Jewish Diaspora Research Articles

Biblijne uzasadnienie prymatu biskupa orientu na podstawie listów Tymoteusza I, patriarchy Bagdadu

In the interpretation of the Bible among Christians of the Orient, i.e. in the ancient Oriental exegesis, the historical sense is relevant, as history reveals Jesus to us. He is present, as the School of Alexandria describes, in the entire Bible, on its every page, but He is not veiled by allegory – He is present through time, having its special place in the revelation of the Word. Using types and images to explain certain points in the Bible is related to the concept of theological language in which types and images inscribed in the Holy Bible play an important role in our way of talking about God. They are elements that, by definition, should form the theological discourse. Certain elements of this exegesis are similar to concepts both of the School of Antioch and that of Alexandria, although, from the point of view of its basic assumptions and axioms, it is completely different. In many aspects, it is close to Judaism against which it fights so intensely, as many of its concepts are inspired by the heritage of the Jewish Diaspora of the Middle East.

Migration ‘against the tide’: location and Jewish diaspora entrepreneurs

ABSTRACTDiaspora entrepreneurs contribute to regional development through business, ideas and resources. Most diasporas originate from migration from developing and emerging economies and are captured in dyadic patterns between the country of origin and their residence. Understudied are diaspora entrepreneurs migrating ‘against the tide’ by selecting atypical destination region(s). This qualitative study examines the migratory paths of Jewish diaspora entrepreneurs departing from their communities and planting seeds at new locations for their communities to follow – in other words, leaving their communities behind physically, not mentally. Findings advance a theoretical understanding of diasporic entrepreneurial types, contexts and the dynamic interplay between pioneering entrepreneur(s), their community and their location.

Jewish Tourism in Berlin and Germany’s Public Repentance for the Holocaust

For generations, members of the Jewish diaspora boycotted German products and would not have dreamed of stepping foot within the borders of a nation that murdered six million of their people. Today, however, American Jews are no less likely to visit Germany than non-Jewish Americans are, and thousands of Israeli Jews live in Berlin. My research asks how the German government and private tourism industries approach Jewish tourism in Berlin and assesses how Jewish visitors respond to the experience of visiting Berlin.During the summer of 2018, I interviewed four tour guides and numerous tourists, observed people’s interactionwith the city’sHolocaust memorials and other Jewish sites, partook in Jewish-themed tours, and conducted a ‘netnography’ of analysing over ten thousand TripAdvisor reviews. This qualitative research showed thatwhilemany Jews express apprehension about visiting Germany and experience emotional turmoil on site, the abundant memorials and museums dedicated to the Holocaust convince most Jewish tourists that the nation is dedicated to educating and reminding its people about Germany’s past crimes and committed to repairing their relationship with the global Jewish community. The trips have the effect of both strengthening tourists’ Jewish identity and allowing them to reconcile their people’s traumatic history with the current German nation. The article provides a brief analysis of Germany’s post-war marketing directed at foreign Jews, describes the Jewish-related sites in Berlin, and reveals the responses of Jewish tourists in Berlin before presenting its conclusions. Keywords : Jewish tourism, Germany, Berlin, dark tourism, Holocaust, memorialisation

Reactions of the American Jews to Trump’s Jerusalem Embassy Move: Continuation of the Historical Pattern?

Pro-Israeli politicians in Washington have long supported the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, contrary to the widespread belief, not all American Jews offer unconditional support to U.S. decisions taken in order to promote Israel’s national interests. In this article, interviews were conducted with representatives from various Jewish diaspora groups in United States shortly before and after the official declaration of the U.S. Embassy move in December 2017. This article documents that opinions of American Jews diverge significantly regarding Trump’s Jerusalem Embassy decision. This article argues that this divergence stems from Israel’s actions and policies toward the Palestinians since the late 1970s and political and religious divisions within the American Jewish community.

Reframing Jewish mobilities: de-nationalized/non-territorialized, racialized, and hybrid identities among Israeli immigrants in Canada

ABSTRACTIn this article, I share the voices of diverse Jewish-Israeli immigrants who cross racial, cultural, and political boundaries as they discuss their cultural diasporic identities and belongings in Israel, in Toronto, and elsewhere along their personal and familial journeys of migration. Participants’ narratives illustrate that the geographies of Jewish diaspora are not simple locations in time and space that can be mapped based on the mobility from one nation state to another. Some migrants understand their Jewish diasporic identities in de-nationalized, cosmopolitan term, while others understand their Jewish diasporic identities as being inherently multiple, fluid, and hybrid. However, what is common among the participants is that they require scholars to stretch and re-form ethno-national Zionist geographies of social care, kinship, and belonging that are emphasized in the existing literature on the Israeli diaspora.

God and Idols: Representations of God in 1 Corinthians 8–10

Is Paul’s advice in 1 Cor 8 and 10 coherent? Does he provide different answers to two different situations? These are among the questions discussed by Trent A. Rogers in a monograph originally presented as a doctoral dissertation at Loyola University, Chicago. Chapter 1 provides a survey of possible solutions to problem of the coherence of 1 Cor 8–10. Of the suggested solutions, Rogers finds most helpful the work of scholars who propose that Paul’s argument builds on different first-century responses of Jewish diaspora writers to Greco-Roman idolatry (e.g., Liong-Seng Phua). Thus, a “coherence of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor. 8–10 can be understood . . . by examining the different ways in which God is represented” (p. 27).Chapter 2 discusses the complexity of Jewish and Christian interaction with the omnipresent idolatry of the Greco-Roman world. Rogers notes the different perspectives of Joseph and Aseneth and of Artapanus. Joseph and Aseneth reflects a rigorous rejection of idolatry. Artapanus, on the other hand, commends Moses as the great lawgiver of Judaism, while also crediting him with the creation of Egyptian religion. These perspectives reflect divergent understandings of what constituted idol worship in the Jewish Diaspora.Chapters 3–5 survey how three traditions of the Jewish Diaspora encountered idolatry: the wisdom tradition (ch. 3), Philo of Alexandria (ch. 4), and Josephus (ch. 5). Each chapter follows the same format: (a) structure of the argument, (b) analysis of the argument, (c) representation of God, and, (d) understanding of false worship. Chapter 3 focuses on how Wis 13–15 expanded the prophetic critique of idols such as that found in Isa 44:9–20. Philo’s critique was different. It began with Scripture and then proceeded to show why idolatry is philosophically untenable. Josephus, in Contra Apion, attacked the character of Greco-Roman divinities, demonstrating that they are unworthy of worship.Chapter 6 uses the same format to focus on 1 Cor 8–10. Rogers asserts that Paul drew on a rich tradition of idol polemic, nuanced Christologically, in conjunction with rhetorical conventions. By this means, Paul established that Christians’ exclusive allegiance is to the God of Israel revealed in Christ. Paul’s complex argument refuted the view of the “strong” who assert that Christians cannot be threatened by idols (8:1, 4). Paul points to both Israel’s history and God’s nature (10:1–22) to demonstrate the “strong’s” error. Participation in temple ceremonies, including banqueting, is prohibited, since that contradicts the exclusive character God’s call exemplified in the Lord’s Supper. On the other hand, Paul is more flexible on the eating of meat in private settings. Nevertheless, the law of love is to be the guiding factor. Paul employs his own example to demonstrate the validity of abandoning personal prerogatives for the sake of others (1 Cor 8:13–9:27).Rogers has provided a helpful resource for our understanding of Paul’s argument in 1 Cor 8–10. Paul’s argument is complex, employing rhetorical tools, Diaspora Jewish apologetic, and a Christological lens to make his case. The ubiquitous nature of polytheistic practice certainly tempted the “strong” to compromise with their society. On the other hand, Rogers’s case could be strengthened by additional attention to the pressures on Gentile Christian converts to conform to polytheistic practices as citizens of the city and empire, especially in the Roman colony of Corinth. Despite this caveat, Rogers has provided a helpful perspective for understanding 1 Cor 8–10.

Oral Group Memory – Written Fragmented Memory: A Note on Paul and the Jews

The ‘narratorial vacuum’ of a written text in early Christianity, at the time that Paul wrote his letters, works in his favor when he speaks to Diaspora Jews. In order to attract them, Paul dissociates from historical memories concerning the history of Jesus and its aftermath in Palestine. Paul wants to isolate Diaspora Jews from the history of constant conflicts between Palestinian Jews and the Jesus group. Even the crucifixion, which is practically the only fragmented memory that Paul repeatedly mentions, is ‘purified’ of its Jewish context and role (with the exception of 1 Thessalonians, where he blames the Jews) and is in fact divorced from its historical context.

Remembrance and Exile in Argentina’s Jewish Diaspora: The Poetry of Adriana Stein

Remembrance and Exile in Argentina’s Jewish Diaspora: The Poetry of Adriana Stein

Past and Present of Latin American Jewry: A Conceptual Pathway

The article aims to analyze the conceptual pathway that the author followed along her research trajectory focused on past and present trends in contemporary Jewish life, as specifically expressed in Latin America. Along a systematic reflection on axioms, theories and findings, diverse conceptual elaborations are presented, as they entail a sustained encounter with previous scientific formulations and changing times and contexts. Thus the author reflects on theory and biography as they nourished her research questions, while simultaneously committed to the stricter canon of scientific conscientiousness. Political science, sociology and contemporary Jewish studies converge in the development of research axes that found their point of departure in the prefix “multiple,” covering the author’s multidisciplinary journey through Latin American multiple modernities; multiple collective identities; and multiple social and communal structures and praxis. Diverse thematic clues are displayed to account for the striking fact that over the course of two generations Latin American Jews have transformed from mostly immigrants and immigrant communities, to rooted communities of locally-born citizens and, simultaneously, of expatriates and emigrants. The richness of Jewish life in the region, its presence and relevance in the Jewish world, as well as in national and communal spheres, and simultaneously, its relocation in new geographies are part of their current reality marked by disjunctures and paradoxes. The research presented crosses disciplinary confines in order to reach a wider epistemic spectrum and become better equipped to deal with the complexity that characterizes Jewish life today, as well as to traverse the national borders where Jewish diasporas dwell, in an effort to understand the globality of the Jewish condition and grasp its current dynamics.

Going on the offensive: the religious Zionist rabbinic ethos in Judea and Samaria as a response to post-heroism

ABSTRACTThis article examines some of the conceptual changes taking place in religious Zionist thinking in the course of the last three decades, as expressed in the writings of Judea and Samaria rabbis. The Halachic literature produced by these rabbis reinforces the offensive Jewish‒Israeli ethos, a sea change from Halachic texts composed by Diaspora Jews. From the theological point of view, this change is part of the return to the days of biblical-Jewish identity; from an ideological point of view, it is part of the reaction against the post-heroic culture that has infiltrated the IDF and the desire to influence this conceptual retreat from within.

Book Review: Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews. By John M. G. Barclay. Foreword David G. Horrell

Book Review: <i>Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews</i>. By John M. G. Barclay. Foreword David G. Horrell

Political Tradition and Foreign Affairs: A Study in Jewish Foreign Policy

This study proposes to identify a Jewish political tradition in the area of international politics and foreign policy. The concept of Jewish foreign policy tradition encompasses the interaction between Jews and external groups during times of Jewish sovereignty as well as times of Jewish Diaspora. The article analyzes patterns of Jewish foreign policy behavior drawn from both various sources of Biblical or Halakhic literature as well as from the empirical Jewish political behavior in foreign affairs. It is concluded that a Jewish foreign policy tradition is relevant to understanding current Jewish international affairs.

The Jewish Diaspora in Greco-Roman Antiquity

The term “diaspora” is nowadays used in connection with many different groups and peoples. Greek-speaking Judaism provides early models of diasporic self-consciousness and techniques for political ...

Building the country or rescuing the people: Ben-Gurion's attitude towards mass Jewish immigration to Israel in the mid-1950s

ABSTRACTIn mainstream scholarship, David Ben-Gurion is described as one of the main supporters and primary advocates of the policy of encouraging mass Jewish immigration to Israel (aliya) in the 1950s. The Zionist movement had two different motives for supporting aliya: Diaspora Jews’ need for a safe haven (which would require mass aliya), and the need to build a solid and stable Jewish society in mandatory Palestine/Israel (which would require selective aliya).When Ben-Gurion, in the 1940s, came to favour mass aliya, he did so because of the immigrants’ potential contribution to the attainment of statehood and then the independent state.In the first years after independence, when entire communities immigrated to Israel, they included old and infirm people who did not fit the image of the pioneers of pre-state aliya. Nevertheless, for Ben-Gurion, their demographic contribution outweighed the burden of their absorption. By 1952, he had changed his mind and became one of the strongest supporters of selective immigration. He continued to support selectivity even when, in 1955, the safety of Moroccan Jews and their freedom to emigrate was in jeopardy. Ben-Gurion's attitude to aliya from Morocco, in the shadow of the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, reflected his priority – a strong and secure Israel.

Chaos in Babel: Reconfiguring Biblical Archetypes in Monique Bosco's Babel-Opéra

Monique Bosco was a prolific author of numerous novels, short stories, and poems, and was recognized as one of the key Jewish writers in Montreal, a small minority group of immigrant intellectuals who wrote in French.... In many of Bosco’s works, readers can observe a particular fascination with the ancient past, especially a preoccupation with the Old Testament and such biblical archetypes as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Moses, Miriam, Job, and Lot’s wife. However, Bosco deviates from the traditional representation of these biblical figures, as she revises them to reflect the contemporary crisis of exile and geographical displacement—seminal elements associated with the Jewish Diaspora.

America on the Responsa Map: Hasidim, Mitnagdim, and the Trans-Atlantic Social Network of Religious Authority

America on the Responsa Map:Hasidim, Mitnagdim, and the Trans-Atlantic Social Network of Religious Authority Zef Segal (bio) and Menahem Blondheim (bio) There is a deep tension limning the experience of Jews, Jewry, and Judaism in America and their relation to the Old World. One side of this tension—perhaps ambivalence—is the depth of the immigrants' uprooting, the degree to which they rejected the alte haym (old home). Few voluntary migrations in the modern world were as decisive, the disowning they implied so conclusive. The demographics of the migration, including the proportion of people who migrated versus those who stayed, the rapidity of their coalescence into a mass-migration movement, and that movement's unidirectionality, indicate an overwhelming rejection of the old country. From the late nineteenth century to the 1920s, fully one-third of Eastern European Jews evacuated their countries of birth. The uprooting was thorough and systematic: a large majority of the Jewish immigrants had their way paid by relatives who had already settled in America. The intention was patent: no family member should remain behind. And indeed, an unusually large share of Jewish immigrants never looked back. While at least 30 percent of most (non-Jewish) immigrants returned to their homelands, the rate of return among Jews was a minuscule 7 percent, and even that was until the outbreak of World War I, which practically stopped return migration.1 Strictly, "no return" may have been mythical, but it was certainly a dominant state of mind. Jewish immigrants to America conclusively and emphatically turned their backs on the countries they left.2 [End Page 133] Yet at the same time, Jewish Americans were distinctly outward looking, remarkably mindful of their brethren's affairs. Historian Eli Lederhendler has recently argued that the distinguishing aspect of American Jews, both as an immigrant group and religious group in America, was precisely their awareness, interest, and connectedness to their coreligionists abroad. This "foreign aspect of American Jewry's history," Lederhendler argues, was unique, it was "an essential attribute of Jews' 'otherness.'".3 The significance of this dimension of connectedness stands, however, in stark contrast to the decisiveness we noted in the uprooting process characterizing American Jewish immigration. This duality, which touches on the most fundamental sensibilities of American Jews, calls for careful analysis. What follows is an attempt to untangle one strand of this ambiguity, one that relates to the religious aspect of the problem of continuity and its severance. Lederhendler argues that ecclesiastical ties disintegrated, that there were "no formal, hierarchical relations between Jewish rabbis and congregations in the United States and those abroad. Such ties of religious dependency that occasionally developed were ephemeral and apt to atrophy quickly."4 While we do not disagree with the gist of this argument, we will try here to delimit its scope and point to areas in which religious authority served as a realm of connectedness between American Jews and their homelands, rather than an arena of severance. In what follows, we attempt to map and evaluate the forces of connectedness between America and Europe and their disruption, the continuity and change in the realm of religious authority and religious teachings. In this study, we use responsa literature as a prime source for uncovering the dynamics of traditional Jewish religious authority, its disruption and its binding force. Responsa literature is a traditional rabbinical genre, dating back to the Middle Ages. Responsa are written replies to questions of Jewish religious law (halakhah), which had been conveyed in writing to a rabbinic authority. While many consider responsa strictly as exchanges related to practical, real-life legal dilemmas that had actually occurred, responsa have in fact been written on virtually every aspect of Jewish life and thought. The diffusion of such texts, in turn, became the standard mode of circulating legal rulings throughout the Jewish diaspora since the Geonic period, in many cases setting binding legal precedents, civil law-style.5 [End Page 134] Accordingly, responsa literature has been widely recognized by historians as a rich resource for both reconstructing the development of rabbinic law and for illuminating the historical details of everyday life in Jewish communities over the ages.6 Less obvious and less...

The Emergence of The Masculine Plural Construct Morpheme in Modern Hebrew

In written Hebrew, the final tsere plene as in 'sons of' is the graphemic masculine plural construct marker, but throughout the history of Hebrew until the pre-revival period, this morphogram has had no specific linguistic counterpart. This is valid not only for the morphophonology of Classical Hebrew but also for all non-vernacular communitarian Hebrew orthoepies (reading traditions) throughout the Jewish diaspora. In D. Bolinger's terms, the final graphemic unit is a visual morpheme. With the advent of spoken Hebrew, however, the Ashkenazi dictum "tsere alef → ey," though unfit vis-à-vis Sephardic ideal Hebrew, was maintained in colloquial Hebrew in instances of open syllable tsere plene, whence the final morpheme +ey as in /bney/ (Sephardic /bene/). This new colloquial Hebrew morpheme has originated ex scripto.

Impartiality as a Lack of Interest: Israel, Brazil, the Jewish Diaspora, and the Question of Jerusalem

Impartiality as a Lack of Interest: Israel, Brazil, the Jewish Diaspora, and the Question of Jerusalem

Golda Meir and Bruno Kreisky – A Political and Personal Duel

This article describes the political and personal duel between Golda Meir and Bruno Kreisky. In 1973, the two Socialist statesmen of Jewish origin clashed over the issue of Palestinian terrorism directed against Jewish transit via Vienna, triggering an almost decade-long bilateral crisis between Israel and Austria. For the purpose of better understanding the roots of their animosities, this paper traces and compares the biographies and mind-sets of the two heads of state, arguing that it was the Inner-Jewish divide between Zionist and Diaspora Jews that led to bitter personal and political conflict between Golda Meir and Bruno Kreisky.

Le cas Malaussène I. Ils m’ont menti par Daniel Pennac

Reviews 251 new novel is filled with impassive, irony-laced prose and wry humor. Even if one wishes to follow the current of life, it can lead you to worthwhile destinations. Bradley University (IL) Alexander Hertich Pennac, Daniel. Le cas Malaussène I. Ils m’ont menti. Paris: Gallimard, 2017. ISBN 978-2-07-014231-6. Pp. 596. After an eighteen-year hiatus, the Malaussène clan returns with their surreal world of linguistic humor and social satire. Tribal brother and uncle Benjamin, who raised the children on bedtime stories that would be unbelievable were they not the truth, is now suffering from empty nest syndrome. Still working as a professional scapegoat, Benjamin is charged by his publishing house with shielding a “true story” novelist whose family has attempted to murder him after learning of his revelations. The isolation of Benjamin’s country home gives both characters a moment of peace; the author to finish his work safe from harm, Benjamin to ruminate on the passage of time. Trying to stay out of trouble (and as always failing to do so), Benjamin attempts unsuccessfully to ignore the latest scandal in the news, the kidnapping of former CEO Georges Lapietá, whose golden parachute has become his ransom. Despite a disappointingly simple plotline and the frustrating name-dropping of (both real and fictitious) characters whose identities have to be looked up in a lengthy index at the back of the book, Pennac’s novel is still a delight. Shifting viewpoints and narrative styles rife with multi-lingual wordplay and slang hearken to the popular literature in which the Malaussène saga had its roots. The many colorful characters, such as Judge Talvern (Benjamin’s sister Verdun), who goes to great pains to make herself ugly before going to court, and Ariana Lapietá who, after hours of daily makeup and hairdressing, unknowingly bears a striking resemblance to Claudia Cardinale, simultaneously charm and provide biting social commentary. Although the social analysis in Pennac’s novel is not innovative, the means with which he explores how the harsh reality of the contemporary bio-novel has replaced popular fiction in literary taste are irrefutably Pennac’s. Technology’s immediacy and sensationalism have supplanted faith in communal collaboration (Benjamin) with a self-centered individualism that takes pleasure in vitriolic denunciation and accusation (the author whom Benjamin is protecting). Through structural mise en abyme and convincing rhetoric, Pennac questions the distinction between perceived authenticity and fiction. As Chief Inspector Coudrier, an aspiring novelist, points out, a detective with a crime to solve is no different from a storyteller weaving a text. Both seek to arrive at the truth by (re)constructing a plausible sequence of events and elucidating motives to assign responsibility. However, as Pennac’s novel demonstrates, the search for coherence is full of pitfalls and erroneous inferences. The novel cautions readers of reality and fiction alike that what convincingly appears as truth can be misleading. Thus, although some critics argue that the Malaussène series is a literature of the past, the analytical vision this fiction brings of the contemporary present is as entertaining and thought-provoking as reality literature, without the danger of inciting readers to a violence all too prevalent in real life. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Nathalie G. Cornelius Redouane, Najib. L’envers du destin. Paris: Vérone, 2016. ISBN 979-10-284-0183-2. Pp. 388. This novel has a richly-described cultural setting that includes the history of the Jewish diaspora in Morocco and depictions of the community’s celebrations, food, clothing, and customs—much of it explained further in an ample glossary of Hebrew/ Moroccan terms. Less pleasantly, the novel also portrays inflexible religious practices, unbridgeable divides (Muslim-Jewish, Israeli-Palestinian, Sephardic-Ashkenazi, etc.), and a volatile political history that seems bent on eliminating said cultural richness and variety.Against this backdrop, Mimouna, the youngest daughter of a Jewish Moroccan family living in Séfrou in the 1960s, tells her story. She is ravishingly beautiful, headstrong , passionate, and held as the apple of her father’s eye. Much to her detriment, she is unable and unwilling to please any other family member, especially her mother. Mimouna’s brief though unconsummated...