SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THEIR CHILDREN

Despite the importance given in their narratives to the birth of their children and grandchildren, in most of the interviews I conducted with Holocaust survivors they do not discuss their children or family life in detail. Rather, for many of them, discussion is generally connected to how or what they have explained to their children about their experiences during the war. Survivors’ preoccupation with this issue could be understood as a response to the context in which they find themselves, in which a particular social discourse about survivors has developed. This discourse arguably engendered particular responses from survivors: it is a question that survivors expect to be asked, and it is seen as part of their prescribed role. Based on over 50 narrative interviews with survivors of the Holocaust, this article explores how survivors reflect and understand their parenting. It examines to what extent their behaviour has been influenced by their experiences during the war, or in reaction to a particular social discourse. Whilst literature on the second generation has been predominantly based on the responses of the children of survivors, this article provides important evidence of how survivors reflect on and understand their parenting.     

DELEGITIMIZING JEWS AND ISRAEL IN IRAN'S INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST CARTOON CONTEST

In 2006, the Iranian government-aligned newspaper Hamshahri sponsored The International Holocaust Cartoon Contest. The stated aim of the contest was to denounce “Western hypocrisy on freedom of speech,” and to challenge “Western hegemony” in relation to Holocaust knowledge. This government-backed initiative was a clear attempt to export the Iranian regime's anti-Zionist agenda. Using qualitative thematic analysis and Social Representations Theory, this article provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of the cartoons submitted to the contest in order to identify emerging social representations of Jews and Israel. Three superordinate themes are outlined: (i) “Constructing the ‘Evil Jew’ and ‘Brutal Israel’ as a Universal Threat;” (ii) “Denying the Holocaust and Affirming Palestinian Suffering;” (iii) “Constructing International Subservience to ‘Nazi-Zionist’ Ideology.” Although the organizers of the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest claimed that their aims were anti-Zionist, this article elucidates the overtly anti-Semitic character of the contest and its cartoons. It is argued that the cartoons exhibit a distorted, one-sided version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of Jewish history, and may therefore shape viewers' beliefs concerning Jews and Israel in fundamentally negative ways, with negative outcomes for intergroup relations and social harmony.     

THE AUSTERITY POLICY AND THE RULE OF LAW: RELATIONS BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC IN FLEDGLING ISRAEL 1

This article examines the concept of the rule of law as perceived by the Israeli public and decision‐makers during Israel’s early years. The purpose of the article is to examine the relationship between policy‐makers and the general public in the early stages of Israeli statehood. The “rule of law” is employed to facilitate greater understanding of the weaknesses or even failures of the austerity policy and to unveil some of the mechanisms leading to public disobedience, during times of nation‐building fervour. The roles of the public, policy‐makers, law enforcement apparatus and adjudicators in shaping the social order and economic reality is addressed.     

EFFECTS OF VISUAL PERSPECTIVE AND NARCISSISM ON SELF-PERCEPTION:

Abstract— Would people still see themselves through rose-colored glasses if they had the same perspective as others do? We contrast predictions from narcissism theory with cognitive-informational accounts of self-perception bias Study 1 showed that narcissists enjoy situations in which they can view themselves from an external perspective, and report that such situations boost their self-confidence. In Study 2, subjects evaluated their performance in a group task from the normal visual perspective of the self and from a "reversed" perspective (manipulated via videotape) Narcissists overestimated their performance, and reversing visual perspective did not reduce this self-enhancement bias Instead, we found a person-situation interaction. Narcissists became even more positively biased in the reversed-perspective condition, whereas nonnarcissists showed even less bias. Thus, allowing narcissistic individuals to observe themselves on videotape further increased their self-admiration, just as the mythical Narcissus admired his reflection in the pond     

PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIETY IN ISRAEL*

The development of psychology in Israel is presented as a reflection of its society's aims and needs. Until the early 50′s, the major orientation of Israel's population was geared towards achieving national and ideological goals. Scientific as well as applied psychology was not perceived as being able to fulfill or even being in line with these goals. However, starting from the early 50′s, Israel's ideological orientation as well as its practical needs changed dramatically. Mass immigration, housing problems, ethnicity, urbanization, industrialization, the emergence of underprivileged groups and a more individualistically oriented ideology raised new problems and strongly required the services of psychology. This paper tries to show how different branches of psychology - scientific as well as applied ones - developed as a direct function of the country's social needs and problems and its search for appropriate ways of dealing with them.     

SELF-PERCEPTION IN WRITING: THE EFFECTS OF WRITING WORKSHOP AND TRADITIONAL INSTRUCTION ON INTERMEDIATE GRADE STUDENTS

This study compared the self-perception - specifically in terms of writing - of fourth- and fifth-grade students whose teachers used a writingworkshop approach with those whose teachers used a traditional approach. The measure used was the Writer Self-Perception Scale (Bottomley, Henk, & Melnick, 1997/1998). No significant differences were found between the scores of students who had been taught by the two teaching approaches. The findings of this study suggest that individual teachers are more important than strategies or approaches in affecting the writer self-perception of intermediate-grade children.     

REMEMBERING AND REBUILDING: THE WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS,IN THE SHADOW OF THE HOLOCAUST

In this essay I expand on the role of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in the 1940s and 1950s. Its mode of operation during the two decades that followed World War II was markedly different from those that characterized other sections of American Jewry. What set the WJC apart from other Jewish organizations was that its leaders sought not merely to institutionalize the relationship between Israel and American Jewry, but involved themselves in the Jewish world as a whole and in Europe in particular, where they vigorously worked to rehabilitate the post-Holocaust Jewish diaspora and to assist those survivors who wished to do so to reintegrate themselves into Europe.     

THE ABSENT JEWISH CHILD: PHOTOGRAPHY AND HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION IN POLAND

This article considers the representations of Holocaust in Poland by discussing the ways in which photographs of Jewish children are used in literature, film and public commemoration. It shows how a “postmemorial reading” of these images by, predominantly gentile, writers, directors and social actors might be viewed as an attempt to rhetorically fill the void left after the destruction of Poland's Jewish community and to project an image of a tolerant civic society. The article examines famous images, like the photo of the Warsaw Ghetto boy, with which this discussion begins, and lesser known pictures, such as the family photographs of Henio ?ytomirski from Lublin, which are examined towards the end of this article. While looking at these images, I reflect on the interaction between the visual representations of Jewish children, the memory of the Shoah in Poland and the fashioning of Polish national identity in the wake of the accession to European Union.     

QUANTITATIVE MEASURES OF CONSTRUING IN CHILD ABUSE SURVIVORS

Quantitative aspects of construing associated with long-term effects of abusive childhood experiences are examined within a personal construct theory framework. Indices of negative self-construing, reduced identification with others, and extreme construing are compared from the elicited Repertory Grids (RepGrids) of survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse and nonabused controls (N = 336). Responses to the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire (ATQ) are also compared, as a further measure of negative self-constructions. Abuse histories are particularly associated with RepGrid and ATQ measures of negative self-constructions and with RepGrid measures of perceived differences between self and parents. Among cognitive and construct measures, the ATQ is most strongly related to standardized measures of symptom distress and social maladjustment, but RepGrid measures also make a unique contribution. From the RepGrid, extreme perceptions of self are related to symptom distress and social maladjustment, and self-ideal discrepancy is related to social maladjustment. Shared method variance and standardized statements specifically relevant to self-evaluation and pathology may contribute to the predictiveness of the ATQ. In contrast, the RepGrid samples a more general range of idiographic constructs used in comparing people.     

IDENTITY,POLITICS AND HALAKHAH IN MODERN ISRAEL

The fierce debate over conversion to Judaism raging in Israel today has been fuelled by the Israeli Law of Return and the resulting immigration of large numbers of non-Jews to Israel from the Soviet Union. It has precedents, however, in earlier rabbinic literature. This paper traces the conversion debate from its Talmudic origins, through the nineteenth century halakhic polemic, to the present day. It demonstrates how the processes of secularization and nationalism that have affected the Jewish community have impacted on a changing balance in the roles of religion and nationalism in the definition of “who is a Jew” and “who is a convert?” It also shows how halakhic rulings are affected by social changes and how the ideologies of halakhic authorities impact their decisions.     

LARGE-SCALE REDUCTIONS IN SPEEDING AND ACCIDENTS IN CANADA AND ISRAEL: A BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

We assessed the effects of posted feedback and warning ticket programs on speeding and accidents in two cities. In Experiment 1, speeding feedback signs were effective even when 10 were used in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and reductions in speeding were associated with reductions in accidents. The effectiveness of the signs was correlated with the number of intersections and residences within 0.5 km beyond them, and the signs had no effect on untreated streets. In Experiment 2, posted feedback and a warning program reduced speeding and accidents on 14 streets in Haifa, Israel.     

THE LONG-TERM PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS AND TREATMENT OF HOLOCAUST TRAUMA

The present article gives an overview of the long-term psychological effects of Holocaust traumatization on survivors and their offspring and suggests possible treatment strategies for these client populations. Based on interviews with and treatment of hundreds of such clients and on an extensive review of the literature, it also represents some of the cumulative experience of AMCHA, an Israeli treatment center devoted specifically to this issue.     

SHADOWS OF WAR AND HOLOCAUST: JEWS,GERMAN JEWS,AND THE SIXTIES IN THE UNITED STATES,REFLECTIONS AND MEMORIES

The article reflects on the––muted––“shadows of war and Holocaust” motivating Jewish activists in the civil rights and New Left movements of the “sixties” as well as the women's movement in the 1970s. For children of Jewish refugees from National Socialism, as well as for “red diaper” offspring of American Communists and alienated rebels against the newly comfortable Jewish suburban middle class, participation in these political struggles could serve both as a key form of alternative “Americanization” or “assimilation through protest” and a link to Jewish values of social justice. In a radically forward-looking movement, profoundly influenced by the African-American church, and linked with a few prominent refugee rabbis, the call for “Never Again” admonished young Jews never to be “good Germans,” to reject complicity with unjust policies at home and abroad; the specifically Jewish invocation of “never again a victim” only came later, decades removed from the events of war and Holocaust.     

A TEST OF McCLELLAND'S THEORY OF ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION IN BRITAIN,JAPAN, IRELAND AND ISRAEL

Les auteurs tirent deux hypothèses de la théorie de McClelland, selon laquelle les taux rapides de développement économique sont sous-tendus par un fort besoin de réussite. La première hypothèse pose que les étudiants des pays à forte croissance économique manifesteront une préférence pour les affaires, et la seconde qu'ils se sentiront plus concernés par la réussite professionnelle. Les recherches ont lieu au Japon et en Israel, pays à forte croissance économique, en Grande-Bretagne et en Irlande, pays à faible croissance économique, sur des échantillons d'étudiants mâles d'université. Les résultats ne confirment pas la première hypothèse, mais confirment la seconde.