Between the Diaspora and Zion: Cecil Roth and his American friends

Near the start of his career (1925–1930) Cecil Roth developed a vision of the significance of the Diaspora to Jewish life, which he articulated during his tenure at the Intercollegiate Menorah Society Summer School of 1930. For Roth, Jewish creativity could be expressed only by possessing a firm grasp of Jewish history and its essentials. In his summer school lectures Roth sought to integrate Jewish history into the broader sweep of European history, while at the same time he introduced students to historical sources beyond traditional Jewish texts. In the aftermath of World War II Roth entered into a prolonged correspondence with the American Jewish historian Jacob Rader Marcus, who had recently founded the American Jewish Archives, whose purpose was to forward the study of Jewish history by collecting the documents that would enable future research. In their correspondence, Roth and Marcus enunciated an approach to Jewish history that would influence the field for a generation.     

The Conversion of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia: A Reversible "Rite of Passage"

Before Zionism entered the political arena, Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) struggled with many issues concerning his appearance, which were connected with the contemporary dilemmas of Jewish emancipation and stereotypes about the Jewish look. Herzl identified with the Vienna cultural circle and manifested a full approval of its values, for example, by wearing sideburns distinctively modelled on those of the Emperor Franz Joseph. But during his stay in France (1891–1896) Herzl began to consider Austrian anti-Semitism as a new political power. Along with the shift of his views on the Jewish Question, Herzl changed his appearance. He cut off his sideburns and grew a long, black, Assyrian beard instead. This new look alluded to ancient Jewish roots which had gained interest within the context of Orientalism that had become popular thanks to the archaeological discoveries in the Middle East, especially those of images of Assyrian rulers. Thus, the phenomenon of Orientalism understood in aesthetic and historical categories was an important factor behind the formation of Jewish identity. This conclusion constituted a significant argument on the way to embracing elements of Eastern culture and identifying them with Jewish elements in a new, Zionist, incarnation.     

Prospero Moisè Loria: A Case Study of Jewish Secularism in Liberal Italy

In his will, Prospero Moisè Loria (1814–92) requested an autopsy and cremation and left his large inheritance to the municipality of Milan to establish a secular philanthropic institution, the Società umanitaria, “to enable all the disenfranchised poor, without distinction.” Loria and other Italian Jews were at the heart of secularist activity in Italy’s culture wars, as demonstrated by their engagement with secular philanthropy, battles for cremation, and Freemason activity. By exploring Loria as the most generous nineteenth-century Italian Jewish philanthropist, along with his affiliation with the Alliance israélite universelle as a secular Jewish institution in the Mediterranean, this essay shows how forms of secularism and Jewishness could coexist for Italian Jews and how secularism in Italy could include a commitment to a Jewish collective, and thus seeks to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the composite mixture of secular Italians and to a discussion of Jewish secularism in an international context.     

Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi,the Royal Alliance,and Jewish Political Theory

This article examines Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi’s views of the realities and myths of the “royal alliance” in medieval and modern Jewish history as a seminal contribution to Jewish political history and theory as well as a revealing entrée into his overall historiographical approach. Elaborating the ideas of his teacher Salo Baron and drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s insights into the relationship between Jews and modern states, Yerushalmi ultimately used his own understanding of Jewish political experience to argue against her indictment of wartime Jewish leaders. For Yerushalmi, Jews’ awareness of their tendencies to forge vertical alliances with the highest authorities served to fortify and console them; he considered these perceptions generally realistic and, though at times tragically blinding, still ultimately anchored in historical experience. This essay situates the royal alliance within Yerushalmi’s broader conceptions of Jewish community, political agency, and domicile as diasporic survival strategies. It also views this concept as part of his post-Holocaust commitment to chart the paradoxes of Jewish hope and to regenerate Jewish hope, both collective and individual. Yerushalmi is often celebrated as a pioneering thinker who contrasted modern critical historiography to traditional collective memory and who explored the individual, existential, psychological, and skeptical dimensions of modern Jewish identity. Yet, this essay suggests, a traditionalist strain may be heard in his profound identification with the Jewish people and his deriving hope from their political and historical experience—in both its continuities and its ruptures.     

FORWARD,TO THE EAST: NAPTHALI HERZ IMBER'S PERCEPTION OF KABBALAH

Naphtali Herz Imber is famous as the author of the Jewish national anthem, “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”). He is also quite well known for his non-conformism, vagabond lifestyle, and excessive drinking. However, his interest in the occult and Kabbalah are much less known. Imber wrote several articles on Jewish mysticism, translated some kabbalistic texts, and published the first journal on Kabbalah—Uriel: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Cabbalistic Science (of which only one issue appeared). Although much scholarly literature has been devoted to Imber and his famous poem, his interest in the occult and Jewish mysticism has not been investigated. This article will discuss Imber's encounter with late-nineteenth-century esotericism, specifically the doctrines of Laurence and Alice Oliphant and the Theosophical Society. It presents Imber's notions concerning Jewish mysticism and examines the impact that the Theosophical Society and the Oliphants' principles had on his perception of Kabbalah. Finally, it discusses the connection between Imber's Zionism and his interest in Kabbalah and shows that his perception of Jewish mysticism, which was greatly influenced by Western esoteric ideas, was shaped in the framework of fin de siècle Orientalism and Jewish nationalism. Imber's positive evaluation of Jewish mysticism and its nationalistic interpretation anticipates the position of later Zionist scholars of Jewish mysticism, whose vision of Kabbalah and Hasidism largely shaped the way Jewish mysticism is perceived and studied today.     

Freud's Jewish identity,circumcision, and the theory of castration anxiety: problem or pride?

In this work the author reflects on the Jewish identity of Sigmund Freud. It is acknowledged that Freud, even though he seemed ambivalent towards Jewishness and even though anti-Semitism was omnipresent, not necessarily perceived his Jewish identity as problematic. Rather, it seems as if Freud had a positive Jewish identity, which was connected to profound knowledge in Jewish religion and tradition, even though he declared himself as a Godless Jew. Both his Jewish identity and his knowledge in Judaism seemed to have contributed to some of his insights into the human psyche. The impact of the traditional Jewish circumcision and the insights connected to the theory of castration anxiety are specifically discussed. The author suggests that Freud's positive Jewish identity, and the significance of circumcision, contributed to his insights into the prerequisites of human development and how we as individuals are shaped both by our interpersonal relationships and by the cultural context.     

The “Jewish Knight” of Slobodka honor culture and the image of the body in an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish context

Scholarship on Ultra-Orthodox Jewish thought has traditionally assumed that the views of these communities derive from a struggle against the Jewish Enlightenment and Zionism, as well as against any values they identify as “modern.” This article challenges that assumption. Beginning with an examination of Ultra-Orthodox sources that present an image of the religious leader as the “ideal Jew,” the author then focuses on sources concerning the founder of the Slobodka Yeshiva in Lithuania. This rabbi intended his students to internalize “modern” norms found in the European honor culture of his time, while translating them into the language of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy. The author chooses to present his argument by tracing the image of the body in the Slobodka method, since it is precisely through the nexus of the body that Ultra-Orthodox Judaism was segregated from general European society and culture.     

Freud's atonement

The authors explore Freud's preoccupations with death and dying. In particular, they focus on the day of Freud's death, which was the Jewish Day of Atonement and the Jewish Sabbath. The significance of this event, which the authors think was “planned,” was not just in order to obliterate years of pain and suffering from cancer, but also to overcome a lifelong burden of conflict and guilt about his relations with his family and colleagues as well as his Jewish cultural/religious upbringing. The authors consider whether the timing of Freud's death represented a premeditated return to his cultural and religious roots.     

Inching towards wholeness: C.G. Jung and his relationship to Judaism

The evolution of Jung's relationship with Judaism is interpreted as reflecting aspects of the individuation journey over the course of a long life. The progress and limitations of his public positions and personal relationships are explored through his published work and correspondence. Perspectives from relational psychoanalysis and Jewish philosophy are used to amplify Jung's understanding of Jewish, and specifically Kabbalistic, text and image. Dimensions of the author's own journey toward greater acceptance of his own Jewish soul is also considered, along with the wider contemporary relevance of these themes.     

Groping for the greats: the strange musical claims of Nathan Ausubel

Nathan Ausubel (1898–1986) achieved unprecedented popularity as a compiler and translator of Jewish folklore during the 1940s and 1950s. Beneath the inspiring stories and charming sayings was a leftist ideologue preoccupied with the demise of Jewish life in Europe and the loss of Jewish identity to capitalist forces in the United States. Ausubel's agenda is elucidated in his polemical essays, which advocate using folklore as a means of bolstering Jewish pride and solidarity. Part of his strategy involved exaggerating the influence of Jewish culture on famous non-Jews, including Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. This article examines these dubious musical claims and how they furthered Ausubel's activist agenda.     

Paul Christian - A Jewish Dominican Preaching for the Jews

The so-called Barcelona disputation of 1263 was one of the earliest Jewish-Christian disputations in medieval Europe. The disputants were Paul Christian, a Jewish convert to Christianity and member of the Dominican order, and the well known Jewish sage Ramban (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman of Gerona). In the disputation Paul Christian used an innovative method: he attempted to prove the truth of basic Christian dogma, for instance that the Messiah had already come, by using classical Jewish texts, especially the Talmud. Paul Christian used the same method in his sermons which the Jews in the area were forced to listen to. When one analyses the arguments he employs, it becomes obvious how he alludes to both Jewish and Christian traditions in order to convince his listeners.     

EMMANUEL LEVINAS' METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE JEWISH SACRED TEXTS

This paper explores Emmanuel Levinas' Jewish writings, and in particular, his Talmudic commentaries and essays on Judaism. The aim is to elicit some salient features of his methodological approach to the Jewish sacred texts. In general, Levinas' specific reflections on method (in terms of reading the Jewish Scriptures) are confined to sporadic, fragmentary comments interspersed throughout his writings. In extracting these reflections, a specifically Levinasian approach emerges. In particular, his approach shows how one may ethically encounter the Other(s) in these sacred texts.     

Medicine as Enlightenment cure: Benedetto Frizzi, physician to eighteenth-century Italian Jewish society

This article examines modern Jewish doctors and the Enlightenment in action through its analysis of Dr. Benedetto Frizzi (1756–1844) as an Enlightenment Jewish physician and public intellectual in Habsburg northern Italy. Frizzi sought to spread the new Enlightenment gospel of polizia medica—public health policy or social medicine—that he learned from its pioneering exponent, Dr. Johann Peter Frank, his teacher at the University of Pavia. Frizzi dispensed Enlightenment medicine for the benefit of the state and society in general, as well as Jewish society and culture in particular, for he saw himself as both public health crusader and doctor-priest ministering to his own people. His commitments to Enlightenment science and rationalism led him to criticize Jewish social practices harshly even as he creatively reinterpreted classic Jewish texts; accordingly, Frizzi was regarded in some quarters as subversive, while in others as an apologetic defender of Jews and Judaism. Situating Frizzi within the traditions of Jewish as well as European Enlightenment physicians, this article raises broader questions about religion and secularism in the modern discourse of medicalized Judaism.     

Demographers in the service of the nation: Liebmann Hersch, Jacob Lestschinsky, and the early study of Jewish migration

The historiography of Jewish migration began while the mass emigration from eastern Europe was still in progress. The emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews left a deep impression on Jewish intellectuals and students, who sought to come up with a satisfactory explanation. The present paper has two aims: The first is to trace the beginning of historiography on Jewish migration, with special emphasis on two demographers — Liebman Hersch and Jacob Lestchinsky - and the way each of them tried to understand the phenomenon. The second aim is to understand the relationship between the rise of Jewish nationalism at the turn of the century and scholarly research at the time. How were the political activities and worldviews of Hersch and Lestschinsky manifested in their research into Jewish migration, and how did each of them attempt — through his research-to solve the problems of the Jewish people in his time?     

Arnold W. Brunner and the new classical synagogue in America

Arnold W. Brunner (1857–1925), Albert Kahn (1869–1942), and other Jewish architects played an important role in reviving the classical style for American synagogue design at the turn of the twentieth century, putting their stamp on American Jewish identity and American architecture. The American-born Brunner was the preferred architect of New York’s Jewish establishment from the 1880s until his death. He adopted the classical style with his third New York synagogue, Congregation Shearith Israel, dedicated in 1897, and then championed the style in his extensive public writing about synagogue design. The classical style was subsequently widely accepted nationally by Reform congregations, especially in the South and Midwest. Classicism was a mediating device, and served as a new emblem of religious and civic identity. Mixing a variety of architectural and cultural traditions, Jewish architects and their patrons created a bridge between Judaism—or Jewishness—and Americanism.     

On Judaism and genes: a response to Paul Root Wolpe

The following comments on Paul Root Wolpe's article "If I Am Only My Genes, What Am I? Genetic Essentialism and a Jewish Response" address (1) his presentation of the relationship between science and culture or religion as unimodal; (2) his misconception of the Jewish view of the physical corpus; and (3) his essential question of genetic determinism by examining the traditional Jewish view of the spiritual aspects of the human.     

JEWISH CINEMATIC SELF‐REPRESENTATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY ARGENTINE AND BRAZILIAN FILMS

In recent years, young Latin American‐Jewish film directors have produced films that portray the Jewish communities in both Argentina and Brazil. While Argentine‐Jewish filmmakers have been prominent since the beginning of the film industry in Argentina, it is the first time a group of contemporary directors share the depiction of Jewish life and culture. For his part, Brazilian‐Jewish director Cao Hamburger also chooses to present the Jewish community of São Paulo in his award‐nominated film, O ano em que meus pais saíram de férias [The year my parents went on vacation (2007)]. This article explores what this self‐representation entails for Argentine‐Jewish and Brazilian‐Jewish filmmakers, as well as on the commonalities of Jewish characters presented in the films of Daniel Burman, Gabriel Lichtmann, Ariel Winograd and Cao Hamburger.     

Education as ethics: Emmanuel Levinas on Jewish schooling

For Levinas, the moment of real meaning is in the relation sustained with alterity. This relation is difficult or impossible to characterize philosophically, however, because to render it in comprehensive or objective terms would reduce the relation to one of comprehension and make it commensurate with the ego. Thus philosophy has an ambivalent status with respect to transcendence and ethics; but Levinas is convinced of the essentially transcendent or ethical meaning of Judaic practice: Talmudic exegesis, but also Jewish ritual and the keeping of the sabbath; and these elements are included within a conception of Jewish educational practices. Thus to what extent transcendent meaning can be discussed in philosophical terms and evinced in philosophical work (theoretical and practical)—or rather, to what extent transcendent meaning is possible at all—may be clarified by a sketch of Levinas’ broad approach to Jewish practice, particularly in terms of education. This essay shows how Jewish education is essential for transcendence and ethics for Levinas. Reference is made to several untranslated texts that Levinas published for intellectual but nonacademic French-Jewish journals, in which he explains his own pedagogical vocation. This offers an invaluable perspective on his philosophical and Judaic writings; and above all it gives an indication of his vision of the quotidian and life-long educational practices through which ethics and the transcendent relation between human beings are possible. Finally it raises the question of whether a secular or philosophical education could offer this as well.     

"The defects of his race": E.G. Boring and antisemitism in American psychology, 1923-1953

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Edwin G. Boring wrote letters of reference for Jewish students and colleagues in which he followed the common practice of identifying them as Jews and assessing whether they showed "objectionable traits" thought to characterize Jews. These practices are discussed in relation to the increasing antisemitism of the interwar period, with specific reference to Abraham A. Roback and Kurt Lewin. In Roback's case, the "defect" of Jewishness was thought to explain his undesirable personality: with Lewin, personal charm mitigated the "defect" of Jewishness. Boring's unsuccessful attempts to place Jewish students, his subsequent pessimism, and his postwar discussions of Jewish identity are examined in relation to the general issue of antisemitism in the history of academic psychology.     

MICHAEL WALZER'S SECULAR JEWISH THOUGHT

Although he has never assumed the mantle of a “Jewish thinker,” Michael Walzer has over a period of several decades articulated a comprehensive teaching rooted in philosophical reflection on the sources of Judaism and focused on the most important issues facing both Israel and the diaspora. At the core of his teaching lies a reiteration of what he takes to be the Jewish idea of justice, which he derives from the Bible and other ancient and medieval texts. He also places strong emphasis on liberalism, which he sees not as a product of the Jews' ancient heritage but as “a product of emancipation,” yet no less authentically Jewish for that. On a practical level, his writings are concerned with the implementation of justice and liberal values in both Jewish communities and the Jewish state, in their internal affairs as well as in their relations with others. He has devoted special efforts to showing that a Jewish state is, as such, fully compatible with the promotion of both justice and liberalism, properly understood.