-
Feeling Familial Separation: Emotions, Agency, and Holocaust Refugee Youths Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Daniella Doron
Abstract: During the years of the Nazi regime, well over 1,000 European Jewish youths migrated to the United States in organized unaccompanied child migration schemes. These youths left an abundant, and largely untapped, trove of sources in which they constructed narratives of their lives and emotions to their parents in letters, to their social workers in their various interactions, and to themselves
-
"Like Salt in Water": Toward a History of Jewish Immigrants' Suicide in Urban America, 1890–1910 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Yael Levi
Abstract: During the early twentieth century, suicide among Jewish immigrants in the United States was hardly uncommon. The American Yiddish press regularly reported on suicide cases, and Jewish public figures acknowledged the phenomenon's frequency. Uncovering this forgotten chapter in American Jewish history and drawing on immigrants' letters, reports from the Yiddish press, burial records, and autobiographies
-
Traditionalist Jews and the Question of Whiteness Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Jonathan Boyarin
Abstract: This article has two main purposes. First, it aims to unpack the question "Are Jews white?" by insisting that the assignment of even ambiguous racial identities to "Jews" as an undifferentiated collective is a categorical mistake. It argues instead for a highly contextualized approach to the racialization of certain Jews or groups of Jews in certain times and places for certain purposes and
-
When Hermann Cohen Cried: Zionism, Culture, and Emotion Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 James Loeffler
Abstract: In this article, I examine a curious chapter in the history of modern Jewish culture: the 1914 Berlin meeting of Zionist musician Avraham Zvi Idelsohn with the philosopher Hermann Cohen. A shared belief in the redemptive power of aesthetics and the unique character of Jewish music briefly drew the two men together. Each saw in sound an unparalleled means by which to recalibrate Jewish difference
-
How the Locals Grew an Accent: The Sounds of Modern Hebrew in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Caroline Kahlenberg
Abstract: Early twentieth-century Palestine was a noisy place. Urban streets echoed with the cries of hawkers, the songs of nationalists, and the whistles of trains announcing their arrival. Conversations in Arabic, Turkish, Yiddish, English, Ladino, French, Hebrew, and other languages reverberated in the soundscape. In this article, I explore how Palestine's residents made sense of what they heard
-
"To the East"? Israeli Soccer's Asian Period and Debates about the Jewish State's Cultural Affiliations with the Continent Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Daniel Mahla
Abstract: For two decades, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, Israeli soccer players participated in Asian leagues and associations. During this period, they achieved much and celebrated significant athletic victories. But at the same time, they were met with hostility and boycotts and excluded from entire tournaments, until August 1976, when the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) officially expelled
-
Jews and Education in Modern Iran: The "Threat of Assimilation" and Changing Educational Landscapes Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Daniella Farah
Abstract: In the 1960s and 70s, several transnational Jewish organizations—the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Ozar Hatorah, and the Jewish Agency—expressed dire concern over the purported assimilation of Jews into Iranian society, claiming that it stemmed from their upward mobility and increasing enrollment in non-Jewish schools. Drawing on previously
-
Documenting Scholarly Dishonesty in Hyman Berman's 1976 Jewish Social Studies Article, "Political Antisemitism in Minnesota during the Great Depression," and Some of Its Political Consequences Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-11-03 Riv-Ellen Prell
Abstract: This article draws attention to the distortions and falsehoods that appear in the 1976 Jewish Social Studies article "Political Antisemitism in Minnesota during the Great Depression" by Hyman Berman. It identifies and corrects the many errors on two of its pages. In addition, the role of Berman's article in a student movement at the University of Minnesota to remove names on four campus buildings
-
MENA Jewry after "the Middle Eastern Turn": Modernity and Its Shadows Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Michelle Campos, Orit Bashkin, Lior Sternfeld
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: MENA Jewry after "the Middle Eastern Turn":Modernity and Its Shadows Michelle Campos (bio), Orit Bashkin (bio), and Lior Sternfeld (bio) In the fall of 2021 Netflix began broadcasting an original Turkish dramatic series, "Kulüp" (The Club), which centered on the tragic story of a Sephardi Jewish convicted murderer, Matilda Aseo, as she
-
"Our Cruel Polish Brothers": Moroccan Jews between Casablanca and Wadi Salib, 1956–59 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Shay Hazkani
Abstract: This article reconsiders three years in the lives of Jews in Morocco and their families who chose to immigrate to Israel. Relying on private correspondence between Moroccan Jews in Israel and in Morocco that was secretly intercepted by the Israeli intelligence apparatus, I argue that Moroccan Jews in Israel underwent a major process of radicalization between Moroccan independence in 1956
-
Between the Border of Despair and the "Circle of Tears": Musrara on the Margins of Jewish-Arab Existence in Jerusalem Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Moshe Naor, Abigail Jacobson
Abstract: This article focuses on Jerusalem's Musrara—a neighborhood trapped between borders—between 1948 and 1967. Barbed wire running along the eastern side of the neighborhood divided the city of Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. Musrara's western border separated it from West Jerusalem, thus enhancing the division between its residents—new immigrants of Middle Eastern descent—and the mainly Ashkenazi
-
Jews, Law, and the Modern State: Legal Nationalization in Colonial North Africa Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Jessica M. Marglin
Abstract: This article explores the transformation of Jewish law in the French colonial Maghrib (late nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century). Drawing primarily on Jewish newspapers in French and Judeo-Arabic and responsa in Hebrew, it explores how the perception and practice of Jewish law shifted in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. First, westernizing Jews came to think about Jewish law through
-
"It Was our Home and Sadly We Will Never Return": Nostalgia and the Circulation of Images in Lebanese Jewish Virtual Communities Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Molly Theodora Oringer
Abstract: By focusing on photographs pertaining to Beirut's historic Jewish neighborhood and central synagogue, I address in this article the mobilization of collective nostalgia on three Lebanese Jewish Facebook groups that provide a realm for debating, challenging, and reconstructing concepts of belonging while remembering a shared homeland from the diaspora. Furthermore, I explore how the nostalgic
-
The Oufran "Letters of Tzaddikim Burials": Cross-Translations between Charms, Epitaphs, and Historiography Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Orit Ouaknine-Yekutieli
Abstract: In this article, I focus on two themes connected to the Jewish community of the southern Moroccan town of Oufran and its place within conceptions of Moroccan Jewishness and Jewish Moroccanness. The first theme is the story of Oufran's burned martyrs—ha-nisrafim in Hebrew—and the second, the topos of this community's antiquity. I analyze the intertextual creation, circulation, evolution, and
-
Resurrecting Maghreb Pluriel?: Jews and Postauthoritarian Tunisia Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Achim Rohde
Abstract: The Tunisian revolution of 2011 marked a partial reconfiguration of the political elite and the beginning of a protracted democratization process whose long-term success is far from secured. In this article, I discuss societal/political/cultural transformations toward democracy in Tunisia since 2011 through the prism of its tiny Jewish minority. The perceived homogeneity of Tunisian society
-
Between "Ḥarat al-Yahud" and "Paris on the Nile": Social Mobility and Urban Culture among Jews in Twentieth-Century Cairo Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12 Alon Tam
Abstract: In this article I examine out-migration from old Cairo's Ḥarat al-Yahud (The Jews' Alley) to that city's urban expansions in the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. This migration was coupled with large-scale Jewish immigration to Cairo and intersected with its modern urban culture, which Jews shared with Muslim and Christian Cairenes. I argue that for Cairene Jews, these
-
Erratum: The Torah of Che Guevara: Jewish Students and Armed Struggle in Military Brazil by Michael Rom Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-07-12
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: ErratumThe Torah of Che Guevara: Jewish Students and Armed Struggle in Military Brazil by Michael Rom Jewish Social Studies regrets that an error was made in the published version of the article Michael Rom, "The Torah of Che Guevara: Jewish Students and Armed Struggle in Military Brazil," Jewish Social Studies n.s. 27, no. 3 (Fall 2022):
-
Household and Halakhah: A Genealogy of Jewish Practice Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Deena Aranoff
Abstract: In this article, I examine the role of the household and its web of social relations in the formation of halakhah. Through close readings of talmudic texts, I propose that the household functions not only as a domain of halakhic practice but as a significant point of origin. Drawing upon the Latin root matrix (mother), I suggest that everyday activities involving food preparation, childrearing
-
Moshe Wilbushewich, "Vitamin Bread," and Rationalizing the Jewish Diet in Mandate Palestine Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Dafna Hirsch
Abstract: Dreams of good food, writes Aaron Bobrow-Strain, are powerful social forces, which "arise out of particular constellations of power and interests that can be analyzed and understood." This article focuses on a specific food item—Vitamin Bread (leḥem ḥai), developed by Moshe Wilbushewich in 1920s Palestine—as embodying notions of "good food" premised on the tenets of rational nutrition. I
-
I, Ahasuerus: Monsieur Chouchani in Israel, 1952–56 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Yair Mintzker
Abstract: In October 1952, a mysterious man boarded a ship sailing from Marseille to Haifa. In the previous several years he had been living in France, where he was known as "Monsieur Chouchani" and taught Talmud to Elie Wiesel and Emmanuel Levinas, among others. Once in Israel, he went by the name "Ben Shoushan." In neither country did anyone know his true identity, but all who met him were astounded:
-
The Jews of Van-Urmia: Remembering Borderland Migrations (1914–18) Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Nesi Altaras
Abstract: Until 1914, around 2,000 Jews lived in the area between Lakes Van and Urmia, an Ottoman-Iranian borderland. These Neo-Aramaic-speaking Jews of the Van-Urmia border region enjoyed relative autonomy from both the Ottoman Empire and Iran. But Jewish life in the Ottoman province of Van came to an end during World War I when violence, unrest, genocide, and expulsion combined to displace the community
-
Practicing Aşk: Sound and Affect in Late Sabbateanism and Its Ottoman Sphere Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Hadar Feldman Samet
Abstract: Emotional states and their representations are gaining increasing attention in the historical study of mysticism. Building on the notion that mystical texts can be utilized to form a relation with the divine, in the current article I explore the intersection of emotional expressions, auditory elements, and devotional traditions as central praxes in Ottoman society. While focusing on a late
-
Radio Tunis's The Hebrew Hour (1939–56): A Microhistory Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Christopher Silver
Abstract: Radio Tunis's The Hebrew Hour (1939–56) was the first and longest running Jewish radio program in North Africa. From its debut just before World War II and through its final broadcasts just after Tunisian independence, its announcer Félix Allouche, a Zionist activist and journalist, brought together a diverse range of personalities, subject matter, political preferences, and musical repertoires
-
Eliazar Litman Feigin and the Birth of Jewish Capitalism under Tsar Nicholas I Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Ilya Vovshin
Abstract: This article surveys the life and business exploits of a little-known Jewish merchant from Chernihiv, Eliazar Litman Feigin. I argue that Feigin became a wealthy, self-made, dynamic entrepreneur who exercised aggressive, high-risk economic tactics in tax farming and military supplies. He attempted to enter the new economic spheres of banking and railroad construction, but he faced the system
-
"Jews, Heathens, and Other Dissenters": Governing Religion in the English Atlantic World, 1614–1790 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Shari Rabin
Abstract: This article argues that discussions about how Judaism "became a religion" should include consideration of early modern English thought and colonial governance. In the seventeenth century, Jews gradually came to be understood in relationship to new concepts of "religion" and "religions," even as they were beginning to inhabit English territories for the first time since their 1290 expulsion
-
The Jewish Question in the British Colonial Imagination: The Case of the Deportation to Mauritius (1940–45) Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Roni Mikel-Arieli
Abstract: In December 1940, 1,580 Jewish refugees who fled Nazi-controlled Europe survived a long journey to Haifa only to be deported by the British Mandate authorities in Palestine to the British colony of Mauritius. Using this case study, this article explores British perceptions of the Jewish Question during World War II. It builds on a transnational archive that includes British colonial records
-
Challenging Communal Boundaries in Late Ottoman Thrace: Jews and Muslims in Dimetoka (Didymoteicho) Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Eyal Ginio
Abstract: This article turns to microhistory to explain the targeting of Jews by their Muslim opponents following the Second Balkan War (July 1913) and the return of Ottoman rule to Dimetoka. It explores intercommunal tensions between Jews and Muslims over boundaries and representation in the public sphere that surfaced following the 1908 revolution and the project to construct a new building for the
-
Between El-Horria and La Liberté: The Jewish Worldview of a Judeo-Arabic and French Newspaper from Twentieth Century Tangier, Morocco Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Alon Tam
Abstract: El-Horria/La Liberté was a bilingual, Judeo-Arabic and French, Jewish weekly newspaper published in Tangier, Morocco between 1914 and ca. 1924. This article offers a careful study of this newspaper in order to show the worldview it created for its consumers through discussion of issues its editor and authors deemed to be crucial for Jewish life in Morocco at the time. These ranged from the
-
"What Is Permitted to Jupiter Is Not Permitted to an Ox": Maskilim as a Class Phenomenon Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Svetlana Natkovich
Abstract: The Haskalah emerged in the eighteenth century under the auspices of modernized Jewish commercial elites. By the late 1860s, however, Russian maskilim started to adopt highly critical positions toward their former patrons, and some toward capitalist relationships in general. This article sheds light on a previously neglected factor in discussions on the economic position of maskilim. It points
-
Challenging Humanism: Jews, Theory, and Yale during the Closing Decades of the Twentieth Century Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-12-16 Gregory Jones-Katz
Abstract: Jews used theory from the early 1970s to the late 80s at Yale University to revise humanism, a collection of intellectual traditions in the American academy until then largely shaped by a white, male, and Christian-European perspective. Jews, first, uncovered and reworked the philosophical principles of literary scholarship. Jews subsequently employed theory, often in anti-humanist ways,
-
The Culture of Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Yiddish Song Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Alyssa Quint
Abstract: This article examines a body of Yiddish songs published between 1860 and 1890 with the intention of tracing the historical cultural milieu of Jewish merchants in eastern Europe and how songs functioned in their world and how these songs—at times, playfully, insightfully, or ironically—captured it. Behind this inquiry is a larger one regarding the relationship between folk material and historical
-
"Who Will Laugh the Last?": Jac Weinstein's Sketches, Poetry, and Songs during Finnish-German Co-Belligerency, 1941–44 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Simo Muir
Abstract: This article analyzes Jac Weinstein's (1883–1976) sketches, poems, and songs written in Yiddish and Swedish during 1941–44, when Finland fought alongside Nazi Germany. While satirizing daily life and changing social norms among Finnish Jews, Weinstein's work dealt with the genocide of European Jewry—waged by Finland's de facto ally—and the horror of the war. Weinstein's work challenges postwar
-
"Morts pour la France": Commemoration and Community Building among Ottoman Sephardim in Interwar Paris Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Robin Margaret Buller
Abstract: In interwar Paris, a community of Sephardi immigrants originally from the Ottoman Empire raised a monument paying tribute to Ottoman Jews who fought for France during World War I. Its construction, which spanned over a decade, underscored the evolution of Ottoman Sephardi immigrant collective identity, goals, and anxieties in France between the close of World War I and the eve of World War
-
The Web in the Tempest: The Experiences of the Teachers and School Directors of the Alliance Israélite Universelle during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–11 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Isabelle S. Headrick
Abstract: The lives of the teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Alliance) were entangled with the turmoil and humanitarian disasters of Iran's 1906–11 Constitutional Revolution. In theory, the revolution should have been an exciting moment and a validation of the Alliance's mission to "emancipate" Middle Eastern Jews. Yet in the Alliance staff's letters, there are surprisingly few mentions
-
Citizenship and Loyalty in Times of War: The Ottomanization Movement in Palestine during World War I Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Abigail Jacobson
Abstract: This article examines debates regarding citizenship and loyalty to the empire that arose during the Ottomanization campaign that took place in Palestine during World War I. These discussions in Palestine took place in the context of an evolving national conflict with its differing visions for Palestine. World War I and changing political conditions steered political and legal debates concerning
-
The Origins of Israeli Deaf Ethnicity Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Marco Di Giulio
Abstract: At the first school for deaf children in the Yishuv, established in 1932, teachers used oralist methods developed in Germany to instill the Hebrew language in pupils. Graduates joined a Hebrew-speaking Deaf community that included orally trained Jews returning from Europe. This Deaf elite envisioned an extensive oral education system for children and adults, but the sudden influx of deaf
-
Modern Haredim and Contemporary Haredi Society: Beyond the Paradigm of Liberalization Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Itamar Ben Ami
Abstract: Modern Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Israelis who have joined the army, workforce, and academia) are often perceived as a sign that contemporary Haredi society is becoming more liberal and Western. This article presents an alternative framework, which understands the challenge posed by modern Haredim to the classic Haredi society of learners not in terms of increasing liberalism but rather of increasing
-
The Culture of Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Yiddish Song Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Alyssa Quint
Abstract: This article examines a body of Yiddish songs published between 1860 and 1890 with the intention of tracing the historical cultural milieu of Jewish merchants in eastern Europe and how songs functioned in their world and how these songs—at times, playfully, insightfully, or ironically—captured it. Behind this inquiry is a larger one regarding the relationship between folk material and historical
-
"Who Will Laugh the Last?": Jac Weinstein's Sketches, Poetry, and Songs during Finnish-German Co-Belligerency, 1941–44 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Simo Muir
Abstract: This article analyzes Jac Weinstein's (1883–1976) sketches, poems, and songs written in Yiddish and Swedish during 1941–44, when Finland fought alongside Nazi Germany. While satirizing daily life and changing social norms among Finnish Jews, Weinstein's work dealt with the genocide of European Jewry—waged by Finland's de facto ally—and the horror of the war. Weinstein's work challenges postwar
-
"Morts pour la France": Commemoration and Community Building among Ottoman Sephardim in Interwar Paris Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Robin Margaret Buller
Abstract: In interwar Paris, a community of Sephardi immigrants originally from the Ottoman Empire raised a monument paying tribute to Ottoman Jews who fought for France during World War I. Its construction, which spanned over a decade, underscored the evolution of Ottoman Sephardi immigrant collective identity, goals, and anxieties in France between the close of World War I and the eve of World War
-
The Web in the Tempest: The Experiences of the Teachers and School Directors of the Alliance Israélite Universelle during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–11 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Isabelle S. Headrick
Abstract: The lives of the teachers of the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Alliance) were entangled with the turmoil and humanitarian disasters of Iran's 1906–11 Constitutional Revolution. In theory, the revolution should have been an exciting moment and a validation of the Alliance's mission to "emancipate" Middle Eastern Jews. Yet in the Alliance staff's letters, there are surprisingly few mentions
-
Citizenship and Loyalty in Times of War: The Ottomanization Movement in Palestine during World War I Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Abigail Jacobson
Abstract: This article examines debates regarding citizenship and loyalty to the empire that arose during the Ottomanization campaign that took place in Palestine during World War I. These discussions in Palestine took place in the context of an evolving national conflict with its differing visions for Palestine. World War I and changing political conditions steered political and legal debates concerning
-
The Origins of Israeli Deaf Ethnicity Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Marco Di Giulio
Abstract: At the first school for deaf children in the Yishuv, established in 1932, teachers used oralist methods developed in Germany to instill the Hebrew language in pupils. Graduates joined a Hebrew-speaking Deaf community that included orally trained Jews returning from Europe. This Deaf elite envisioned an extensive oral education system for children and adults, but the sudden influx of deaf
-
Modern Haredim and Contemporary Haredi Society: Beyond the Paradigm of Liberalization Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Itamar Ben Ami
Abstract: Modern Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Israelis who have joined the army, workforce, and academia) are often perceived as a sign that contemporary Haredi society is becoming more liberal and Western. This article presents an alternative framework, which understands the challenge posed by modern Haredim to the classic Haredi society of learners not in terms of increasing liberalism but rather of increasing
-
How Race Travels: Navigating Global Blackness in J. Ida Jiggetts's Study of Afro-Asian Israeli Jewry Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-02-10 Bryan Karle Roby
Abstract: This article explores the intellectual history of Black scholar (John) Ida Jiggetts in her study of Yemenite Jewish integration efforts in Israel in the 1950s. I begin with a critical look into the scholarship that heavily influenced her: Zionist ethnography and anthropology. Jewish engagement in these fields, then dominated by race scientists, constructed Afro-Asian Jewry as a Black foil
-
Indios, Negros, and Criollos: The Racial Anxieties of Argentine Yiddish Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-02-10 Amy Kerner
Abstract: This article analyzes discourses of Latin American race and ethnicity in the context of the ethnic language production of a transnational immigrant group: Yiddish-speaking Jews in Argentina. Argentine Yiddish writings have been analyzed in previous scholarship as an offshoot of a global Yiddish culture that entered a marked decline as immigrants culturally assimilated in the 1930s. By contrast
-
In Praise of the Multitude: Rabbi Yosef Knafo's Socially Conscious Work in Essaouira at the End of the Nineteenth Century Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-02-10 Gabriel Abensour
Abstract: This article examines the work of Rabbi Yosef Knafo (1823–1900), a prolific author writing for the Jewish masses of Essaouira in Morocco. In this article, I suggest that Knafo’s work should be read in the light of the local Jewish community’s turbulent social context. Through his books, Knafo joined the ranks of the local advocates of modernity, dedicating himself to forging a more egalitarian
-
Statistics, Race, and Essentialism in the Debate over Jewish Employment Structure (1905–39) Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2022-02-10 Nicolas Vallois
Abstract: The second half of the nineteenth century saw the development of statistical studies about Jewish populations written by Jewish authors. Jewish enthusiasm for statistics gave rise to what historians have called Jewish social science or Jewish statistics. This article contributes to scholarship on Jewish social science by challenging the assumption in the literature that statistics was inherently
-
"The Passionate Few": Youth and Yiddishism in American Jewish Culture, 1964 to Present Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Sandra Fox
Abstract: In the last two decades, journalists have chronicled a contemporary “Yiddish Revival,” focusing in particular on the language’s popularity among a subculture of young Jews. But, while the Holocaust and other circumstances threatened Yiddish on a global scale by the mid-twentieth century, youthful pursuits of, in, and for Yiddish are by no means new. Indeed, each American-born generation has
-
The Rhodes Blood Libel of 1840: Episode in the History of Ottoman Reforms Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Olga Borovaya
Abstract: Since historians assume that the Rhodes blood libel of 1840 was a small-scale version of the contemporaneous Damascus Affair, Rhodian Jews, too, are believed to have been rescued by Moses Montefiore and other European Jews. Yet, unlike the Damascus crisis that turned into an international political emergency, the one on Rhodes was treated by the Ottomans as a domestic legal case and handled
-
Kindling Enlightenment: A Social History of the Jewish Candle Tax in Russia Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Eliyana R. Adler
Abstract: This article offers an alternative social history of the candle tax, generally viewed as part of the failed experiment of state-run Jewish schools in the Russian Empire. Building on scholarship that suggests the schools actually had some influence and the Jewish minority in Russia actively engaged with the government in negotiating their own transformation, this article follows the diversion
-
Swastikas on Jacob-Schiff-Straße: The Peculiar History of Jewish Street Names in Frankfurt, 1872–1938 Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Max Lazar
Abstract: This article uses the history of Jewish street names in Frankfurt to challenge prevailing narratives about World War I’s deleterious effect on Jewish integration in Germany. It also shows how spatial theory can raise new questions and enrich our understanding of the nature and markers of Jewish integration. By naming streets after prominent local and national Jews between 1872 and 1933, Frankfurt’s
-
Ordinary Moments of Demise: Photographs of the Jewish Home in Late 1930s Germany Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Ofer Ashkenazi
Abstract: Historians of interwar Germany have noted the transformation in the perception of “the ordinary” under Nazism. This article analyzes private photographs of the Jewish home as responses to this transformation. Taken and compiled in albums by German Jews in the late 1930s, these photographs display two major stylistic paradigms, which communicate two distinct approaches to the persecution of
-
A Taytsh Manifesto: Yiddish, Translation, and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Saul Zaritt
Abstract: This manifesto calls for a translational paradigm for Yiddish Studies and for the broader study of modern Jewish culture. The manifesto takes as a paradigm an early name for the Yiddish language, taytsh, which initially means “German,” and leverages the ways in which this name signifies the proximity of Jewish and non-Jewish languages and their intimate entanglements. The call to taytsh is
-
Jewish Midwives, Wise Women, and the Construction of Medical-Halakhic Expertise in the Eighteenth Century Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Jordan R. Katz
Abstract: This article analyzes rabbinic responsa and court cases from eighteenth-century western Europe to illustrate the central role of Jewish midwives and wise women in halakhic venues where medical information proved decisive. It demonstrates that midwives frequently shared their knowledge with rabbinic figures and contributed specialized medical knowledge to rabbinic questions of Jewish ritual
-
"So That If One Dies": The Narrative of the Replacement Child in Israeli Literature Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Dana Olmert
Abstract: This article deals with an unexamined aspect of the Israeli culture of bereavement and its ethos of sacrifice: the expanding legitimation among bereaved parents to actively strive to have a substitute child in place of one killed in the course of military service. It begins by reviewing recent civil initiatives aimed at utilizing new fertility technologies to realize this wish. Despite these
-
A Bridge or a Fortress? S. D. Goitein and the Role of Jewish Arabists in the American Academy Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Hanan Harif
Abstract: In the summer of 1957, Professor S. D. Goitein (1900–85) left Israel and relocated to the University of Pennsylvania, leaving a tenured position at the Hebrew University. Although he initially planned to return to Israel, Goitein ended up remaining in the United States until his death in 1985, emerging as one of the leading medievalists of his time. This move by Goitein aroused criticism
-
Jewishness, Gender, and Sexual Violence in Early Nineteenth-Century Frankfurt am Main: An Intersectional Microhistory Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Vera Kallenberg
Abstract: This article analyzes the criminal procedure against the Schutzjudensohn (son of a protected Jew), Heyum Windmühl, who was charged with raping the six-year-old daughter of a Christian citizen in a case in Frankfurt am Main in the early nineteenth century. In doing so, it engages with three topics currently debated in historical scholarship: sexualized violence, the relationship between anti-Jewish
-
Conflicted Anagoge: The Renewal of Jewish Textuality in Haskalah Rhetoric Jewish Social Studies Pub Date : 2021-06-01 Amir Banbaji
Abstract: This article proposes a theoretical basis for understanding a crucial component of the maskilic literary approach to Scripture, which many proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment referred to as meliẓah (eloquent or figurative language). Once a venerated concept, it declined following the late nineteenth-century neo-romantic critique of Haskalah literature. Beginning with a brief discussion
-