Jewish Diaspora Research Articles

Un-dainty fat Jewish daughter: Jewish mothers’ racialized disgust, and embodied recognition across racial difference

ABSTRACT This analytical and exo-autoethnography begins with a depiction of how my Jewish family wished to control my fat body to fit into whiteness. I close with a narrative about an interracial and transnational relationship in which I experienced embodied recognition across racial difference. The purpose is to illustrate the broader intersections between Jewish women’s fatness, associations with blackness, internalized antisemitism, assimilation into whiteness, and the links between the African and Jewish diasporas. Jewish mothers frequently critique their daughters’ bodies to try to assimilate into white femininity. Internalized gendered antisemitism creates disgust for one’s own body that is passed down to daughters. My mom wanted me to have a private pride in being Jewish that she could not access because of her gender, but did not want my Jewishness to physically mark me. Historically Jewish women have been associated with fatness, blackness, vulgarity, and lack of femininity. Collective recognition and acceptance of fat bodies across racial difference is possible through the connections between the Jewish and African diasporas and the challenge to white-centric beauty norms within Black communities.

Jewish Burial of Late Antiquity

What did Jewish burial in late Antiquity look like? In the Middle Ages, burial in plots of ground in cemeteries grew to become the prevalent method of burial and the method that is still dominant to this day. Yet, as we know from tradition, burial does not require the existence of cemeteries; afterall our ancestors in Tanach & Talmud were buried in caves and underground tombs. So what did Jewish burial look like in Late Antiquity, specifically between the Biblical and Temple times and the Medieval Era? The development of Jewish burial practices spanned the entire Jewish diaspora and it took centuries to take shape, but by looking at the archeological findings of late antique burials we can come to understand what it meant to have a Jewish burial in late antiquity.

The significance of the apocryphal Greek Additions to Esther for the church today

Over the centuries, the Protestant church has increasingly ignored the apocryphal books of the Old Testament, including the Additions to the book of Esther. This article first outlines the extent of the apocryphal material; it then discusses its origins, purported theology, and its “canonicity” in various religious traditions; it then provides a detailed examination of the content of the Greek Additions to Esther and comments on how the Additions alter or add to an understanding of the book of Esther; finally, it offers some comments on the significance of the Greek Additions to Esther for the Church today. The study concludes that the Greek Additions to Esther are a rich resource for the Christian community, providing insight into the issues confronting the diaspora Jews as they made their way in a Gentile world and essential background information for understanding the early Christian world view, enhancing an understanding of what it means to be faithful in a world that seems not to be, and showing the evolving and ever-changing status of what is considered “scripture” today.

THE WAY TO UNITY: THE IDEA TO CREATE THE WORLD CONGRESS OF FREE UKRAINIANS

Summary. The history of the Ukrainian diaspora/emigrants makes up an integral part of the Ukrainian history. The article traces the path of foreign Ukrainians to unification in order to defend the interests of the entire Ukrainian people. The successful Jewish experience may serve as the vivid example. The latter lived scattered for ages, but united and established World Jewish Congress in 1936, being able to declare the State of Israel in 1948. The purpose of our study is to trace the origins of the idea to consolidate the Ukrainian emigrants and to establish the only coordinative institution for the whole Ukrainian nation from all over the world in the 1920s, its evolution and the practical measures for its implementation. The successful experience of the Ukrainian diaspora can serve as a model for the modern Ukrainians, while the analysis of the mistakes of the latter can help to avoid them at the contemporary stage of state formation. Methodology. The methods to solve the aforementioned problem are the following: 1) the method of historical comparison of the Ukrainian and Jewish experience of consolidation; 2) historiographical analysis and synthesis; 3) inductive and deductive reasoning. The scientific novelty of our research is in the comprehensive step-by-step study of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians. Conclusions. The powerful centers of the Ukrainian political emigration appeared in the 1920s. They aimed to restore Ukraine’s unity and independence. However, there was disagreement among them, given the fact that they struggled for power in 1917–1920. S. Petliura was one of the first competent political leaders, who realized the necessity of consolidation. His associates A. Shulgin and V. Prykhodko made the first attempts to organize the World Ukrainian Congress in the 1930s. The idea was supported in Galicia and in the USA, though it wasn’t implemented. The same process may be noticed in the Jewish diaspora at the same time; however, they summoned the World Jewish Congress in 1936 and declared their own state. Because the Ukrainian politician leaders failed to create a single political center, the Soviet diplomats became the legitimate representatives of Ukrainians during and after the World War II. The establishment of the Pan-American Ukrainian Conference (PAUC) in 1947 is thought to be the pre-condition for summoning the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, as it was one of its key tasks. A. Melnyk was one of the most active lobbyists of the Ukrainian unity. He also introduced the idea of the organization superstructure. PAUC made a few attempts to summon the congress in the 50s – 60s of the 20th century, but none of these were successful. Consequently, the Ukrainian emigrants were disappointed with its PAUC’s ability to accomplish the task successfully. Despite this fact, in January 1967 PAUC published/promulgated the manifesto on summoning the World Congress of Free Ukrainians launched the active propaganda campaign, and the long way of the Ukrainian nation to consolidation met with success in November.

Constructing Paul: The Canonical Paul

Constructing Paul: The Canonical Paul

Die Urgemeinde und das Judenchristentum

Die Urgemeinde und das Judenchristentum

Regional professionals, American activists, and the Iron Curtain: transnational memory work during the Cold War in the Jewish neighbourhood of Kraków

ABSTRACT In the search for the roots of the cosmopolitanization of Polish memory in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this article looks past the chronological boundaries of post-socialist Poland. It identifies regional memory professionals as the key “scale” in transnational memory work. It demonstrates that the present state of Jewish sites of Kraków is the outcome of transnational work conducted from as early as the 1970s, and it is the effect of competition and collaboration among Jews from the American diaspora, Polish Jews, and Polish regional memory professionals. In a field regulated by the Polish socialist state, diaspora Jews tried to impose on their Polish collaborators their vision of Jewish sites. Polish Jews fought to protect those same sites as a key component of their identity work. Prompted by local and transnational Jewish pressure, ethnically Polish professionals discovered the Jewish past for themselves. They began by protecting Jewish sites, later turning them into valuable parts of the heritage of Poland and, eventually, into a constitutive element of Polish heritage. This article claims that it is precisely regional memory professionals who are the key to transnational memory work.

Jewish Identity and the Intercommunal Links between Diaspora Jewish Communities in the Second Temple Period

Abstract Many diaspora communities identify not only with a distant homeland but also with others distant from the homeland. How exactly do these intercommunal connections take place and contribute toward a shared identity? What specific aspects of diasporan identity are created or strengthened? What practices are involved? This study will begin to answer these questions through investigating two practices which were widespread among diaspora Jewish communities during the last two centuries of the Second Temple period (1st cent. B.C.E.–1st cent. C.E.). First, we will show how sending offerings and making pilgrimages to the Jerusalem temple from these communities enabled regular intercommunal contact. Then, we will suggest some ways in which these voluntary practices reinforced a cohesive Jewish identity and the importance of the homeland, especially the city of Jerusalem and the temple, for many diaspora Jews, whether they lived in Alexandria, Rome, Asia Minor, or Babylonia.

“Mi amparo y Fortaleza”: Seeing Psalms through a Trans-Iberian Worldview in Espejo fiel de vidas (Life’s True Mirror)

This article studies Espejo fiel de vidas (Life’s True Mirror, 1720) of Daniel Israel Lopez Laguna as an example of Baroque Spanish poetry that reworks the book of Psalms for an audience that like the author were conversos, or New Christians, that is, Spanish and Portuguese Catholics of Jewish origin and their descendants. Likewise, it studies the geographic and spiritual journey of one such Iberian New Christian through the Hispano-Portuguese Jewish diaspora who became a practicing Jew upon settling in Jamaica. Besides showing elements of this journey in Lopez Laguna’s paraphrase of Psalms, the article explores how the poet incorporates features of Golden Age Baroque Spanish into his text. As a result, it positions Lopez Laguna as a Jewish and Spanish author in ways that never seem incongruous, despite the exclusion of Jews from Spain and Portugal during the two centuries before he wrote the poem. Our analysis of specific passages of Espejo fiel de vidas shows how Lopez Laguna navigates a hybrid worldview reflective of his years living first as a New Christian and subsequently as a “New Jew.” The following pages accompany the poet on this journey by situating Espejo fiel within his lived experiences; connecting the poem to trends of converso and Baroque Spanish literature; and discussing how the spiritual wandering, or peregrinaje, and Inquisitorial consciousness that permeate the text represent the converso condition.

‘Let my people go’: diaspora mobilization for the human rights of political prisoners

ABSTRACT Diaspora mobilization to influence homeland conflicts has been explored extensively. What has been considered less is the role diasporas play as ‘long distance human rights advocates’ in mobilization for political prisoners. Adding to the increased attention on diasporas as human rights advocates, this inquiry conceptualizes and compares the mobilization of the American Jewish and Vietnamese diasporas during the Cold War to release political prisoners in the Soviet Union and in Vietnam. Jewish and Vietnamese diasporas created influential, special purpose human rights organizations, employed successful framing strategies and mobilized grassroots members through contentious action. The Jewish diaspora further utilized transnational advocacy coalitions and symbolic politics to great effect. This inquiry argues that diaspora human rights NGOs provide critical advantages to human rights advocacy, including through the provision of information about political prisoners, considerable resources for grassroots mobilization and by acting as legitimizing agents for external interventions.

Archaeology of San Francisco Jews: Themes for the Study of Jewish Domestic Life

This article shows how archaeology contributes to our understanding of life in the nineteenth-century Jewish diaspora. Using both qualitative and quantitative (statistical) methods, I compare several family-specific, archaeological artifact collections from San Francisco, California, to show how diaspora Jews adapted their traditional practices to modern life while retaining their ethnic identity. Themes include the development of diverse religious practices, consumerism and social mobility, urban geography, and materiality.

Analyse der Struktur des masoretischen und nicht-masoretischen Danielbuches (MT-Dan und LXX967-Dan) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Zeitangaben

Abstract This article focuses on the different structures of the main variant literary editions of Daniel (MT-Dan and LXX967-Dan). In MT-Dan, the text moves from the story about Daniel (Dan 1–6) to Daniel’s extensive reports about his dreams and visions (Dan 7–12), thus making the voice of Daniel the dominant one in the book. The textual sequence of the edition represented by LXX967-Dan differs significantly, since chapters 7–8 are placed behind chapter 4. Furthermore, this edition includes several additions (as BelDrag, Sus and an epilogue). In this edition, chronology is the prominent organizing principle of the text (at least with regard to the main chapters 1–12). Consequently, the dominant voice throughout the book is the voice of the book narrator. Whereas MT-Dan may be described as the book of Daniel, LXX967-Dan appears as a biographic book about Daniel, which should primarily serve, according to the epilogue, as an instruction for the youth in the Jewish Diaspora.

Daniel’s Prayer for Jerusalem: Reading Daniel 9 in a Diaspora Context

ABSTRACT Daniel 9 focuses on the fate of Jerusalem. While the chapter likely addresses concerns during the Maccabean crisis in the 160’s BCE, it is consistently set in the time of the exilic Daniel. This article explores the significance of this literary setting for interpreting the chapter as a whole. I argue that chapter 9 portrays Daniel as a faithful diaspora Jew, an image known from the court stories in chapters 1-6, and thereby constitutes an important link between the two halves of the book. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the portrait of Daniel as a leader of his people connects him to other biblical characters, especially Nehemiah, who in dispersion cares for the well-being of the land of their ancestors.

Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture by Mariusz Kałczewiak

Reviewed by: Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture by Mariusz Kałczewiak Amy Kerner (bio) Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture. By Mariusz Kałczewiak. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2020. 301 pp. The establishment of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 was a turning point for Jewish immigrants in Argentina and a climactic moment in Mariusz Kałczewiak's new monograph, Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture. This book belongs to a growing body of scholarship on interwar Polish-Jewish cultural contacts with Argentina. Based on research in Yiddish, Spanish, and Polish, and particularly on transnational Yiddish-language press reports and travelogues, the book argues that interwar migration gave rise to a category of "subethnic" Polish-Jewish belonging—the world of the Polacos—which depended on the existence of transnational ties between Jews in Poland and Argentina. The Poylisher Farband, a Jewish immigrant homeland association formed in Buenos Aires in 1916, exemplifies the allegiance to and identification with Poland among Jewish immigrants in Argentina captured by the book's title. The Farband aspired to represent all Polish Jews in Argentina. Its members cultivated an image of Jewish Argentine middle-class respectability, spearheaded communication with Poland's ambassador to Argentina, and protested antisemitism in Poland. To be a "Good Polish Jew" meant participating in its social and philanthropic projects. The author argues that the Farband was also an "ethnic training room" for immigrants to learn about Argentine cultural practices, such as picnicking in popular middle-class destinations like the forests of the Olivos neighborhood (143). Its members were influential and active in other Jewish Argentine institutions, especially ones that aimed to reinvigorate Yiddish-language culture in Argentina, including the Yiddish Scientific Institute, the secular Yiddish school network, and the post-WWII publishing project Dos Poylishe Yidntum [Polish Jewry], which contributed to the legacy of "Polish Jewry" as an entity. The concept of "subethnic identity" would benefit from a clear definition (10). While the framing of the book emphasizes Poland as a center of global Yiddish culture, not all characters in the book were Polish-speaking, had lived in Poland, or self-identified as "Polish Jews." As the author argues, Polacos were united not by Poland only, but by a constellation of concerns: "the independence of Poland, there-centered Zionism [Bundism], and Yiddish-centered nationalism" (11). This definition of shared concerns is at once broader and less nationally-determined than the proposition that a "Polish Jewish subethnicity" emerged in Argentina (14). Pinie Wald, for example, was a committed internationalist [End Page 299] who came to Argentina in 1906 and never joined the Farband (146). For Katz, Buenos Aires existed in relation to at least three other Yiddish centers: New York, Moscow, and Warsaw. Jacobo Botoshansky was a "citizen of the Yiddishland" who placed activism for the Yiddish language above Polish-Jewishness (83). While the fate of Poland and of the Jews living there mattered deeply to many Jewish immigrants in Argentina, the author may overstate the importance of Poland's political boundaries to the self-conceptions of Polish Jews beyond the Farband, especially considering the relatively more expansive global geographies of Yiddishism and Jewish diaspora nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s. Polacos also encompasses the cultural choices that awaited new immigrants who "made America" to Argentina. The "new Polish immigrants" or "argentiner yidn [Argentine Jews]" of the 1920s and 1930s saw themselves as Jews and Yiddish speakers foremost, and their "Argentineness was a specific cultural idiosyncrasy of their Jewishness" (111). They composed essays, stories, and poems in Yiddish depicting urban life in Buenos Aires, idealism and disillusionment, tango music and mate, a traditional Argentine drink, and poverty in the conventillos (tenements). They lived alongside "israelitas argentinos" [Jewish Argentines] who, having arrived decades earlier or been born in Argentina, expressed their Jewishness in Spanish, joined ethnic Jewish clubs like the Sociedad Hebraica, or the Liga Israelita pro-Argentina (a Jewish group that opposed immigration), participated in parliamentary politics, and translated Yiddish literature into Spanish. An original and important contribution to the history of one of the lesser...

Противодействие аристотелизму в еврейской культуре: конфликт вокруг произведений Маймонида в XIII в. с точки зрения теории игр

The Maimonidean Controversy at the beginning of the 13th century was one of the most significant conflicts in the midst of the Jewish diasporas in the Middle Ages. The conflict followed a vivid discussion on the treatises of Maimonides and the interpretation of Judaism in the light of Aristotelian philosophy. Almost all of major Jewish communities in Europe were drawn in this conflict. Moreover, at some point the conflict expanded outside of the Jewish world, so that some works of Maimonides were burnt by the Christian Inquisition as heretical books. Despite the significance of these events and the trace left in the memory of the Jewish people, there is not much reliable evidence about them. The authors aim to discuss the history of this conflict, focusing on the problematic aspects of the Maimonides’ teaching, and to make a reconstruction of the events occurred, to provide a specification of main characteristics of the conflict interaction (the players, their strategies and preferences, possible outcomes of the conflict, conflict dynamics, etc.), to design a game-theoretical model of the social conflict under consideration and to explore this model using the methods of mathematical game theory. It turns out that the majority of the players' actions correspond to optimal behavior concepts employed in game theory (bargaining solutions, Pareto efficiency, Nash equilibria). However, some actions obviously contradict the concept of rational behavior (one of the fundamental assumptions in mathematical game theory), and namely these actions induced the conflict escalation and such a tragic outcome.

«Еврейские мифы» в отечественной истории: евреи в Древней Руси

This article is devoted to the consideration, formation and development of two historical myths in Russian Jewish studies: the "Khazar myth" and the "Kenaanites myth." The key works of A.Ya. Garkavi devoted to the statement of "Jewish myths" in Jewish studies have been discussed in the article. The author reveals the background of this problem appearance in Jewish studies and prerequisites which determined its father’s interest in this topic. The need to turn to the consideration of "Jewish myths" in the historiography of the problem "the history of Jews of Ancient Russia" is dictated primarily by the actualization of scientific interest in the beginning of the history of Jewish diasporas in Russia. Discussions between historians and researchers of Jewish studies have obtained the characteristic of the "modern historical paradox," as far modern researchers turn to the long-forgotten hypotheses of historians of the 19th century with the aim of proving them today on the basis of relevant material. The purpose of this article is to consider two forms of historical representation on the example of studies of two Jewish myths (the Khazar myth and the later Kenaanites myth). We pose a problem to analyze the process of myth formation, its interpretation during this formation and the growth of its thematic content. The theoretical basis of the article is P. Ricoeur's ideas about the "historiographic process." Although the philosopher recognizes strict methodological operations and methods he nevertheless attributes the decisive importance to the historical intentionality of the researcher and the skill of representing the historical narrative. At the end of the article the author makes a conclusion about the difference between the forms of representation of the Khazar myth and the myth of Kenaanites in the works of modern Russian researchers in Jewish studies.

A Conceptual Framework of Jewish Diaspora

Man moves from one place to another in the search of comfort and prosperity. Such movement of people, voluntary or involuntary, is studied in the social sciences of literature under the head of Diaspora. The present study of Diaspora, has emerged with the multiplicity of histories, variety of culture, tradition, and a deep instinct for survival in the adapted country of the migrants. The present paper explores the conceptual framework of Jewish diaspora.

Hybridity of the Jewish Diaspora Characters in Pearl S. Buck's Novel Peony (1948)

This research aims to investigate the hybridity of the Jewish diaspora characters in Pearl Sydenstricker Buck's novel Peony (1948). Peony (1948) raises identity issues especially within the Jewish diaspora characters. The qualitative method is used in collecting, interpreting, and analyzing the novel Peony as the main data. The data analysis uses the theory of identity and hybridity in analyzing characters in the novel. The theory of identity is used to analyze the intercultural interactions among the characters of different ethnic backgrounds which shapes a contestation of identity among characters in the novel. Hybridity theory is also used to analyze how Jewish diaspora characters transform into hybrid characters in responding the contestation of identity. Through the observation of how the contestation of identity happens among the characters, this research shows that the Jewish diaspora characters in Peony use hybridity as strategy to win the contestation of identity among characters in the novel.

Ante un horizonte tenebroso. Alfred Döblin en búsqueda de una Nueva Judea

El escritor Alfred Döblin (1878-1957), una de las más destacadas voces del modernismo alemán, se comprometió en los años treinta con el Neoterritorialismo en búsqueda de colonizar territorios para poner a salvo a la diáspora judía. El artículo traza las posiciones del exiliado frente al movimiento, en el que veía la oportunidad de una «renovación integral» del judaísmo. Para Döblin, esta renovación mediante la colonización de un nuevo territorio tiene un contenido utópico que –una vez finalizado su activismo político– llevó al ámbito de la literatura en su trilogía de novelas Amazonas (1937). El trabajo analiza sus escritos judíos para explorar el nexo entre una aguda consciencia de crisis y la imaginación de otra comunidad posible.

The Birth of a New Narrative: Jewish-American Autobiographical Writing

The Jewish diaspora quickly became one of the most notable immigrant groups in the American context. Faced with an arduous process of assimilation and acculturation, as exiles, Jews in America felt the pressure of the difficult choice between preserving their tradition and adapting to the new pragmatism and materialism that their new circumstances required. The issue of accelerated assimilation and loss of Jewishness became a real concern. As such, initiatives such as the one proposed by the YIVO Institute of a contest for autobiographical writing belonging to Jewish immigrants, dedicated to protecting Jewishness, offered a forum for personal written histories, submitted in different languages, but united through their English translations. Autobiography, as an essentially American genre, constituted an auspicious venue of expression, thus aiding the communal efforts of (re-)shaping and (re-)defining what it meant to be a Jew and what it meant to be a Jewish-American.