“A new book in Jewish affairs begins”: Maurice de Hirsch and the waning power of Jewish philanthropy at the Fin-de-Siècle

This article looks at Jewish responses to the death of the banker, railroad entrepreneur, and philanthropist Maurice de Hirsch in 1896, the same year that Theodor Herzl published his Jewish State. Examining printed eulogies and obituaries that appeared in Jewish newspapers, from Eastern Europe to France, and from Germany to the Ottoman Empire, the article demonstrates how contemporaries understood the passing of Baron Hirsch as the end of a golden age of Jewish philanthropy. While they celebrated the legacy of the late benefactor, the leaders of Jewish public opinion across Europe realized that the challenges that began to undermine the liberal order established in the century of emancipation were calling for a political response that philanthropy could no longer offer.     

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.     

Transnational intervention and its limits: the case of interwar Poland*

This article reassesses the efforts by western Jews to rescue their imperilled European brethren in the years before and during the Second World War. It goes beyond the conventional question, “Could more have been done to rescue European Jewry?” Rather, the article explores what Jewish leaders learned about the global practice of philanthropic relief during the decades before the rise of European fascism and hyper-nationalism. It then asks how this accumulated knowledge may have informed their decisions once they understood the dangers faced by Jews in Germany, Poland, and Romania. This holistic analysis of actions taken by transnational leaders accounts for operational precedents, geo-politics, migration regimes, diaspora networks, organizational history, intra-communal relations, and economics and contemporary orientations toward aid. All these create a realistic reckoning of the strengths and limitations of Jewish transnationalism at the time, allowing us to transcend value-based judgements of this painful chapter in Jewish history.     

"Thy People Are My People": Emma Lazarus,Daniel Deronda,and the Ambivalence of Jewish Modernity

This essay examines the role of Jews in Britain’s imperial strategy and asks whether Britain could have built its empire without them. Recent scholarship concerning Jews and the British Empire places Jews in the “informal empire”, in economic and other activities outside political rule. This was the case in nineteenth‐century Malta, where Jews established themselves in commercial activities in support of Britain’s military ambitions in the Mediterranean. They received some political recognition, though this was short‐lived. Despite the efforts of Moses Montefiore, the British government refused to yield space for building a synagogue. The success of Malta’s leading Jews, in the early and mid‐century, meant that they were never above suspicion. In the late nineteenth century, the British government shielded the Jewish community from an accusation of ritual murder, but this had more to do with promoting British interests vis‐à‐vis the Catholic Church in Malta than advancing Jewish interests. Colonial policy concerning Jews did not result from a coherent rationale concerning Jewish interests nor consistent Jewish influence.     

Identity,Incentives, and Religious Defense of Human Rights: Marshall Meyer and the DAIA in Argentina's Dirty War

Whether religious groups advance or limit human rights has been a topic of recent debate among human rights scholars. This article studies the conditions under which religious leaders advance human rights in the context of Argentina's Jewish community during the country's 1976–1983 military dictatorship. Three major influences on religious support for human rights—autonomy from a religious community's establishment, a missionary-reformer identity, and congregational mobilization—are highlighted. Original archival research from the papers of U.S.-born rabbi Marshall T. Meyer illustrates his defense of human rights in Argentina, contrasting his work with the inaction of a major established Jewish organization. Quantitative cross-national analysis extends the case study findings by showing a relationship between religious institutions’ autonomy from the state and defense of human rights.     

Counting on Whiteness: Religion,race, ethnicity,and the politics of Jewish demography

American Jews have long been an anomaly for scholars concerned with understanding how they fit into extant social scientific or historical categories. Sometimes they seem best described as an ethnic group, other times as a religious one. This ambiguity has also vexed Jewish communal leaders whose desire to comprehend their communities has largely been underwritten by their intention to protect it. This intersection of sociological methods and schema and Jewish communal concerns has resulted in decisive omissions regarding how best to account for the racial and ethnic diversity of American Jews. An analysis of survey instruments used in 175 American Jewish population studies and community portraits conducted since 1970 reveals a focus on questions of religious practice and an avoidance of those about race and ethnicity, resulting in a “religio-racial formation” of American Jews as White. This approach to studying American Jewish life has marginalized or excluded non-White Jews while ensuring ongoing Jewish communal access to Whiteness without having to claim it explicitly.     

Regional history, Jewish memory: the purim of Narbonne

Records of traumatic events in the Jewish past provide the historian a rare glimpse at how community leaders interpreted and understood the historical conditions of diasporic Jews as well as their own immediate communities. In 1236 a violent altercation between a Jewish traveler and a local Christian precipitated a mass uprising against the city's Jewish community. Rapid intervention by the local viscount, Don Aymeric, restored peace to the Jewish quarter, averting loss of life or valuable property. Modern interpretations of this text have varied significantly since its discovery in the late nineteenth century. Scholars have struggled to reconcile it with their expectations of the shape and meaning of the Jewish past. Because the thirteenth-century author of this brief narrative suggested a typological link between the events in Narbonne and the story of Purim, the dominant modern interpretation has viewed this account as evidence of a very early Second Purim commemoration. However there is little evidence to support this claim. This article reads the narrative of the “Purim of Narbonne” against other medieval Jewish narratives about the history and legacy of Jewish Narbonne*.     

Family, Community, and Motherhood: Caring for Fatherless Children in the Jewish Community of Thirteenth-Century Perpignan

This article investigates the guardianship of fatherless children (orphans) in one of the most important Jewish communities of the thirteenth-century realms of Aragon, the aljama of the town of Perpignan. After reviewing some ideals of Solomon ben Abraham ibn Adret of Barcelona, as expressed in his responsa, the article focuses on documents of practice. This documentary basis includes royal charters, Latin wills of Jewish testators, and 148 unedited transactions generated by eighteen panels of guardians between 1266 and 1286, described in an analytical table at the end of the article. The practical evidence reveals that guardians usually served as a group, panels comprised close relatives of the wards and men who were distinguished in their community through official service. Case studies expose the dynamics within these panels and establish that the orphans' widowed mother usually acted as the group's leader. A comparison with her Christian counterpart places the rights and responsibilities of the Jewish widowed mother guardian into relief. Although not autonomous, Jewish widowed guardians were highly effective caretakers of their fatherless children. The idealized view of the Jewish widow held by her medieval contemporaries as helpless and in need of special care from the men of her community enabled already capable widows to benefit from the financial aid of community leaders who otherwise might not have been so keen to foster these women's legal and financial agency.     

EICHMANN’S BLOOD‐BARTER IN HUNGARY

In 1944, with the Second World War all but lost for Germany and her bombed‐out industry unable to supply the military, one desperate measure taken to obtain needed war material was an offer by Eichmann to barter the lives of one million Jews for ten thousand trucks. The interaction between the SS and Jewish leaders in Budapest—and in turn their appeals outside Hungary—is the subject of five plays: one originating in Austria, two in Germany, one in Great Britain and one in Israel. All five are discussed here in terms of their approach to the subject, their raisons d’être and their pursuit of the ethical issues raised by Jewish involvement with the Nazis. Whether under a fictional or his real name, a central character in these plays is Reszö Kastner (1906–1957), who was accused after the war of cooperation with the Nazis.     

“Two Jews walk into a Coffeehouse”: the “Jewish question,” utility, and political participation in late eighteenth-century Livorno

This article examines the distinct ways in which the Jewish condition was perceived during the Enlightenment in the port city of Livorno, arguing that the privileged status of certain mercantile Jewish communities could be a force for conservatism and not necessarily a trigger of emancipation. On the basis of literary and governmental sources, including the little-known ironic philosophical dialogue Les Juifs (Livorno, 1786), and an analysis of Tuscan municipal reforms, it appears that Livorno offers an alternative model of integration to the better-known Prussian and French cases. The Tuscan government and intellectual elite did not consider the useful Livornese minority in need either “to be improved” or better “integrated into society,” and thus the Enlightenment critiques of Jewish society typical of French and Prussian reformers and the calls for Jewish self-improvement that characterized the Haskalah are not applicable to Livorno. However, the notion of utility that defined the Livornese community during the Old Regime was not a station on the road to emancipation. Jewish utility in Livorno did not bring about greater civil rights for individual Livornese Jews. Rather in both function and perception, it contributed to the arrested political integration of Livornese Jewry in the 1780s compared to events in all other Tuscan Jewish communities     

“End of the jargon-scandal” – The decline and fall of Yiddish in the Netherlands (1796–1886)

In the nineteenth century the language of the Ashkenazi community in the Netherlands rapidly changed as the Dutch vernacular replaced Yiddish. In the first half of the century a coalition composed of government officials and members of the Jewish elite collaborated in matters of language–politics. The goal was the acculturation of the Jewish community by advocating Dutch and combating Yiddish. Controlling Jewish education and encouraging preaching in the vernacular were the most important means employed, and by the second half of the century, Yiddish disappeared as the language of Dutch Jews. The arguments of the proponents of Dutch were centered on social integration and the belief that Yiddish was not a proper language. The advocates of Yiddish defended their language by stressing it as an international means of Jewish communication.     

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.     

Replenishing the “Fountain of Judaism”: Traditionalist Jewish Education in Interwar Poland

The unexpected revitalization of Polish Jewish traditionalism—Hasidic and non-Hasidic—is particularly visible in the realm of education. During the interwar period, a combined influx of pious refugees from the Soviet Union and generous American Jewish philanthropy bolstered traditionalist Jewish elementary schools (hadarim) and yeshivot. At the same time, traditionalists reformed those hitherto sacrosanct institutions in hopes of competing with emergent secularist Jewish movements while preserving an ostensibly authentic cultural core. Polish Jewish traditionalism was subtly transformed in the process, presenting a striking contrast with its more rigid “ultra-Orthodox” counterpart in neighboring Hungary and offering a viable alternative to secularist Jewish subcultures within Poland. This article highlights the surprising durability and flexibility of Poland’s traditionalist Jewish communities during a period usually conceived as one of secularist Jewish growth and traditionalist decline.     

Philanthropy,cosmopolitanism, and the benefits of giving directly

In the face of widespread poverty, Peter Singer argues that the best response is giving money to charitable organizations that give aid to the poor. In response, much criticism has been leveled by cosmopolitan philosophers that philanthropy is unable to effectively combat poverty for many reasons: such funds fall prey to corrupt bureaucrats, the poor will waste the money, or become dependent upon donations rather than providing for themselves. In this paper, I argue that the work of the organization GiveDirectly offers an approach that can overcome the criticisms leveled against philanthropy. GiveDirectly works by providing direct cash transfers to the poor; by adopting such a straightforward method, GiveDirectly provides practical benefits to the poor, and overcomes key philosophical critiques. The poor are empowered to make choices to meet their own needs, and do not become dependent upon donations. While GiveDirectly does not constitute the solution to the problem of global poverty, it does provide an avenue by which philanthropic efforts can make a difference in the battle against poverty, in ways that best respect and promote the autonomy of the poor.     

“JEWISH TRAFFICKING” AND LONDON JEWS IN THE AGE OF MIGRATION

There are excellent accounts of the Jewish response to “trafficking” in women for prostitution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but recent analyses of the white slavery phenomenon have raised new questions. This article concerns the response of Jews in England, and specifically the motivations and activities of those who founded the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women (JAPGW). The JAPGW set the model for initiatives carried out by Jewish communities throughout the British Empire and was a primary contributor to internationalisation of the issue on the part of the League of Nations after the First World War. The JAPGW’s motivations were complex: they involved a particular religious outlook, the response to antisemitism and assumptions along lines of class and gender. In addressing “Jewish trafficking”, Britain’s established Jewish community sought to take ownership of what it meant to be a Jew in British society.     

An Orthodox View of Philanthropy and Church Diaconia

According to Orthodox theology, philanthropy refers to the loveof God toward man, which man is called to imitate by lovinghis neighbor as himself. This love consists not just in emotionsbut requires specific acts of philanthropy toward our fellowman in need. The church, in keeping the commandments of Christ,has developed throughout her history a rich philanthropic work.The diaconia of the church has taken many forms, thus respondingto historical change and to the specific human needs at differenttimes. Concentrating on diaconia for those who are in need oflong-term care, this article presents the Orthodox view of thediaconia of the church, as realized through her own philanthropicorganizations as well as through her very specific contributionto the diaconia offered by state sponsored charitable institutions.     

JCA-ORT-JAS-JDC: one big agrarianizing family

This essay examines ideological and institutional patterns that characterized the four most successful projects in Jewish agrarianism from the 1890s until the eve of the Second World War. These major undertakings included the agricultural settlements created by Baron Maurice de Hirsch in Argentina, colonization efforts in North America supported by the Jewish Agricultural Society, the settlement work of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the interwar Soviet Union, and parts of the institutional mechanisms that supported Zionist agricultural settlement in the Yishuv. The article studies the forces that drove the world of Jewish philanthropy to support such efforts over several decades and across four continents.     

The New Anti-Semitism in Europe: The Islamic Dimension of,and Jewish Belonging in,the EU

This article examines the sense of Jewish vulnerability and exclusion in Europe that has resulted from manifestations, and Jewish perceptions, of the “new anti-Semitism,” and the role of Islamic communities in Europe in propagating this form of hatred of Jews. First emerging in 2000 with the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada, and tied in with the Middle East conflict, anger at Israel is directed at Diaspora Jewish communities. This “new anti-Semitism” targets the Jewish collective with the characteristics of anti-Semitism previously aimed at individual Jews. The article focuses on the wave of anti-Semitism that erupted as a result of the 2014 Israeli–Hamas War. Based on an analysis of European Jewish communities, it considers the active part played by European Muslim communities in perpetrating the new anti-Semitism. Using an analysis of survey data, emigration statistics and newspaper opinion articles by leading European Jewish intellectuals, the article considers how the new anti-Semitism is adversely affecting Jewish–Muslim relations and the concomitant sense of “belonging” of European Jewry. The article considers what is required to overcome the new anti-Semitism propagated by Muslim communities to restore a greater sense of Jewish belonging to, and identification with, Europe.     

Explaining Differences in Philanthropic Behavior Between Christians,Muslims, and Hindus in the Netherlands

Using survey data from the Netherlands, we find that Muslims have relatively high levels of religious philanthropic behavior and relatively low levels of secular philanthropic behavior, whereas Hindus have relatively low levels of religious philanthropic behavior and higher levels of secular philanthropic behavior. Results indicate that the community explanation and the conviction explanation of the relationship between religion and philanthropic behavior are both valid to some extent when it comes to differences in philanthropic behavior between Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. In addition, we find a relationship between group orientation in worship rituals on the relation between religion and philanthropic behavior. The more group-oriented the worship rituals, the stronger the relation between religion and philanthropic behavior. The results suggest that Durkheim’s theory (La Suicide: Etude de Sociologie. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1897) may only be valid in a Christian context.     

The discursive “othering” of Jews and Muslims in the Britain First solidarity patrol

In this paper, critical discursive psychology is used to analyse the Islamophobic discourse by the far‐right party Britain First in its “solidarity patrol” video. Britain First patrolled in Golders Green, North London, to show support for Jewish communities following the ISIS shooting at the kosher supermarket in Paris on January 9, 2015. The Charlie Hebdo shooting and the shooting at the kosher supermarket (as well as other attacks by members of the Islamic State) have led to Muslims being seen as a threat to Britain and exposed to Islamophobic attacks and racial abuse. This presents far‐right parties in the United Kingdom with the dilemma of appearing moderate and mainstream in their anti‐Islamic stance. The analysis focuses on how Britain First used the shooting at the kosher supermarket in order to construct Jews as under threat from Islam. The analysis also includes visual communication in the solidarity patrol video that was used to provide “evidence” that Britain First supported Jewish communities. Results are discussed in light of how Britain First used aligning with Jews in order to appear as “reasonable” in projecting its anti‐Islamic ideology and how critical discursive psychology can be used to show how conflicting social identities are constructed.