Pub Date : 2021-10-11DOI: 10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.02
O. 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 in accordance with the Tanzimat laws (a series of modernizing reforms), the 1840 penal code in particular. This article, based on newly discovered evidence, examines the legal means and mechanisms used to manage the Rhodes crisis, arguing that its resolution, advocated by the Jewish leadership in Istanbul, can be adequately understood only in the context of the Tanzimat judicial reform. This was the first instance when the Sublime Porte complied with its European allies’ demand that it guarantee its non-Muslim subjects equal treatment and legal protection.
{"title":"The Rhodes Blood Libel of 1840: Episode in the History of Ottoman Reforms","authors":"O. Borovaya","doi":"10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.02","url":null,"abstract":"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 in accordance with the Tanzimat laws (a series of modernizing reforms), the 1840 penal code in particular. This article, based on newly discovered evidence, examines the legal means and mechanisms used to manage the Rhodes crisis, arguing that its resolution, advocated by the Jewish leadership in Istanbul, can be adequately understood only in the context of the Tanzimat judicial reform. This was the first instance when the Sublime Porte complied with its European allies’ demand that it guarantee its non-Muslim subjects equal treatment and legal protection.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"35 - 63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46357543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-11DOI: 10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.06
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 German Jews since 1933. The first documented domestic routines in a way that alluded to major tropes of both German national culture and Jewish religious heritage. It depicted changes in the daily experiences of Jews as the downfall of (German) bourgeois culture. The second paradigm moved in the opposite direction, by engaging in a conspicuous effort to disconnect ordinary scenes at home from the ominous circumstances that prevailed beyond its walls. The latter paradigm seems to portray the Jewish home as a site of escapist refuge from reality. Yet, I argue, it often functioned as a vehicle for a sinister depiction of the “new ordinary” as a signifier of inevitable demise.
{"title":"Ordinary Moments of Demise: Photographs of the Jewish Home in Late 1930s Germany","authors":"Ofer Ashkenazi","doi":"10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.06","url":null,"abstract":"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 German Jews since 1933. The first documented domestic routines in a way that alluded to major tropes of both German national culture and Jewish religious heritage. It depicted changes in the daily experiences of Jews as the downfall of (German) bourgeois culture. The second paradigm moved in the opposite direction, by engaging in a conspicuous effort to disconnect ordinary scenes at home from the ominous circumstances that prevailed beyond its walls. The latter paradigm seems to portray the Jewish home as a site of escapist refuge from reality. Yet, I argue, it often functioned as a vehicle for a sinister depiction of the “new ordinary” as a signifier of inevitable demise.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"149 - 185"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41503079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-11DOI: 10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.03
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 of candle tax funds into private schools for Jewish girls and Jewish religion courses in Russian state schools. I argue that, just as the framers of the original legislation could not have foreseen its secondary uses, so, too, the educators who repurposed the candle tax monies could not have imagined the enduring consequences.
{"title":"Kindling Enlightenment: A Social History of the Jewish Candle Tax in Russia","authors":"Adler","doi":"10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.26.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"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 of candle tax funds into private schools for Jewish girls and Jewish religion courses in Russian state schools. I argue that, just as the framers of the original legislation could not have foreseen its secondary uses, so, too, the educators who repurposed the candle tax monies could not have imagined the enduring consequences.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"64 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44461152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.05
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 of Moses Mendelssohn, this article explores these themes by examining the work of Benedict de Spinoza, Robert Lowth, and Naftali Herz Wessely. Pursuing a unique mode of interpretation, these four thinkers strongly affirmed the role of figurative language in Hebrew Scripture, thus promoting an emphatically rhetorical approach to scriptural language. Mendelssohn, Spinoza, Lowth, and Wessely believed that figurative language played a constitutive role in the formation of the anagogical meaning of Scripture and that this meaning was conflictual and open-ended due to its reliance on persuasion, public deliberation, and the use of eloquent speech. While scholars have suggested that maskilim tended to read the Jewish Enlightenment as a movement that either re-sanctified or desacralized Scripture, this article shows that proponents of the much-maligned meliẓah literature were keen on showing that Scripture is not a container of philosophical knowledge. For them, what made Scripture sacred was not its truth—which could be manipulated at will—but its engagement in an often inconclusive struggle between sacredness and secularity, reason and revelation, mythical and philosophical conceptions of God.
{"title":"Conflicted Anagoge: The Renewal of Jewish Textuality in Haskalah Rhetoric","authors":"Amir Banbaji","doi":"10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.05","url":null,"abstract":"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 of Moses Mendelssohn, this article explores these themes by examining the work of Benedict de Spinoza, Robert Lowth, and Naftali Herz Wessely. Pursuing a unique mode of interpretation, these four thinkers strongly affirmed the role of figurative language in Hebrew Scripture, thus promoting an emphatically rhetorical approach to scriptural language. Mendelssohn, Spinoza, Lowth, and Wessely believed that figurative language played a constitutive role in the formation of the anagogical meaning of Scripture and that this meaning was conflictual and open-ended due to its reliance on persuasion, public deliberation, and the use of eloquent speech. While scholars have suggested that maskilim tended to read the Jewish Enlightenment as a movement that either re-sanctified or desacralized Scripture, this article shows that proponents of the much-maligned meliẓah literature were keen on showing that Scripture is not a container of philosophical knowledge. For them, what made Scripture sacred was not its truth—which could be manipulated at will—but its engagement in an often inconclusive struggle between sacredness and secularity, reason and revelation, mythical and philosophical conceptions of God.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"126 - 169"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47006848","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.02
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 developments, the claim this article seeks to promote and discuss is that the underlying aspiration for a replacement child has existed within the Israeli national order from the state's early days, and has several common cultural symbolic and sublimative expressions, such as commemorating a dead soldier by naming newborn relatives for him. New fertility technologies have opened up a path to materialize symbolic modes of commemoration. The article closely examines the concept of the replacement child and the national logic guiding it in two novellas written at the millennium's outset by two influential Israeli authors: "Diana's Child" (Ha-yeled shel Diana) by Savyon Liebrecht and "My Younger Brother Yehudah" (Aḥi ha-ẓa'ir Yehudah) by Sami Berdugo.
{"title":"\"So That If One Dies\": The Narrative of the Replacement Child in Israeli Literature","authors":"Dana Olmert","doi":"10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.02","url":null,"abstract":"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 developments, the claim this article seeks to promote and discuss is that the underlying aspiration for a replacement child has existed within the Israeli national order from the state's early days, and has several common cultural symbolic and sublimative expressions, such as commemorating a dead soldier by naming newborn relatives for him. New fertility technologies have opened up a path to materialize symbolic modes of commemoration. The article closely examines the concept of the replacement child and the national logic guiding it in two novellas written at the millennium's outset by two influential Israeli authors: \"Diana's Child\" (Ha-yeled shel Diana) by Savyon Liebrecht and \"My Younger Brother Yehudah\" (Aḥi ha-ẓa'ir Yehudah) by Sami Berdugo.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"37 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49107779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.03
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 and even resentment among several of his Israeli colleagues. They were skeptical of the formal reason he gave for his move, namely, to facilitate his work on the Cairo Geniza. Using unpublished archival sources, this article sheds new light on Goitein's move as well as his activities in the US. It focuses on Goitein's efforts to combat both anti-Israel criticism within the academy and the emerging post-colonial critique of orientalism by scholars such as the British-Palestinian A. L. Tibawi, Goitein's former colleague in Mandate Palestine. By exploring both the political context and manner in which Goitein saw his own role as a "Jewish orientalist" in America in the Cold War era, the article reveals the ways in which scholars like Goitein sought to use their expertise to address ideological and political challenges in the postwar era.
{"title":"A Bridge or a Fortress? S. D. Goitein and the Role of Jewish Arabists in the American Academy","authors":"Harif","doi":"10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.03","url":null,"abstract":"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 and even resentment among several of his Israeli colleagues. They were skeptical of the formal reason he gave for his move, namely, to facilitate his work on the Cairo Geniza. Using unpublished archival sources, this article sheds new light on Goitein's move as well as his activities in the US. It focuses on Goitein's efforts to combat both anti-Israel criticism within the academy and the emerging post-colonial critique of orientalism by scholars such as the British-Palestinian A. L. Tibawi, Goitein's former colleague in Mandate Palestine. By exploring both the political context and manner in which Goitein saw his own role as a \"Jewish orientalist\" in America in the Cold War era, the article reveals the ways in which scholars like Goitein sought to use their expertise to address ideological and political challenges in the postwar era.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"68 - 92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46387187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.01
J. 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 practice, especially in cases concerning female bodies and sexuality. This article thus sheds light on an unrecognized dimension in Jewish legal culture in the early modern era—a consistent phenomenon in which midwives were recognized by rabbinic decision-makers as an important source of knowledge about the female body, and therefore as vital components of the halakhic decision-making process. It argues that the heightened involvement of Jewish medical women in the production of Jewish legal knowledge was due in large part to the value placed upon empirical practitioners beginning in the early modern period. As a shift in epistemic values privileged experience and observation above theoretical prowess, women began to develop more epistemological credibility in medicine. Rabbinic cases that concerned questions of medical knowledge thereby provided an opening for women's expertise and practical experience to become more valuable.
{"title":"Jewish Midwives, Wise Women, and the Construction of Medical-Halakhic Expertise in the Eighteenth Century","authors":"J. Katz","doi":"10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.01","url":null,"abstract":"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 practice, especially in cases concerning female bodies and sexuality. This article thus sheds light on an unrecognized dimension in Jewish legal culture in the early modern era—a consistent phenomenon in which midwives were recognized by rabbinic decision-makers as an important source of knowledge about the female body, and therefore as vital components of the halakhic decision-making process. It argues that the heightened involvement of Jewish medical women in the production of Jewish legal knowledge was due in large part to the value placed upon empirical practitioners beginning in the early modern period. As a shift in epistemic values privileged experience and observation above theoretical prowess, women began to develop more epistemological credibility in medicine. Rabbinic cases that concerned questions of medical knowledge thereby provided an opening for women's expertise and practical experience to become more valuable.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"1 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42156180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.04
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 resentment and gender, and marginalized masculinity and intersectionality. As this study posits, Christian criminal justice provides insight into the nature of contact and conflict between Jews and gentiles. The article illuminates the role discrimination played in the anti-Jewish-encoded criminal arena of sexuality and violence while also exploring the patriarchal gender order that shaped the misogynous construction of sexual assault in the case. Finally, it reveals how the mechanisms of criminal procedure, as well as the legal discourses of reform and regulatory interests impacted the verdict and its interpretation. This case evidences the impact of the motif of the "Jew as desecrator of virgins," the Jud Süß (Jew Süß) motif, which constructed Jewish men as rapists of Christian women.
{"title":"Jewishness, Gender, and Sexual Violence in Early Nineteenth-Century Frankfurt am Main: An Intersectional Microhistory","authors":"Vera Kallenberg","doi":"10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/JEWISOCISTUD.26.2.04","url":null,"abstract":"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 resentment and gender, and marginalized masculinity and intersectionality. As this study posits, Christian criminal justice provides insight into the nature of contact and conflict between Jews and gentiles. The article illuminates the role discrimination played in the anti-Jewish-encoded criminal arena of sexuality and violence while also exploring the patriarchal gender order that shaped the misogynous construction of sexual assault in the case. Finally, it reveals how the mechanisms of criminal procedure, as well as the legal discourses of reform and regulatory interests impacted the verdict and its interpretation. This case evidences the impact of the motif of the \"Jew as desecrator of virgins,\" the Jud Süß (Jew Süß) motif, which constructed Jewish men as rapists of Christian women.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"26 1","pages":"125 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48674009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jewisocistud.27.1.04
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 Jewish society and providing spiritual backing to those struggling for societal democratization. Rather than representing a break with religious tradition or a form of westernization, Knafo’s vision of modernity was a rearticulation of Jewish tradition in order to mobilize it toward social change. Using the printing press to subvert the local authority and reach new audiences, Knafo was also the first person in Morocco to quote and translate Hasidic works and he pioneered the diffusion of Judeo-Arabic literature.
{"title":"In Praise of the Multitude: Rabbi Yosef Knafo’s Socially Conscious Work in Essaouira at the End of the Nineteenth Century","authors":"Gabriel Abensour","doi":"10.2979/jewisocistud.27.1.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.27.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"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 Jewish society and providing spiritual backing to those struggling for societal democratization. Rather than representing a break with religious tradition or a form of westernization, Knafo’s vision of modernity was a rearticulation of Jewish tradition in order to mobilize it toward social change. Using the printing press to subvert the local authority and reach new audiences, Knafo was also the first person in Morocco to quote and translate Hasidic works and he pioneered the diffusion of Judeo-Arabic literature.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"27 1","pages":"115 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48429976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-01DOI: 10.2979/jewisocistud.27.1.05
Véronique Mickisch
Abstract:Isaiah Trunk (1905–81), the author of the classic work Judenrat, was one of the few Polish Jewish historians to survive the Holocaust. His trajectory reflects the key political and intellectual experiences and developments that shaped Jewish historiography in the twentieth century, from the Russian Revolution and the revival of Yiddish culture in the interwar years to Stalinism, the Holocaust, and the period of relative peace and prosperity in the postwar United States. The Holocaust and Stalinism left Trunk disillusioned with socialist internationalism and prompted a shift in his historical thinking “from class to nation.” Nevertheless, his lifelong commitment to Bundism reflected his determination to fight for the preservation of Polish Jewish culture, including its socialist traditions. Moreover, throughout his life, he retained a concern for social equality and the conviction that history, as an empirical science, was an important weapon in the struggle against antisemitism.
{"title":"Jewish Historiography Between Socialism and Nationalism: A Portrait of Historian Isaiah Trunk","authors":"Véronique Mickisch","doi":"10.2979/jewisocistud.27.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/jewisocistud.27.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Isaiah Trunk (1905–81), the author of the classic work Judenrat, was one of the few Polish Jewish historians to survive the Holocaust. His trajectory reflects the key political and intellectual experiences and developments that shaped Jewish historiography in the twentieth century, from the Russian Revolution and the revival of Yiddish culture in the interwar years to Stalinism, the Holocaust, and the period of relative peace and prosperity in the postwar United States. The Holocaust and Stalinism left Trunk disillusioned with socialist internationalism and prompted a shift in his historical thinking “from class to nation.” Nevertheless, his lifelong commitment to Bundism reflected his determination to fight for the preservation of Polish Jewish culture, including its socialist traditions. Moreover, throughout his life, he retained a concern for social equality and the conviction that history, as an empirical science, was an important weapon in the struggle against antisemitism.","PeriodicalId":45288,"journal":{"name":"JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES","volume":"27 1","pages":"150 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48989572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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