bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Judaism and Chinese Religion: A Prolegomenon to Any Future Dialogue
Authors: Herman Jonathan R.
Published: October 2012

Given the theoretical affinities between Judaism and Chinese Religion, or between the Jewish and Chinese people, there has historically been little interaction between the two groups and even less rigorous comparative study. This essay establishes parameters for such a study, by examining how both traditions place primacy on collective identity and how their shared legacies of "peoplehood" shape interpretations of history, produce mythologies of unity, provide bases for family-centered ethics, and influence attitudes on education, outsiders, and the land. The essay concludes with a brief example of one unusual historical instance of dialogue between the two traditions.
Between Maternity and Modernity: Jewish Femininity and the German-Jewish "Symbiosis"
Authors: von Ankum Katharina
Published: October 2012

The article addresses the question of a German-Jewish "symbiosis" in the context of three bodies of text that are geared towards German-Jewish woman readers. Raphael Breuer's Diary of a Jewish Woman Student (1907) and Else Croner's The Modern Jewess (1913), as well as the women's journal Die jüdische Frau (1925-1927), aimed to define and regulate Jewish femininity in ways what would safeguard the continuity of the Jewish tradition and the Jewish people within a highly assimilatory German society. The shift from a proudly assertive stance on Jewish femininity to an apologetic response to a prevalent antisemitic discourse, marked by World War I, vividly illustrates the limitations of gender-specific national discourses that attempt to write "difference" onto women's bodies.
Silent Heritage: The Sephardim and the Colonization of the Spanish North American Frontier
Authors: Santos Richard G.
Published: October 2012

Many Hispanic families in Texas, Northern Mexico, and the U.S. Southwest are descendants of Sephardic crypto-Jews and Conversos. Their ancestors colonized the sixteenth century northern frontier kingdoms of the Vice Rregency of New Spain. Living in a hostile environment for five centuries, many families managed to preserve their Sephardic identity and culture through oral traditions and cultural manifestations without the benefit of a written record. Silent Heritage is the introduction to a twenty-five-year research project outlining the historical trajectory and cultural contributions of the Sephardim who colonized the Spanish North American frontier. The completed manuscript (when released) will also shed light on the contemporary descendants of the Sephardic crypto-Jews and Conversos.
Let My Daughter Go: The Jewish Mother and the Black Mother in Novels about Catastrophe and Bondage
Authors: Lyles Lois
Published: October 2012

Cynthia Ozick's The Shawl—Rosa and Toni Morrison's Beloved depict the characters' struggles to fulfill their roles as mothers despite harrowing circumstances, whether of slavery or war. In both works a woman's body and mind become sites for violation as her sexual, reproductive, and maternal functions are besieged by her enemies. Since their children's lives have been lost to oppression, the women must learn to justly acknowledge, then to relinquish the dominance of, the spirits of their dead offspring over the women's lives. Witnessing to and resisting injustice must be accomplished both to honor the dead victims of tyranny and to heal the survivors.
Anusim Women in Mexico
Authors: de Backal Alicia Gojman
Published: October 2012

The immigration of anusim or crypto-Jews to New Spain took place from 1492 to 1700. The first to arrive came from Spain with the conquerors and colonizers; Portuguese anusim started to arrive in 1580. Hostility and secrecy played an important role in the adaptation of anusim to life in America because they had to keep their religion in secret. Mexico offered a familiar culture and the possibility of contact with the mother country. Family structure was centered upon the mother. The role women played in the preservation of Judaism was very important, since they were responsible for the way in which the religion was passed on through several centuries even when they were isolated from centers of worship.
Images of Women in Holocaust Films
Authors: Fuchs Esther
Published: October 2012

The question of the role of women in Holocaust Studies has been raised in the last decade with increasing eloquence and urgency. This article considers the role of women in Holocaust films. It argues that in numerous major cinematographic representations of the Holocaust (e.g., The Holocaust, Schindler's List, Europa Europa, Shoah ) women are portrayed as vicarious victims of the Holocaust. They suffer as the wives and mothers of men who are directly involved in the war as refugees, camp inmates, or resister. Often female characters are marginalized and stereotyped as sexual objects, or as emotional reflectors. They are often ignorant of or indifferent to the political complexity and the threat of the war. This article questions these stereotypes and the ideology that undergirds them.
Maurice Friedman and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: Pilgrims to the East
Authors: Linzer Judith
Published: October 2012

This essay is a personal tribute to the author's mentors, Maurice Friedman and Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. The article describes her experiences in Eastern religions as being prototypical of the 1960s generation. For over thirty-five years, Friedman and Schachter have displayed true openness towards a significant segment of a Jewish generation's need for Eastern meditative practices. They have also understood that generation's hunger to find a way to embrace their own Jewish birthright in a meaningful way. As deeply spiritual human beings and brilliant academics with vast reservoirs of knowledge in world religions, philosophy, psychology, literature, and history, they are deeply committed to Jewish tradition and to the Jewish people. They have helped create a bridge for thousands of Jews to return to the practice of religious Judaism. They have modeled the possibility of being open to other traditions, while remaining loyal to the Jewish way.
Jewish Women's Theology: A Literary Archaeology
Authors: Rose Dawn Robinson
Published: October 2012

In this paper, I demonstrate specific methods, developed from Jewish and black Womanist traditions, for the derivation of theology and ethics from contemporary Jewish women's literature and auto/biography. In order to recognize these texts as potentially theological, a radical shift in perception and interpretation is required. These texts bring to us Jewish women's experience. More, they contain the Jewish woman's response to that experience. I suggest within that response is an ethics, behind the ethics a theology. These texts then bring to us the theologies of our predecessors and contemporaries. In this paper, then, I explore the possibility that a baseline feminist approach to Jewish women's literature must begin here: viewing every Jewish woman's word as a potential declaration, each context a revelatory setting, all content an epiphany of the hitherto unrevealed and unread Jewish women's experience and situation, pains and glories, wisdom and silence.
J. M. da Costa, M.D.—A tinok she-nishbah? : An American Civil War Converso Physician
Authors: Kobrin Nancy Hartevelt , Kobrin Jerry L.
Published: October 2012

This essay presents a Sephardi physician, J. M. da Costa, who described the Civil War equivalent of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder—Irritable Heart. Da Costa's medical contribution is deemed an origin for the contemporary field of traumatic stress studies. Intergenerational transmission of trauma is an important facet of trauma studies; extensive research exists concerning Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren. Second-general children routinely choose helping professions such as medicine in order to master their parents' trauma and to fend off feelings of psychological vulnerability which may lead to assimilation and marrying out. Da Costa personifies such findings. It is suggested that the Marrano experience has not been adequately factored into what it means for Jewish identity and continuity. The concept of tinok she-nishbah , the captured infant, is used metaphorically to frame the problematic discontinuity of identity due to trauma.
Second-Generation Holocaust Poetry in Hebrew
Authors: Fuchs Esther
Published: October 2012

This article discusses central themes in the poetry of three Hebrew poets who are children of Holocaust survivors. Rivka Miriam, Oded Peled, and Tania Hadar are second-generation poets who have given a unique and articulate expression to their perceptions of the Holocaust as event and memory. The focus of the discussion is the ways in which the poets assess the political and moral meaning of the State of Israel as a result and aftermath of the Holocaust. Most intriguing, however, is the way in which these poets fuse personal and political visions, creating both "particularistic" and "universalistic" representations of the Holocaust as a historical event and an ongoing reality.
Assessing Israel
Authors: Sharkansky Ira
Published: October 2012

Israel is often a subject of shrill criticism, with hyperbole more prominent than clear reasoning, systematic analysis of the Israeli record, or comparison of its performances with those of other countries. Inquiries into claims about a threat of religious domination by the ultra-Orthodox and the disadvantages of non-Jews serve to illustrate the problems in assessing claims affected by ideology and emotion. As far as the analysis can go, the prospect of religious domination seems no greater in Israel than in other western democracies. Ethnic differentiation, as measured by indicators for incomes and health, has improved in recent years and is less severe than comparable conditions in the United States.
Three Generations of Israeli Music
Authors: Fleisher Robert
Published: October 2012

Most of Israel's cultural and political institutions were established by Central European refugees who transplanted their musical culture to British-mandate Palestine in the 1930s. The immigrant composers of the first generation (some of whom remain active) were a diverse group, but their era has come to be associated primarily with the self-conscious "Mediterranean" style (a hybrid of French impressionism and Middle Eastern musical sources) of Paul Ben-Haim and others determined to create a musical language suited to their unique time and place. The native-born sabras and their immigrant counterparts of the second generation were influenced both by their first-generation teachers and their own studies in the United States and Europe following World War II. The third generation, including for the first time composers born in the independent State of Israel, has been the most eclectic and international of all. Against an ever-changing social and historical backdrop, each generation of Israeli composers has created a body of literature as diverse as it is inextricably tied to its culture. This article is excerpted from the author's book Twenty Israeli Composers: Voices of a Culture (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997).
Newark Maid Feminism in Philip Roth's American Pastoral
Authors: Gentry Marshall Bruce
Published: October 2012

Philip Roth's American Pastoral contains a feminist subversion of its dominant male voices: the protagonist Swede Levov, the narrator Nathan Zuckerman, even author Roth. While reviews treat Swede as a good man punished for his virtues, the novel's women refute his reputation as the world's nicest guy. Swede's major faults are that he accepts the injustices of capitalism, that he never genuinely loves women, and that he does not think for himself. In creating ambiguity about his stance toward Swede, Roth may be admitting he has built a house of fiction that causes women to become bombmakers.
Pedagogy of Fear: Making the Secret-Jew Visible at the Public Autos de Fe of the Spanish Royal Inquisition
Authors: Lunenfeld Marvin
Published: October 2012

Throughout the Iberian world from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century an all-purpose scapegoat drawn from a few prosperous convert families was thrust by inquisitors into view during times of social stress. The tribunal's education in hatred required that ever-more-grandiose pageants be held in major cities. The issue raised by these Autos de Fe is how such a "pedagogy of fear" kept subjects of the Crown in line by evoking racial hostility with little more proof presented after secret trials than mere sentences. It was through costume, ceremony, and printed invective that defendants were men made over into society's definitive Other: the Secret-Jew.
Martin Buber's Conception of the Relative and the Absolute Life
Authors: Schmidt Gilya G.
Published: October 2012

Martin Buber's intense occupation with issues or causes during his younger years contributed to his spiritual enlightenment in specific areas in a particular time frame. So, for instance, in the years from 1898 to 1904 he was consumed with Zionist activities, from 1905 to 1909 he concentrated on understanding Hasidism, from 1909 to 1914 he synthesized his previous eureka experiences into a life philosophy. In his view, unity, action, and vision were three related and interconnected concepts of great importance to life. In his own struggle for meaning, he identified two spheres of which life consists. One sphere is our history, a people's relative life; the other our relationship to God, a people's absolute life. Both are necessary for a harmonious life, but both are not equally accessible. While a people may make a mark in history, it does not have the kind of direct access to God that the prophets or the Baal Shem Tov had. Hence, an indirect way to the Divine has to be found. In 1910 Buber contended that, for the Zionist period, Herzl had such a leadership role, not because of the goal he pursued, but because of the manner in which he carried out his task.
The End of Identity: Philip Roth's American Pastoral
Authors: Parrish Timothy L.
Published: October 2012

With American Pastoral Roth completes the assimilation story his fiction has previously been telling by rendering judgment upon its naive hopefulness. In rewriting Zuckerman's story through the story of Swede Levov, Roth rewrites his Zuckerman œuvre to stage a reconciliation with the Jewish past his fiction has struggled to escape. Through his identification with Swede, Zuckerman at last surrenders to the demands of the Jewish father. When Swede dies we understand that Zuckerman in a sense has died too. Zuckerman's performing American self inhabits Swede's corpse to identify the Jew who remains.
Views on Zionism and Israel in East Germany
Authors: Timm Angelika
Published: October 2012

The approach of the East German political elite to Zionism had its ideological background in the communist approach to the "Jewish question," antisemitism, and nationalism, while the most important criterion in shaping attitudes towards Israel was the incorporation of me GDR Middle East policy into the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Like other communist parties, the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) characterized Zionism as bourgeois nationalism and chauvinism. In addition, the East German political elite followed its own political interests. It would be a simplification to identify anti-Zionism with antisemitism, but one cannot ignore that anti-Zionism promoted antisemitic stereotypes and prejudices and kept old antisemitic views alive; antisemites could veil their anti-Jewish attitudes behind an anti-Zionist cover. Some Jewish and non-Jewish communists, leaders of Jewish communities, and representatives of the churches did not accept the official propaganda and policy, but their voices were not heard in public.
The Practice of Music as an Expression of Religious Philosophy among the East-Ashkenazi Jews
Authors: Frigyesi Judit
Published: October 2012

The article attempts to provide a conceptual framework for the discussion of the liturgical music of the East-Ashkenazi Jews. It discusses why our commonly accepted categories such as "prayer," "speech," "sacred," "music," "art" cannot be applied, as separate categories, to East-Ashkenazi culture. The article discusses this issue by "fusion groups," conceptual categories that fuse categories that are commonly thought of as being distinct and separate. This fusion means that aspects listed as belonging to one fusion group appear in the practice of the religious Jews as an indivisible whole. For instance, in the traditional context, melody is not an additional element but part and parcel of the text, inseparable from it and inconceivable without it, and vice versa: text is inconceivable without its melody. Similarly, meaning is not separable from a transcendental state, and neither meaning nor religious state is separable from the actual performance of the text with melody. Thus melody does not "express" meaning—it becomes one with it. These ideas are explained and illustrated by documents coming from the sacred written sources as well as from the practices observed and the opinions received from informants during twenty years of fieldwork projects.
The Transformation of the Haggadah's Preface as Influenced by the Development of Public Education in Europe and the United States
Authors: Cohen Ioannides Mara W. , Cohen Stephen M.
Published: October 2012

The seder (Passover ritual meal) and haggadah (text used during the meal) were codified in early medieval times. With the decline of women's Jewish literacy and their role in Jewish society beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the prefatory material in haggadot became more common. Since medieval times prefaces have often been added to the haggadah; yet, in the last two hunded years, the preface has changed considerably from an occasional comment to a standard set of information concerning holiday preparation. Why this change in the preface occurred is under examination in this paper. The change in Jewish educational patterns, which happened through the creation of free public education in both Europe and the United States and resulted in the need for the prefaces primarily among Jewish women, is illustrated.
Is It "Good-for-the-Jews or No-Good-for-the-Jews"?: Philip Roth's Registry of Jewish Consciousness
Authors: Aarons Victoria
Published: October 2012

In the short story "Eli, the Fanatic," one of Philip Roth's early pieces, we find the prototype for many of Roth's later characters, a Jew deeply ambivalent about his history and identity, so much so, in fact, that he is not even sure whether he has an identity or a history outside the limited confines of his own unconscious desire to manufacture both. And so, Roth creates his protagonists's double, an ironically insistent reminder of the failure of self-invention.
A Portrait of a Russian-Jewish Shtadlan: Jacob Teitel's Social Solution
Authors: Horowitz Brian
Published: October 2012

This article concerns the life and work of Jacob Teitel, a social activist and judge in the czarist Ministry of Justice. From his position in the government in provincial Russia, Teitel was able to aid Jews affected by legal restrictions by interceding with influential individuals. This portrait of Teitel offers a window to view the changes in Jewist life and reflects the complexities of the Jewish experience during the late czarist period.
Bobbie Ann Mason and Philip Roth: Two Great-American-Novel Concepts Pieced in One Big Picture
Authors: Roberts Nora Ruth
Published: October 2012

My purpose in this essay is to place Philip Roth's American Pastoral in a context broader than that of the urban New Jersey milieu for which he is generally known. By contrasting this work with the two major novels of Bobbie Ann Mason, I weave together Roth's delineation of the rise and fall of the industrial northeast with Mason's saga of a similar period in the rural agricultural mid-south. In this way a total picture emerges of America's rise and decline in the period of the twentieth century through the aftermath of the Vietnam War—with some surprising similarities.
How Do I Decide?: Practical Reason, Particular Judgments, and Holistic Concerns in Jewish Ethics
Authors: Mackler Aaron L.
Published: October 2012

The particular judgments of practical reason play crucial roles in Jewish ethics, in applying rules, balancing concerns, and specifying the realization of values. While acknowledging the elusive character of practical reason, the paper develops an account in which these judgments are not only acceptable stopgaps, but may offer valuable contributions. It builds on Aristotle's classical discussion of phronesis , intelligence or practical wisdom, and Richard Boyd's contemporary account of the role of trained judgments in both science and ethics. In the model presented, the particular judgments of practical reason reflect both specific situational circumstances and more general values and holistic concerns. Particular judgments both are shaped by Jewish values and norms, and present new input that enriches the system of Jewish ethics, leading to its refinement and growth.
The Music of the Amsterdam Sephardim: A Musicological Survey
Authors: Molenaar Anton
Published: October 2012

A short introduction describes the historical background of the Sephardic tradition and reviews some facts about Jewish poets and religious poetry during the Golden Age in Spain and Portugal (eleventh-fourteenth centuries). This overview is crucial to a better understanding of the music sung by the Sephardic community that arrived in Amsterdam at the end of the sixteenth century. In the Sephardic tradition, chazzanut is a matter of correctness without improvisation, the keeping of and adherence to the cantorial tradition. However, chazzanim of the Iberian peninsula were also poets of liturgical and semi-liturgical poetry. Finally, the article focuses on the liturgical hymns of the High Holy Days and the art music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Without real borders between them, both liturgical and secular music have had their place in the Sephardic musical life of Amsterdam.
Qabbalah and Academia: The Critical Study of Jewish Mysticism in France
Authors: Fenton Paul B.
Published: October 2012

No doubt because of the interest of French intellectuals in Qabbalah, it is significant that at the turn of the century it was upon French soil that the first translation of the Zohar appeared in a modern language. In addition, during the bourgeoning of the historical-critical study of Jewish mysticism in the last century, French scholarship played a major role. Leaving aside the occultists' tendencies, the present article examines the development of Qabbalistic studies in France in the academic context, dividing it into two periods. The first, historically oriented, is that inaugurated by the trail-blazing work of Adolphe Franck (1809-1893), while the second, dealing with speculative systems, is marked by the prodigious activity of the modern historian of Jewish philosophy, Georges Vajda (1908-1981) and his school. An account is also given of certain French intellectual trends which manifested an interest in Jewish mysticism.
Philip Roth's Fictions of Self-Exposure
Authors: Shostak Debra
Published: October 2012

The article examines Roth's exploitation of his own persona through self-reference in his writing. It argues that throughout his career, Roth has challenged readers' expectations of the truth value of narratives that simultaneously expose, conceal, and rewrite the autobiographical subject—the "I" in the text. Roth has thereby not only explored postmodern epistemologies of identity, but also has offered fresh angles on the problem of writing the self in a variety of genres: from autobiography and memoir to dialogue and reflexive fiction.
Images of the Jew Focused on in the Translated Polish Works of Tadeusz Borowski, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Czeslaw Milosz
Authors: Parmet Harriet L.
Published: October 2012

Historically Poles have been unable to resist writing about Jews. "Judeophilic" writing in Polish literature was impressive—illustrative of the often affectionate attitude toward Jews. On the other hand, the writing was often remarkable for its palpable departure from real-life situations. From the years 1530-1990 a body of work was produced that was characterized by stereotypes, distortions, paternalism, and condescension toward Jews. In this essay several works from the nineteenth century are summarized as illustrating the efforts of Polish writers to bring the Jew into the mainstream of Polish life. The essay then turns to Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen , which exemplifies the confrontation of one writer to the concentrationary experience, Andrzejewski's Holy Week , which concerns a failed attempt to save one Jewish woman during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and Milosz's poetry, which deals with the impact of history upon moral beings and the search for ways to survive spiritual ruin in today's world.
The Circus of Being a Man
Authors: Astruc Rémi
Published: October 2012

Philip Roth may well be a pornographer, but he is definitely and first of all a moralist. Obscenity in his tragic farces is only a way of imposing shock therapy on readers who, like many characters in his novels, might confuse propriety and reality. Truth is never clean, and therefore literature itself cannot be clean. For Roth, the phallus has thus become an artistic evidence of the salutary violence which is needed to restore a full consciousness of what Man and Life are truly about.
Beethoven and His Jewish Contemporaries
Authors: Miller Malcolm
Published: October 2012

Scholars have drawn attention to the significance of Beethoven's circle in biographical and critical evaluation of his music and influence on music of the nineteenth century. The particular circumstances of the Jewish population in Europe during this important period, that of the Emancipation and Haskalah, with its changes of socio-political profile, add a significant perspective to a consideration of Beethoven's Jewish contemporaries, and his relationships with them highlight both the composer's own rapport with Judaism and their contribution to nineteenth-century culture. The article deals with close colleagues such as the pianist-composer Moscheles, poet Jeitteles, and publisher Schlesinger, all of whom were instrumental in the genesis and reception of many of Beethoven' s masterworks as well as the wider circle of Hiller, Heller, Meyerbeer, Thalberg, and Sir Julius Benedict, who came into contact with Beethoven and whose influence extended into the Romantic era. Beethoven's Jewish friends and patrons are also discussed as well as the possibility that his commission to compose for Vienna's Seitenstettengasse Synagogue inspired his greatest, last quartet in C sharp minor, op. 131.
Nathan Samuely: A Forgotten Writer in a Neglected Genre
Authors: Ober Kenneth H.
Published: October 2012

The Nazi suppression of Jewish writers led to the near eradication of an entire genre of German literature—that of the so-called "ghetto story." By tacitly accepting the Nazi-established canon of German literature, we are continuing to abet this crime. The only names of writers in this genre that are at all recognized now are Leopold Kompert and Karl Emil Franzos, but there were many other writers of such stories, some of whom are at least equal to these. One of the best—if not the best—was Nathan Samuely (1847-1921), whose name and works have been forgotten. It is time Samuely and the group of other "ghetto story" writers were restored to the canon of German literature.
Textualizing the Self: Adultery, Blatant Fictions, and Jewishness in Philip Roth's Deception
Authors: Neelakantan G.
Published: October 2012

This article examines how Philip Roth's Deception , by enmeshing fiction with autobiography, enlarges the definition of reality. The artist-hero of the text is guilty of deception in both practicing adultery and in adulterating reality by his blatant fictions. Strangely enough, the protagonist's Jewishness lies at the heart of these deceptions. Deception , thus, qualifies as a portrait of the artist as an adulterous Jew.
A Literary Struggle with Ambivalence: Representations of Misogyny and Jewish Self-Hatred in the Writing of Albert Cohen
Authors: Schneider Judith Morganroth
Published: October 2012

Critics have lauded Albert Cohen for his vehement affirmation of Jewish identity, in contrast to the reserve historically exercised by French Jewish intellectuals with respect to their own Jewishness. Cohen has been equally praised for the exaltation of femininity and maternal love in his writing. Despite Cohen's ostensibly philosemitic and pro-feminine stance, his works exhibit both antisemitic and misogynistic discourses inscribed with a positive authorial evaluation. This essay examines the psychological and cultural conflicts underlying the representation of Jewish and female subjects in Cohen's major novels and autobiographical texts. Situating his writing within the dual framework of Melanie Klein's theories of mourning and artistic reparation and Sander Gilman's theorization of Jewish self-hatred, I argue that Cohen's novels succumb to the destructive forces of the maternal/cultural schism, while his autobiographical texts transcend the writer's ambivalence towards women and Jewish identity through textual acts of reparation.
Filling the Love Vessel: Women and Religion in Philip Roth's Uncollected Short Fiction
Authors: Fahy Thomas
Published: October 2012

Since many of the men in Philip Roth's fiction perceive women as embodying a devout Judaism that excludes them, they equate their inability to achieve some level of hetero-sexual romantic fulfillment with a failed connection to their religious and cultural heritage. Throughout his short stories, which Roth used as a testing ground for his larger works, the conflation of lover and mother, both of whom uphold and represent Judaism, suggests that men have feminized their faith, and, in doing so, they often transfer their anger from one to the other.
Mahler as a Jew in the Literature
Authors: Filler Susan M.
Published: October 2012

Gustav Mahler was a Jew from the Czech Lands which were part of the Austrian empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A combination of his fame as composer and conductor with the effects of longstanding antisemitism in the German-speaking countries results in a wide spectrum of musicological writings addressing the effect of his Jewish background on his work. Antisemitic commentary on Mahler's work, begun in his own lifetime, is widely known, but prosemitic and neutral assessment has not been afforded comparable study by present-day historians. This is unfortunate, since positive representations of the effect of Mahler's Jewish identity on his work have a longer history in the Mahler literature than those others which, essentially, ended with the Third Reich. In this essay, comparative balances between the two extremes will be examined, with examples from Mahler's contemporaries through the Nazi period and since.
Scholars Contending with Delusional Ideology: Historians, Antisemitic Lore, and The Protocols
Authors: Green Ronald S.
Published: October 2012

Although the notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had enormous impact on twentieth-century public opinion, with disastrous consequences, its importance has only recently been acknowledged by historians. As much as rational thinkers wish to ignore conspiracy theories of history implicating Jews as diabolical plotters, the persistence of these notions makes them worthy of serious study. By examining the origins of the Protocols and its subsequent dissemination, and by linking it to centuries-old folk traditions of demonology aimed at imagined "enemies within," scholars have begun to consider carefully the significance of this spurious document and its antecedents.
Texts, Lives, and Bellybuttons: Philip Roth's Operation Shylock and the Renegotiation of Subjectivity
Authors: Royal Derek Parker
Published: October 2012

This essay argues that the texts and countertexts that make up much of Philip Roth's writing complement the interplay between autobiography and fiction. Roth's post-Zuckerman books, specifically Operation Shylock: A Confession , create not only a text of the self and a countertext of the other, but also countertexts to the text of the self. While such a postmodern awareness of the self is both honest and potentially liberating, there is nonetheless a danger in losing a sense of self and community. In Operation Shylock , Roth attempts to come to terms with this problem by anchoring questions of identity largely within the Jewish ethnic community. What is more, Roth's text demonstrates that the relationship between autobiography and fiction is most illustrative when it provides us with a means to observe how authors construct their reality and thereby their lives.
Memories of History: Women and the Holocaust in Autobiographical and Fictional Memoirs
Authors: Doerr Karin
Published: October 2012

Only later in life have some women voiced their Holocaust experiences. One example is Ruth Klüger's acclaimed German autobiography, weiter leben-eine Jugend (1992). The Holocaust has also influenced female fiction writers. American-born Sherri Szeman wrote the Auschwitz novel The Kommandant's Mistress (1993). Both engaging texts consist of non-chronological memory fragments. Szeman's two narrators, a female Jewish concentration camp inmate and a Nazi camp commander, strive for hegemony as they reveal their common sexual encounters in the concentrationary world. For Szeman, the Holocaust, despite its magnitude and impersonality, provides a symbolic language and a framework in which to express individual victimization of women, and crucially, the possibility of survival. A juxtaposition of autobiographical and fictional memoirs reveals a contrasting depiction of remembered history, especially with regard to women. Good intentions and literary talent aside, the dilemma of fictional representation of the Holocaust arises, and questions of verisimilitude and author's responsibility demand response. Critics continue to grapple with these issues.
Music in the Inferno of the Nazi Terror: Jewish Composers in the "Third Reich"
Authors: Nemtsov Jascha , Schröder-Nauenburg Beate
Published: October 2012

In November 1933, the music association of the German Reich, the Reichsmusikkammer, was founded. Jewish musicians were refused membership and were banned from the profession. Some eminent Jewish composers were deported to Terezin, a concentration camp near Prague, where they developed a rich and unique cultural life. While the Nazis used Terezin for propagandistic purposes, the prisoners could find there a temporary relief from the horrible daily life and a way to preserve human dignity. Like most of the Jewish composers in Central Europe, the Terezin composers were not much aware of their Jewish identity prior to their persecution. However, the restrictive measures of the Nazis led to a separate, artificially concentrated Jewish musical culture. While the musical language of these composers before and during the Terezin years remained unchanged, the experience in the camp molded their works in a different way-the symbolic and metaphoric content and the emotional expression of those works were greatly stimulated by the impressions of this horrible experience. Over 50 years after the destruction of the German-Jewish symbiosis, a posthumous chapter is to be added. The new German generation shows a strong interest in the investigation and revival of the exterminated Jewish culture.
The Times and the Concentration Camp at Dachau, December 1933-February 1934: An Unpublished Report
Authors: Kersten Lee
Published: October 2012

In February 1934 the London Times decided not to publish a long article on the concentration camp at Dachau, although it had already been set up and corrected in galley proofs. The author, Stanley Simpson, listed details of mistreatment of prisoners, based on accounts by witnesses. The Times' Own Correspondent in Berlin, Norman Ebbutt, urged it be published. The report was finally rejected not because it was thought unreliable but because reports about other concentration camps had appeared recently elsewhere, and probably because Geoffrey Dawson, the Editor of The Times , a semi-official journal of record, thought it better not to annoy the German government at that time. Notes and letters about the decision to publish or not and the article itself are held in the Times archives.
Death, Mourning, and Besse's Ghost: From Philip Roth's The Facts to Sabbath's Theater
Authors: Mellard James M.
Published: October 2012

Roth's autobiographical The Facts (1988) and Patrimony (1991) are preoccupied with themes surfacing in the novel Sabbath's Theater (1995). There, the ghost of Sabbath's mother appears as the Lacanian "Real," an irruption into ordinary reality of death and mourning. In The Facts , the Real circulates around Besse Roth, in Patrimony around Herman Roth. But Sabbath contends less with the death of a mother than with an unresolved mourning of a brother and of a self unwittingly denied existence by his mother when his brother was killed in World War II. Finally sorting out these issues, Sabbath resolves not to commit suicide.
Rescue and Cultural Context During the Holocaust: Grundtvigian Nationalism and the Rescue of the Danish Jews
Authors: Buckser Andrew
Published: October 2012

The dramatic rescue of the Danish Jews from Nazi roundups in 1943 contrasts strikingly with the nation's cautious and cooperative response to most features of the German occupation. This paper argues that a full explanation of the rescue must therefore focus not only on Danish humanitarianism or resistance, but also on the specific symbolic significance of Jews in the country during the Second World War. Much of Danish nationalism during the occupation was heavily influenced by Grundtvigianism, a Danish theological movement which stressed the importance of folk culture and spirit. This system implied strong parallels between Jews and the Danes under occupation, which made the Jews an appropriate symbolic proxy for Danish independence. The paper argues that rescue activities, in Denmark and elsewhere, can be most clearly understood by considering not only universal values of tolerance and equality, but also the cultural meanings of Jews and rescue in specific national contexts.
David ben Aryen Leib of Lida and his Migdal David : Accusations of Plagiarism in Eighteenth Century Amsterdam
Authors: Heller Marvin J.
Published: October 2012

David ben Aryeh Leib of Lida (c. 1650-1696) was chief rabbi of several communities, among them the Ashkenaz community of Amsterdam, and the author of highly regarded books. His career was clouded, however, by charges of slander, Sabbatianism, and plagiarism. Although exonerated of the first two charges, the cloud of literary piracy has cast a continuing shadow over Lida's reputation. Two of Lida's works, Migdal David and Divrei David , are attributed to other writers. The article addresses the validity of those charges, finds that Lida himself alluded to the fact that he was not the author, and suggests that he expressed regret, albeit in an enigmatic manner, in a later work.
Joy: A Buberian Perspective
Authors: Gordon Rivca
Published: October 2012

This article shows what joy is, according to Buber's thinking, and suggests why joy is missing in many a person's existence today. In his Hasidic writings Buber repeatedly describes joy as a blessed moment of human existence, which can occur in the personal and the communal realms. Hasidism's uniqueness was that its believers actually experienced this blessed moment when they attempted to hallow every deed in their life. In Hasidism this joyful hallowing of everyday life was perceived as combined to and accompanied by a life of dialogue. Thus, despite the fact that in Buber's philosophical writings joy is rarely mentioned, his Hasidic writings describe the existential link between joy and a life of dialogue, of revelation, and of responsibility.
Against Commanding to Believe
Authors: Benatar David
Published: October 2012

In this paper it is argued that there are both moral and practical problems with obligating people to believe in God. This conclusion having been established, its implications for Judaism are then examined. More specifically, it is argued that the rejection of a commandment to believe in God (unlike a rejection of theism) can be accommodated by traditional Jewish thinking much more easily than might be supposed. For instance, it is shown that there is an influential strand of traditional Jewish thought that eschews a commandment to believe in God. And it is argued that there is a defensible interpretation of kavana such that the principle of mitzvot tzrichot kavana can be satisfied in cases of mitzvot performed by non-believers.
The Role of Reason in Bahya and Maimonides
Authors: Birnbaum Ruth
Published: October 2012

Bahya ibn Paquda, in his work The Duties of the Heart , and Maimonides, barely a century later, in his Guide of the Perplexed , proclaim that the highest worship is the intellectual comprehension of God. Only by means of this knowledge can man serve Him "with all his heart and with all his soul." These works were expressly written for the perplexed of their generation, and although both grant a superior status to intellect, they differ in the intents and purposes each assigns to reason. This is evident in the manner of their presentations. Bahya's work is written in a straightforward, systematic arrangement accessible to all. In contrast, Maimonides addresses a select segment of his kinsmen and writes with guarded circumspection.
The differences, as well as the areas of convergence, of these two thinkers provide a legitimate basis for this study.
The Billings Report and the Occupational Attainment of American Jewry, 1890
Authors: Chiswick Barry R.
Published: October 2012

This paper is based on a survey conducted in 1890 by the Census Office of the vital statistics of over 10,600 Jewish families who as of December 31, 1889 had been in the United States for five or more years (Billings Report). The paper begins by discussing the origin and nature of the survey and two individuals involved in the project, Billings and Solomons. It then discusses the demographic characteristics of the survey respondents and compares their occupation distribution by gender with that of the white population in general. Jewish families were identified through congregation lists. The respondents were predominantly foreign born of German-Jewish ancestry. Compared by gender with the white population in the 1890 U.S. Census of Population, the Jews, especially Jewish women, were less likely to report they were engaged in an occupation. Jewish men reporting an occupation were engaged primarily in sales (57 percent) and clerical (20 percent) occupations, while the Jewish women reporting an occupation were engaged primarily in sales, clerical, craft, and teaching jobs. In contrast, the total white population was employed primarily in laborer, agricultural, operative, and servant jobs. The occupational data on Jews in the Billings Report are reproduced in an appendix.
The Return of the Past: The Intergenerational Transmission of Holocaust Memory in Israeli Fiction
Authors: Sicher Efraim
Published: October 2012

Recent Israeli fiction has included an incredibly large number of works which reflect the intergenerational transmission of the trauma of the Holocaust. Some of the authors are well-known or newer talents, but not all are themselves children of survivors, for example David Grossman, author of See Under: Love , the most successful account so far of growing up in Israel under the shadow of the Holocaust and the repercussions for a young writer. This essay examines the reasons for the apparent turn-about in Israeli discourse on the Holocaust and discusses ways in which these changes are inscribed in contemporary novels and short stories. The emergence of a "second generation" of survivors in the mid-1980s is a phenomenon not unconnected with transformations of Israeli society, the peace process, and rethinking of the past. In particular, the issues raised by these writers confront the tensions between personal and collective identity, between memory and history, which underlie the turmoil of public debate in contemporary Israel.
Fantastical Faith: John Bunyan and the Sanctification of Fancy
Authors: Bear Bethany Joy
Published: October 2012

Like many English Puritans and Dissenters, Bunyan consistently links the exercise of "fancy," or imagination, to delusion, falsehood, and faithlessness in his sermons, theological treatises, and tracts. However, in Part I of The Pilgrim's Progress , Bunyan suggests that "fancies" such as his allegory can empower religious instruction. In Part II, Bunyan undertakes an even more complex defense of the imagination. Through the figure of Christiana, Bunyan demonstrates how fancy can play a key role in sanctification. However, by rooting the fancy's redemption in the presence of the Holy Spirit and the communion of saints on earth, Bunyan frustrates the secularization and subjectivism that accompany the later elevation of the human imagination. For Bunyan, the Holy Spirit redeems fancy not by enabling pilgrims to apprehend truth on their own but by gathering them into earthly companies that sustain the witness of the primitive church. By bestowing dreams, enabling interpretation, and sustaining love among Christians, the imagination can guide "Fantastical Fools" to their home in the Celestial City.
Thomas Creech's Preface to Lucretius and John Dryden
Authors: Hopkins David
Published: October 2012

The preface to the first edition of Thomas Creech's translation of Lucretius (1682) contains a substantial press variant: potentially offensive references to the clergy and to John Dryden were removed during printing. A letter to Creech from the Oxford scholar Edward Bernard has survived, in which Bernard advises Creech to emend his existing text and proposes an alternative (along with two other small changes to Creech's preliminaries). This article prints the relevant parts of Bernard's letter and discusses the press variants in the light of Creech's developing relationship with Dryden.
Early Medieval Allegory and the Logic of Found Objects
Authors: Yu Wesley Chihyung
Published: October 2012

A metaphor's real referent may be said to disappear into its figurative meaning, but early medieval poems demonstrate a penchant for preserving and reifying those referents. This contrary conception of metaphor owes to metaphysical expectations that are at work in early reasoning, especially in regards to the signification of word-units. Taking Tzvetan Todorov's history of allegory as a point of departure, this article studies verbal signification in Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae and Carolingian grammar-logic in order to reframe the early medieval orientation to allegory and tropes as discussed by Bede, Alcuin, and John Scotus Eriugena. We discover a metaphysical schema in early grammar and logic that is left under-studied by the modern history of semiotics. Extending to rhetorical and poetic uses of words, this metaphysical schema may be said to arise from a willful error in early philosophical approaches to language, which saddles the figurative word with an unusual expectation to produce its real referent in the verbal sign, constituting style as a form of inventional proof. While this period is not known for developments that contribute to the strength of formal logic, its investments fall under the rigorous exploration of interpretation and inference, making rhetoric and poetics into indispensable praxes for the study and exercise of discursive reasoning in the early Middle Ages.