A new exodus? Explaining Jewish migration from Europe after the Cold War

Why are European Jews migrating to Israel in significant numbers? Israeli leaders and popular press reports suggest that incidents of antisemitism have reached such high levels across Europe, even in fully democratic countries, that Jews are leaving once again to escape persecution and violence. Others suggest that Jews are migrating for the same reasons other migrants do: for greater economic opportunity. Until now, we have had no way of weighing the relative merit of these claims, hampered by the absence of reliable comparative data on antisemitism in Europe. Leveraging a new dataset compiled by the author, this study tests these competing hypotheses and finds that European Jews migrate because of greater economic opportunity in Israel. While concerns about antisemitism in Europe are at record highs and more Jews are considering moving to Israel than ever before in the post-war era, so far most Jewish migration is to take advantage of better economic opportunities in Israel.     

J. J. Katz' logic of questions: New departure or dead end?

Philosophical Studies -     

“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.     

“A new and modern golden age of Jewish culture”: shaping the cultural politics of transnational Jewish antifascism

The Holocaust and a worldwide Jewish enthusiasm and support for the Red Army’s defeat of the German Army on the Eastern Front led to a greater sense of international Jewish consciousness and solidarity often tied to an antifascist politics. Utilizing a transnational lens, I explore how Jewish antifascists of the immediate post-war period proffered a novel cultural politics as a means of addressing ongoing international issues of post-Holocaust Jewish survival in a dangerous and politically uncertain modernity. I examine three Jewish left magazines of the late 1940s that were involved in a loose international antifascist progressive Jewish network and ideological framework. These magazines Jewish Life (USA), New Life (UK) and Unity (Australia) represented similar antifascist politics and cultural outlooks in the USA, Britain and Australia, respectively. They have received little sustained scholarly attention previously. I analyse their vision of diverse multilingual Jewish cultures which were to be promoted and developed in any country where Jews lived and in whatever language they spoke. Their cultural vision represented antifascist values against bourgeois or nationalist Jewish culture and broadly reflected a pro-Soviet, progressive and Jewish internationalist, Popular Front politics and worldview.     

Mexican Jewish? A conversation with Ilan Stavans

Mexican Jews are at a crossroads. Their history reaches back to after 1492, when a number arrived as conversos, crypto-Jews, and New Christians. The Holy Inquisition was founded in Mexico in 1535, with Bishop Juan de Zumárraga. Twenty-nine “deviants” were executed during this period. Ashkenazic and Sephardi Jews arrived at the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, followed by a wave of refugees of the Second World War. Today the Jewish community is made up of Orthodox Jews, exiled Israelis, and others. With democracy a messy affair, the government unable to ascertain its authority, and the drug cartel in an intense battle for power and territory, their position is delicate at best. Ilan Stavans is arguably the most prominent Mexican Jew inside and out. In books like On Borrowed Words (2001), Return to Centro Histórico (2010), and El Iluminado (2012), as well as in movies such as My Mexican Shiva (2007), directed by Alejandro Springall and based on his story “Morirse está en hebreo,” he has reflected on the dilemmas—cultural, political, and religious—facing this minority of close to 40,000 in a national population of 115 million. This conversation took place in April 2014.     

Jewish Primary Schools in a Multicultural Society: Responding to diversity?

In February 2001 the British government announced its commitment to increase the number of schools run by the churches and other religious groups where there was 'clear local demand from parents and the community'. The decision met with approval in some quarters, but was condemned elsewhere on the grounds that such schools, in a multicultural society, are inevitably divisive. In the course of exploring the response of Jewish primary schools in England to cultural pluralism, this article sheds light on the charge of divisiveness. It describes a study that offers little support to the critics, for it highlights the wide variation in attitudes and practices that characterised the schools with regard to the multicultural dimension of citizenship education.     

Social phobia in ultra-orthodox Jewish males: culture-bound syndrome or virtue?

Social difficulties of the performing variety are reported by ultra-orthodox male referrals to a psychiatrist in Jerusalem and confirmed by key communal informants. Three cases of social phobia are presented, and the content concerns performing, either speaking on religious matters publicly, a role associated with status and authority, or leading prayers and ceremonies, a role of sanctity and duty. The absence of women sufferers may be understood as a consequence of the value placed on modesty in women and there being no expectation of women to participate in study and public prayer, while the absence of complaints of interactional social phobia may be a consequence of the general discouragement of social intercourse not related to religious study. Aymat zibur, literally meaning fear of the community, is a term used by ultra-orthodox Jews to describe these fears of performance, although in its original meaning the term expresses the respect that the leader of prayers is expected to have for his awesome role. The cases described, however, were motivated by personal shame, similar to social phobia of the performance variety found in other cultures, rather than fear and respect. The values of ultra-orthodox religious life are presented that invest a person who avoids interactional social behaviors with the status of zaddik (a righteous person) while one who avoids the performance behaviors of speaking publicly on religious matters or leading prayers suffers from an idiom of distress in this particular society. Religious law and societal mores appear to be critical factors in deciding whether symptoms of social phobia are perceived and experienced as idioms of distress.     

Can Life Be Evaluated? The Jewish Halachic Approach vs. The Quality of Life Approach in Medical Ethics: A Critical View

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of requests formercy killings by patients and their relatives. Under certain conditions,the patient may prefer death to a life devoid of quality. In contrast to thosewho uphold this quality of life approach, those who hold the sanctity oflife approach claim that life has intrinsic value and must be preservedregardless of its quality. This essay describes these two approaches,examines their flaws, and offers a golden path between the two extremepositions.We discuss the halachic and the secular views, arguing for a balancebetween the sanctity of life and the quality of life. We argue that, indeed,such a balance exists in practice, and that life is important, but it is not sacred. Life can be evaluated, but quality of life is not the solecriterion.     

An Impossible Possibility? Jewish Barthianism in Interwar Germany

In this essay I examine the Jewish reception of Karl Barth's theology in Germany of the 1930s. This I do through an analysis of a disputed exploration into the possibilities and limitations of the theological principles of dialectical theology for the formulation of a Jewish theology that took place at the time. The publication of Karl Barth's Römerbrief (1919, 1922) generated a great stir among Christian circles in Germany. Profoundly challenging the fundamental assumptions of liberal theology, Barth's ‘dialectical theology' was quickly recognized as an epoch‐making work. But the impact of Barth's theology exceeded its Christian readership. As a corresponding disillusionment of liberal theology in its Jewish version took place among Jews, Barthianism presented itself as a compelling theological model offering a profound rejoinder to the spiritual needs of Jews as well. Yet alongside the recognition of the potentially constructive engagement with Barth's radical thought for a rejuvenated articulation of Jewish theology, Jewish thinkers similarly acknowledged the many challenges and difficulties such a theological encounter implied from a Jewish point of view, thereby projecting their understanding of the Jewish‐Christian difference.     

Does an American puppy amaeru? A comment on Dr. Doi's paper

Doi's paper has successfully spelled out several important points on Amae: (1) Amae is an interpersonal process; (2) the origin of amae probably lies in the infant-mother relationship; (3) the concept of amae provides no absolute standard to classify a behavior in terms of amae; (4) amae is best understood as a combination of patterns of behaviors; and (5) amae is a very broad concept. Implicit, but insufficiently recognized in Doi's paper, is the concept that amae is an interpersonal process of negotiation that is continuously revised throughout life. It is not just a motivational factor embedded in an individual; underneath the surface phenomenon of amae, an amaeru-ing person usually allows the other to feel needed, valued, and respected. Operationalizing the concept of amae for international research requires that the term be defined in relation to a combination of patterns of behaviors observable in the infant/child-mother dyad.     

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.