Jewish Teenagers Research Articles

Recurrent Proceedings of Distress: The Psychological trauma of a Teenager in Elie Wiesel’s “The Night”

Trauma studies was inveterate in the early 2000s as a critical study which scrutinize the facet of the consequences on how literature deals with the outcome of personal trauma and the resilience that leads. Psychological Trauma vandalize the peace and harmony of psyche that was followed by the acquaintance of series of traumatic events. Sigmund Freud inaugurated Trauma theory initially with the notion of addressing sexual violence such as rape, battering, incest, considering the female as a focal point as it advanced to the next level of the traumatic psychic scars inflicted by the tortures, genocide in regards to the holocaust. The shock and the stressors of the incident pave way for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which make the victim arduous to cope up with daily life make them undergo abnormal activities namely sleepless nights, derealization, anxiety disorder, dissociative amnesia etc. In the Memoir, ‘The Night’ by Elie Wiesel, narrated the traumas of a young protagonist named Eliezer, an Orthodox Jewish teenager who undergone traumatic experience, because of witnessing ill treatment and being a prisoner in a Nazi German concentration camp. He was enforced to go on for days in the absence of the fundamental necessities which are needed for a human to survive. Those refusals held back his will to strive and left him traumatic that he ceased to response for the happenings he witnessed. His change from being a normal boy who was steadfast to religion, how shattered he has become after receiving the recurring cruel punishments and being a victim to the inhumane behaviour is noticeable.

Nazi Germany in the Viewfinder: On Space and Movement in German-Jewish Youth Culture

Abstract This article analyzes instances of independent mobility of Jewish youngsters in Nazi Germany through the lens of photography. Photographs, taken by teenagers of their trips and sometimes assembled in albums or collages demonstrate that the category of mobility helps to uncover and define a particular kind of agency exclusive to Jewish youth, shaped by the simultaneous attachment to and disconnect from the environments they crossed. Travel is observed as a space in which freedom and restrictions were negotiated, preparing youngsters for a near future of sometimes radically independent choices. Moreover, it is investigated in its capacity of offering instances of contact – planned or spontaneous – with other youth, with Jewish adults or with Germans, which additionally shaped the youngers’ identities on the move. Photography not only helped youngsters to produce records and memories. It also incited new trips and encounters. The camera, then, served as a means of translation which helped Jewish teenagers make sense of their surroundings in a moment of utmost crisis. Ultimately, the photographs attest to an alternative German topography created by independent youngsters who found a home in a cosmopolitan way of life tested on provincial roads.

Modern Communication Techniques as Means of Breaking the Cultural Barrier of Arab-Bedouin Youth and Jewish Youth

New media have facilitated communication all over the world and we are able to maintain long-distance relationships. The purpose of this study was to investigate how young Arab Bedouin people engage with their friends online via social networking sites. The researchers employed 200 questionnaires to gather information from Jewish and Arab-Bedouin users of social networking sites. According to the findings, online interaction between Bedouin and Jewish teenagers in the Arab world helped them acquire social and emotional experiences. Additionally, many mentioned how communicating online has improved their perceptions of and relationships with Jews. This kind of communication is more important for exposing people to different cultures because it does not put their community membership at risk. The results of this study are an initial encouragement to modify the relations between young people in the country. It is also a golden opportunity for Arab Bedouin youth to get to know the Jewish community. Therefore, this study emphasizes the interaction between the two communities, which differ in religion, language and cultural heritage.

Tox and Detox

Tox and Detox

Visualizing Superman: Artistic Strategizing in Early Representations of the Archetypal Man in Comic Books

In 1933, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Ohio, fashioned an ideal personality called Superman and a narrative of his marvelous deeds. Little did they suspect that several years after conceptualizing the figure and their many vain attempts to sell the story to various comic book publishers, their creation would give rise to the iconic genre of comic book superheroes. There is no doubt that the Superman character and the accompanying narrative led to Siegel and Shuster, the writer and artist, respectively, becoming famous. However, was it only the appealing character and compelling narrative that accounted for the story’s enormous popularity, which turned its creators into such a celebrated pair, or did the visual design play a major part in that phenomenal success? Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in the comic book medium in several disciplines, including history, philosophy, and literature. However, little has been written about its visual aspect, and comic book art has not yet been accorded much recognition among art historians. Since the integration of storyline and art is what allow the comic book medium to be unique and interesting, I contend that there should be a focus on the art as well as on the narrative of works in comic books. In the present study, I explore the significance of the visual image in the prototype of the Superman figure that Siegel and Schuster sold to DC Comics and its first appearance in the series American Comic Books. I argue that although the popularity of Superman’s first appearance was due to the conceptual ideals that the character embodied, the visual design of the ideal man was also an essential factor in its success. Accordingly, through a discussion of the first published Superman storyline, I emphasize the artistic-visual value of the figure of this protagonist in particular and the comic book medium in general.

Superman in linguistics

A primeira revista em quadrinhos com representação ficcional de personagem com super poderes, Action Comics nº 1, é fruto de um contexto de crise da sociedade norte-americana após a quebra da Bolsa de Valores de Nova Iorque, em 1929. Reconhecendo as narrativas com linguagem de quadrinhos como um segmento do jornalismo moderno, também conhecida como nona arte e, que possui grande aceitação das massas, este trabalho tem como objetivo discutir e refletir as origens de Superman. Escrito e desenhado por dois adolescentes judeus, Jerry Siegel e Joe Shuster, o texto visual do Homem de Aço surgiu para suprir uma carência dos Estados Unidos por um herói, um bom exemplo que ajudasse o povo americano a superar um período de muitos problemas, como violência, desemprego, fome e suicídios, por exemplo. Através da análise crítica do discurso, tomando como base o texto de Norman Fairclough, este trabalho se debruça sobre o texto da revista lançada em junho de 1938 e apresenta a primeira história do kryptoniano, dividida em sequencias e quadros estáticos, sua importância para reerguer a moral americana, além de iniciar um processo de dominação hegemônica que perdura até hoje.

Introduction: The Holocaust in French and Francophone Literature (1997–2017)

Introduction: The Holocaust in French and Francophone Literature (1997–2017)1 Helena Duffy In 1995, during the commemorative ceremony marking the fifty-third anniversary of the rafle du Vél’hiv’, the newly elected French president, Jacques Chirac, implicated the broadly understood French state in the deportation of some 76,000 Jews to the Nazi concentration and death camps. Prior to that, French authorities blamed the Jewish tragedy largely on the Germans and in any case abstained from singularizing it, instead preferring to subsume it within the broader phenomenon of la déportation. In contrast to subsequent postwar administrations, including that of his immediate predecessor, François Mitterrand, Chirac broke with the Gaullist myth of the French as uniquely heroic resisters. Then, with Lionel Jospin’s 1997 speech, the Left itself took distance from Mitterrand’s position. Finally, the leading politicians’ iconoclastic pronouncements were followed by other acknowledgements of institutional responsibility: in 1997 the Catholic church asked for forgiveness for its wartime silence, and a police officers’ union offered an apology for the actions of their predecessors (Clifford 206–07). The recent intensification of French and Francophone writers’ interest in the Jewish tragedy, which is the subject of the present special issue, can certainly be attributed to the encroaching absence of survivors, the influence of thriving Anglophone Holocaust fiction, or the growing threat of negationist tendencies as well as, more broadly, of racism and populism. However, the afore-described breakthrough in French memory politics must be regarded as an important factor in—if not as the trigger of—the recent surge of French-language Holocaust literature. Customarily connected with Jonathan Littell’s hugely successful albeit controversial novel, Les Bienveillantes (2006),2 this surge can be traced back to Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder published nine years earlier. It can hardly be a coincidence [End Page 1] that Modiano, who had been chiefly interested in the ambiguities of the Occupation (Morris 22), wrote his only Holocaust-themed novel so far in the immediate aftermath of Chirac’s momentous speech. Moreover, as the narrator’s search for information about the eponymous Paris-born Jewish teenager develops, his tone becomes increasingly critical of the French state that he overtly blames for the arrest, internment, and deportation to Auschwitz of Dora and her parents. Since the publication of Modiano’s Dora Bruder many other French-language writers have taken up the subject of World War II and the massacre of Europe’s Jews; apart from Littell’s already-mentioned monumental novel, recent French-language narratives about the Holocaust include Pierre Assouline’s La Cliente (1998), Soazig Aaron’s Le Non de Klara (2002), Philippe Claudel’s Le Rapport de Brodeck (2007), Fabrice Humbert’s L’Origine de la violence (2009), Yannick Haenel’s Jan Karski (2009), Laurent Binet’s HHhH (2010), Arnaud Rykner’s Le Wagon (2010), or David Foenkinos’s Charlotte (2014). The present issue of French Forum takes stock of some of the developments in French and Francophone Holocaust literature published over the last twenty years. Without being able to deal with all the texts that appeared between 1997 and 2017, the articles gathered here manage nevertheless to explore writings by all three generations of Holocaust authors. The twelve articles also address a variety of genres, including the graphic novel and poetry, and, looking beyond the borders of the Hexagon, focus on texts produced by European and non-European Francophone writers. The analyses undertaken in this special issue have been contextualized by a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, such as Marianne Hirsch’s elaboration of postmemory as transgenerational transmission of trauma through objects, stories and photographic images in the context of Holocaust survival. While Hirsch’s theory has proven useful in the examination of the work of second- and third-generation novelists, Michael Rothberg’s study of multidirectional memory as a space where traumatic memories of violence can enter into dialogue with each other, has been helpful in reading Haitian and Mauritian literature. Raul Hilberg’s problematization of the bipolar opposition between victim and perpetrator with the category of bystander has in turn been deployed to interrogate our own position in relation to both Holocaust memory and the crises in...

History that matters: How students make sense of historical texts

ABSTRACTThis “think-aloud” study examines how a group of American Jewish teenagers read historical documents that addressed what it has meant over time to be American and/or Jewish. It demonstrates that students use a variety of sense-making strategies as they read about the past, many of which fall beyond the boundaries of critical historical analysis. It also finds that students read different historical texts in markedly different ways, so that texts about U.S. and Israeli history, and those about “open” and “settled” political issues, held different emotional resonance for students.

Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817–1906 by Ellie R. Schainker

Reviewed by: Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817–1906 by Ellie R. Schainker Brian Horowitz Ellie R. Schainker. Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817–1906. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017. 339 pp. Ellie Schainker’s study aims to change conventional opinion on converted Jews in imperial Russia. The traditional view is embodied in Sholem Aleichem’s novel Tevye the Milkman, in which Tevye and his wife Golda sit shiva (mourn) for their daughter, who has converted in order to marry the Ukrainian Fedka. Schainker explains, “By asking how converts functioned in Jewish society, I hope to sidestep the emotional, literary rendering of apostates as dead to their Jewish kin, and account for the overwhelming archival evidence of ongoing social, religious, and economic ties between converts and Jews in imperial Russia. In this vein, my work on converts is as much about a minority of radical boundary crossers as it is about the majority of their former, traditionalist coreligionists who tried to defend cultural and communal boundaries in the face of conversion” (10). Schainker describes unusual individuals who crossed the religious Rubicon. Using rare materials from archives in Russia and the United States, she depicts converts from among the lower classes and rural population. The focus differs from the kind of converts who were the subject of Saul Ginsburg’s famous book, Meshumodim in Russland (Converted Jews in Russia), published in 1946. In contrast to the social elite—medical doctors, government censors, and professors—Schainker depicts minor missionaries who peddled Christianity, marginal Jews who fell in love with a Christian neighbor or a servant, and the poor who saw distinct financial advantage in conversion, such as access to educational institutions or a permit to live in Russia’s capital cities. Schainker also includes “simple” Jews who fell in love with the Christian religion. After converting, she notes, many Jews did not move far from their homes, and some resided close to their parents and family. Here are some of the protagonists of the book: “In 1855 the Jewish teenager Faiba Nakhim from the village of Smorgona in Vilna Province applied for conversion after having begun preparations himself by learning prayers and articles of faith from Christians with whom he had ‘occasional contact.’ Malka Kuks, the daughter of a mill leaseholder, ascribed her 1864 conversion to her exposure to Orthodoxy and her acclimation to Orthodox life in her village. Roshka Shmulovna [End Page 241] Stovatitskaia from the village of Svenchino (Lomzha Province, Congress Poland) explained to the Vilna Consistory in 1870 that ‘from a young age, living among a Christian population, I had the opportunity to become acquainted with their faith’” (102–3). These represent only a few examples of individuals whose truncated stories line the book’s pages. Of these people and their native surroundings, Shainker writes, “Though vague and imprecise, these attributions of conversion to exposure and sociability are an acknowledgment of the multiple cultural fluencies bred in the multiconfessional spaces of the Pale of Settlement where, as one woman noted, many different kinds of Christians lived. Far from the image of the shtetl as a place of Jews alone, the villages and towns these neophytes described were meeting grounds that opened up the possibility of exploring other faiths” (103). The thesis, if true, points to flaws in Russian Jewish historiography, especially in the kind of evidence and interpretation that Jewish historians have provided. With some exceptions, Jewish historians have shared the Jewish community’s hostility regarding conversion, and have likely exaggerated Jewish separation, language barriers, and psychological gaps. But perhaps real life was more fluid, interaction more casual and natural. After finishing the book, I am still weighed down by doubt. The vast array of materials brought to prove an intensive interaction between Jews and Christians seem to this reviewer equally capable of confirming the conventional viewpoint. Greater instances of interaction do not change the fact that converts ceased to be members of the Jewish community and became something else—wards of the state, brothers or sisters in the church, or simply members of a Christian community with new Christian wives or husbands. Because of the fear that...

O RELATO COMO VINGANÇA: as memórias de Stanislaw Szmajzner

This article analyzes the book Hell in Sobibor: the tragedy of a Jewish teenager by Stanislaw Szmajzner, a former prisoner in the Nazi extermination camp in Sobibor that latter resided in Brazil where he published his memoirs. Based on the reading of the text we aim to verify how this autobiographical work is constructed based on the memory of a survivor of an extermination camp during World War II, identifying its characteristics and frictions between the report and other sources. Szmajzner’s book fits in what Todorov established as good use of the memory , since the exemplar case of the author is used to generate a lesson, intended to prevent that analog cases occur in the future. Also, the book is established as an instrument so that the crimes committed by the tormentors of the author are not forgotten, using the work as a form of revenge.

Jewish acculturation in late nineteenth-century Russia: the case of Yonah Berkhin

ABSTRACTYoung Jewish students in the Pale of Settlement have not received comprehensive scholarly attention, despite their impact on Jewish politics and the public sphere in the late nineteenth century. Typically, representations of Jewish pupils and students are limited to the study of small and non-representative radical groups. This paper fills this gap through a contextualized examination of the practices and meanings of acculturation among educated Jewish youth. It focuses on a previously unknown diary by Yonah Berkhin, a Jewish teenager who strove to obtain a secondary education between 1879 and 1882. The discussion of this document adds a critical contextual perspective to the existing scholarship on acculturation among Jewish learning youth in late nineteenth-century Russia. I suggest that acculturation was a complex, multidirectional process. I show how, rather than merely creating alienation from Jewish society – which is often described as a “departure” leading either to a complete assimilation or to “repentance” and “return” – acculturation created new as well as modified existing modes of attachment to Jewish society.

The Greater Hope by Ilse Aichinger

Reviewed by: The Greater Hope by Ilse Aichinger Kirsten A. Krick-Aigner Ilse Aichinger, The Greater Hope. Translated by Geoff Wilkes. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. 252 pp. Geoff Wilkes’s The Greater Hope, the recent and eminently readable translation of Ilse Aichinger’s only novel Die größere Hoffnung, published in 1948, is one of the first Austrian literary works to chronicle the persecution of Austrian Jews before and after the Anschluss. Wilkes’s translation comes at a critical time in history, a time of political unrest when xenophobic populism and rhetoric is again on the rise, not only in Austria but throughout Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. Aichinger’s novel was first translated by Cornelia Schaeffer in 1964 as Herod’s Children, but that translation is now out of print and therefore inaccessible to a deserving global readership. Wilkes’s contemporary translation captures Aichinger’s unique imaginative voice, one that critics have described as surrealist due to the complex layering and interweaving of dream sequences, dialogue, and plot. I would also argue that Aichinger draws on the imagery and narrative structure of the German-language fairy tale or legend, even referring to the underlying [End Page 190] terror in “Little Red Riding Hood” as a metaphor to set the stage for Ellen’s grandmother’s intentional suicide in the face of a possible deportation (a narrative that counters Aichinger’s grandmother’s deportation in May 1942 and murder in Minsk). Wilkes’s ability to interpret Aichinger’s insistent tone gives English-speaking readers the opportunity to share in Aichinger’s coming to terms with her psychological and emotional response to being a persecuted Jewish teenager in Vienna. Wilkes himself notes that his text differs vastly from Schaeffer’s translation. While he does acknowledge consulting Schaeffer’s translation in the later stages of his translation work, having taken on her translation of “bürgen für” as “to vouch for,” (221), Wilkes’s text has a lyrical quality that engages the reader and evokes the intensity and longing of Aichinger’s literary voice. Wilkes has translated Aichinger’s German title Die größere Hoffnung more literally as The Greater Hope, inviting readers to focus on Aichinger’s quest for humanity during the Holocaust and in postwar Austria. Schaeffer can be credited for having brought Aichinger’s story to an English-speaking readership during a time when Aichinger’s voice was under-represented even in the German-speaking realm. However, her title, Herod’s Children, may have unintentionally evoked the perception of otherness both forced upon and then felt by the novel’s main characters, underscoring the false dichotomy cast by the Austro-Fascist regime between Austrian non-Jews and Jews. Wilkes’s choice of words assures the reader that this perceived otherness of the Austrian Jew is vindicated by the hope for peace and humanity against all odds that Aichinger instills in her main character Ellen, even beyond her tragic death. The conclusion of the novel involves the collapse of a bridge during which Ellen and her friend Georg share a moment of hope that precedes Ellen’s death by an exploding shell. Shortly before, Ellen shouts: “Georg, the bridge has collapsed!” to which Georg replies: “We’ll rebuild it!” When Ellen asks: “What shall we call it?” Georg answers: “The greater hope, our hope” (220). Wilkes reinforces the hope carried by children of war but also Aichinger’s own drive to write the novel out of necessity in order to emotionally survive the Holocaust. The novel draws to a close with the continued message of hope: “The battle for the bridges continued. Above them stood the morning star” (220). The phrasing of these last lines is measured, conveying certitude about hope and life beyond human suffering that counters the ongoing battle and Ellen’s brutal and abrupt death. A further treat, in addition to the translation, is Gail Wiltshire’s afterword, which provides readers with the rich history and context of the novel, spanning [End Page 191] its conception to Aichinger’s legacy today. It is here, for example, that readers can learn of Aichinger’s original proposal for the novel’s title: “The Baptism of...

<b>O diário: uma representação polifônica do <i>Eu</i>. Reflexões sobre a obra <i>O diário</i>, de Anne Frank

O artigo explicita o conceito de diário, remetendo a sua origem para os gêneros de cariz confessional. Enquanto expressão literária, esse gênero textual parece abalar as convenções da construção ficcional. É sob esta luz que os autores analisam a obra O Diário, de Anne Frank. Escrito pela conhecida adolescente judia, a obra tece um conjunto de considerações pessoais e familiares, mas também políticas, sociológicas e ideológicas sobre os lugares do homem no mundo.

Voluntary work with sporting activities for Jewish children and teenagers: commitment to inclusiveness, Jewish identity, and a future Jewish life – an interview study

ABSTRACTMembership in Jewish congregations seems to be declining and modern society has been described as a challenge to Jewishness and to the future for Jews as a people with shared characteristics and traditions. Activities for children and teenagers have gained increasing attention, since such activities might be a reassurance of a future Jewish life. To arrange such activities is, however, demanding and individuals who commit themselves to voluntary work are essential. In this study, six members of a Swedish Conservative congregation, who were committed to voluntary work with sporting activities for children and teenagers, were interviewed about the way in which they perceived their voluntary work. A thematic analysis was conducted. The volunteers concluded that everyone should feel included in the activities. They had a nuanced view of Jewish identity and also welcomed those who were not considered halakhically Jewish. Moreover, they wanted to support a positive Jewish identity in the new generation. Their work was perceived as meaningful even though they said that congregants who felt that the activities should adhere to Halakhah had criticized them. It is proposed that congregations should support voluntary workers and facilitate their efforts, otherwise experiences of misrecognition might evolve, experiences that are counterproductive for a vital congregational life.

The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s by Mariah Adlin (review)

Reviewed by: The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s by Mariah Adlin Jenna Weissman Joselit (bio) The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s. By Mariah Adlin. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2015. xvi + 167 pp. For some time now, we have grown accustomed to thinking of the comic book as an American Jewish phenomenon–and one that redounds, happily, to the community’s credit. Mariah Adlin’s new book suggests otherwise. By her lights, comic books were not good for the Jews–or, more to the point, perhaps, not good for four teenage Jewish boys in 1950s Brooklyn named Jerome, Robert, Melvin and Jack. Taking their cue, or so it was said, from the misadventures of overly muscled, violence-prone comic book heroes like those who inhabited Nights of Horror, the foursome went on a crime spree in the summer of 1954 that ultimately landed them in jail and on trial for their lives. The case of the “Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang,” as its members were dubbed by the press, occasioned a great deal of commentary and even more head-shaking, prompting a succession of concerned citizens to account for how American-born Jewish boys from good, middle class homes–boys who played the piano and read a lot could go wrong. Explanations abounded. Some pointed to an excess of free time or to over-indulgent parenting. Others attributed the boys’ pathological behavior to their sexuality, claiming they were “probably homosexual and victims of drives that dethroned all inhibitions in the pursuit of the gratification of their passions” (56). Still others insisted their collective moral failings were more a matter of a limited, soul-less Jewish education. Adlin quotes often and at length from the Jewish Daily Forward, whose pages were filled with feature stories, editorials and letters to the editor about the dread deeds of these kids from Brooklyn. “Why are more crimes committed here than previously among Jews in the Old Country?” the paper asked. Its answer was a simple one: Back home, Jewish youth became “Zionists, pioneers, Labor Zionists, socialists, Bundists . . . ”(60) Here in Brooklyn, they became bums. By far the most compelling, and certainly the most widely adopted, explanation favored the comic book, whose lurid depictions of derringdo captured the imagination of susceptible teenage boys like Jerome, Robert, Melvin and Jack. Surely it was no coincidence, argued a steady stream of expert witnesses for the prosecution, that Jack, the group’s [End Page 155] ringleader, was a big fan. Spending far too much of his time in the company of Lorna, the Jungle Girl, rather than that of Little Dorrit or Rabbi Akiva, was it any wonder that he was no model citizen? The “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent and disgusting literature accessible to the youth of our city” corrupted their minds and warped their souls, insisted one civic official (108). That comic books came in for more than their fair share of anathematizing is not new, of course; this is well-traveled territory. But in expressly linking the anti-comic book sentiment of the 1950s to the nefarious exploits of a group of Brooklyn Jewish teen-agers, Adlin’s account adds a new twist, rendering the story a distinctly American Jewish one. In this, the book is only partially successful. At times, the narrative proceeds along, and shuttles between, two separate tracks: the demonizing of the comic book and the American Jewish response to the trial of its junior coreligionists. They do not converge quite as neatly–or as convincingly–as readers might hope. More pointedly still, Adlin’s over-reliance on the Forward as the major, indeed the only, repository of information about the Jewish communal response to the Thrill-Kill Gang, seems ill-conceived. By the 1950s, it was hardly the only, much less the most influential, voice in town. A greater contextual knowledge of American Jewish history–and, most especially, of earlier instances of malfeasance–would also have enhanced the story she unfolds, highlighting the ways in which this gang of four both belonged to and departed from earlier generations of n’er-do-wells. Still, for all its...

Durkheim’s Sign Made Flesh: The “Authentic Symbol” in Contemporary Holocaust Pilgrimage

Synthesizing Durkheim’s notion of “sacred symbol” with Walter Benjamin’s theorization of “authenticity,” this paper proposes the theoretical construct, “authentic symbol,” to account for the symbolic function of Holocaust relics in contemporary Holocaust pilgrimage. The symbolic function of four kinds of relics (the sites, witness/survivors, human bodily remains and accessories) is examined and compared in three different contexts: The March of the Living Holocaust tours organized for Diaspora Jewish teenagers, the Masa tours organized for Israeli and practical aims of the tours and displays teenagers and the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. Different ritual experiences are found to predominate in each of the three contexts, which significantly correlate with how symbols are processed by participants and the different ideological.

Ongoing Measles Outbreak in Orthodox Jewish Community, London, UK

Ongoing Measles Outbreak in Orthodox Jewish Community, London, UK

Unequal Fortunes: Snapshots from the South Bronx (review)

Reviewed by: Unequal Fortunes: Snapshots from the South Bronx Beth Hatt Arthur Levine and Laura Scheiber. Unequal Fortunes: Snapshots from the South Bronx. New York: Teachers College Press, 2010. 170 pp. Paper: $25.95. ISBN-13: 978-0-8077-5075-9. Award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar (1996) states, “Anthropology that doesn’t break your heart just isn’t worth doing anymore” (p.177). Arthur Levine and Laura Schreiber have followed Behar’s advice in their book, Unequal Fortunes. They provide a street-level perspective of life in the South Bronx through the words and experiences of the people who have lived there and those who continue to do so. The book concludes by tying lived experience to policy on many levels and depicting the ways they are interrelated. Through reading the stories, policy becomes personal and the vulnerability of living in urban poverty is revealed. Arthur Levine lays the groundwork for the book’s premise by describing his return to the apartment in which he grew up in the South Bronx and which he had not visited for 30 years. He discovered that his old bedroom now belonged to 14-year-old Carlos from the Dominican Republic. Carlos’s bed and dresser were in the exact location that Levine’s had been. Arthur Levine became fascinated at the possibility of understanding his old neighborhood 30+ years later through the eyes of a young man who now lived in his old apartment, slept in his old bedroom, and observed the neighborhood through his old bedroom window. Arthur and his research associate, Laura Scheiber, who is bilingual in English and Spanish, embarked on a decade-long research study to better understand the decline of U.S. inner cities, the impact of poverty, and the possibilities of urban renewal by exploring the lived experience of these issues through Carlos and his two best friends, Juan Carlos and Leo. The authors compare the experiences of these Latino teenagers with those of Arthur as a young Jewish teenager in the same neighborhood three decades earlier. Carlos, Juan Carlos, and Leo agreed to keep diaries of their daily lives for five years. When Leo was shot and killed by a police officer in 2005, the study became more personal. Levine and Schreiber focused on his life and death to represent the harsh realities of Levine’s old neighborhood today. The first part of the book details the context of Arthur’s youth, including his family, the neighborhood, and his schooling experiences. Arthur’s family included a two-parent household, Jewish traditions, and high expectations for academic and economic success. The neighborhood was largely White and working class with 36% of the population being immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially Russia and Poland. The community was close-knit with neighborhood parents keeping an eye on each other’s children and reporting any misbehavior immediately. Arthur describes the community as having a common “belief in the power of education and a commitment to the American dream” (p. 30). The older kids in the neighborhood provided evidence that the dream was possible by becoming teachers, lawyers, and doctors. Part 1 concludes by discussing Arthur’s departure from the Bronx to attend college in Massachussetts. Upward class mobility meant he would not return to live in the same neighborhood once he graduated. He chose education as a career because of his belief that “education is the only effective way to improve the world” and the best way to give low-income kids a chance to escape poverty (p. 38). Levine did not return to New York City for 28 years, when he became president of Teachers College. The changes he found in his former neighborhood gave him a profound sense of loss. The neighborhood had more graffiti and trash. Broken glass, the occasional used condom, and empty crack vials littered the street. The children living in the neighborhood were mostly Latino, low income, and living with single parents, many of whom worked long hours to survive. Arthur felt that, due to many structural issues such as White flight, “planned shrinkage,” a lack of bank investment, and under-resourced schools, the American Dream had died in his old neighborhood. Part 2 introduces...

A different kind of dialogue? Messianic Judaism and Jewish‐Christian Relations

A different kind of dialogue?: Messianic Judaism and Jewish‐Christian Relations Yaakov Ariel In the 1970s, both Jews and Christians were surprised to see the rise of a vigorous movement of Christian Jews. Messianic Jews embraced the evangelical definition of Christians as people who undergo experiences of conversion or being born again, as well as evangelical manners of reading the Bible and evangelical codes of personal morality, but wished to maintain a measure of Jewish culture and identity. The same years were the heydays of Christian‐Jewish dialogue, which brought about a breakthrough in the relationship between the two faiths. Situated in a very different cultural and theological climate, Messianic Jews have engaged in a very different experiment in Christian‐Jewish relations that also signified a new understanding of the relationship between the two faiths, albeit in a very different manner than liberal Christians and Jews envisioned. Students of Christian‐Jewish relations in our time should therefore pay attention to the Messianic Jewish movement, which, like the dialogue, also signified a change of heart in relation to the Jews, this time among conservative Christians. Historical background and early years The roots of the new movement can be traced to Pietist and evangelical missionary ideology in the modern era that advocated the position that accepting the Christian faith did not stand in contradiction to Jewish identity but rather made it more complete. The evangelical premillennialist view that has considered the Jews to be the Chosen People has also served to offer justification for maintaining Jewish identity, customs, and symbols. There were attempts at creating communities of Jewish‐Christians in the nineteenth century, but such experiments were short‐lived. “Judaizing” had traditionally been considered heresy, and many expressed suspicion toward the idea of separate Jewish congregations. Converts too were often afraid of arousing suspicion that their conversions were not genuine and, as a rule, chose to join non‐Jewish churches. Attitudes gradually changed, and in the 1920s, the Presbyterian Church, USA, initiated the establishment of Jewish‐Christian congregations, intending them to serve as centers of evangelism among the Jews as well as communities where being ethnically Jewish was normative. The more assertive and independent movement of Messianic Judaism that came on the scene in the 1970s represented a new generation that possessed unprecedented freedoms of choice, including the amalgamation of traditions, which previous generations had considered alien to each other. This offered Messianic Jews a sense of mission as they felt that they were healing historical injuries. The new movement has attempted to create a young and exciting vision of Christianity that worked around traditional views of a faith alien to Jews. Evangelical Christian attitudes also changed and became more accepting toward ethnic pride and incorporation of symbols and customs from other traditions, such as Native Americans, although an amalgamation of the Christian faith and Jewish identity was, perhaps, even more daring. The war in June 1967, between Israel and its neighbors, also affected the manner in which evangelical Christians had come to view the Jews and their role in history, boosting the converts’ status, their pride in their roots, and their desire to maintain Jewish identity. In the first phase of the movement, Jewish converts to Christianity established congregations on their own initiative, which were largely independent of the control of missionary societies or Christian denominations. An early and central congregation, within the larger movement, has been Beth Yeshua in Philadelphia. In the late 1960s, Joe Finkelstein, a chemist and a Jewish convert to Christianity, gathered a group of Jewish teenagers who were looking for an alternative to their parents’ middle‐class environment, as well as a haven from the more dangerous aspects of the counterculture. The Christian‐Jewish communities demanded abstinence from drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex and encouraged their members to obey the law and work hard toward careers. Finkelstein initially brought the new converts to the Presbyterian‐sponsored Hebrew Christian center in downtown Philadelphia, but the young converts did not take well to the older Jewish‐Presbyterian congregation, viewing it as lacking in Jewish atmosphere, and they decided to establish their own congregation, which grew considerably. Messianic congregations serve as centers of evangelism with sermons promoting the Christian...

Reflections on the Experience of Teaching about Christianity to Jewish Teenagers

This reflection-on-action essay shares and analyzes the author's experience of teaching about Christianity to Jewish teenagers.