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AbstractIn this paper, building upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted among members of one initiative of Jewish-Muslim dialogue in the UK, I discuss how my interlocutors thematize the temporal dimension of anti-minority discrimination and perceive remaining historical material heritage associated with it. Using the example of problematic artifacts pertaining to mediaeval Lincoln, such as the so-called “shrine of Little Hugh,” I discuss how in engaging the memory of traumatic past events in Jewish history activists of inter-faith dialogue reflect on their current conditions of minoritization and attempt a projection of their communities’ lives in the UK in the future. I also borrow insight from the presentist theoretical framework in anthropology of time to highlight the impact my interlocutors’ life histories have had on the way they relate to and conceptualize their own and other minoritized groups’ histories and imagine their personal and collective futures based on their experiences in the present. I suggest that in these reflections, narratives of positive historical trajectories in the minority experience sit alongside an anticipation of multiple possible futures, some inflected with anxiety about a repetition of difficult pasts, others imbued with a vision connecting the past, present and future of minoritized communities into a common presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Cultural Poetics / KulturPoetik: Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft is the property of Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the French Haute-Savoie there is still today a building that is deeply linked to the history of the Italian Republic, which not only testifies to its roots and values, but also represents a paradigm of childhood tragedies in the twentieth century. It is a holiday camp in Saint-Cergues Les Voirons (now converted into private apartments) which was built by the Italian “fuorusciti” for the children of the emigrated compatriots. The creation of this holiday camp was considered one of the most successful undertakings of international anti-fascism. After its opening in 1933, the holiday home was used for a few years by Italian emigrants’ children as well as a refuge for well-known anti-fascists; then it was adapted to the new needs of assistance to the most fragile and difficult children imposed by international circumstances. Five years after its opening, the building was in fact used as a holiday camp for Spanish refugee children from the civil war and, after the outbreak of the Second World War, it became a place to welcome children of any nationality, victims of the conflict and finally a home-refuge for young Jews fleeing deportation. This building, built in a typical alpine style, was most dissimilar from the fascist monumental architectural models. Built just a few kilometres from Geneva, it was much more than just a building: it was a real challenge against an autarchic regime that was increasingly turned in on itself, even in its educational models.

The research aims to: determine the meaning of symbols and symbolism both linguistically and terminologically, understand the value of symbols among Jews, clarify the meanings of numbers and their significance for Jews, highlight the exaggeration of Jews in their reliance on interpretation to explain the ambiguities in the altered texts, open the door for many researchers and scholars to explore topics related to comparative religions, and enrich the library of theology and comparative religion, which focuses on aspects of Jewish studies and their history. Research Methodology: the inductive method and the deductive method. Jews rely on symbolism to understand their sacred texts, and through this, rabbis integrate this religion, opening the door widely to the alterations that have affected this religion. Among the most prominent findings of the research: A symbol linguistically is a gesture or indication using the eyes, eyebrows, lips, and mouth. The definitions of a symbol have varied according to the science or art in which the term is used. A symbol is a sign that refers to a meaning that exists independently, representing it and replacing it. A symbol in the Old Testament is an expression or indication of what will happen in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

9½ Mystics: The Kabbala Today by Rabbi Herbert Weiner introduced the idea of mystical search to a generation of American Jews who were turned off by traditional synagogue Judaism and unsure of how to relate to the emerging counterculture. He met with a number of mystics to find out if their life-secrets can have meaning even for those who do not share the full intensity of their experience. Weiner's search relied in large part on Gershom Scholem's idea that there was a dramatic contrast between rabbinic Judaism and Kabbalistic Judaism. Kabbalah was like an underground stream moving through the heart of Judaism, bringing with it transformative mythic ideas, providing inspiration and spiritual excitement. Weiner's book successfully popularised Scholem's theories of what Kabbalah was, as well as the mystical thought of previously unknown mystics such as Rav Kook. 9½ Mystics transformed the American Jewish religious landscape, especially in the Reform movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot (1908) and Horace M. Kallen's essay 'Democracy versus the Melting Pot' (1915) as two different visions of future Jewish inclusion. Zangwill's play and Kallen's response reflect social changes at the time, and both visions consider Jewish history exemplary for the world-to-come. Both show how conceptions of Jewishness were turned into universalist teleologies, but of different kinds. Zangwill's play opened in Washington at the height of immigration, urbanisation and social change, and it swiftly exemplified a vision of the American nation in the making, emphasising concepts of amalgamation more than old historical identities. In opposition, Kallen's response in 1915 emphasised historical identities and rejected the metal melting metaphors, replacing them with a Darwin-inspired spontaneous 'symphony'. Zangwill and Kallen both imagined the future world as profoundly shaped by Jewishness, albeit with different consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Immigration, particularly forced immigration, has a profound impact on every aspect of immigrants' lives. One such aspect is their religious convictions and practices. Nowadays, Migration Studies is a major academic field that produces many books and articles each year. This article examines the impact of forced immigration on the daily practices and internal relationships between leaders and followers of a specific religious group—Hassidism, in one particular period—the early second half of the 20th century. It does so by examining how two Hassidic leaders, the Satmar Rebbe in America and the Viznitzer Rebbe in Israel, established their communities after the Holocaust. This is one of only a few academic studies that explore post-Holocaust Hassidism, with a specific focus on the effects of forced immigration on its development. Throughout Jewish history, large-scale immigration and the inevitable need to adapt to new political, religious, and cultural circumstances had a profound influence on the way Jews conducted their religious affairs. This article explores how the uprooting of Hassidism from Eastern Europe after the Holocaust and its transplantation in countries that were new to them prompted Hassidic leaders who wanted to reestablish their communities to adopt a new set of leadership priorities. The result was that despite bearing the same title, Hassidic communities that were established after the Holocaust were very different from those that operated in Europe previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the longest established non‐Christian minority group in the UK, the history of Jewish archives in this country has a particular significance. Following the readmission of the Jews to England in the 1650s, Jewish created archives exist, though through communal neglect and the blitz they are uneven in coverage until the later eighteenth century. Only by the end of the nineteenth century were conscious efforts made by British Jewry to preserve its own heritage. Our chapter focuses on the formal efforts post‐1945 to locate, collect and preserve Jewish archives from slow and uncertain beginnings to the situation in the first decades of the 20 first century when there are major collections of Jewish archives in the University of Southampton and the London Metropolitan Archives, successful local and regional initiatives, as well as projects enabling a more inclusive Jewish archive such as that of the Liberal Synagogue's Rainbow Jews to document and record the LGBTQ+ experience. It concludes that Jewish archive preservation in the UK is a story more of success than failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Urban History Review / Revue d'Histoire Urbaine is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the Jewish imagination of the Carpathians in 20thcentury literature. Non-Jewish observers who discovered the Carpathians at this time typically saw the Jews as an alien symbol of urban civilization that disturbed the authenticity of mountain life. The article analyzes essays from various Jewish intellectuals, whose aim was to rediscover the Carpathians as a Jewish space through the figure of the Hasidic leader Baal Shem Tov, who lived in the area during the 18th century. By connecting his life with the mountain landscape, they created a Jewish figure embedded in nature and not alienated from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests a re-periodisation of the transit camps in which hundreds of thousands of immigrants were housed in Israel's first three decades. It anchors the meaning of these temporal housing spaces – known as Ma'abarot – and rebuts the perception of their temporality, presenting new data about institutional policies regarding these allegedly temporary living spaces and the everyday reality of their inhabitants. It suggests a re-periodisation that includes not only the initial handling of the massive Jewish immigration wave during the 'Mass Aliyah' (1948–51) but also the longer-term settling of the immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hebrew Manuscripts Catalogue of the National Library of Israel holds a wealth of information about Jewish history, literature, and culture. However, its complex structure and limited accessibility have resulted in underutilized data. This study aims to harness new digital approaches to unlock the potential of this valuable resource. Specifically, we focus on 275 Yemenite Jewish manuscripts related to 'sciences' to explore complex relationships within the data. We began by consolidating metadata from the Hebrew Manuscripts Catalogue, often found scattered within the 'notes' field of the records. We supplemented this data with information from linked open data (LOD) entities as well as previous research. This comprehensive approach reveals details about copyists, authors, and owners, even identifying lesser-known figures. Our methodology involved using Nodegoat for data management and visualization. This platform allowed us to create a comprehensive data model for manuscript provenance and explore relationships between objects, transactions, persons, and organizations, along with geographical data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay stages an encounter between Michel Foucault and Franz Rosenzweig by juxtaposing their parallel observations on the continuity between history and war. While Foucault analyzes the strategies organizing seventeenth-century historical writing about the Norman conquest of England and the Frankish invasion of Gaul, Rosenzweig opposes the warlike progress of Christian history to the eternal peace of Jewish time. Through this comparison, the essay reevaluates the terms governing well-known debates about Jewish history and Jewish memory. It asks what role the concept of "war" has played in the emergence of modern Jewish historicism and the so-called Jewish return to history. The essay concludes by submitting the Israelite conquest of Canaan as a supplement to Foucault's examples and as a critical index of the bellicose grammar underwriting the representation of Jewish history as a field of struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the Second World War and the Allied occupation of Iran came with a relaxation of censorship laws in the country. This in turn permitted the revival of an active Jewish press after a lull of almost two decades. One of the main publications of this period, 'Alam-e Yahud (The Jewish world), frequently translated prose and literary texts for the benefit of its readers, including a great deal of Hebrew poetry. Translations were designed to encourage a global Jewish, literary, and political modernity (on both a Zionist and domestic Iranian plane) and to promote a participation within these projects by the periodical's readers.This essay analyses these literary translations and adaptations, demonstrating Iranian Jewish writers' active engagement with Hebrew literary works, shifting and molding them for their own context and ideals. It begins with an examination of the periodical's wider translation project and its function as a political and cultural bridge during a period of change. It moves on to examine the "foreignness" of authors including Haim Nahman Bialik, and Bialik's normative cachet as an Ashkenazi/European and later Palestine-based writer. The essay proceeds to analyze other Hebrew-language contemporaries as spurs for linguistic and national renewal in both Hebrew and Persian, and concludes by reading original popular and belletristic poetry in Persian by Iranian Jews published in the periodical as a signifier of distinctiveness away from these sometimes-Eurocentric translated models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jewish past has always represented a distinct chapter in Morocco's history; an embodiment of a historic component of Moroccan society. 'Tinghir – Jerusalem: Les Echoes du Mellah' (2013): a documentary by Moroccan director Kamal Hachkar, excavates history through places and testimonies of Jews who left Morocco towards 'Israel' and Muslims still living in Tinghir in an attempt to investigate the factors that shaped Moroccan Jews' migration. Going back and forth diverse oral narrations about lived experiences, Moroccan Muslims and Jews recall their memories of good neighbourliness and coexistence during the 1950s and 1960s before the exodus. Memories clash and a new generation that did not witness anything about the history of Jews in Morocco except the Jewish cemetery; emerges, and although the perceptions regarding the Jews' departure diverge, the common feelings of belonging, intense nostalgia and diaspora of the soul appears to be shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music across Twentieth-century North Africa" by Christopher Silver is a comprehensive exploration of the musical culture and recording industry in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The book highlights the role of music in fostering Jewish-Muslim coexistence and shaping national identities in North Africa. Silver's research is based on a wide range of sources, including phonograph records, radio broadcasts, memoirs, and personal interviews. The book challenges conventional narratives of division and conflict between Jews and Muslims, emphasizing the creative collaboration and cultural exchange that music facilitated. Overall, "Recording History" provides a nuanced and compelling account of the musical history of North Africa. [Extracted from the article]

This Article explores parallels between Frankfurter's faith in democracy, that is, his trust in the legislative and executive branches as reflected in his jurisprudence of judicial restraint, and Frankfurter's vision for Jewish (and other) immigrants' integration into the American polity, namely his conviction that immigrants should shed vestiges of their birth cultures and assimilate into their adopted culture. The Article argues that Frankfurter's commitment to judicial restraint was his means of mediating the pluralist dilemma, that is, the need to accommodate within the law diverse cultures and values; just as Felix Frankfurter, the first-generation Jewish American, wanted to sidestep ethnic particularism, Justice Frankfurter sought to shield the Court from having to balance the competing values, identities, and viewpoints that characterized modern American society. Evading the difficult task of choosing between competing interests and values, Frankfurter's decisions often became an apology for the status quo, that is, the social position of the insider and the political position of the majority. As the Article further suggests, in the 1950s and 1960s, Frankfurter's students and clerks reinvigorated his vision into an ideal of procedural democracy. Frankfurter can thus be described as linking early-twentieth century Progressivism with the postwar ideal of procedural democracy; in different reiterations this model of democracy has come to dominate American legal theory in the second part of the twentieth century. At the same time, Frankfurter's vision may also be described as giving rise to a particular strand of Jewish legal thought. Historians often emphasize Jewish-American jurists' celebration of pluralism and their role in the midcentury fight for civil rights and liberties. In these narratives, Frankfurter's judicial record is deemed an anomaly. But, as this Article concludes, advocates of procedural democracy were often first- and second-generation Jewish Americans who were both committed to the protection of civil rights and liberties and concerned about calling attention to ethnic differences. I hope this Article encourages further explorations of the relationship among the ideal of procedural democracy, Progressivism, and Jewish-American history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed article is devoted to improving the classification of literature on Jewish studies kept in the collections of both the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and other scientific libraries. Ukraine inherited from the former USSR a significant number of collections of literature in the area of Jewish studies, which include, in particular, the collection of the Department of Jewish Studies at the Institute of Manuscripts in Vernadsky Library. The issue of systematization, classification and cataloguing of the Judaic literature still remains not fully resolved. This state of affairs can be illustrated by looking at the classification of the languages of the respective texts. In particular, the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), widely used in modern Ukraine, indicates the following classification possibilities for the Hebrew language within Class 8 of the Classification: 811.4 Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Congo-Kordofanian, Khoisan languages 811.41 Afroasiatic languages 811.411 Semitic languages 811.411.16 Hebrew 811.411.16'02 Biblical Hebrew 811.411.16'03 Mishnaic 811.411.16'04 Rabbinical 811.411.16'08 Modern Hebrew. The potential of this classification is quite limited and it uses concepts borrowed from different branches of linguistics. For example, not all variants of the Hebrew language can be correctly classified as Jewish languages. On the other hand, many Jewish languages are non-Semitic and should be classified within their respective language families. It is not our intention to classify the Jewish languages on the basis of purely linguistic para�-meters; the main goal of our study is to unambiguously relate a particular language and therefore the study, to the context of Jewish studies regardless of how correct and consistent the used classification system is for a particular sphere or knowledge. This allows us to conclude that the Ukrainian version of the UDC has sufficient potential for classifying research in the field of Jewish studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laura Arnold Leibman's book, "Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family," explores the complex issue of Afro-Jewishness and challenges traditional definitions of Jewish identity. Leibman delves into the personal lives of a multiracial Jewish family, tracing their experiences and highlighting the ambiguities of Jewish identity and race. The book also examines the historical relationship between Jews and enslaved and free people of African descent, shedding light on the presence of rape, sexploitation, and other types of sexual relationships between light-skinned Jewish men and women of color. Leibman's research is rooted in archival sources and offers a fresh perspective on early American Jewish history. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, I analyze E. Lockhart's comic Whistle: A New Gotham City Hero (Burbank, CA: DC Comics, 2021) as a distinctively American Jewish text. I argue that Whistle draws upon nostalgia for an imagined Jewish past by creating an alternative present infused with the material culture of American Jewishness. In so doing, I show how the comic develops features of mainstream American Jewishness—such as eating at Jewish delis, holding a nostalgic attachment to American Jewish history, and working for social justice—in the construction of a superhero narrative. I explore how Whistle's visual depiction of Jewish food and space construct an authentically Jewish environment. Lastly, I suggest that, as a superhero comic book written for teenage readers, Whistle promotes nostalgia and the pursuit of social justice as components of American Jewishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Rescuing the History of American Jewish Dissent on Israel" by Eric Alterman discusses the overlooked history of American Jewish criticism of Israel from 1948 to 1978. It highlights the efforts of organizations like the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to influence Israel's treatment of Palestinians and Arab minorities. The author, Eric Alterman, delves into archival research to shed light on these historical events, providing a valuable resource for scholars interested in this topic. [Extracted from the article]

The article examines studies on Jewish resistance in Israeli historiography on the Shoah. Through the analysis of various contributions, conference proceedings, articles and monographs, the article aims to reconstruct an essential historiographical profile of the concept of amidah, identifying some of the most relevant declinations and critical issues that have emerged in Israeli historiography. Particular importance is given to the Yad Vashem Conference held in Jerusalem in 1968 which began the tradition of studies analyzed.

Special Forum Editors' Introduction

In 1891, the United States Congress codified a harsher version of the 1882 public charge provision. Commodifying health and pathologizing poverty, the public charge law excluded and deported immigrants termed “likely to become a public charge” according to its conflation of physical, mental, and economic status, shaping America’s image across the world. Though public charge implicated all immigrants, its impact on eastern European Jews captured the attention of pro-immigration American Jewish advocates. My article analyzes American Jewish attorneys and reformers who emphasized that public charge endangered Jewish immigrants who sought admission to and citizenship in the United States. Contesting the administration of the law—and especially the discretion that state officials possessed to enforce it—as un-American and antidemocratic, this coalition endeavored to liberalize public charge by promoting new interpretations of its terminology, reducing its reach, and contesting it through the courts, while contending with the ever-evolving concepts of borders and nationalist restriction. Public charge particularly victimized young Jewish women and girls, whom immigration officials often diagnosed as “mentally defective” despite evidence to the contrary. To illustrate this trend, I explore a case of a Jewish immigrant girl named Esther, diagnosed as insane, subjected to illegal medical examinations, and threatened with imminent deportation over the course of eleven years. I consider how American Jewish communal luminaries intervened on this immigrant’s behalf, simultaneously integrating disability into the field of American Jewish history and investigating how these advocates challenged the premise that illness and impairment disabled immigrants from becoming Americans.

Focusing on aspects of mobility and daily life, this paper aims to highlight the history of nineteenth century Persian Jews as one of interconnectedness, but also separation. Various forms of interaction such as marriage, trade and the circulation of literature connected communities of Central Asian, Afghan and Iranian Jews, while they at the same time maintained or developed distinct identities. Departing from ideas of Persian Jews as isolated from their environment, I discuss aspects of interaction with different actors such as local Turkmen tribes, governors or religious authorities. The ancient city of Merv in today’s Turkmenistan, a former hub for Jews from Iran, Central Asia and Afghanistan, challenges notions of ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ and points out how Persian speaking Jews contributed to the socio-economic environments in which they were active. Their movements and activities are crucial for understanding the formation of (transregional) communities and their relevance for global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A set of rediscovered revolutionary posters by the Reprint Collective (which was presented as part of Documenta fifteen) in Brussels provided an incredibly moving window into times past. Notwithstanding how the events addressed by those political artefacts now lie in the historical past, the revolutionary reverberations of the posters remain something to treasure. They bring to life political causes that underline the importance of radical solidarity and activist alliances. To understand why such artefacts were banned, we need to recognise the role of contemporary racism – the projection of the figure of a Palestine-radical left-Muslim subject that encompasses everything the liberal mainstream supposedly is not. This article argues that the New Anti-Semitism is a merely ideological manifestation that has no contribution to make toward the struggle against antisemitism. The posters remind us that 1) the struggle against antisemitism cannot be separated from the struggle against Islamophobia, but also that 2) the erasure of a particular Jewish and Left revolutionary subjectivity is intrinsic to the workings of hegemonic forces that maintain contemporary politics. Going against the account in which antisemitism has conventionally been framed, this article aims to come to terms with the erasure of a left epistemology that had emerged from the region in the 1970s. Moroccan revolutionary Abraham Serfaty is an example of how the erasure of the radical history of Arab and Jewish progressives was no coincidence. Reversing this erasure not only helps in understanding progressive Jewish interventions in liberation politics but also that the flattening of complex histories and Arab, Left, and Jewish subjectivities is in fact a prerequisite for Zionism. Arab Jews do not fit neatly within a pro-Israel ideological framework that itself systematically feeds off anti-Arab racism. This article furthermore reflects on New Anti-Semitism as a key political instrument and as a powerful moralistic force that muzzles the expression of political context and social ambiguity. The notion 'Arab Anti-Semitism' arose against the backdrop of Israeli state terror and regional warfare. This article also provides insights into important intellectual interventions of the left between the 1960s and the 1980s. In combination with the rise of counter-revolutionary forces and major anti-left crackdowns, this emancipatory approach building on a critique of imperialism and capitalism, and solidarity politics based on progressive universal values, was undermined. Finally, coming to terms with the erasure of a left epistemology that had emerged from the region and recovering this very legacy serve as an antidote against historical amnesia. This spirit of a progressive universalism – as, for instance, illustrated in Mahmoud Darwish's rejection of the opportunistic dictum 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' on the grounds that one can readily speak of a 'world's enemy' – is born from the belief that our ethical and moral constellations carry universal value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissent over what merits preservation and constitutes progress undergirds Alexandria Archaeology's establishment. This program is rooted in mid-20th-century urban renewal. In demolishing several blocks and removing people of color and poor whites from the city's downtown, officials hoped to reinvent this area as a haven for white, middle-class residents and tourists drawn to Alexandria by its historic character. During demolition, a group of concerned citizens noted that bulldozers were removing archaeological resources as well as "blight" in the name of progress. They established an archaeology program dedicated to mitigating these effects. These early archaeological projects privileged some histories, however, focusing on 18th-century, elite, white history instead of on the diverse 19th-century community that had once existed on the blocks. These archaeological collections provide insight into the dissonance of historical interpretation. This article explores how new analyses of older collections give voice to some of these lesser-known histories [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2017, Vienna's Leopoldstadt community succeeded in reinstalling a Hebrew street sign in a public space of the second district. This achievement became possible in large part due to the efforts of an active online community that encouraged many people to share their wish to have visible signs of the former historic Jewish quarter in the present urban space. Through vigorous Facebook and other social media activities, the interest that the group generated put pressure on the city, leading to the support of an art project. The placement of the Hebrew street sign marked a hybrid way of constructing Jewish urban spaces. The dialogue between virtual and physical spaces added new layers to the historic Jewish quarter of Vienna; this way of relational space making is, I wish to argue, paradigmatic for today's Europe as it witnesses the heyday of Holocaust tourism and klezmer revivals. In this article, I investigate this space-making process in Jewish public history in present Vienna and examine how the virtual community frames the way urban Jewish spaces are constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the transformative impact of the Documentation of Jewish Records Worldwide (DoJR) project, launched in 2017, on Jewish genealogy. Jewish genealogy, deeply rooted in centuries of tradition and cultural significance, transcends mere ancestral tracing, embodying a comprehensive exploration of Jewish history and heritage. The DoJR project represents a monumental shift in this field, aiming to compile a comprehensive, freely accessible online catalog, JCat, of every existing document of every Jew who ever lived. This endeavor reshapes our approach to Jewish genealogy and profoundly deepens our understanding of Jewish history. This article delves into the historical context of Jewish genealogy, tracing its evolution from ancient times through various challenges, including the Holocaust's devastating impact on Jewish genealogical records. It highlights the pioneering efforts in the field and the modern advancements that have facilitated the growth of Jewish genealogy, including DNA testing and digital technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing the ancestral roots of Polish Jews before the introduction of metrical data in 1808 represents a unique and complex challenge for genealogists and historians alike. Indeed, limited official records, shifting geopolitical boundaries, and the absence of standardized documentation practices characterize that early era. Sometimes, however, genealogical sources and records unique to Jews, based on religious daily life and traditions, have subsisted. When available, they open unforeseen avenues into identifiable family histories for which no other record, or personal memories, are available. In other cases, less well-known archival records unexpectedly emerge to elucidate a perplexing genealogical problem. The present article deals with two such instances with a similar starting point, namely, the apparent impossibility of merging two family clusters with the same surname in a given town. The first case deals with two separate KUMEC clusters in the small Polish town of Konskie. Research of this specific case, using limited official records, leads to the discovery of a single-family line dating back to the early 1600s, by means of complementary metrical and rabbinical data. The second case deals with two distinct KRELL clusters in the city of Warsaw, which, after 25 years of extensive but unsuccessful research, finally leads to merging into a cohesive KRELL ancestral line dating back to the early 1700s, by means of a less exploited source of archival records. The present study puts forward guiding principles for searches back to pre-1808 Jewish family history. As such, it should be useful to researchers encountering similar roadblocks in the quest for their Jewish ancestors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On September 17, 2023, the Jewish Medieval Heritage in Erfurt was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List at the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee chaired by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh. This brought a decades-long process to its provisional conclusion, in which research into the history of the Jewish community in Erfurt in the Middle Ages and its material evidence had been intensified in preparation for the World Heritage application and also during the evaluation, thus leading to a great increase in knowledge. This process should and must continue, but an (interim) conclusion can be drawn in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Documentary Hypothesis proposed by Julius Wellhausen has sparked discussions for over a century. The core of this debate revolves around the perspective through which the creation of the Torah should be viewed. Previous studies have often neglected the focus on "people". The Torah was created by individuals and was profoundly influenced by the era in which they lived. In this specific study, instead of concentrating on the texts or historical background, we should focus on the "authors" or "redactors", exploring how they processed and created the texts under the influence of their times. In Jewish history, the destruction of the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom played a crucial role in the creation of the Torah. After the fall of the Northern Kingdom, the Deuteronomists, reflecting on historical lessons, formulated a set of legal norms for theology and society, which established theological standards for further interpreting and writing ancient Jewish history. Following the destruction of the Southern Kingdom, Diaspora group and Returnees, centered on reflecting on their catastrophes and responding to contemporary crises, further created and integrated texts of ancestral traditions and the Promised Land, embedding the historical memory of ancestors-land for the Jewish people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the often overlooked history of the Jewish community in North Wales and the recent efforts to study and preserve their heritage. Academic works, exhibitions, guided walks, and mapping projects have been undertaken to raise awareness and understanding of Welsh-Jewish history. Bangor University is working to digitize Welsh Jewish heritage and create a comprehensive database of archival resources. Three new books have been published that provide valuable insights into the Welsh Jewish experience, including the experiences of Jewish refugees during World War II. These publications contribute to the growing study of Jewish history in Wales and lay the groundwork for future research. [Extracted from the article]

Portrait photography is a fixed element in the history of German Jewry. This article asks what we can learn about a Jewish biography like that of the German–Jewish writer Sammy Gronemann by seeking to follow his life's trajectories through the images he and others created of him and the appearances he coined. It argues that photography not only represented but also actively shaped his work as a writer and a Zionist politician and that it influenced the worlds he inhabited. It does so by situating Gronemann, the German Jew, in the history of German portrait photography, Gronemann, the Western Zionist, in the history of international Zionist image politics and Gronemann, the writer in the history of the creation of a visible cultural scene in the Yishuv and later Israel. Pondering Gronemann's relationship with visual arts offers insights into the ways public visibility shaped German–Jewish realities both in Europe and in Palestine, both before and after the foundation of the State of Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the significance of advertisements in historical Jewish press as a window into everyday life and major themes of Jewish history, including nationalism, social and economic situations, and cultural choices. It discusses three readings of advertisements which contribute to understanding various aspects of Jewish history, encompassing consumer identity, occultism, and the economic, cultural, and religious history of Jews in different contexts.

This essay focuses on Jewish practical kabbalistic books of recipes that were produced in early modern East-Central Europe. These handwritten sources document the Jewish engagement with practical forms of expertise, which were informed by the theoretical foundations of kabbalistic knowledge. Through two case studies, the article highlights Jewish vernacular ideas about nature and matter, and the techniques used to transform these ideas into practical things during the early modern period. It also explores the phenomenon of recording these ideas and methods in the form of practical kabbalistic books of recipes, which serve as a prime example of practical episteme. In so doing, the article sheds light on the significance of kabbalistic theosophy and practical kabbalistic traditions, particularly those developed in East-Central Europe, in the broader history of Western European knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article reports on two books about German-Jewish history: "Germany from a Jewish Perspective" by Shulamit Volkov and "Antisemitism: A German History" by Peter Longerich. Both books discuss the history of German Jews and their connection to German history. It is emphasized that antisemitism can be found not only in right-wing circles but also in the political left and among climate activists. The books offer a differentiated view of the history of Jew-hatred and show how the perception of German Jews was influenced by epochal upheavals. Longerich's diagnosis that antisemitism is "among us and seemingly ineradicable" remains a sad reality. [Extracted from the article]

In this essay, I extend the existing scholarship on the character of Bertha Mason Rochester by providing historical and textual evidence that Brontë represents Bertha's ethnocultural background as an amalgam of Jamaican, Jewish, and Creole. In support of this thesis, I examine passages focusing on Bertha's father and brother, and I describe the cultural meanings of Spanish Town (Jamaica) and Madeira (Portugal) with regard to Caribbean Jewish creole communities in the nineteenth century and their complex ties to England and the Continent. In contrast to previous claims (e.g. Heidi Kaufman's), I argue that Brontë imbues Bertha with a literal (vs merely symbolic) Jewish lineage. Also, I consider Brontë's portrayal of Bertha in relation to gender-specific tropes about Jews, which were familiar to Brontë and her Victorian readers. Furthermore, I discuss the sociopolitical zeitgeist during Brontë's formative years and in the period in which she wrote Jane Eyre , with an emphasis on the pervasive attempts to evangelize England's Jews and the vigorous debates about whether to grant Jews political rights in England. Additionally, I examine the phrase 'stiff-necked' as it is used in the novel and in the King James Bible, positing that it signifies an unwillingness to change. On the basis of these various forms of evidence, I argue that Brontë's construction of Bertha as having hybridized Jewish origins helps make her an embodiment of radical otherness and stagnation. In this conceptual framework, the polarity between the ability versus inability to grow emerges as a core theme within the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses Tzvi Avni's Second Piano Sonata, Epitaph, a sonic commentary on one of the inner tales in Rabbi Nachman's "The Seven Beggars". Written between 1974 and 1979, Epitaph not only marks the composer's act of translation (from words into music and from a textual tale into a wordless and semantically unmarked piano sonata) but also his very turn to ethnographic sources that defied their negative function in a national territorial culture that vilified otherness while separating art from ethnography. Avni's turn to Rabbi Nachman was part of a bigger shift that saw composers' dialectical returns to Jewish histories and cultures that were previously repressed from a national culture which dehistoricized the Diaspora to the point of rendering the times and cultures of diasporic Jews a single temporality—ahistorical, contextless, and outside the teleological time of Zionism. With the (re)introduction of diasporic temporalities, non-redemptive poetics became an affordance in the music of Avni or Andre Hajdu (who is also discussed here) while steadily muting the territorial tropes that constituted Hebrew culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that the marginality of World War II in the historiography of Zionism and Israel is based on a historical perspective that shaped contemporaries' evaluation of reality and framed postwar historiography. Through the wartime writings of Robert Weltsch, I argue that this historiographic absence draws on a dilemma: Should Britain's colonized populations continue their fight for independence from British rule during the war or support the empire in the world conflict against the Axis? The dilemma expressed a tension between the colonial aspects of the Yishuv and its reliance on the British Empire, on the one hand, and its anticolonial struggle for independence from the British, on the other. This article examines the Yishuv's wartime dilemma using the distinction Weltsch made between a narrow perspective, which he associated with World War I's legacy of self-determination, and a broad international view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a list of contributors to the Journal of American Ethnic History. The contributors include scholars and researchers from various universities and institutions who specialize in a range of topics related to migration, labor, social movements, race relations, gender, and immigration history. Their research focuses on diverse groups such as children, LGBTQ+ individuals, Indigenous migrants, Japanese women, Mexicans, Germans, and Indigenous people. The contributors utilize qualitative methods and explore different aspects of American history, including the twentieth century and colonial period. [Extracted from the article]