“Feeling” the pain of those who are different from us: Modulation of EEG in the mu/alpha range

We explored how apparently painful stimuli and the ability to identify with the person on whom the pain is inflicted modulate EEG suppression in the mu/alpha range (8–12 Hz). In a 2 × 2 design, we presented pictures of hands either experiencing needle pricks or being touched by a Q-tip. In the dissimilar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient suffering from a neurological disease in which Q-tips inflicted pain, whereas needle pricks did not. In the similar-other condition, the hand was assigned to a patient who responded to stimulation in the same way as the healthy participant. Participants were instructed to imagine the feeling of the person whose hand was shown and to evaluate his or her affective state. Pain conditions elicited greater EEG suppression than did nonpain conditions, particularly over frontocentral regions. Moreover, an interaction between pain and similarity revealed that for similar others, the pain effect was significant, whereas in the dissimilar-other group, suppression was equally large in the pain and no-pain conditions. We conclude that mu/alpha suppression is elicited both automatically, by observing a situation that is potentially painful for the observer, and by empathy for pain, even if the other person is different from oneself.     

Messianism and nationalism: Liberal optimism vs. orthodox anxiety

Confronting modernity, nineteenth century Jewish historians offered four different interpretations of the Jewish century that began in 1840: the liberal, the Orthodox, the nationalist, and the messianic. Exponents of the Wissenschaft school associated the year 5600 with the gospel of emancipation and the winds of cultural openness in western Europe; Orthodox historians viewed these change with suspicion and believed that the new century would usher in a period of twilight. Nationalist and the messianic interpreters saw the year 5600 as marking the start of the age of the redemption of Israel in its land: whether because the first buds of a Jewish national movement had appeared or because contemporary events were identified as heralds of the messianic redemption in the traditional sense. Unique was Rabbi Judah Alkalai, who sought to link traditional messianism with the liberal, optimistic interpretation of current events. He viewed progress, the Haskalah, and emancipation as positive signs of the messianic age and indicted traditionalists. Their rejectionist attitude toward modernity, he said, was delaying redemption. Today, narrowing differences between the traditionalist reaction to modernity and the religious nationalism have buried the memory of Alkalai's bold attempt.     

Benjamin Nathans, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia</Emphasis>. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, 424 pp.

Review Essay

Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, 424 pp.     

Farming the land on three continents: Bilu, Am Oylom, and Yefe-Nahar

Jewish agrarianization projects in Eastern Europe began in the late eighteenth century. This article compares three such movements that emerged in the Russian Empire: the colonization of the southern Ukraine that took place in the early decades of the nineteenth century, and, later, in the 1880s, the initiatives known as Am Oylom and Bilu. The founders of the colonies in the Ukraine combined the ideology of the Enlightenment with Russian imperial considerations, while the later movements were part of a radical Jewish avant-garde that aimed to create a “new” Jew, who would be a hardworking farmer and live in a cooperative community. Yet these visions could be realized only in a new land free of old, anti-Jewish political systems. Thus the place of social and economic rebirth would be “New Russia,” the United States, or Palestine, and regardless of location or time, the initiators of these enterprises all adopted a consistently productivist rhetoric. In addition, the settlement projects all unknowingly advanced the expanding colonialist interests of the governments of Russia, North America, and Palestine. A revised version of this paper was presented at the international conference “Beyond Eastern Europe: Jewish Cultures in Israel and the United States”, Rutgers University, March 2007.     

Perception and tonus

Abstract.— A review is given of the achievements of more than one hundred years of research concerning the influence of muscular tonus on the perceptual phenomena related to human spatial orientation. The tonal conditions of both the extrinsic eye muscles and the complex system of skeletal muscles have been shown to have decisive influence on "egocentric localization". The factual median is perceived as being displaced in the direction of the side of the body with greater tonus. This is the case whether the tonic asymmetry is experimentally induced or natural. Corresponding to this fact, a spot of light in the dark situated at the factual eye level will be perceived as being situated above the experienced eye level. The influence on egocentric localization exercised by prolonged fixation of greater or smaller parts of the muscular system (especially of the eye muscles) is pointed out. This "fixation effect" seems to be in accordance with conceiving the postural system of the body by analogy with a servo-mechanical system, the feed-back part of which is restrained.