BEYOND THE PALE: Jewish identity,radical politics and feminist art in the United States

Historians have not yet recognized how the cultural legacy of East European Jews helped change the status of women artists in the United States. Immigrant Jewish women in general reacted to institutionalized patriarchy with a desire for social change and the will to act to that end. Jewish women who were artists had professional reasons to embrace feminism, given women's virtual exclusion from professional notice. This article focuses on two pioneering feminist artists — Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro — and demonstrates the importance of their Jewish heritage, showing how and why they set in motion important changes in the tumultuous 1970s that continue to resonate in the art world today. An unusually large number of American feminist artists of the 1970s were Jewish. Their heritage resembles that of the Jewish feminist activist Betty Friedan, whose father emigrated from Eastern Europe. Once we examine the linked roles played by Jewish identity and leftist politics in the formation of the feminist art movement in the United States, it becomes evident that activism in the community of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and the values that they passed on to the next generations made a significant contribution to the success of this movement.     

REVIEWS

This article identifies a previously ignored social movement that existed in London during 1827–1831. The Jewish rights movement, as it will be called here, actually involved a coalition of Jews and Christians. During the movement’s initial phase, London Jews, led by Moses E. Levy (an activist from the United States), joined in solidarity with their oppressed brethren in Russia: their public protests against tsarist policies drew a broad response from the national and international press. This unparalleled movement influenced national political agendas and major legislative reforms, and resulted in striking changes within the Anglo‐Jewish community. By utilising the modern social movement framework as an essential tool to reconstruct this long‐forgotten collective effort, the Jewish rights movement has emerged as a notable chapter in the development of modern Jewish political identity.

“At the present moment, the eyes of England, of Europe, and of a great part of the civilized world seem to be directed toward us, and… men are looking with something approaching anxiety for the result of the Public Meetings of the Jewish Nation that have been called (the first time for many centuries)” (Levy Jewish Community).     

The other invisible hand: Jews and anarchists in London before the First World War

In the decades before the First World War, London worried about anarchist outrages, and particularly, about Jews said to instigate them. Jewish anarchists were rumoured to have been responsible for the ‘ripper’ murders in Whitechapel (1888), an attempt to blow up the Royal Observatory at Greenwich Park (1894) and the Houndsditch murders (1910)/Sidney Street affair (1911). Jews were a visible population in the East End, and editors, MPs, and police authorities offered Jewishness to explain the ‘who’ and ‘why’ of anarchist violence. Jews were also thought to have the capacity to become invisible, ‘outsiders’ who could pass for ‘insiders’. In the radical press, and fictionalised accounts in novels such as Conrad’s The Secret Agent, the image of the Jewish anarchist became that of agent provocateur paid by police to infiltrate and undermine the movement. Jews were said to operate behind-the-scenes, manipulating the economy and political structure. The invisible hand of the market and the invisible hand of anarchism were attached to a Jewish body. About the author: Paul Knepper (Ph.D. Arizona State) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociological Studies, University of Sheffield, and Research Fellow, Centre for Jewish Studies, University of Manchester. Recent publications include ```Jewish Trafficking” and London Jews in the Age of Migration’, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (2008); ‘British Jews and the Racialisation of Crime in the Age of Empire’ British Journal of Criminology (2007); ‘Michael Polanyi and Jewish Identity’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences (2005); ‘Polanyi, “Jewish Problems”, and Zionism’ Tradition and Discovery (2005).     

COMMENT

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jews around the world intensified their call for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Jewish Labour Bund, an Eastern European Jewish socialist party, had been, throughout its existence vehemently anti-Zionist, advocating instead its notion of doikayt (literally “here-ness”), which claimed that Jews should focus on building viable communities in any place in which they lived. This article will examine the way the movement remained steadfast in its opposition to Jewish statehood in the aftermath of the Holocaust and even in the wake Israel's establishment in 1948, and it will chart the process by which the Bund embraced Israel as quickly in 1955, looking at the rise of a Bund organization in Israel. I will argue that the Bund's position was neither desperate nor naïve. It was grounded in the Bundists' traditional enmity towards Zionism, and reflected their faith in a universalist answer to the problem of Jewish survival. This story complicates contemporary understandings of postwar Jewish and European history, and sheds new light on notions of diaspora and experiences of displacement.     

The Lieberman Syndrome: Public and Private Jewishness in American Political Culture

Shortly after the Second World War, Jewish communities in the Czech lands began to remember the Jewish victims of the conflict through a ceremony called the “tryzna”. This article investigates the structure and timing of tryzny to understand how Czech‐Jews memorialized the tragedy that had recently befallen their community. By 1952, it became standard practice for Jewish communities to host a tryzna in March to commemorate the Nazi liquidation of the so‐called “Czech family camp” at Auschwitz‐Birkenau in 1944. The proliferation of tryzny ensured that Czech‐Jews mourned and commemorated the dead of the Second World War in a religious and then increasingly public way. What began as small community events, coalesced and grew into national mourning ceremonies. Tryzny link a national story of loss and an awareness of the larger Jewish genocide with Jewish funerary practices. These tryzny evolved within a communist state, in a world where the concept of the “Holocaust” had not yet entered international consciousness.     

JEWISH NATIONALISM AND THE ENCYCLOPAEDIC IMAGINATION

This article examines Ahad Ha'am's attempt to create a Hebrew compendium of Jewish knowledge, Otsar hayahadut belashon'ivrit (A Treasury of Judaism in the Hebrew Language), at the end of the nineteenth century. Although his proposal was never realized, it represents an important moment in the history of Jewish nationalism, both because of the influence it exerted on Hebrew writers and scholars active in the Zionist movement and, eventually, on the political culture of the yishuv. Ahad Ha'am's effort to publish a Hebrew encyclopedia reveals his faith in the power of books to spark a national revival; he believed that the entire Jewish heritage could be contained within one authoritative book or set of books, and that such a project had the power to rehabilitate and preserve a weak, divided and scattered people, and to provide it with a unified, homogenous national identity. His vision was later modified and transformed by the Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik and survived in altered form as the primary impulse behind Bialik's ambitious attempt to gather, translate and edit the classical works of Judaism into modern anthologies, and after Bialik's death in 1934 as one of the organizing principals of the Zionist movement during the period of the British Mandate.     

Why ‘punk’? Religion,anarchism and feminism in Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer

Pussy Riot became world famous after their Punk Prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. This paper looks at the religious and political statements of some Pussy Riot members against the background of their Russian context and explains why the politically radical left-wing, anarchist and feminist group used the form of a punk prayer to express protest. Elaborating the connection of punk, religion and politics, I argue that punk is a sub-culturally established medium to express leftist, anarchist and feminist political convictions and to offend the religious and political hierarchy, especially when performed in the country’s most prominent cathedral; and also that the religiosity of at least some of the Pussy Riot members is not an obstacle to using a punk performance as their form to express protest; by contrast, punk is an adequate medium for ‘liminoid’ anti-authoritarian forms of religion like that of Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. In Russia, a punk prayer is not only a way for young anarchistically orientated feminists to celebrate their lifestyle, but also one of the very few ways to get attention for their concerns.     

“I will bless those who bless you”: Christian Zionism,Fetishism, and Unleashing the Blessings of God

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of ‘blessing’ Israel that has become common among contemporary American Christian Zionists. After introducing a theological scheme that has dominated discussions of contemporary Christian Zionism, the article critically examines one of the emerging narratives concerning the (re)discovery of Christian Zionists’ Jewish roots and the way the Jewish contribution to Christianity is framed. Following this, the article considers the way Israel and Jews are understood to hold a distinct place in the network of world redemption and how contemporary Israel acts as a marker—what is referred to as a ‘signifier of stability’—that helps Christian Zionists locate God’s ongoing work in the world. Finally, the article discusses how Christian Zionists ‘bless’ Israel in practical ways as a form of submission to God, a reminder of their relationship with God, and a way to locate themselves in the redemptive process.     

OF MESSIAHS AND SULTANS: SHABBATAI ZEVI AND EARLY MODERNITY IN MOROCCO

Moroccan Jews became “modern” through a complex process of cultural and legal changes resulting in large part from their close encounter with imperial Europe. Institutions like the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the protégé system had an undeniable influence on the transformation of Moroccan Jewish identity and expectations during this period. In order to fully historicize Moroccan Jewish modernity, however—to locate its beginnings as well as its ending (not to mention its myriad meanings)—this article argues for broadening our inquiry to encompass earlier time periods, alternative geographies, and deeper registers of change than those imposed by an exclusive focus on a European impact followed by a local response. To that end, it analyses a cataclysmic event in Jewish history during the period prior to colonial penetration: the rise and fall of the messianic movement known as Sabbateanism, so-named after its founder, Shabbatai Zevi the “false Messiah” [1626–1676] of Izmir. Inspired by current trends in Ottoman history, this article attempts to locate Sabbateanism within contemporary social and political developments in Morocco during a formative period that witnessed both the integration of the Sephardim and the rise of the Alawi state. Such a contextualization begins sketching the parameters of an early modern period in Moroccan Jewish history at the same time as it compels us to recognize the consistencies in Moroccan Jewish society that survived the subsequent colonial period in North Africa, when seemingly everything changed.     

White Jesus and Antisemitism: Toward an Antiracist and Decolonial Christology

This article argues that traditional Christology is intimately bound up with a triumphalist agenda that denies Jesus’ Jewishness and is structurally antisemitic. Taking an antiracist stance, the article argues that systemic rethinking of Christianity’s theological resources is needed, which must be anti-antisemitic and antiracist. This involves reconfiguring how we take on board Jesus’ Jewishness in a post-Holocaust context and recognizing Jesus as a Jewish prophet. From this, it is tentatively suggested that rethinking the role of the Messiah involves understanding a Levinasian Messiah who does not come, but rather calls upon us to act in a Messianic role before the Other as an ethical imperative.     

Tisha B’Av, “Ghetto Day,” and producing “authentic” Jews at postwar Jewish summer camps

The postwar period brought sweeping changes for American Jews. Communal socioeconomic transitions and the aftermath of the Holocaust triggered intense anxieties among Jewish leaders regarding the preservation of so-called Jewish “authenticity,” and to an increased focus on the moulding of American Jewish youth. This article considers how Jewish summer camps used Tisha B’Av and secular, alternative memorial days, to lead campers toward various, ideologically imbued visions of Jewish authenticity. Through fostering an aura of tragedy in what was otherwise a world of play, songs, and enjoyment, Jewish educators used memorial days as transformative educational tools. Though camps’ ceremonies looked remarkably similar, often including a carefully crafted sombre atmosphere, dirges, and responsive readings, the message of the days proved malleable to different ideological perspectives. This article considers how Zionist, Yiddishist, Reform and Conservative camps came to use memorial days to produce “real,” “ideal,” or “authentic” Jews in accordance with their ideological visions in the decades immediately following the Holocaust.     

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.     

Tension and opportunity in post-world War II American psychology

The rapid growth of post-World War II psychology in the United States led to intradisciplinary tensions and opportunities. In this article, I examine these tensions and opportunities in the context of social change from the 1950s through the present, attending specifically to the broad impact of federal funding on psychology. I argue that as psychology became a resource-rich field, it was forced to move from a narrow, parochial stance to a position as a national-level professional player that had to deal with the challenges of mixing science and practice, as well as meeting the demands of non-White psychologists at the national level. The impetus to create a more inclusive psychology has grown in the last three decades of the 20th century and has helped create possibilities for greater richness in American psychology and movement toward a truly international role vis-a-vis emergent psychologies around the world.     

The Jews of Jaffa at the Time of the Arab Revolt: the emergence of the demand for annexation

The outbreak of the 1936 riots immediately motivated the Jews of Jaffa to sever their ties with that city in favour of annexation to Tel Aviv. This demand became one of the thorniest and most sensitive problems on the local level, and engaged the British authorities right up to the end of the Mandate. It also became a concern of the highest order for the institutions of the yishuv, bound up with the Zionist struggle as a whole. This article focuses on the origin of the problem and its treatment from 1936 to 1939. The activity of the Jewish side is studied as being in conflict with that of the British and Arab side. From the outset, a solution hardly seemed likely. As long as the authorities preferred a policy of non-involvement, the issue remained a quarrel between the Jews and the Arabs. Although this period ended without any progress towards a settlement, it produced several notable gains for the Jewish side that formed a basis for continued action towards annexation in the years to come.     

The Montreal Jewish Community and the Holocaust

In 1933 Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in Germany. At the same time, in Canada in general and in Montreal in particular, anti-Semitism was becoming more widespread. The Canadian Jewish Congress, as a result of the growing tension in Europe and the increase in anti-Semitism at home, was reborn in 1934 and became the authoritative voice of Canadian Jewry. During World War II the Nazis embarked on a campaign that resulted in the systematic extermination of millions of Jews. This article focuses on the Montreal Jewish community, its leadership, and their response to the fate of European Jewry. The study pays particular attention to the Canadian Jewish Congress which influenced the outlook of the community and its subsequent actions. As the war progressed, loyalty to Canada and support for the war effort became the overriding issues for the community and the leadership and concern for their European brethren faded into the background.     

The construction of gender in halakhic Responsa by the Reform movement: transgender people as a case study

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to the expanding field of trans-Jewish-feminist studies in general, and to the scholarship about Jewish law in particular, by analyzing the ways in which the Reform movement has gradually legitimized transgender people and accepted them fully. Applying Judith Butler's ideas about the heterosexual matrix as an analytical tool, the article demonstrates how the Reform movement, in a slow and gradual process, has left the entire heterosexual matrix behind, although it can be claimed that the process (of leaving behind the heterosexual matrix) has not run all the way to a complete dissolution.     

Dissecting life with a Jewish scalpel: a qualitative analysis of Jewish-centered family life

This article highlights findings from a qualitative analysis of the ways in which Jewish families identify how Judaism influences their lives. A theoretical sample of two religious and two cultural families were chosen from a larger sample of 48 Jewish families in Central New York. The qualitative part of this study, which was part of a larger multimethod investigation, was done in order to gather inductively any data that would allow the researchers to build a theory about a particular type of ethnic identity--Jewish identity--and how it affects family dynamics. Eleven categories emerged from this study, which suggest that this particular type of ethnic identity influences many family dynamics, for example, styles of communicating, parenting, values, and family rituals. The participants seem to dissect the world with a "Jewish scalpel." This "scalpel" informs their daily interactions, their parenting styles, and their childrens' self-perceptions.     

The Hasidic Ethos and the Schisms of Jewish Society

The early hasidic movement was distinguished by its readiness to see the sacred in everything. As presented by Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polonnoye (d. 1782), disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, this perception was particularly to be applied to fragmented eastern European Jewish society. The scholarly class saw themselves as “holy” but could not relate to the ignorant masses. Hasidic teachings sought to reveal the holiness in everyone and thus draw together these disparate classes, with a vision of an underlying unity of the Jewish people. During the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment and Reformist movements provoked a strong traditionalist reaction which eventually led to the contemporary ultra-orthodox (haredi) enclave. The haredi Jew consciously seeks to live in a separate society with invisible walls protecting the holiness within and keeping at bay the profane world outside. The hasidim form an important section of this haredi enclave, deliberately suppressing the earlier inclusivist hasidic ethos. In the mid-twentieth century, the Habad hasidic movement revived aspects of that ethos in a modern form, leading to its dominant contemporary mode of expression: outreach. At the same time, Habad seeks to remain part of the haredi world. This post-modern combination of opposites may eventually influence other haredi groups and lead to new configurations of the schisms provoked by the confrontation of tradition and modernity.     

Mediate Auscultation, the Stethoscope, and the “Autopsy of the Living”: Medicine's Acoustic Culture

The practice of mediate auscultation—listening to the body through a stethoscope—was at the center of new articulations of medical thought and practice in the 19th century. During that period, the stethoscope became the hallmark of medical modernity. This article offers a detailed examination of the work of RTH Laennec and other important writings on the stethoscope in order to argue for the centrality of a distinctive orientation toward listening in modern medicine. The development of mediate auscultation applied medical and scientific reason to listening, just as a particular practice of hearing the body became integral to everyday functioning of medicine. Mediate auscultation was thus an artifact of a new approach to reason and the senses, one based in a scientific mindset and a logic of mediation.     

From H = log s(n) to conceptual framework: a short history of information

"Information" has become a widely used term in psychology, especially within cognitive psychology. However, despite its status as a technical term, the word now rarely receives explicit definition. By contrast, when information entered the vocabulary of psychologists in the late 1940s, it had an explicit mathematical definition largely derived from developments in information theory. This article examines how information entered psychology, how its meaning changed, and how it remained a technical term in the vocabulary of psychologists in the second part of the 20th century. "Information" became a term that was required to speak to ever more diverse theoretical concerns and its earliest definitions in psychology could not sustain such uses. As a consequence, "information" became a term whose technical uses became increasingly difficult to differentiate from its everyday meanings. I argue that this has not necessarily made "information" a worthless term but one whose lack of specificity may now be unsettling to some psychologists.