bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Real to Reel
Authors: Sohn-Rethel Martin
Published: February 2021

What happens when we watch feature films or television dramas? Many of our responses to moving-image fiction texts embody “realism” or “truth,” but what are we responding to, exactly, and how is our notion of reality or truth to be understood? For film and media students and makers of moving-image fiction in new digital forms, the question of how to get a more objective, rigorous handle on realism has never been more important. The author of this book brings a lifetime of teaching film and media to bear on developing a new approach to analyzing the “realism” of the moving image: a set of seven “codes” that plot this tricky field of enquiry more systematically. In doing so, the book considers a wide range of film and media texts chosen for their accessibility, including Do the Right Thing (1989), In the Name of the Father (1993), Erin Brockovich (2000), and District 9 (2009).
Introduction
Authors: Sohn-Rethel Martin
Published: February 2021

What happens exactly when we watch feature films or TV dramas? What determines whether we see the occasion as an ‘appointment to view’ or look for the remote control to switch over to something else?

Many of our responses to moving image fiction texts make mention of ‘realism’ or ‘truth’. We might say to ourselves, or to others around us, ‘It’s so real!’ or, ‘It’s unbelievable!’ But what are we responding to, and how exactly is our notion of reality or truth to be understood? Even a superficial glossing of internet user comments as well as classroom interaction with films and TV throw up a multitude of different, conflicting coinages of realism. Can there be a common, accepted standard, a currency of realism or truth?...
The Code of Discursive or Ideological Truth
Authors: Sohn-Rethel Martin
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies the realism code of discursive or ideological truth, which marks out films where questions of personal identity link to messages and values about power or lack of power in society. It is the battle of ideas in constructing individual and social reality that assumes a dominant role here. Realism under this code can assume whatever guise a film maker chooses in order to highlight the interplay and struggle of contesting ideas. A prime example of this can be found in Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989). Do the Right Thing is a film of ideas which refuses to tell its audience what to think. And this is in large part why it is such an effective vehicle of ideological realism. The other reason is that it does not pull its punches; its ideas penetrate right through to the economic, cultural, and political roots of ethnic inequality and disharmony: to the acute power imbalance triggered by ethnic identity. The chapter also looks at Michael Haneke's Hidden (2005) and The White Ribbon (2009).
‘I wish you were dead, old man’
Authors: Conolly Jez , Bates David Owain
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses ‘Golfing Story’, directed by Charles Crichton, which is universally considered to be the weakest of Dead of Night's stories, to the point that its inclusion has been regarded as detrimental to the whole film. It asserts that not only is the sequence necessary in terms of pace and structure, but that it contains and explores many of the themes examined in the rest of the film. What it also does is set the stage for the final, chilling, sequence and the consequent nightmarish coda which ends the framing narrative. The love triangle at the heart of ‘Golfing Story’ establishes the notion ahead of the implied homosexual polyamory to be found in ‘Ventriloquist's Dummy’ and in doing so it also echoes the implicit triangle in ‘Haunted Mirror’. The chapter extends the discussion of the changing portrayal of male characters in a post-war world as evidenced by the use of its two male lead actors, Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne playing golf partners George Parratt and Larry Potter, whose frequent pairing in earlier films had come to represent a particular strand of Britishness during wartime.
Jewish Life in Ruins
Authors: Webber Jonathan , Schwarz Chris , Francisco Jason
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on ruins as a key present-day reality of the Jewish heritage in Poland. It recounts the German occupation of Poland in the Second World War, in which about 90 percent of the country's 3.3 million Jews were forced out of their homes and murdered, leaving behind towns and villages that testify to the richness and diversity of the culture they had built up over many centuries. It also discusses how the ruins bear witness to the immensity of Poland's deliberate destruction. The chapter describes the ruins that continued to physically survive in the present-day, such as roofless synagogues and desecrated Torah arks. It talks about the ruins of the cemeteries with tombstones scattered on the ground like debris that present an eloquent and poignant testimony to the tragedy of the Holocaust.
The Revival of Jewish Life
Authors: Webber Jonathan , Schwarz Chris , Francisco Jason
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the people who are creating and maintaining projects that memorialize both the Jewish life that existed in Polish Galicia for centuries and the enormity of the Holocaust during which it was destroyed. It discloses the public acknowledgment of the Jewish heritage that has been ongoing since Poland regained its democratic freedom in 1989, which led to the revival of Jewish life. It also describes the main Holocaust memorial in Kraków, which is comprised of symbolic abandoned chairs scattered through an entire city to highlight the Jewish absence. The chapter mentions non-Jewish Poles who have become aware of the past in Poland that included Jews and Jewish culture. It details post-Holocaust Poland in the 1970s that was severely restricted and in danger of facing extinction as 90 percent of Holocaust survivors had emigrated.
The Birth of the Adjectival Jew
Authors: Sacks Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the birth of the adjectival Jew. The story of modern Jewry can be told in terms of the collapse of the idea of Jewish unity. Modernity — which here means the two hundred years since the beginning of European Jewish emancipation — has transformed the Jewish world from the outside through a series of epic processes: secularization, assimilation, racial antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the birth of the State of Israel. But it has transformed the Jewish world no less deeply from within. The most striking manifestation of what has changed is that it is no longer possible to be a Jew tout court. The noun, to convey anything at all, now needs to be qualified by an adjective, perhaps several. Indeed, Jewish existence has become adjectival existence. There is no longer a common content to being a Jew as such, whether in behaviour or belief. Jews have begun to search for an affirmation of Jewish unity.
The Synagogues of Łódź
Authors: Stefański Krzysztof
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the synagogues in Łódź. The first synagogue in Łódź was built in 1809, the year in which a separate municipal authority was created, the town having previously been under the control of Lutomierz. The synagogue was a small wooden structure with a shingle roof, reflecting the modest economic circumstances of the Jewish community. Łódź experienced industrial growth from the 1820s, and there was a substantial increase in its Jewish population. By the end of the 1850s, the ramshackle condition and limited space of the old synagogue on Wolborska Street forced the Jewish community to plan for a new brick building. The Progressive Jews also planned to build a new house of prayer in the 1860s. The chapter then details the construction of the Progressive synagogue. The turn of the century witnessed extensive synagogue construction in Łódź; it was linked to a significant increase in the Jewish population. One of the reasons for the increase was the many so-called ‘Lithuanian’ Jews who settled in Łódź. These Jews, who were fleeing from persecution and pogroms, came from the easternmost area of the former republic and from Russia. They, too, began to build their own house of prayer in the closing years of the nineteenth century.
Conspiracy Theories and the Reception of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Poland
Authors: Tazbir Janusz
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses conspiracy theories and the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the most infamous ‘instructions’ telling adherents of the Jewish faith how they were to build the Sanhedrin's global empire. The Protocols was supposedly based on lectures given at the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897. The aim of the book was to show that the perpetrators of all social upheavals were Jews, who expected to conquer the world with the aid of revolution. In inter-war Poland, belief in the omnipotence of the masonic lodges and international Jewry found its adherents among historians and journalists associated with the nationalist right, the Endecja (National Democratic Party). In the opinion of modern supporters of the conspiracy theory of history, Freemasonry, always directed by Jews, constituted a factor in all the more important events in the political, social, and cultural history of Poland, Europe, and the western world.
Polish Influences on British Policy Regarding Jewish Rescue Efforts in Poland 1939–1945
Authors: Wasserstein Bernard
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores to what extent Polish policies and attitudes helped shape British policy on the Jewish question during the Second World War. It particularly focuses on Britain's policy regarding the question of Jewish rescue in Poland. At the root of all discussion of the Jewish problem between the British and Polish governments before and during the Second World War was the emphatically and repeatedly voiced Polish desire to secure mass emigration of Jews from Poland on a scale sufficient to reduce the Jewish proportion of the general population and to diminish alleged Jewish preponderance in certain branches of the Polish economy, culture, and society. Such attitudes, commonplace in Poland in the period, reflected the widespread tendency to regard Jews as outsiders and aliens rather than as members of the Polish nation and society. The trend was noted by British observers and officials, some of whom indeed sympathized with the Polish desire to rid Poland of what was seen as its ‘excessive’ Jewish population. And of course this notion of ‘excess’ was certainly not limited to antisemites; some Jews themselves, particularly Polish Zionists, shared it. Ultimately, the Polish desire to stimulate large-scale Jewish emigration from the country was a significant element in Anglo-Polish relations in the pre-war years.
Trunk’s Poyln: Its Place in Jewish Polish History
Authors: Clarke Anna
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies Jehiel Isaiah Trunk's Poyln and its place in Jewish Polish history. Trunk's Poyln is more than just an autobiography. In the words of Trunk's nephew, the historian Isaiah Trunk, it is an artistic description of the life of Polish Jewry: ‘the Trunk saga became an epos of Polish Jews’. To call a work an ‘epos’ or ‘epic poem’ implies that it has many parts and cuts a broad swathe through history. It may also be written and rewritten over long periods of time. The chapter adds to the knowledge of the history of Polish Jews, based on the epos of Poyln and other writings by J. I. Trunk.
Jewish–Ukrainian Relations in Inter-War Poland as Reflected in Some Ukrainian Publications
Authors: Redlich Shimon
Published: February 2021

This chapter surveys Jewish–Ukrainian relations in inter-war Poland as reflected in some Ukrainian publications. The historiography of Jewish–Ukrainian relations, although quite extensive, has usually tended towards partisanship, caused by the uneasy, and at times tragic, relations between Ukrainians and Jews. To provide an understanding of Ukrainian attitudes towards Jews between the two world wars, the chapter examines the perceptions and images of the Jews in the Ukrainian press in Poland in the inter-war years. The Ukrainian press reflects traditional Ukrainian attitudes towards Jews as well as some images formed specifically during the period under discussion. It also helps one understand how Ukrainians felt towards Jews during the war years in the face of the Holocaust. Since Ukrainians and Jews formed the two largest national minorities in inter-war Poland, their interrelations reflected issues relating to Poles and the Polish state as well. Moreover, Ukrainian–Jewish relations were influenced by problems relating to Poland's most significant neighbours, Soviet Russia in the east and Weimar and later Nazi Germany in the west. Thus, an examination of the Ukrainian press in Poland also throws light on broader ideological and political issues.
Jewish Martyrdom in the Works of Adolf Rudnicki
Authors: Wróbel Józef
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the theme of Jewish martyrdom in the works of Adolf Rudnicki. Without losing sight of the universal dimensions of the theme he was taking up, Rudnicki enriches the subject-matter with characteristics that are specifically Jewish. First, the situation of Jewish society during the occupation differed from that of other nations. Jews were pushed to the very bottom of the invader's hierarchy. Their life and death depended not only on Germans but also on the aid of Poles among whom they lived, which was not always forthcoming. A second specific feature is derived from Rudnicki's chosen artistic genre, which monumentalized the suffering of Jews by including them in the biblical circle and the almost 2,000-year history of the Diaspora, the wandering and persecution with which God tries his chosen people. This problem dominated the writing of Rudnicki for at least ten years. Undoubtedly, the literary situation in the first half of the 1950s was decisive in Rudnicki's abandonment of the theme, since the subject of the war was quickly recognized as outdated. The chapter then studies occupation literature.
The Realm of Shadows: Recent Writing on the Holocaust
Authors: Burleigh Michael
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates recent writing on the Holocaust. Surveying the field of recent Holocaust literature after the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War leaves the impression that histories of the Final Solution are as subject to the academic trivialities as those in other fields. Just as Claude Lanzmann's Shoah stands head and shoulders above other filmmakers' efforts to document the Holocaust, collections of testimonies from survivors have a more lasting value than many of the recent histories. Some of the recent works are more devoted to current political questions, which will make them seem dated in only a few years. Meanwhile, others have made what seems to be a more lasting contribution to people's detailed knowledge of the Final Solution.
Polish History through the Eyes of Three Jewish Popular Historians
Authors: Tomaszewski Jerzy
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a comparison of Howard Sachar's book The Course of Modern Jewish History, which was first published in 1958, with two other general works on Jewish history. One is a large volume entitled A History of the Jewish People, edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, which was first published in Hebrew in 1969. The other is Robert M. Seltzer's Jewish People, Jewish Thought, which is more limited in size and scope and intended for a broad audience. The chapter considers only topics relating to Polish history, not those concerned with exclusively internal Jewish problems or the history of other nations. Nor will there be any general assessment of Sachar's book. Although Ben-Sasson's and Seltzer's works cover Jewish history from ancient to modern times, the story of the Jews in Poland is a relatively recent chapter in this history: it dates only from the creation of the Polish state in the tenth century. Both authors mention the early period of Polish history only briefly, beginning their real narratives of Polish Jewry with the detailed analysis of privileges granted to Jews by Polish kings in the thirteenth century.
A New Account of the ‘March Events’
Authors: Lewandowski Józef
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates Jerzy Eisler's monograph Marzec 1968 (1991), which offers a new account of the March 1968 events. The main strength in Marzec 1968 is Eisler's ability to recount accurately the atmosphere of the March days. He writes well, a quality not often found among historians, and has created a lively account of the events of 1968 without sacrificing objectivity. It is not of course surprising that individual participants saw the March events differently. To the heroes of those events, most of whom wrote reviews of Eisler's book, they were an initiation into politics that left very strong personal impressions. In general, Eisler's book is an important achievement in Polish historiography: it is a work of diligent and scrupulous scholarship, and is undoubtedly one of the best Polish monographs describing ‘real socialism’ in action. What is more, by presenting the March events in the light of what people have learnt since, in the 1980s and 1990s, Eisler raises relevant issues that need to be examined in more depth.
Rainer Erb (Ed.) Die Legende vom Ritualmord: Zur Geschichte der Blutbeschuldigung gegen Juden
Authors: Tomaszewski Jerzy
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the thirteen studies included in The Ritual Murder Legends: The History of Blood Libel against Jews, which were prepared for the conference organized by the Centre for Research into Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin in October 1990. They cover the vast area of historical, sociological, psychological, and legal issues connected to the ‘blood libel’, from the Middle Ages up to the beginning of the twentieth century. The authors are mainly concerned with developments in the German lands, but they also discuss how the relevant issues were influenced by the situation of Jews in Great Britain, France, and Spain. The Jews of Poland receive only marginal treatment, and it is sometimes inaccurate. The authors' conclusion is that the history of blood libel in Poland is relatively unknown and should be further investigated.
Jacek J. Jadacki and Barbara Markiewicz (Eds.) A mądrości zło nie przemoże
Authors: Basista Jakub
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews a book, entitled But Over Wisdom, Evil Can Never Triumph, dedicated to the thirty-six philosophers and students of philosophy who were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. The book has three parts. The first consists of remarks by eminent Polish philosophers on the Jewish philosophers in Poland who were murdered during the Nazi occupation. These remarks are followed by essays by Jacek J. Jadacki, R. Jadczak, and Barbara Markiewiecz devoted to the thirty-six commemorated by Polish philosopher Tadeusz Kotarbiński. The essays focus on the relationship of the students to their teacher and the Polish Jewish philosophical tradition. The second part contains ten philosophical discourses written by some of those to whom the book is dedicated. The final twenty pages consist of short biographies of the thirty-six.
Death Books from Auschwitz: Remnants
Authors: Ambrosiewicz-Jacobs Jolanta
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Death Books from Auschwitz: Remnants, an extraordinary work published in Polish, English, and German versions. The three volumes are dedicated to the memory of ‘those whose names we know, and those of whom only ashes remain’. Volume I includes articles by well-known former prisoners of Auschwitz which shed light on camp reality, the functioning of the SS administration, and the ways in which evidence of Auschwitz atrocities was eliminated. The volume opens with a foreword by Władysław Bartoszewski, analysing Auschwitz as a symbol for Jews, Poles, and Germans, and reflecting on his own memories and motivations: ‘never more would I stand helpless before evil’. The last part of Volume i combines prisoner photographs and photographs of various camp records in a dramatic comparison of sources on Auschwitz. Volumes II and III of the Death Books, the ‘index of names’, lists the names of murdered people.
Zygmunt Bauman Modernity and the Holocaust
Authors: Porter Jack Nusan
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Zygmunt Bauman's Modernity and the Holocaust. Bauman first discusses how sociology saw and dismissed the Holocaust. Sociologists called it an example of ‘untamed innate human aggressiveness’; a ‘privatization’, the parochial experience of Jews alone; simply and callously a matter between Jews and antisemites. Bauman is troubled by these reductionist discussions. He sees the Holocaust as an ultimately human, not inhuman, act. As such, it is fundamentally social, not asocial. As an essentially human act, it is repeatable. The Holocaust set the stage for modern genocide in this century. Bauman then attempts to address the questions raised by the Holocaust. He describes the Holocaust as a system where rationality and ethics point in opposite directions, and humanity is the loser.
Nechama Tec Defiance: The Bielski Partisans
Authors: Littell Franklin
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Nechama Tec's book, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, which introduces a new aspect to the history of the Holocaust period. The book details how several hundred men, women, and children in western Belorussia during the Second World War maintained a surviving and fighting community. These Jewish partisans were blessed with a gifted leader, Tuvia Bielski. Bielski emerged out of the chaos of war conditions and the assault on the Jewish people, an assault not only by the Germans but by some sectors of the peoples subject to their military occupation. Around him he gathered a triad of loyal and gifted aides: his brothers Asael and Zus, and his chief of staff Lazar Malbin. Their relationship with Russian partisan groups ranged from precarious to friendly, depending on the measure of overt antisemitism on the part of the other partisans. The Bielski group pursued a policy of harsh retribution towards villagers who collaborated with the Germans and helped to recapture Jews. The non-Jewish villagers came to respect the courage and efficiency of the Jewish partisans and there were fewer denunciations and safer roads as a result.
Tomas Venclova Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast
Authors: Zlatkes Gwido
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes Tomas Venclova's Aleksander Wat: Life and Art of an Iconoclast. Aleksander Wat was much more than a prominent Polish poet of Jewish origin; he was a paradigmatic twentieth-century intellectual who claimed an illustrious cultural lineage that included King David, Rashi, and Isaac Luria. A ‘born futurist’, he was also a communist fellow traveller in inter-war Poland, one who later became a Soviet prisoner, and on his return to Poland was an open anti-communist. Both his background and experiences placed him at the centre of major artistic currents and historical trends. Thus, in his writings one can find a reflection of virtually everything important that occurred in Europe between 1914 and his death in 1967 and even after.
Irena Kowalsk and Ida Merżan Rottenbergowie znad Buga
Authors: Anna Clarke
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores The Rottenbergs who Lived near the River Bug, which was written by two cousins, Irena Kowalska and Ida Merżan. Their grandfathers, Chaim and Szmul Rottenberg, were brothers and co-owners of Skrychiczyn, an estate on the River Bug. The bulk of the book, some 158 pages, were written by Kowalska, and the remaining fifty-three pages were the work of her cousin Merżan. Kowalska uses archival material to describe the history of the family. In addition, she provides interesting details about the history of the town of Dubienka, the importance of the River Bug to the area and the family, and the main events that determined the fate of the large, extended Rottenberg clan. Merżan concentrates on reminiscences of family celebrations of Jewish festivals.
Arnost Lustig Children of the Holocaust
Authors: Greenstein Michael
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews Arnost Lustig's Children of the Holocaust. Children of the Holocaust brings together two earlier collections of short stories, Night and Hope and Diamonds of the Night, as well as a novella, Darkness Casts no Shadow. As these titles indicate, Lustig thrusts his readers into a world of perpetual darkness with only the slightest glimmer of light. That dim flicker of hope resides in the survivor's memorial candle, for that alone puts an end to the Nazis' years of terror, brutality, and torture that run through every page of Lustig's writing. Each of Lustig's stories tears at the flesh of character and reader: his fiction provides the phenomenology for understanding the reality of the history of the Holocaust.
A Collection of Kabbalistic Works from the Unpublished Manuscripts of Rabbi Moses Hayim Luzzatto: MS Oxford 2593
Authors: Tishby Isaiah
Published: February 2021

This chapter introduces MS Oxford 2593, which was described in the Neubauer's catalogue as a collection of unidentified kabbalistic writings by anonymous authors. It presents surveys and explanatory comments to link the kabbalistic writings compiled in MS Oxford 2593 with other writings in the corpus of Rabbi Moses Hayim Luzzatto's works. It also reveals sentiments on Luzzatto's handwriting, which displays many pronounced differences in the form of the letters and pen strokes. The chapter discusses the tikun of the Shekhinah and her elevation to her mystical union and perfect yihud up to the level of Ein Sof, which run through all the homilies in MS Oxford 2593. It examines the messianic eschatological bent, that incldues the trinity of redeemers in the shape of Moses and the two Messiahs.
The House of Prayer
Authors: Toaff Ariel
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the permission to establish a synagogue, a house where Jews could worship and gather for prayer whenever they wished. Permission to establish a synagogue amounted at once to much less, and much more, than building a particular place of prayer. Less in the sense that, in general, the choice of synagogue fell on a modest rented house whose exterior was not to be altered, so as not to attract attention, or one or more rooms made available to the community in the house of a rich and influential Jewish family. More because these rooms, outwardly so unpretentious, did not serve simply for religious ceremonies and prayers, but often became the fulcrum of Jewish life, where Italian Jews gathered to take decisions affecting the whole community. The chapter then describes the synagogues of the Umbrian Jewish communities. It also considers how the Jewish banker and merchant separates religious time and professional time.
Merchants and Craftsmen
Authors: Toaff Ariel
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Jewish merchants and craftsmen in late medieval Italy. Jewish carters and pack-saddle makers hired out their goods and conveyances for a daily or weekly rate. These carters from the city of Spoleto would often come upon Jewish cloth and saffron merchants from the Umbrian Apennines and the Marches. In Perugia, from 1383, Jews were enrolled in the guild of the cotton-waste and rag sellers, and had close relations with the wool guild, which they partly financed. Moreover, in the villages and larger Umbrian trading centres, Jewish cloth merchants had workrooms and shops where they received their town and country clientèle. Other merchants, too, travelled the roads of Umbria. These were the corn merchants, some of which were Jews. The chapter then considers the Italian leather trade, looking at the rise in the export of hides and leather by Jewish merchants from 1570 until the end of the century.
Joseph Weiss: Letters to Ora
Authors: Wilensky Sara Ora Heller
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the twenty letters that Joseph Weiss sent to the author in Cambridge, Massachusetts, over the years 1949 to 1968. These letters offer an insight into Weiss's spiritual constitution and into the extraordinary friendship that developed between him and Professor Gershom Scholem, its vicissitudes notwithstanding. The letters are of value not only for the personal and biographical details they contain, but also because they contribute to a deeper understanding of Weiss's scholarly work, while at the same time enriching one's knowledge of intellectual life in Jerusalem and in the Jewish academic community of the 1950s. Undoubtedly, however, their greatest importance is that they provide a new perspective on Weiss's complex personality and add a unique and personal dimension to his scholarly bequest. Joseph Weiss's letters are unusually frank: they speak of the changing circumstances of his life; his poverty and alienation, particularly during his unsettled period in England in the early 1950s. There are hints of his ambivalence towards Diaspora Jews in England and towards the State of Israel, and one sees his response, wounded and sarcastic, to the criticism of his bold new approach to the study of hasidism.
Hasidism after 1772: Structural Continuity and Change
Authors: Rapoport-Albert Ada
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses hasidism after 1772. The year 1772 is generally regarded as a critical one, or at least an important turning point, in the history of hasidism. Three decisive events took place in that year which altered both the ideological and the organizational course on which the movement had originally embarked. The spring brought with it the first outbreak of bitter hostilities between the mitnaggedim and the hasidim in Vilna, whence the dispute quickly spread to other Jewish communities in Lithuania and Galicia. During the summer months, Belorussia was annexed to Russia, and Galicia to Austria, in the first partition of the disintegrating kingdom of Poland; as a result, parts of the Jewish (and hasidic) community in Poland which until then had formed a single cultural and political entity found themselves arbitrarily separated. At the end of the year, in December, the supreme leader of hasidism, R. Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezhirech, died without leaving an ‘heir’ to take charge of the movement in his place.
Hasidism as a Socio-religious Movement on the Evidence of Devekut
Authors: Piekarz Mendel
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses hasidism as a socio-religious movement on the evidence of devekut. Nothing throws the socio-religious élitism in hasidism into sharper relief than the treatment of devekut. This is exemplified by the subdivision of the concept into ‘first-class’ devekut for zaddikim and ‘second-class’ for the common people. R. Jacob Joseph's second category signifies recognition of the authority of the zaddik and the duty of providing material support for him. Although devekut was not associated with zaddikism to begin with, the two became integrated during the formative stages of the institution of the zaddik, and it was not for nothing that R. Jacob Joseph's remarks on the second category of devekut were accompanied by a fervent polemical criticism of the common people—a term in which he included householders and communal leaders—who refused to recognize the special authority of new leaders.
Habad Approaches to Contemplative Prayer, 1790-1920
Authors: Loewenthal Naftali
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the dialectic implicit in popularizing a contemplative approach to prayer. A system of contemplation suitable for an élite group of men of stature may well need modification before it can be applied by a wider echelon of society. In fact, it would seem that R. Dov Ber felt that his initial guidance on the contemplative process was being misinterpreted; people were reaching too high. In consequence, he felt compelled to restrain the majority of his followers from the intense mode of contemplation that he had originally advocated in his works. Later leaders of Habad continued the attempt to introduce deep and lengthy contemplation to the members of the fraternity. This was achieved with a surprising degree of success by R. Shalom Dovber, known as the Rashab, of the fifth generation of Habad leaders. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he taught the art of intense contemplation to the youthful pupils in his Tomekhei Temimim yeshivah, and one is left with the impression that the Habad contemplative ideal was realized to a greater extent around 1914 than a century earlier. This phenomenon seems to defy the principle of yeridat hadorot (decline through the generations) that is assumed by scholars and by hasidim themselves.
The Fluidity of Categories in Hasidism: Averah lishmah in the Teachings of R. Zevi Elimelekh of Dynow
Authors: Mondshine Yehoshua
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the concept of ‘sin for the sake of Heaven’ (averah lishmah) in the teachings of R. Zevi Elimelekh of Dynow. In broad terms, there are two types of ‘sin for the sake of Heaven’, one intended for zaddikim only, the other for ordinary people. The first type solves a problem which faces the zaddik: his usual concern is with mitsvot which by their nature draw down the benign forces of heavenly deliverance and grace on the world; but how is he to deal with cases in which it is his duty to bring down divine retribution on the heads of the enemies of Israel? In such cases, he is called upon to commit a sin—albeit for the sake of Heaven—an act which by its nature brings judgements and accusations into being. Although this type of ‘sin for the sake of Heaven’ is more commonly found in his writings, one shall, however, give more attention to the second type. At every moment of the life of the hasid, he deliberates over every action or omission, and the halakhah is powerless to guide him. In addition to all other considerations he must also take account of ‘the Will of God’, a will that is not written in the Torah, since it changes according to time and place and to the spiritual condition of the individual at any particular time.
The Historiography of the Hasidic Immigration to Erets Yisrael
Authors: Barnai Jacob
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the historiography of the hasidic immigration to Erets Yisrael. The first waves of hasidic immigration to Erets Yisrael have attracted the attention both of scholars of hasidism and of historians of the Jewish yishuv in Erets Yisrael. Hasidic scholarship has viewed the subject as an interesting and somewhat obscure chapter in the history of hasidism, while the historians of the yishuv, most of whom were associated with either the Zionist or the Orthodox currents in Jewish historiography, have perceived the hasidic immigration as an important element of the ‘proto-Zionist’ trend which proved the centrality of Erets Yisrael to Diaspora Jews even before Zionism. While the scholars of hasidism have set the issue in the context of the overall history of the hasidic movement, historians of the yishuv, under the impact of various trends within the Zionist movement and orthodox Jewry, have treated it primarily as an ideological issue. The chapter then surveys and evaluates these two distinct traditions in the historiography of the subject.
Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem on Hasidism: A Critical Appraisal
Authors: Idel Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies the divergences between Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem on the nature of kabbalah and hasidism and the appropriate methods for exploring their literatures. Guided by his phenomenological approach, Buber ultimately reached the view that hasidism expressed the quintessence of Judaism. Other types of Jewish spirituality, such as kabbalah and apocalypticism, were for him not essential components of the Jewish religion. In principle, Buber was looking for the perennial element in hasidism that could nourish his own religiosity. Scholem's historical and critical considerations, on the other hand, led him to a theological stance that defined most expressions of Jewish mysticism as authentic Jewish phenomena, in line with his pluralistic vision of Judaism. Buber's romantic posture is conspicuously different from Scholem's critical approach; indeed, Scholem himself pointed out that Buber had ignored some of the more distasteful aspects of hasidism, most strikingly its magical components.
Hasidism: The Third Century
Authors: Dan Joseph
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the third century of hasidism, considered the most enduring phenomenon in Orthodox Judaism in modern times. Gershom Scholem described hasidism as the ‘last phase’ in a Jewish mystical tradition that spanned nearly two millennia. Yet at the conclusion of his account of the movement in the last chapter of Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, he appeared, with some regret, to view his subject as a phenomenon of the past. The contrast between this view of hasidic history and the reality of Jewish life in the late twentieth century could not be greater. The hasidism of today cannot be treated as a lifeless relic from the past. It appears to have made a complete adjustment to twentieth-century technology, the mass media, and the intricate politics of democratic societies without surrendering its traditional identity in the process.
The Study of Hasidism: Past Trends and New Directions
Authors: Etkes Immanuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates past trends and new directions in the study of hasidism. One question which has dominated the study of early hasidism is what factor or factors may account for the emergence and rapid spread of the movement. The mere fact that this question has occupied so many minds for so long needs no justification, in so far as the endeavour to discover the causal relationships between phenomena and events is a sine qua non of historical thinking. Nevertheless, what has lent this question its particular poignancy is the extraordinary speed with which hasidism gained acceptance throughout eastern Europe, and the persistence of this process despite the vehement opposition encountered by the new movement. The most influential attempts to answer this question have been those of Simon Dubnow, Benzion Dinur, and Raphael Mahler. All three historians sought to explain the emergence of hasidism and its rapid dissemination against the background of what Dubnow called the ‘historical framework’, that is to say, the political, economic, and social circumstances of eastern European Jewry during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Another important trend in the study of hasidism is represented by the work of Gershom Scholem and his followers. The crucial question for Scholem was the religious and spiritual identity of the new movement.
Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the persistent binary between Jewish and Greek culture. It shows how Jewish writers, thinkers, and creative artists of diverse viewpoints adopted the binary model as an appropriate historical code. However, the chapter also reveals that the modern era formulated new conditions and inspired new meanings within tradition, or aroused protest against it for reasons new in nature. Since the eighteenth century, the confrontation or encounter with Greekness (as a metaphor for modern European culture) has neither exhausted nor diminished the debate in matters of philosophy or theology, but rather extended it to all areas of human existence. Gradually, all strata of Jewish society faced the new European culture, and became involved in the process of building and creating the new Jewish world. In the process, the validity of the antinomy was strengthened, and it became all-embracing — a historical and cultural challenge that had constantly to be faced. Paradoxically, as the desire to be regarded as a nation of culture became more intense and the broadening of the antinomy became more pronounced, the chapter reveals that a process of ‘Hellenization’ of thought categories and criteria deepened.
Introduction
Authors: Weinberger Leon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides an overview of Jewish hymnography. Synagogue hymnography, compared to its Christian and Muslim counterparts, is distinctive in both its focus and its volume. There is nothing comparable in Christianity or Islam to the vast Jewish liturgical corpus. The disparity in output is due both to the difference in focus and to the rabbinic encouragement to be creative in prayer. Lay leaders in the synagogue responded enthusiastically to the rabbinic advice, and urged their cantor-poets to compose additions to the obligatory šemaʻ and ʻamidah, as well as celebrations and observances of life-cycle events. A constant feature of the Jewish experience emerged with the hymnic ritualization of the great events of human life. There is also a difference in the historical experience of the Jews exiled from their national home. Given a life in exile, the synagogue poet would often appeal to God for national restoration. This book studies Jewish hymnography in the eastern Mediterranean and in western and central Europe, demonstrating how its literary history was largely determined by contemporary culture.
Hymnographic Developments in Spain
Authors: Weinberger Leon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the hymnographic developments in Spain. Although the Andalusians adopted much of the prevailing culture, their Arabism was tempered by the reality of being exiled from their national home. The degree to which Arabism was pervasive is seen in the Andalusians’ attempt to adapt Arabic-style quantitative metrics for use in their writings for the synagogue. They also composed their piyyuṭim in the prevailing styles of Arabic prosody, the qaṣīdah, a monorhyme hymn in metrically balanced hemistichs, and muwashshaḥ, a hymn where the rhyme is variable in the strophes and constant in the refrain. Distinctive in the Hispanic piyyuṭ is the poet’s signature in the acrostic. Although the Hispanic synagogue poets composed in most of the older genres, they added some unique features. However, a change in the fortunes of Iberian Jewry in the latter half of the twelfth century resulted from the invasions of the Muslim Almoravids and Almohades. With the Christian reconquest, the earlier courtly life and culture came to an end. The celebrated Andalusian poets became vagabonds and their grandee patrons were replaced by an emerging middle class. The new cantor-poets, sensitive to the more modest needs of their constituents, fashioned a conservative tone in liturgical writing.
The High Point (I): The ‘Court Jews’ (1650–1713)
Authors: Israel Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the age of the ‘Court Jew’ (1650–1713), which marked the zenith of Jewish influence in early modern Europe. The remarkable role of the Jews in European affairs at that time rested on the solid foundations laid during the Thirty Years War. By 1650, a scattered but socially closely intertwined élite of provisioners and financiers had emerged who were simultaneously agents of states and the effective leaders of Europe's Jewish communities. Sometimes, they showed a strong sense of commitment to one particular government, but this was, in fact, both unusual and untypical. Generally, Jewish court factors, or Hoffaktoren as they were known in Germany, lived outside the states which they served. Not infrequently, they acted for several governments at once. Most typical of all, the close collaboration and interdependence between them, interlocking with the correspondence between kehillot in different countries, made their activity more thoroughly international and specifically Jewish than the banking and contracting of later times. Assuredly, the system centred on Germany, Austria, and Holland, but it ramified far beyond these limits, exerting an appreciable influence also on affairs in Spain, Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Italy, England, and Ireland.
Heading West
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter details Isaac Mayer Wise’s appointment to Cincinnati. The generally accepted version of Wise’s appointment is that in August 1853, Jacob Goodheart, then treasurer of the Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, wrote to Wise out of the blue asking whether he would accept the position of rabbi; that Wise stipulated election for life, no trial sermon, and not taking up his duties before a lapse of six months, and a salary that would make him independent of gifts; and that five days after communicating the requirements he ‘received a telegram to the effect that he had been unanimously elected rabbi of the congregation on his own terms’. This story can be traced back to Wise’s Reminiscences, where he says he received Goodheart’s letter while he was in a mood of defeat and self-pity following the failure of his history book from the previous chapter. But by the time this book appeared, Wise had received the Cincinnati appointment. And he was already in communication with B’nai Jeshurun before receiving the letter.
Conference—Union—;Synod
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to Wise’s attempts to set up a synod. Early in 1855, Wise had begun to renew his agitation for a conference. Wise wanted a general ‘get-together’ without regard to theology. He enumerates some of the questions which lay before American Jewry: Zion College, which had been started in Cincinnati; the orphan asylum which had been started in New Orleans; whether or not to have Jewish parochial schools; ‘our standing complaint about the serious want of textbooks for Hebrew schools’. ‘The grand problem-to be solved at present is this’, said Wise, ‘how to unite all these endeavours into one focus’. Here, indeed, the chapter reveals a mind working on a grand design for American Jewry. It is a conference on practical issues, not on ideologies, that Wise is advocating. The note is definitely union, not reform.
David Einhorn
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to Rabbi David Einhorn. Einhorn was ten years older than Wise. He received his Talmudic education at the yeshivah of Fürth, in his native Bavaria, and at the universities of Munich and Würzburg. Participation in the German rabbinic conferences of 1844–1846 marked him out as a reformer and made life in German congregations uncomfortable for him. To point to the contrast with opponents such as Einhorn on the one side and Isaac Leeser on the other is helpful to the understanding of Wise’s personality and policies. Wise’s constant hammering at the need for an American rabbinate and the naturalization of the Jew and Judaism in America must be seen in the light of the Einhorn influence; the significance of his constant travels to outlying congregations stands in contrast to his opponent’s aloofness. What they shared was a readiness for full-blooded conflict.
‘We must have “Union in Israel’”
Authors: Temkin Sefton D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Isaac Mayer Wise’s continued agitation for support for the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and in particular for the educational institution which it was its task to bring forth. He gave himself to this task with an enthusiasm and a single-mindedness which recalls the spirit with which he had carried the flag of Zion College twenty years before. Harnessed to a practical task, working in the midst of an organized body of men, the goal of his strivings in sight, he found little occasion for personal complaints of persecution and victimization. Naturally anyone who was indifferent to the cause of the Union and the College incurred his wrath. While Wise was making further appeals via the Israelite, the union was taking shape and plans were being laid for the opening of Hebrew Union College.