.org/10.2307/26424588 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Daniel M. Gurtner; Jewish Reactions to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70: Apocalypses and Related Pseudepigrapha. JSJSup 151. Bulletin for Biblical Research 1 January 2012; 22 (3): 435–436. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/26424588 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressBulletin for Biblical Research Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2012 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2012The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Cementing the Enemy Category: Arrest and Imprisonment of German Jews in Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933-8/9

Understandably, research has focused overwhelmingly on Jews in the camps of the Holocaust. But the nazis had been detaining Jews in concentration camps ever since 1933, at times in large numbers. Who were these prisoners? This article analyzes nazi policies that brought Jews into the concentration camps. It ventures into the inner structure and dynamics of one of the most heterogeneous groups of concentration camp inmates. By contrasting the perpetrators' objectives with the victims' experiences, this article will illuminate the role of the concentration camp as the ultimate means of pressure in the fatal process of turning a minority group into an outsider group: that is, the act of defining and marking the enemy which was the critical stage before the destruction of European Jewry. Furthermore, it will examine Jewish reactions to SS terror inside the camps.

The Christian Appropriation of Jerusalem in the Fourth Century: The Case of the Bordeaux Pilgrim

IN THE PAST THREE or so decades there has been a noticeable increase of scholarly interest in the world of Christian pilgrimage in general and that leading to the Holy Land in particular.1 Indeed the birth of Christian pilgrimage to Roman Palestine during the third and fourth decades of the fourth century took place not in the least due to the brilliant Holy Land plan of Constantine, which was, among other matters, aimed at diverting the attention of the Christian masses from what only just recently had been their lot - horrifying persecutions at the hands of the heathen Roman Empire. At the same time it served to invigorate their interest in their recent heroic, historic, and mythic past that took place in the Holy Land and particularly in Jerusalem.2 In addition to its avowed interest in a new Christian self-identity it seems to me that Constantine's plan served too as yet another component in the overall scheme to tilt the political and religious center of gravity from the Occident to the Orient - from Rome the civitaa aeterna to Roma Nova, which he founded in Byzantium on the banks of the Bosphoran straits and renamed Constantinopolis.3In no time the massive construction work carried out predominantly in (the Holy Sepulcher) and around Jerusalem (Mount of Olives, Mamre [near Hebron] and Bethlehem) was being augmented by the creation of yet another configuration of a spiritual nature, the holy Jerusalem liturgy, which no doubt when finally formed merited the title the Fifth Gospel given it by Peter Walker.4 The pilgrims who flocked by the hordes to the holy city were the backbone of the unique religious and cultural transformation that is the Christianization of Jerusalem and of the Holy Land. They captured and disseminated its message as well as its scents. It seems that it must have been to them, as well as to the neophytes gathering in Jerusalem to convert to the new religion, that Cyril the local bishop addressed the following: One should never grow weary of hearing about our crowned Lord, especially on this holy Golgotha. For others merely hear, but we see and touch5The end product, so to say, of the Christian appropriation of the Holy Land in general and of Jerusalem in particular was demonstrated cartographically on the famous mosaic floor of the Madaba Church east of the Jordan River, better known as the Madaba Map.6 This map and possibly other maps7 as well as other components of the Christian Holy Land edifice (relics and tombs) were to an extant a reflection of the circulating verbal accounts of the early pilgrims to Byzantine Palestine. The centrality of these accounts to the understanding of Christian views on pilgrimage and the Holy Land is beyond doubt, but before we take a closer look at segments of the earliest description of the Holy Land known to us, the one written by the anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux (333 CE.), a short precis of the statua quaestionis of the early Christian pilgrimage to Palestine and its literary accounts is in order.Scholars like David Hunt and Zeev Rubin have scoured the intricate historical terrain of Late Antiquity in order to depict for us the hitherto unknown picture of Christian Palestinian pilgrimage set in the unique political and religious circumstances of the empire and in particular in the province of Roman Palestinian.8 Others, like Peter Walker, Robert Wilken, and Robert Markus as well as Piere Maraval, to mention only a few, immersed themselves in the conceptual world of pilgrimage and in the notion of the Holy Land as portrayed in the writings of the Church fathers.9 Still others like John Wilkinson and Ora Limor, took upon themselves to translate and annotate the pilgrims' accounts.10 In more recent years a more specific venue has been explored, namely, the Jewish component of Christian pilgrimage. Recent studies have looked into the following set of topics. On the one hand, for instance, Ora Limor has explored the role of the Hebraica Veritas (that is, the intrinsic and concealed knowledge of the Jews of local Judeo-Christian traditions) in the construction of Palestinian Christian sacred topography, and others like Elchanan Reiner have been tracing hints of possible Jewish reactions to this rather new religious and cultural intrusion into their land. …