“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.     

Nathan Söderblom and Our Own Time1

In 1914 Professor Nathan Söderblom was elected archbishop of the Church of Sweden. His consecration took place in Uppsala Cathedral just months after the beginning of World War I. In 1925, he convened an ecumenical meeting in Stockholm that came to shape the ecumenical movement for decades to come. The peace question remained at the heart of his episcopate as long as it lasted. In this article, Antje Jackelén and Jakob Wirén explore some of the additional challenges that lay before Nathan Söderblom. Even today, there are lessons to be learned from the way Söderblom responded to issues such as questioning the relevance of the church, the need for dialogue between science and theology, the urgency of ecumenical cooperation, and the risks of nationalism.     

The gifts of allurement: anti-conversion legislation,gift-giving,and political allegiance in South Asia

ABSTRACT

The last decade has seen an escalation of various acts of anti-conversion legislation in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and in different states of India. Several scholars comment that the upsurge of anti-conversion legislation can be linked to the ascension of religious nationalism in India and Sri Lanka, yet recent trends indicate that such laws are also proposed by moderate political forces. What is notable about this anti-conversion legislation is that it criminalizes ‘improper’ conversions along the lines of force, fraud, and allurement/inducement. While Article 18(2) of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) protects against coercion, and thus forcible conversions, and while the concepts of force and fraud are already covered by the penal codes of the respective countries, the remaining element of controversy of anti-conversion legislation is that of allurement and/or inducement. ‘Allurement’ is defined as the offer of any temptation for the purpose of converting a person professing one religion to another religion, in the form of: “(i) any gift or gratification whether in cash or kind, (ii) a grant of any material benefit, whether monetary or otherwise, (iii) the grant of employment or grant of promotion in employment” (Owens 2006–2007, 337). Yet, despite critical remarks from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir, that these anti-conversion proposals are vague in their formulations and may lead to religious persecution, the legislative attempts are persistent in their demand to criminalize the allegedly religious gifts of allurement. This article argues that the rationale behind anti-conversion legislation stems from a threefold objective: (1) the dislike of gifts from the religious Other in particular and proselytization in general, (2) legislation as a regulating mechanism of majority religious bodies vis-à-vis religious minorities, (3) anti-conversion laws demanding the complicity of the state in relation to the majority religions, accentuating state patronage as a tacit form of state religion bill.     

The role of group identification in the well-being of Spaniards with gypsy ethnicity

ABSTRACT

Objective: To describe the role of sex, age, educational level and psychosocial group-identification factors in well-being and satisfaction with life. Method: 229 Spanish Gypsies completed a survey of demographic data, psychological well-being, life satisfaction, ethnic identity and the individual’s inclusion of self within the ingroup. Results: (a) only level of studies is related to satisfaction with life; (b) participants with higher scores in ethnic identity reported more well-being and more life satisfaction; and (c) assessment of ethnic belonging affects more areas of well-being than does perception of closeness to the ingroup. Conclusion: objective conditions of deprivation are not related to well-being as reported by the participants; it is important to study how Spanish Gypsies value and perceive their ethnicity in order to predict their well-being and satisfaction with life.     

The Theatre of National Identity in Modern Sport

ABSTRACT

The oil-rich nation-states of the Arabian Peninsula are investing large sums in the development of an international sports industry for the region. In an effort to field its own national sports teams for this industry, Qatar, who will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, has relied upon the practice of naturalizing foreign athletes. It is not a new practice, but Qatar’s wholesale use of the practice amounts to annexing its national sports teams and seems to miss the point of a national team. Certainly, the practice raises questions about the nature of a distinctively national sports team. As I take up some of these questions, my discussion leads to the larger question of international sport as a conversation on the differentiation of national identities. The practice of annexing national sports teams, therefore, raises questions both about nationalism and internationalism.     

Precarious and model minorities: Sikh identities in the ‘new’ global politics of religion

ABSTRACT

In many parts of the world, Sikhs have come to be perceived as a ‘model' minority – so much so that some have critiqued the Sikh community for taking up positions that are perceived as assimilationist. Such critiques, however, gloss over the sense of precarity, and the litany of hardships, racial discrimination and legal battles in which Sikhs have been forced to be engage in a post-9/11 world. Ultimately, this discrimination is enabled and justified by historical western notions of the incommensurability of the sacred and secular. Engaging with recent critical debates over the on-going meanings of the sacred and the secular, this paper argues that the contemporary moment requires a cosmopolitan religious outlook. Such debates reveal the separation between the public and the private, and between the sacred and the secular, to be ‘zombie categories' that fail to capture contemporary realities. Hence, conceptualizing Sikh identities as precarious, vulnerable ‘model minorities' in a post-Brexit/Trump era allows us to explore a Sikh ethics underpinned by the universal message of SGGS Ji. This is so because such ethics have never been conceptualized as simply being ‘other-worldly’, but rather as precisely grounded in the world that has been entrusted to us.     

Odanta through a child’s eye: a study on Buchi Emecheta’s The Moonlight Bride

An interesting story session often takes its listeners on a journey to an imaginary land where ‘good’ always prevails over ‘evil’. Such stories, generally narrated by elders, reinforce the spiritual values of a particular community by consciously building up its moral strength through its own religious beliefs and practices. However, in Emecheta’s The Moonlight Bride, the story is told by the child protagonist Ngbeke and in her responsibility as a griot, the profound spiritual message that she conveys through her story is: ‘the most important beauty is the beauty of the heart' (77). The focus of this study will be specifically on Ngbeke and how she explains the cultural traditions of Odanta community to an outside world.

In the course of this study, the researcher has understood that the traditional practices of Odanta community is a mixed bag in which a few precious conventional ideals deserve appreciation and assimilation, while a few need to be critically looked at and rejected even, taking the interest of women and children into consideration. Positive values can be inculcated universally in today’s world, where community living and its positive effects on people are fast disappearing and losing its value.     

Using Comedy to Explore Racial-Ethnic Identity with Clients: A Narrative Approach

ABSTRACT

The physical and mental health benefits of humor and comedy have been widely documented. This article presents a therapeutic framework outlining several clinical applications of comedy designed to facilitate client exploration of racial-ethnic identity. It also discusses how comedy can enhance narrative therapy approaches by serving as an engaging and effective tool for assisting clients in the process of externalizing storytelling, identifying exceptions to problems, and authoring new and positive stories about racial-ethnic identity.     

Angry rumination moderates the association between perceived ethnic discrimination and risky behaviors

Perceived ethnic discrimination (PED) is associated with increased engagement in risky behaviors in ethnic minority emerging adults. Risky behaviors may reflect efforts to cope with emotional distress like depression or anxiety resulting from PED, particularly for individuals with poor emotion regulation skills. We hypothesized that the association between PED and risky behaviors would be particularly strong for emerging adults with tendencies for angry rumination. We further hypothesized that increased depressive and anxious symptoms would mediate the effect of the PED-rumination interaction on risky behaviors. In this survey study, 155 ethnic minority college students completed measures of PED, depressive and anxiety symptoms, trait angry rumination, and risky behaviors. Analyses revealed that angry rumination moderated the association between PED and greater risky behaviors. Depressive and anxiety symptoms did not mediate this effect. Although cross-sectional, these findings suggest that individuals with poor coping skills may be especially likely to respond to stressors such as PED by engaging in risky behaviors. Implications include using rumination-focused interventions in order to prevent engagement in risky behaviors in ethnic minority emerging adults.