Jewish agricultural settlement in Brazil

Jewish agricultural colonization in Brazil began in 1904 in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, supported by the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA). The JCA created the first colonies – Philippson (1904) and Quatro Irmãos (1912) – with the intention of resettling Russian Jews during the decisive years of mass immigration from the Russian empire. In 1936, the JCA administration in Brazil proposed a new project to establish a colony for German Jews in Rezende, situated in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Similar to other initiatives undertaken by the São Paulo and Paraná state governments some years before, the Rezende colony did not last long. This essay analyzes the main factors behind the disintegration of the JCA colonies, noting that, in spite of their relative failure, the colonies aided Brazil and helped change the stereotypical image of the non-productive Jew, capable of working only in commerce and finance. The main benefit from these agricultural experiments was the removal of restrictions in Brazil on Jewish immigration from Europe during the twentieth century.     

Clerks, Jews, and farmers: projects of Jewish agricultural settlement in Poland

This essay discusses the development of policies regarding Jewish agricultural settlement in the Kingdom of Poland during the first half of the nineteenth century, focusing on the gaps between legal rulings and administrative practices, as well as on declared and hidden motivations. It argues that official policy toward Jewish agricultural settlement reflected the tensions present in so many discussions of the “Jewish question” in Poland between declared ideology and subconscious phobias and stereotypes. As proponents of Enlightenment ideology, Polish liberals advocated projects meant to reform Jewish society, including productivization. At the same time, they expressed misgivings that the strengthening of Jewish society might harm Christians. The result was striking ineffectiveness, which led to repeated failures, a growing disillusionment in Jewish circles, and the failure of the reform projects themselves.     

Jewish rural settlement in Cyprus 1882–1935: a “springboard” or a destiny?

After its transfer to British rule in 1878, Cyprus became an object of Jewish settlement. The island was seen as a reasonable alternative at a time when aliyah and land purchase in Eretz-Israel were problematic. Three attempts were made by different groups to settle Jews in rural sites between 1882 and 1935. The first, near Pathos, was initiated by a millenarian British association. It lasted barely a year and focused on helping immigrants from Russia. The second, in the years 1892–1898, fostered by a pre-Zionist group of London Jews, and with the assistance of JCA, led to the purchase of Margo, an agricultural site located between Larnaka and Nicosia. The third attempt, the longest, between 1898 and 1935, was sponsored by the JCA itself, which settled about 35 families and offered continuing professional assistance. Ultimate failure was assured, nonetheless, by the proximity of Eretz-Israel, which exerted an irresistible allure on the younger, second, generation. For a short time, Cyprus was thought by some to be a political alternative to Eretz-Israel. The so-called “Trietsch Project” of 1898 interested even Herzl himself.     

Verbal ability and executive functioning development in preschoolers at head start

Research suggests that executive functioning skills may enhance the school readiness of children from disadvantaged homes. Questions remain, however, concerning both the structure and the stability of executive functioning among preschoolers. In addition, there is a lack of research addressing potential predictors of longitudinal change in executive functioning during early childhood. This study examined the structure of executive functioning from fall to spring of the preschool year using a multimethod battery of measures. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed a unidimensional model fit the data well at both time points, and tests of measurement invariance across time points indicated that children's mean latent executive functioning scores significantly improved over time. Verbal ability was a significant predictor of longitudinal change in executive functioning. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Jewish Identity and the Secular Achievements of American Jewish Men and Women

Three questions are addressed concerning the relationship of Jewish identity to secular achievements. Are the secular achievements of American Jews related at all to the strength of their Jewish identity? Which has a stronger relationship to secular achievement, a religious or an ethnic Jewish identity? Do communal aspects or private, personal aspects of Jewish identity have the stronger relationship to secular achievements? Using the 2000–2001 National Jewish Population Survey, we find that educational attainment, labor force participation, and occupational achievements are related to several expressions of Jewish identity, even after controlling for the traditional sources of variation (age, gender, education, family status). Jewish identity, as expressed in terms of religion, ethnicity, communal commitment, and private attitudes and practices, is related to contemporary Jewish secular achievement, albeit differently for men and women.     

Race and the construction of Jewish identity in French and American Jewish fiction of the 1920s

In both the United States and France, Jewish-fiction writers of the 1920s often invoked the idea of Jewish racial unity as a non-rational, uncontrollable force separating Jews from mainstream society irrespective of their desire for integration. This genre of fiction reveals an ambivalent attitude towards race-thinking. The notion that there are intractable physical differences between groups threatened the Jews status as fully privileged co-citizens. Yet a racialized self-understanding provided them with a way to articulate the intangible bonds of community, which their official status as a purely religious group normally held them back from expressing openly. The common trope of the failed Jewish-Gentile romance best expresses the dual desire of French and American Jews for acceptance and distinctiveness. A sense of racial identity often leads protagonists to reject a non-Jewish lover or spouse and draw strength from a renewed sense of connection with the Jewish people. More often than not, however, these figures are left with feelings of ambivalence and regret, as they realize that their universalist dream of uniting with someone from a different racial background is not possible in the real world, where their Jewish particularism inevitably dooms such relationships to failure.I would like to thank Hasia Diner, Laura Lee Downs and Bonnie S. Anderson for reading and commenting on previous versions of this article.     

Invention and convention: Jewish and Christian critique of the Jewish fixed calendar

The institution of the Jewish fixed calendar has provoked muchcontroversial discussion not only among Jewish, but also Christian scholars. The significant contributions to the subject by two of the great sixteenth-century polymaths, the Jew Azariah de' Rossi and the Christian Sebastian Münster, pinpoint the delicate nature of calendrical investigation. Münster's frequent use of one particular piyyut (a religious poem) to undermine the basis of the Jewish fixed calendar is intended to defend the contradictory calendrical data in the Gospels. De' Rossi implicitly attacks Muenster for his recourse to this unhistorical text. Yet de' Rossi himself is intent on proving that the Jewish fixed calendar is a late post-talmudic convention, an iconoclastic approach which was not welcome in certain rabbinic circles. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Education in the Jewish State

This essay argues that schooling in Israel is tied too closely to ideology. This results in an indoctrinary orientation that contributes to divisiveness and imperils Israeli democracy. After reviewing and critiquing the roots of this orientation, I advance an alternative that understands education as an agent of the good rather than ideology. Israeli schooling requires a vision of goodness broad enough to encompass competing conceptions of Jewish life espoused by the majority as well as non-Jewish orientations affirmed by various minorities. Such a vision can be grounded, I contend, in a democratic Jewish theology that emphasizes God as teacher rather than tyrant.     

Jewish discourse and the Shtetl

The Shtetl, the small town of Eastern Europe, especially in Poland and Russia, where Jews were the majority in the population and set the tone of life, has not received proper historiographical treatment. The major problem is that the shtetl has been idealized, much like in the play Fiddler on the Roof, to represent people's nostalgia, not reality. Shtetl society was also taken by Zionists and others as representative of an objectionable Jewish role model, the contrary of what Zionist sought to achieve. It is commonly thought that by the time of the Shoah, when the Nazis indeed destroyed it, the shtetl was already moribund. In fact, through the early twentieth century, shtetl population remained steady; in some cases it even grew. This survey of existing literature, whose quantity is less than what might be expected, is a prelude to a comprehensive study on shtetl society, in particular during the twentieth century, which this author is now concluding. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Postural effects of the horizon on land and at sea

Motion of a ship at sea creates challenges for control of the body. Anecdotal reports suggest that the body can be stabilized by standing on the open deck and looking at the horizon. This advice contrasts with land-based findings that looking at the horizon leads to increased body sway. We measured standing body sway in experienced maritime crew members on land and at sea. On land, body sway was greater when subjects looked at the horizon than when they did not-the classical effect. At sea, body sway was greater in a closed cabin than on the open deck. On the open deck, body sway when looking at the horizon was reduced relative to sway when looking at middistance targets on the ship. The results are consistent with centuries of anecdotal advice given to sea travelers and raise new questions about the referents that are used for the control of standing posture.     

Jewish Studies at the Crossroads of Anthropology and History: authority,diaspora, tradition

In recent years, critical thought and theological discourse have been challenging each other, as they share mutual themes alongside contesting motivations. Against this broad background, this outline presents a possible formula for “critical theology,” which negotiates between the critical and the theological fields of inquiry. Stemming from the contemporary Israeli framework of religion, society and political imagination, the formula points to the difference between the call to critically navigate in the theological field of meanings, and the call to faithfully adopt its message; between the call “to the call” of theology, and the call “by means of” theology. By doing so, the outline aims to present theology as the original realm of non-religious, perhaps even un-religious, critique, and not as its adversary, while nonetheless maintaining “the religious” as such. Critical theology, we suggest, from our Israeli/Jewish perspective, is a social and political challenge of our time in which religion and religiosity have returned to the forefront of the social, political and cultural world.