Jewish Theatre Research Articles

Sharon B. Oster. No Place in Time: The Hebraic Myth in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2018. 368 pp.

Reviewed by: No Place in Time: The Hebraic Myth in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Sharon B. Oster Julian Levinson Sharon B. Oster. No Place in Time: The Hebraic Myth in Late-Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2018. 368 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419001077 Sharon Oster's insightful, well-researched book is framed by a discussion of the notorious Seligman affair, which she describes as a turning point in the relationship between Jews and American society. In the summer of 1877, the German Jewish financier Joseph Seligman was denied entry to the prestigious Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs, New York, on the grounds that he represented what hotel manager Judge Henry Hilton called a class of "ostentatious … vulgar" outsiders who were "repulsive to the well-bred" (8). Seligman was a Jew "in the trade sense of the word" (8) and hence deemed irredeemably unfit to rub shoulders with the leisure class. Scholarship on Jews in America has dwelt considerably on negative stereotyping of Jews, but Oster draws attention to the surprising note of praise that Hilton reserved for another kind of Jew: those like the old New York Sephardic families the Nathans and the Hendricks. These represented what he termed the "Orthodox Hebrew Church" (8), a noble religious heritage that the Seligman Jews had long forgotten. For Oster, this opposition between the debased materialistic Jew and the noble Hebrew is a central, if unstable, binary structure in the American imaginary. Seligman may have been sent packing, but the idea of the noble Hebrew endured even from this notorious episode as an alternate source of value, and it is chiefly here that Oster's interest lies. Oster's book may be seen as an effort to reread American literary representations of Jewishness in light of the recent "temporal turn" in the humanities. Whereas many recent scholars of American Jewish culture have analyzed constructions of Jewishness in relation to discourses of race and nationhood (e.g., Sander Gilman, Jonathan Freedman, Eric Goldstein, and Jennifer Glaser), Oster explores how Jews have been associated with competing models of temporality and history. The "Hebraic myth" in her subtitle refers to a constellation of ideas about the deep biblical past within American Protestant culture: biblical Israel is an ancient nation whose erstwhile privileged role in salvation history has been superseded by Christianity; yet it also continues to exert its presence throughout history, either as a typological precedent for Christians (as in the Puritan settlers' self-conception as the "new" Israel), or as a still-legible stratum within the practices, sensibilities, even the physiognomy, of contemporary Jews (as in Hilton's understanding of the Sephardim). As an enduring, alternate locus of meaning within Christian society, the "Hebraic myth" thus complicates the notion of history as a unilinear progression. As Oster contends, "the noble Hebrew marks the disruptive return of the past, complicating narratives of Protestant redemption in anticipation of alternate futures" (25). In order to show a range of uses for this Hebraic myth in American literature, Oster brings together a set of texts written by Jews and Christians (the key figures are Abraham Cahan, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mary Antin, Anzia Yezierska, and Emma Lazarus). In her readings, she explores how ostensibly secular literary [End Page 214] texts are bound up with religious modes of thinking, specifically ideas about temporality. Cahan represents New York City as a "crossroads of different orders of time" (85); Yezierska creates a protagonist who "convert[s] her noble Jewish past into the stuff of narrative and social distinction" (221); and Lazarus "harness[es] the Hebraic myth to disrupt typology" (235). Her readings of these figures are solid and illuminating. By linking secular and religious themes under the broader rubric of temporality, Oster enables us to reconsider important questions such as the roles of nostalgia, redemptive futurity, and cultural critique in Jewish American texts. The most original and, to my mind, the truly inspiring sections of the book are those that take up non-Jewish writers, particularly James and Wharton. Anyone interested in the representation of Jews in the classic texts of American literature will especially welcome Oster's extended readings of The Golden Bowl...

Archive fund of the composer Mark Karminsky

Archive fund of the composer Mark Karminsky

Любов Ліницька – виконавиця ролей у п’єсах єврейських драматургів (перший український стаціонарний театр М. Садовського у Києві (1909–1915 рp.))

In the article Liubov Linytska - performer of roles in the plays of Jewish playwrights (M. Sadovskyi's First Ukrainian Stationary Theatre (1909-1915)) an attempt is made to generalize the experience of staging plays by Jewish authors on the stage of the M. Sadovskyi’s Theatre in Kyiv. This theatre opened on September 15,1907. inthe rented premises of the Trinity People's House (now the Kyiv Operetta Theatre).There was no Jewish theatre in Kyiv in those years, so staging performances based on Jewish plays in the Ukrainian theatre provided an opportunity not only to watch plays by various authors and learn about their life, but also to significantly support the financial position of this theatre. But most importantly, smoothing the sometimes still antagonistic views of individuals, this action influenced the general development of mutual enrichment of the cultures of the Ukrainian and Jewish people, who in the Russian Empire were under severe national oppression.From 1908 to1915, M. Sadovskyi's theatre staged 7 plays by Jewish playwrights - God of Revenge by Sholom Asha (1909), Mirele Efros (1910), Love and Death (1910), Cannibals ( 1910), Beyond the Blue Sea (1911) by Yacov Gordin, Sulamif (1910) by Avraam Goldfagen and Queen of the Sabbath (1915) by Andzhey Marek.Melodramatic performances had a high ideological and artistic quality and were most successful with the audience - Mirele Efros by Y. Gordin and Queen of the Sabbath by A. Marek. Leading masters - M. Sadovskyi, I. Marianenko, L. Linytska, S. Pankivskyi,E. Khutorna, F. Levytskyi and others - were engaged in these performances, which were solved in the genre of psychological drama. They created an image that is psychologically true and convincing. The artist L. Linytska, who has already switched to the roles of mothers and elderly women, stood out with her skill. In her performance in these roles, the actress showed an absolute understanding of the nature of the melodramatics of the images she created and conveyed to the audience a striking artistic intelligence. The participation of Ukrainian actors in the performances of Jewish playwrights enriched their experience and improved their stage and performance skills.The successful stage performance of plays by Jewish authors on the stage of the M. Sadovskyi’s First Stationary Ukrainian Theatre made an extraordinary contribution to the general culture of Ukraine

Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy by Debra Caplan

Reviewed by: Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy by Debra Caplan Sonia Gollance (bio) Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy By Debra Caplan. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2018. 327 pp. The Yiddish theater company that became the legendary Vilna Troupe had two main goals: create art theater for Jewish audiences and bring Yiddish theater to non-Jewish audiences. Entertainment was an afterthought. Yet entertain the Vilna Troupe did, becoming an international cultural phenomenon with wide-reaching influence throughout the performing arts world. In fact, one could say that Debra Caplan's Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy has similar goals. It is on one hand a narrative about the development of Yiddish art theater. At the same time, Yiddish Empire demonstrates the significance of the Vilna Troupe for theater studies more broadly, especially with regard to transnationalism, branding, the creative potential of itineracy, and as a worthy topic for digital scholarship. Entertainment is not the primary goal of an academic monograph, yet Caplan is an engaging storyteller with a compelling subject. The present moment is an exciting one for Yiddish theater scholarship. Productions such as Paula Vogel's Indecent and the Folksbiene's Yiddish-language Fiddler on the Roof have attracted broad public interest. New scholarly works, such as Alyssa Quint's The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater (Indiana University Press, 2019), and translations of plays, such as Michael Shapiro's rendition of the 1932 Moyshe Nadir drama Messiah in America (Farlag Press, 2018), expand upon our knowledge of Yiddish theater. The Digital Yiddish Theatre Project (which Caplan cofounded) publishes works of public scholarship and synopses of Yiddish dramas on their website. Yet Caplan's monograph stands out as a work devoted to a theater company, or (one could say) a theater company franchise. Before the advent of digital [End Page 291] humanities tools, documenting the history of the Vilna Troupe was a virtually impossible task: multiple groups (and nearly three hundred individuals) used the company name as they toured almost constantly throughout Europe and the United States for a period of two decades. Caplan successfully navigates her complex topic in two unconventional ways. She provides a companion website, www.vilnatroupe.com, with a visualization of the connections between troupe members (Vilner) and their associates. Caplan also structures her book so that the five chapters about the history of the Vilna Troupe are interrupted by short "interludes" that provide fascinating snapshots into the lives of the Vilner themselves, on topics such as romantic relationships and the Holocaust. Yiddish Empire charts the extraordinary rise and slow decline of the Vilna Troupe, which began as an amateur theater group in German-occupied Vilna (today Vilnius, Lithuania) and became a celebrated art theater that attracted international acclaim among Yiddish-speaking and non-Yiddish-speaking audiences alike. The first chapter recounts (unsuccessful) attempts by Jewish intellectuals, such as Y. L. Peretz, to create a Yiddish art theater. Professional Yiddish theater companies emerged in Eastern Europe in the 1870s, yet they had an uneasy relationship both with Russian imperial authorities and with the arbiters of Yiddish culture. Modernist writers were embarrassed by what they classified as shund (trashy, poorly written melodramas), yet they were unable to establish a commercially viable alternative prior to World War I. Chapter 2 describes how a group of starving teenaged war refugees created a high-brow Yiddish theater in wartime Vilna. Despite the fact that the actors survived on one potato a day, performed in a theater that had recently been used to stable horses, and had little professional experience, their performances were a huge hit with Yiddish-speaking Jews and the relatively benevolent German occupying forces. When the company went on tour, they became known as the Vilna Troupe. The astonishing success of the Vilna Troupe makes for a good story on its own, yet Caplan also makes it clear that their innovations had a lasting impact on the theater world. One of their major contributions was the popularization of S. An-sky's play The Dybbuk, which also helped [End Page 292] the Vilna Troupe expand...

Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity ed. by Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese

Reviewed by: Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity ed. by Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese David B. Levy (bio) Monsters and Monstrosity in Jewish History: From the Middle Ages to Modernity Edited by Iris Idelson-Shein and Christian Wiese. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. xiv + 269 pp. The past two decades have witnessed a surge of interest in monsters and the monstrous, but none from the perspective of Jewish studies except for some of the work of David Ruderman, who in a number of pioneering articles in the 1970s and 1980s analyzed early modern Jewish representations of conjoined twins, unicorns, and child prodigies, shedding light on the relationship of monsters and omens, teratology, and anthropology, science, religion, and magic. In addition, Jay Geller's Bestiarium Judaicum: Unnatural Histories of the Jews (2018) investigates the productive relationship between the animalization of Jews in Christian works, up to the depiction of animals in works by Kafka and Freud. Thus this timely, well-written, erudite, well-researched book imports the increasing interest in monstrosity into the field of Jewish studies. The book gathers the scholarship of fourteen distinguished international academics, shows how, as Joshua Trachtenberg did, the mechanism by which Jews as the feared "outsider and other" have been demonized negatively into monsters by medieval Christians. Robert Chazan, Miri Rubin, and Sara Lipton have shown it was during the Middle Ages that the Jewish otherness coupled with Christian theology led to accusations of host desecrations, well poisonings, and ritual murder. Its scope is from the medieval times to the modernity from the interdisciplinary methodologies of the perspectives of history, literature, anthropology, folklore, and history of science, art history, and religion, across geographical boundaries. Yet the book goes beyond Trachtenberg's seminal studies and is not susceptible to what Baron calls [End Page 303] "the lachrymose conception of Jewish history"; that is, the history of persecution in the diaspora, by demonstrating how Jews have sometimes subversively polemically flipped the image of monstrosity, a kind of Freudian sublimation and projection, onto their enemies—be they Christian Jew haters or secular Nazis as internally ethically bankrupt. For example, Kabalek's chapter 7 in part analyzes the representations of Simon Wiesenthal's representations of Nazis as monsters. The book is in two parts. The first explores the predominance of images of monsters in Jewish Christian interreligious and intercultural encounter. In chapter 1 Krummel and Mittman examine Beowulf alongside the Old English Exodus, demonstrating how pursuing monsters sheds light on cultural intersections. In chapter 2 Strickland exposes images of medieval monstrous Jews in the painter Hieronymous Bosch, who uses Jewish racial stereotypes of physical features such as long noses, beards, and dark skin to represent Jews as well as Jews' associations with toads, owls, asses, pigs, and scorpions. In chapter 3 Epstein considers the Duke of Sussex Pentateuch from the fourteenth century in southern Germany, whereby four monstrous figures are depicted representing different types of gentiles juxtaposed with four images of anti-Jewish tropes of Jews. In chapter 4 Guesnet examines matted hair assumed to be the work of demons called Plica Polomica [Polish plait] or Judenzopf [Jewish braid] as a marker of contamination and transgression. In chapter 5 Jacobs offers a close reading of Oskar Panizza's The Operated Goy (1922) and Salomo Friedlaender's The Operated Jew (1893) to reveal how science can create monstrosity. In chapter 6 Gelbin looks at Weimar cinematic expressionism. Her examples are Paul Wegener's Der Golem (1920), Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), and Richard Oswald's Anders als die Anderen (1919) to reveal anti-Jewish stereotypes and iconographies of horror. In chapter 6, drawing creatively on Lyotard and other postmodern philosophers, Kabalek analyses Holocaust testimonies that represent the Nazi persecutors and their collaborators as moral monsters, and also addresses the image of the Muselmänner as an image of degraded monstrosity created by the Nazis who worked the Muselmänner to death. [End Page 304] Part 2 looks at "the Jewish monsters" within the European Jewish communities' self-perception and intracommunal meanings of monstrosity. In chapter 8 Shyovitz considers the monstrous inhabitants on the realm of Tevel from the seventh- to eighth-century cosmological...

Spectacles against the Swastika: Informal Education through Meyer Weisgal’s 1930s Theatrical Productions

Despite increased attention among geographers to the diversity of spaces that can constitute informal sites of education, theater in general and spectacles more specifically have garnered relatively little geographical interest. In response, this paper draws upon Paulo Freire’s philosophy to examine how the two major productions of the Zionist activist Meyer Weisgal—The Romance of a People and The Eternal Road—aimed to challenge historic representations of Jews by more powerful groups while raising funds and support for the Zionist cause. Although the shows were unable to hinder the Nazi threat, Freire’s pedagogy demonstrates their power in enabling those subjected to prejudice to develop a voice, raise awareness of social and political concerns, and attract wider support. Consequently, spectacles’ educational potential in disseminating ideologies and facilitating learning and empathetic relations within and between groups must be acknowledged.

From #selfie to #edgy. Hashtag networks and images associated with the hashtag #jews on Instagram

This paper reports on an analysis of networked representations of Jews and Jewishness on social media. It builds on prior research on the usage of Twitter hashtags for issue framing (Meraz, 2017; Meraz and Papacharissi, 2013), and extends it to the leading photo-sharing platform Instagram. We collected a dataset of 1500 Instagram posts marked with the hashtags #jew, #jewish, and #jews, and combine qualitative content analysis and co-occurrence network analysis to explore themes and representational practices in Instagram content about Jews and Jewishness. Besides a range of representations of private lives, Jewish culture, and history, that are shaped by Instagram’s platform affordances, it identifies alternative practices, including meme annotation and sharing political content, notably about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This work contributes to the understanding of how hashtags and visuals are used in the construction of collective representations on social media.

Hospitality; or, A Critique of Un/Inhabitability

Recent criticisms of regionalization and urbanization in the Anthropocene have argued that actors are increasingly producing uninhabitable spaces, in which oppressed and marginalized groups are either left to die or forced into a rootless existence of constant displacement. Through an examination of the cultural politics of current discussions of uninhabitability in the Anthropocene, this article argues against the logic of un/inhabitability—demonstrating its necessity to imagine itself against a subhuman other that was embodied, at least in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in the anti-Semitic representation of Jews—and proposes that the conceptual framework of in/hospitability can be substituted in a way that both maintains the logic of un/inhabitability’s beneficial aspects—its illumination of the inequitable distribution of environmental harms in the Anthropocene and of the relationship between cultural formations and dwelling—and abandons its problematic underpinnings. In this way, the embrace of in/hospitability recommends not a rejection of the logic of un/inhabitability but its development through productive critique.

BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE THEATRICAL SCENE OF DROHOBYCH: EPISODES FROM THE HISTORY OF UKRAINIAN, POLISH AND JEWISH TOURS IN THE ERA OF IVAN FRANKO (1866–1914)

Based on newspaper materials, the article attempts to systematize and analyze information leaflets on the development of theater tours in Drohobych during the life and work of Ivan Franko and his colleagues, who popularized and developed the theater life in Drohobych in 1866–1914. It identifies the key stages of the Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish theater tours, their periodicity, program contents, directing and acting skills and defines the repertoire of national theaters and their decisive role in the development of the intellectual space of Drohobych during the mentioned period. A special attention is paid to the criticism of certain speeches among the multinational audience of the city. The study reveals that the origin of theatrical life in Drohobych is associated primarily with the XIX century, primarily with the famous tours of the Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish theaters, which brought not only the intellectual space of morality of the stage and the mental culture of Lviv or Vienna, but also prompted the city public to think about creating their own theater building that could be looking to work at the theater level. As for the spectator space and fans of theatrical performances, Drohobych clearly was not any worse than Lviv since in its urban space there were intellectuals not only among academic institutions but also from the financial concerns of the oil business who were real connoisseurs of theater. Finally, with the beginning of the war, theatrical performances in Drohobych ceased to be performed on the sustainable basis. On the other hand, military tours, for their part, received a completely different purpose.

Forming the Related Styles With Modern of Choreography in Ukraine

The aim of the article is to determine the main principles of modern-jazz dance, folk-modern dance and rock-ballets, to analyze the latest publications, which deal with the development of the modern-dance styles in Ukraine.Research methodology Two theses were analyzed during the scientific research, three articles became the base for the study, and some performances were taken for the study in art criticism in Ukraine and abroad.Results. The study demonstrates the newest forms of modern dance. The author considers the evolution of modern dance in Ukraine and other European countries. The paper observes the publications, which deal with the rock-ballets in Ukraine and Europe, and the activities of modern dance choreographers, such as Boris Eyfman, Alla Rubina, Radu Poklitaru. The author analyzes the artistic style of Maurice Béjart and his creative contribution to the development of the jazz-dance, modern styles of dancing, etc. The author describes the development of the folk-modern dance in Ukraine and European countries, due to Alla Rubina’s art activities in the Jewish theatre, and her works with the modern artists. The author obtains the common picture of the development of the modern dance in Ukraine.Novelty. An attempt is made to describe the newest styles in choreography in the post-modern period in Ukraine, the way they are connected with the modern-dance, what is common and different in them.The practical significance. Ukrainian researchers can find the opportunity to develop issues on the modern-jazz dance and folk-modern dance. It is the first attempt to create the art criticism analysis of post-modern choreography in Ukraine.Key-words: jazz-modern dance, folk-modern, rock-ballet, Culture of Western Europe, Ukrainian Academy of Ballet, modern-dance.

From Buchenwald to Port-au-Prince: Becoming Haitian in the Holocaust: Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s Avant que les ombres s’effacent

From Buchenwald to Port-au-Prince: Becoming Haitian in the Holocaust: Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s Avant que les ombres s’effacent John Patrick Walsh Ruben Schwarzberg, the protagonist of the Haitian writer Louis-Philippe Dalembert’s 2017 novel Avant que les ombres s’effacent, is a Holocaust survivor who makes a transatlantic escape. The novel is a work of historical fiction that retraces the remarkable journey of an Ashkenazi Jewish refugee. Ruben is born in Lódź, Poland, in 1913, but, six years later, his family flees across the border to Germany after the massacre in Pińsk, when the Polish Army executed members of the Jewish community. The Schwarzbergs settle in Berlin, where the family prospers, and Ruben attends medical school. Yet the rise of the Nazis leads to renewed violence, and Ruben and his uncle Joe are imprisoned in Buchenwald. Somewhat miraculously, they are released after a former medical school professor intervenes on Ruben’s behalf. Through a series of chance encounters, Ruben makes his way to Paris, where he meets the Haitian poet, Ida Faubert, who informs him that the Haitian government has issued a decree that grants naturalized citizenship to Jewish refugees. In the fall of 1939, Ruben finds safe haven in Port-au-Prince, where he finally takes root. Ruben had long kept this story to himself. Yet, near the end of his life, the 2010 earthquake strikes Haiti, and Ruben feels compelled to speak of his past as a way to make sense of the devastation that surrounds him. Ruben’s journey is astounding, perhaps even to readers with knowledge of the Holocaust or Haitian and Caribbean history. Yet this is not the first time that Holocaust refugees have been depicted in Caribbean fiction or that a Caribbean writer has considered the legacy of the Holocaust along-side forced migrations in the Caribbean, from the slave trade all the way to the precarious journeys of Haitian “boat people” in the late twentieth century.1 As Sarah Phillips Casteel shows in Calypso Jews, such inter-diasporic reflection abounds in both anglophone and francophone contexts. [End Page 163] In her thoroughly engaging study of the connections between Jewish and black histories in the Caribbean, Casteel brings together a diverse group of writers, including Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, É douard Glissant, Maryse Condé, Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, and Caryl Phillips.2 Well aware of the political and critical risks of comparing the Holocaust to other historical events, even the Middle Passage, Casteel digs deep into Jewish history in the Caribbean by incorporating the expulsion of Sephardim from the Iberian peninsula in the 1490s. “Caribbean literary invocations of the Sephardic expulsion and the Holocaust merit consideration,” Casteel argues, “for what they can tell us not only about representations of Jewishness in postcolonial writing but also about the shifting preoccupations and vocabularies of Caribbean poetics” (2). One of the great merits of the book lies in Casteel’s handling of shifting historical and intercultural perspectives. However, apart from a brief analysis of Myriam Chancy’s The Loneliness of Angels, Haitian literature and history is absent in Calypso Jews. Historically speaking, Haiti was not the only Caribbean country that took in refugees during the Second World War. Nor was this the sole period during which the Haitian government granted asylum to refugees. In Freedom’s Mirror, the historian Ada Ferrer brings to light two moments of early nineteenth-century Haitian history, when Presidents Alexander Pétion and Jean-Pierre Boyer invoked the principle of “free soil,” or the constitutional right to freedom and citizenship to all “Africans and Indians” on Haitian lands.3 Yet this history remains largely forgotten or unknown. These complex historical, cultural, and geographical layers inform Dalembert’s literary imaginary. As such, the entwined histories of radical conceptions of race and freedom, and migration and asylum in Avant que les ombres s’effacent complicate ongoing debates in a number of fields, including Holocaust studies, Haitian studies, French and Francophone studies, and even those outside literature and history that take up the question of migrants and refugees, such as Anthropology and Political Philosophy. This essay focuses on the literary representation of the circuitous path of Ruben’s itinerary...

Appreciating the Whole: Dante Now

Appreciating the Whole:Dante Now Akash Kumar I am sure that many teachers who teach Dante dwell on the chapter "Il canto di Ulisse" when they come to Inferno 26. And how could we not? Primo Levi's moving account of his struggle to remember the text and meaning of Dante's poem, his difficulties in explaining the details of the Commedia to his French companion Jean, and most importantly, his stunning evocation of Ulysses' dictum "Considerate la vostra semenza," provide an oasis within the horrors of Auschwitz recounted in Se questo è un uomo. When Levi recites those verses, it is as if he too is reborn and able to forget where he is: "Come se anch'io lo sentissi per la prima volta: come uno squillo di tromba, come la voce di Dio. Per un momento, ho dimenticato chi sono e dove sono."1 If Ulysses' vision of a human potential that ever seeks new and greater knowledge can provide Levi something to hold on to, something to have faith in as he witnesses and is subjected to the most vile inhumanity that we are capable of, then surely we can make the case to our students in the global twenty-first century classroom that this is a poem worth reading. It reaches out well beyond its own moment to inspire us to rise above and embrace a vision of human excellence that defies boundaries of religion, culture, and class. As Teodolinda Barolini argues, this is in line with Dante's non-stereotyping imagination. If Ulysses represents, in part, a deep and abiding respect for classical culture, Dante also steps out of line with the popular, orthodox culture of his moment in making his usurers of Inferno 16 not Jews but Christians hailing from his own city, with their moneybags prominently emblazoned with their family crests. Barolini notes that "Dante transfers the stereotypic image—the moneybags [End Page 178] worn around the neck—from the stereotypic wearers—the Jews who were synonymous with usurers in much of Europe—to contemporary Florentines and one Paduan."2 But this is by no means the only representation of Jews in the Commedia. A full accounting must also consider the razing of the Temple by Titus framed in Paradiso 6.93 as just vengeance and the charge of deicide leveled against "Giudei" in Paradiso 7.47. Before we get to these moments, we have the spiritual competition over vows put forth in Paradiso 5 and Beatrice's exhortation to Christians that they not follow the pull of greed like sheep, lest they be subjected to the mockery of Jews: "Se mala cupidigia altro vi grida / uomini siate, e non pecore matte, / sì che 'l Giudeo di voi tra voi non rida" (Par. 5.79–81). And it is here that we can think once again of Primo Levi as a reader of Dante, as he homes in on a moment far less groundbreaking and far more typical of a cultural paradigm that marginalized him and his community. In Il sistema periodico, when he recounts the fraught atmosphere in the wake of the passing of the racial laws, Levi poignantly expresses his conflicted feelings with respect to how his fellow students and his teachers viewed him: Da pochi mesi erano state proclamate le leggi raziali, e stavo diventando un isolato anch'io. I compagni cristiani erano gente civile, nessuno fra loro né fra i professori mi aveva indirizzato una parola o un gesto nemico, ma li sentivo allontanarsi, e, seguendo un comportamento antico, anch'io me ne allontanavo: ogni sguardo scambiato fra me e loro era accompagnato da un lampo minuscolo, ma percettibile, di diffidenza e di sospetto. Che pensi tu di me? Che cosa sono io per te? Lo stesso di sei mesi addietro, un tuo pari che non va a messa, o il giudeo che "di voi tra voi non rida"?3 Levi cites Paradiso 5 not in the vein of light and celebration, but as a way of pointing back to the ancient roots of the anti-Semitism that was being directed at him. He wonders if his old ties of friendship, education, and camaraderie still hold or whether the people...

Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings by Jennifer Otto

Reviewed by: Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings by Jennifer Otto Todd Berzon Jennifer Otto Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018 Pp. 256. $84.50. Jennifer Otto's detailed yet eminently readable monograph sees in Philo of Alexandria a hermeneutic of collective identity for three early Christian writers, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea. Philo's own identity, as a Jewish biblical interpreter and Platonic thinker, afforded these authors the conceptual space in which to elaborate the contours of Christianness vis-a-vis a proximate Jewishness (the author generally avoids the terms Christianity and Judaism because, she says, they anachronistically connote the category of religion). Otto further contends that Philo was harnessed by Christians not simply to elaborate the differences between Jewishness and Christianness, but also "to establish Christianity as a virtuous way of life, parallel to the pursuits of the philosophical schools" (2). Otto's book thus concerns itself with the circumstances in which early Christians invoked Philo as an interpreter who could link facets of Christianness, Jewishness, and (pagan) philosophy and yet simultaneously differentiate them. The Introduction situates Philo's Christian reception in relation to a number of highly contentious issues in the study of early Christian representations of Jewishness. Otto conceptualizes Philo as a lens for revisiting questions about the parting of the ways, the differences in Christian usages of the terms Ioudaioi, Hebraioi, and Israel, the relationship between ancient notions of ethnicity and way of life, and the idea of Christianity as a philosophy. Otto's survey of the relevant scholarly literature is helpful and clear, though the various sub-sections of the Introduction have a disjunctive flow. It is only in the ensuing chapters that the relationship between these questions becomes slightly clearer. In Chapter One, Otto elaborates how Clement likely came to possess Philonic texts. Her aim is to rebut the dominant scholarly theories which argue that Clement's source must have been either a Jewish teacher in Alexandria or a school tradition with Jewish roots. But if, as Otto insists, the Alexandrian Jewish community was virtually decimated after the Trajanic revolt of 115–117, Clement would have needed an alternative source. Otto thus proposes that Clement came into contact with Philo's works through the vibrant (non-Jewish) philosophical networks in Alexandria. Because the philosophical schools of Alexandria were open to consulting outside works, Philo's writings were almost certainly part of the city's broader philosophical exchanges. While Otto is correct that the consensus theory about Clement's acquisition of Philo (via some sort of connection to Jews) necessitates a fair amount of speculation, her alternative suggestion is no less speculative. There is simply no direct evidence to support her claim, and it is not clear how it materially affects her analysis in subsequent chapters. Chapters Two, Three, and Four examine how Clement, Origen, and Eusebius describe Philo's exegetical skills and ethnic identity. Chapter Two investigates Clement's four overt references to Philo. In two of those cases, Clement calls Philo "the Pythagorean" even where he is also called an expert interpreter of the [End Page 342] Mosaic law and/or historian of the Jewish people. Why, Otto asks, would Clement describe Philo this way? Her answer is that the ascription "Pythagorean" worked to present Philo as a barbarian sage who blended the wisdom of Hebraism and Hellenism. Philo's exegetical skills "can thus be wielded by Clement both against Christians who protest the validity of Greek education and against philosophers who denigrate the teachings of the ekkelsia as a novelty" (89). Chapter Three focuses on Origen, who drew upon Philo's biblical allegorizing to bolster Christian efforts to uncover the veiled intent of scripture. For that reason, Origen often (and anonymously) refers to Philo as a predecessor, literally as "one of those who came before us." But in calling Philo his predecessor, Origen is not rendering him into a proto-Christian; rather, in Otto's estimation, the term "signals Origen's awareness of Philo as an interpreter of old who . . . correctly perceived the hermeneutical depths of the narratives recorded in Israel...

To the issue of the reasons for closing the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Theater in Chernivtsy

To the issue of the reasons for closing the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Theater in Chernivtsy

Nina Sibirtzeva, or the Hidden Half of Musical Globalization

Actress and singer Nina Sibirtzeva (1899, Russia–1957, Buenos Aires) developed her inconspicuous career in the popular Jewish theater in Russia and Eastern Europe and moved to Buenos Aires in 1938, where she adapted her repertoire and from where she toured other cities in the Americas, always performing on circuits that were removed from mainstream entertainment. What can we make of her obscure journey? This article attempts to understand Sibirtzeva’s artistic choices and, through them, some structural but unexplored aspects of the globalization of popular music in the twentieth century. Based on evidence rescued from the almost destroyed archives of the IWO (Idisher Visnshaftlejer Institut or Yiddish Research Institute) in Buenos Aires, the article focuses on the meaning of the words popular and populism in music; the engagement of popular artists with musical technologies, markets, migration, and politics; and the conceptual and historiographical question of how to deal with biographies that do not match the cultural mainstream, operating instead at the intersection of different cultural streams.

Jewish identity, fan representation, and Yehuda Goldstein in the Potterverse

The Harry Potter fan fiction "Goldstein," by Laazov, a long-running fic begun in November 2014 that remains uncompleted, centers on Anthony "Yehuda" Goldstein, a marginal character confirmed as Jewish by J. K. Rowling. This fan fic has led many Jewish fans to embrace him as the sole example of Jewish representation in the Potterverse. This analysis of "Goldstein" traces fan efforts regarding representation of marginalized identities and how these efforts have made it into the mainstream.

Introduction

The relationship between Shakespeare and the Jews is a multifaceted one with an extensive history dating back to the Elizabethan era. Attitudes to Jews in Shakespeare’s England comprise a complex topic with religious, racial and cultural components that has been explored in detail in James Shapiro’s seminal monograph Shakespeare and the Jews. Jewish elements in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries extend far beyond the infamous figure of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and the history of critical and interpretative approaches to such elements is extremely variegated, including shifting perceptions of Shylock on the page and stage over the centuries, different ways of addressing Jewish themes within the plays in writing and performance, and the representations of Jews and Judaism in translations of Shakespeare into other languages.

Introduction

The relationship between Shakespeare and the Jews is a multifaceted one with an extensive history dating back to the Elizabethan era. Attitudes to Jews in Shakespeare’s England comprise a complex topic with religious, racial and cultural components that has been explored in detail in James Shapiro’s seminal monograph Shakespeare and the Jews. Jewish elements in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries extend far beyond the infamous figure of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, and the history of critical and interpretative approaches to such elements is extremely variegated, including shifting perceptions of Shylock on the page and stage over the centuries, different ways of addressing Jewish themes within the plays in writing and performance, and the representations of Jews and Judaism in translations of Shakespeare into other languages.

Wrestling with Shylock

Abstract How does Shakespeare’s ambivalent character Shylock affect British theatre artists of Jewish heritage today? Since the 1970s, stage adaptations of The Merchant by British Jewish directors and actors have struggled to glean an interpretation that would make The Merchant relevant or palatable for a post-Shoah generation. This article has a double focus: we discuss the difference between the adaptations of the older generation – Arnold Wesker’s character rewriting in The Merchant (1976) and Charles Marowitz’s deconstruction in Variations on the Merchant of Venice (1977) – and the contemporary revision in Julia Pascal’s 2008 The Shylock Play. Secondly, we focus on the reaction of contemporary Jewish theatre artists in Britain to the centrality of Shylock as the canonical figure of the Jew in Britain. We asked a number of contemporary British Jewish theatre artists – from Tom Stoppard to Samantha Ellis – about their personal relationship to Shylock and we present a digest of their responses.

Nahum Lipowski (1874–1928). Jewish theatre and film

A significant part of the 20th century film and theatre posters preserved and stored in the Lithuanian archives of literature and art are related to the Nahum Lipowski Jewish Folk Theatre. The research focuses on the analysis of Lipowski and his works. It indicates that little attention has been devoted to the influence of Lipowski as a director and scriptwriter on silent film industry. The data yielded by this study prove convincing evidence that the beginning of silent film in Lithuania, film making tendencies and the history of Jewish theatre are related. The works of Nahum Lipowski and his biographical facts are a great illustrative example of the cultural life in the late 19th and early 20th century. This study can also clarify some aspects and fill the knowledge gap of the Jewish enlightenment movement followers.