BETWEEN RECEPTION AND SELF-PERCEPTION: TESTIMONIES OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN ISRAEL

Based on survivors’ testimonies the article discusses the encounters of Holocaust survivors in Palestine/Israel between 1945 and 1955. After addressing the issues of the historiography of these Holocaust survivors and the value of using their testimonies, it examines the interactions of survivors with official authorities: work, housing, kibbutzim, education, and the pre-military/IDF. It sheds light on the meaning of silence and the manifestation of stereotyping for the survivors themselves, and it assesses the impact of families and creating families. The article also examines the validity of these testimonies by studying some testimonies of Holocaust survivors who emigrated from Israel and those who immigrated directly from Europe to North America. The study concludes that although contemporary collective views influenced survivors’ perceptions, cases of their ill-treatment were not isolated. They were more the result of the attitudes of individuals than the policy of the state. Veteran Israelis' insensitivity affected survivors. Stigmatizing ostracized them. Lack of empathy and discrimination caused survivors to feel unwanted and lonely, which resulted in many volunteering for the military, or in self-isolation, or in getting married as quickly as possible. Lack of study and job opportunities for women were more difficult to overcome.     

THE RECEPTION OF DIONYSIUS IN THE BYZANTINE WORLD: MAXIMUS TO PALAMAS

The first major theologian to engage the CD in the Byzantine world is Maximus the Confessor. His is a highly individual engagement, but without any of the embarrassment alleged by many modern scholars. Dionysian influence in Byzantium seems to have been mostly confined to the monastic tradition, and is traced here, in outline, from Symeon the New Theologian to Gregory Palamas. Various issues recur: the distinction between apophatic and kataphatic theology, the notion of hierarchy (often understood in a much cruder way than in Dionysius himself), the nature and importance of angelic mediation, and the central place of the sacramental liturgy.     

ENFOLDING VIOLENCE,UNFOLDING HOPE: EMERGING CLOUDS OF POSSIBILITY FOR WOMEN IN ROMAN CATHOLICISM

In an effort to think through possible impossibilities, and enfold current problems within Catholicism into the luminous darkness of the cloud of the im/possible, this response to Catherine Keller's Cloud of the Impossible considers what might happen should Keller's cloud of mindful unknowing and nonseparable difference billow over and through one particular Catholic conundrum: how to respond to the terrifying reality of domestic violence in the context of a marriage defined as indissoluble, imperishable—inescapable.     

TEARS AND WEEPING AMONG PROFESSIONAL WOMEN: IN SEARCH OF NEW UNDERSTANDING

Crying among adult professional women is a phenomenon experienced far more often than it is studied or publicly discussed. Guided by Sherifs (1982) theoretical work on gender identity, socialization, reference groups, and power, the authors explore several factors central to the topic. Among them are: the origins of conflict between women's experience of emotional expression and "public" tears; gender-related differences in crying and responses to crying; the role of reference groups in conflicting attitudes toward crying; and power in the workplace as influencing the meaning of crying. The role of images and imagery during times of conflicted and heightened emotion is discussed. It is suggested that most imagery related to crying in adults derives from perceptions of crying in infancy and that most responses to adults who cry are linked to an understanding of appropriate responses to a crying infant or child. Lewin's construct of behavior as a person-environment transaction is employed as a means of exploring the images experienced by the crier and the observer when female crying occurs in a professional situation. New images to guide more productive approaches to emotional expression in the workplace are suggested.     

CONSCIOUSNESS IN EXTREMITY: DISCOURSE ON MADNESS AMONG THE TABWA OF ZAIRE

The madman makes it possible for us to grasp the radical potential of consciousness at its limits. He contradicts the other person's discursive thinking towards the virtually inarticulable or unthought self. The Lakeside Tabwa of Shaba, Zaire, apprehend madness in three rather different, discursive domains. There is, firstly, wazimu, or its ‘mature’, incurable form, kizenzezia, considered as a fact of social life. It is seen as inverting the norms or functions of personhood and undoing those of mentality. It breaks down reciprocity, it is the negative function of ‘Death’. Secondly, it is in the prodromal illness, mubulibuli, and certain related emotion states, that madness appears as the artefact of another's malicious and intrusive ‘Desire’: the madman is said to have ‘closed anger’ in his heart alienating him from ongoing experience and interaction. Finally, in the diviner, the ‘otherness’ of gaze and speech is transformed into the normative power of clairvoyance bringing about its own logic and historicity. Here, the inversion of personhood becomes an emblem of insight and ‘Law’, but at the risk of insanity. The ethnographic encounter with the very otherness of the thinking of madness and of another culture toward the unthought itself is, in a sense, epistemogenic.     

WANDERING AMONG SHADOWS: THE DISCORDANCE OF TIME IN LEVINAS AND BERGSON

One of the earliest examples of articulating the “discordance of time”—a theme that serves as a guiding thread woven throughout much of the re‐engagement with time that is characteristic of continental philosophy—can be found in a series of essays written by Levinas in the aftermath of World War II. I show how these essays derive from a set of key texts by Bergson and how Bergson already anticipated the distinctive ways of conceptualizing the movement of time that are advanced by Levinas in his early essays. Nevertheless, as I will show, Levinas chooses not to acknowledge this Bergsonian anticipation of his theory of time, despite his recognition, repeated throughout many texts and interviews, of the influence of Bergson on the formation of his own thought. I conclude by reflecting on the complexity of the Bergsonian inheritance in Levinas's philosophy of time.     

PROFESSIONALIZING SURVIVAL: THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC MEMORY AMONG HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR-EDUCATORS IN MONTREAL

The majority of Holocaust survivors never speak publicly about their experiences, but those who do tend to find themselves at the centre of commemorative work in their communities. As Holocaust scholars, Holocaust education institutions, and members of the general public become increasingly interested in how to ethically universalize the lessons of the Holocaust, the public Holocaust survivor's role has broadened. It is no longer enough to recount one's own experience; survivors are expected to speak to current human rights abuses and genocides.In Montreal, Canada, a city which once claimed the third largest survivor population in the world, public survivors do a great deal of work. They give testimony in schools and at commemorative events, organize book clubs, write plays, direct films, teach, act as museum docents, and assume roles as community spokespeople. Given their dedication to this work, and a push to get them to speak beyond their personal experiences, we argue that there is a major shift taking place: the act of giving public Holocaust testimony is being professionalized. This professionalization raises unique questions about how people who lived through the Holocaust conceptualize themselves and their identities as survivors. By treating testimony as professional work, survivors contemplate, on a daily basis and in an applied manner, their stances on big questions regarding hierarchies of suffering, comparability, the connection between the personal and the political, blame and forgiveness, as well as many other relevant themes that are central to Holocaust and memory scholarship. All of this plays out in their testimonies.     

Margaret F. Washburn (1871–1939): First Woman Ph.D. in Psychology

Margaret Floy Washburn was one of the first generation of leading psychologists trained in America and became an eminent and influential psychologist during the first third of the 20th century. She was recognized for significant contributions in theory development, experimental work, teaching, and professional service, but this paper focuses on her activities as director of the psychology program at Vassar College and author of the classic text in comparative psychology, The Animal Mind . Although full biographical details are not given, a listing of bibliographic sources is provided so that scholars might more readily obtain access to information omitted from the paper. The discussion also considers Washburn's professional life and personal characteristics and how she might be viewed as a role model.
"Nothing in the world is so compelling to the emotions as the mind of another human being" (Washburn, 1916b, p. 606). This statement, tucked away in an essay on the psychology of esthetic experience in music, provides an insightful clue to one of the motivations which sustained Margaret Floy Washburn's significant career as one of the most influential psychologists in psychology's first half–century as a distinct discipline. She held a life long fascination with the minds of humans and animals and was convinced that experimental psychology provided the appropriate methodology for exploring the topic. She devoted her unflagging energy and outstanding ability to the newly evolving science throughout a 43–year career which covered the period 1894–1937.