Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)最新文献

{"title":"‘A CONSTRUCTIVE FORM OF HELP’: VOCATIONAL TRAINING AS A FORM OF REHABILITATION OF JEWISH REFUGEES IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1939–1948","authors":"Katarzyna Person","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2013-080105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2013-080105","url":null,"abstract":"On 9 May 1945 the unconditional surrender of Germany signified the end of World War II in Europe. One of the greatest challenges faced by the international community was the fate of the refugees, those people who for various reasons could not or did not want to return to their pre-war homeland. An especially significant place within this category was taken by the Holocaust survivors – the last remnants of the ten million strong pre-war Eastern and Central European Jewish community. The relief effort undertaken in helping this group, by mid-1947 numbering around 250,000 people, was a task of unprecedented scale and difficulty. Among the challenges of that time, the education of children and adolescents was of particular importance. Military authorities, non-governmental organizations (both Jewish and non-Jewish) and finally the survivors, all devoted themselves to helping those who lost their childhood and youth in concentration camps, forced labour and in hiding. This article will discuss this issue through the case-study of the Organization for Rehabilitation and Training (ORT) and its undertakings among Jewish refugees in Great Britain. ORT was set up in Russia in St. Petersburg in 1880 as the Society for the Promotion of Trades and Agriculture among the Jews in Russia, a philanthropic organization designed to assist Jewish artisans, workers and cooperatives, by providing them with cheap credit and establishing vocational schools.1 After World War I, ORT expanded into Eastern Central Europe, France and Germany and by the mid-1930s, despite growing anti-Jewish legislations, organized a comprehensive network of trade schools responding to the needs of the Jewish community. The British branch of ORT, set up in 1921, focused for the first years of its existence on fundraising and propaganda. This situation changed abruptly on 29 August 1939, two days before the outbreak of World War II as 104 teenage students and seven teachers from the ORT school in Berlin left Charlottenburg Station on a train heading for London. The school in Berlin (Private jüdische Lehranstalt für handwerkliche und gewerbliche Ausbildung auswanderungswilliger Juden der ORT Berlin), located at Siemensstrasse 15, was one of ORT’s most significant undertakings in the interwar period and a major centre offering vocational training to Jewish youth.2 The school was opened in 1937 as an answer to * Awarded her PhD in history at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2010. Email: Katarzyna. person.2007@live.rhul.ac.uk 1 On the history of ORT see Leon Shapiro, The History of ORT: A Jewish Movement for Social Change (New York: Schocken Books, 1980) and Jack Rader, By the Skill of Their Hands (Geneva: World ORT, 1970). I would like to thank Rachel Bracha and colleagues from the World ORT Archive in London for their help with gathering material for this article. 2 For more on the ORT school in Berlin, see Monica Lowenberg, “The Education of the Cologne Jawne Gymnasium Children and the Be","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"89 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117094087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A MULTIFACETED NUPTIAL BLESSING: THE USE OF RUTH 4:11–12 WITHIN MEDIEVAL HEBREW EPITHALAMIA","authors":"Avi Shmidman","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2013-080106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2013-080106","url":null,"abstract":"When bestowing poetic blessings upon newly married couples, the medieval Hebrew poets often advance analogies to biblical figures, indicating their wish that the couple should merit the good fortune of, for instance, the forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or of later biblical figures such as Moses, Zipporah, Phinehas, or Hannah. The most common analogy offered, however, is that of the matriarchs Rachel and Leah, as per Boaz’s nuptial blessing from Ruth 4:11: “May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, both of whom build up the House of Israel!” In this study, the usage of this recurring motif throughout medieval Hebrew epithalamia will be considered, so as to demonstrate its role as a focal point of poetic creativity. The medieval Hebrew poets composed hundreds of epithalamia, celebrating nuptial occasions within the Israelite nation, while offering blessings on behalf of the newly married couples.1 Many of these blessings center upon comparisons with biblical figures. For instance, one anonymous Palestinian poet writes: לֹכּבַּ ךְרֵבָּתְנִ שׁיאִכְּ םכֵרְבָוּ םרֵזְעָ (ozrem uvarkhem ke’ish nitbarekh bakkol, “assist them and bless them as he who was blessed in all things”),2 praying that the bride and groom should merit the blessings of Abraham. Similarly, the Palestinian * Lecturer in the Department of Literature of the Jewish People at Bar-Ilan University. Email: avi.shmidman@ biu.ac.il. I would like to thank my colleague Dr Tzvi Novick for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to the following institutions for the use of their manuscript catalogs and collections: The Ezra Fleischer Institute for the Research of Hebrew Poetry in the Genizah; the Academy of the Hebrew Language; the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem; and the Friedberg Genizah Project. Translations of scripture within this paper follow the JPS translation of 1917. Transliterations follow the general guidelines for Hebrew and Semitic languages specified in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., v. 1, 197. Where relevant, citations of poems are accompanied by their corresponding index number, as per Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, 4 vols (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1924–38) (Hebrew). Finally, a note regarding my use of the term “epithalamia”: etymologically, an epithalamium is a song intended specifically for the bridal chamber (based on the Greek “θλαμος”); however, following modern English usage (see The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., s.v. “epithalamium”), the term will be used herein to refer to nuptial poems in general. 1 For a chronological survey of Hebrew epithalamia through the ages, see Meir Bar-Ilan, Ateret H. atanim (Ramat Gan: self-published, 2007). For additional studies of medieval Hebrew epithalamia, see Shulamit Elizur, “Al Piyyute H. atanim ve-Haftarat","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121341318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"IMAGINING FIN-DE-SIÈCLE ANGLO-JEWISH MINORITY SUB-GENRES: PROTO-FEMINIST VISIONS OF RELIGIOUS REFORM IN “WEST END” LONDON IN AMY LEVY’S REUBEN SACHS AND LILY MONTAGU’S NAOMI’S EXODUS","authors":"Luke Devine","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2013-080104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2013-080104","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129878685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"FROM THE CHRIST-KILLER TO THE LUCIFERIAN: THE MYTHOLOGIZED JEW AND FREEMASON IN LATE NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH CATHOLIC DISCOURSE","authors":"S. Mayers","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2013-080103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2013-080103","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional wisdom in studies of English antisemitism has tended to suggest that by the nineteenth century religious prejudice had largely been secularised or replaced by modern socio- political and racial forms of hostility. This may have been the case in the general English discourse, but in the English Catholic discourse at the turn of the twentieth century, traditional pre-modern myths, with their cast of Jewish and Masonic diabolists, were still a pervasive feature. This article examines a range of sources, including the published works of prominent and obscure authors, the pastoral letters and sermons of cardinals, bishops and priests, articles and editorials in newspapers and periodicals, letters, and a small number of oral testimonies, in order to bring to light an English Catholic discourse which, with the exception of the published works of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, has largely gone unexamined. Prominent mythological villains in the English Catholic discourse during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century included \"the Pharisee,\" \"the Christ-Killer,\" \"the Ritual Murderer,\" \"the Sorcerer,\" \"the Antichrist\" and \"the Luciferian.\" This article examines the continued presence of narratives in which Jews and Freemasons were assigned one or more of these villainous roles. This article presents some of the results of an investigation into the representations of \"the Jew\" which existed in English Catholic discourse during the final years of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century (circa 1896 to 1929). Three main types of representation were considered during the investigation: the roles assigned to the Jew in traditional Christian myths, contemporary stereotypes of the Jew and composite constructions which combine themes drawn from myths and stereotypes. 1 For the purpose of the investigation, stereotypes were broadly speaking defined as crude, powerful, resilient but protean representations, which take so-called human vices and virtues, often distorted and magnified, and project them onto all individuals within the stereotyped group. In the English Catholic discourse, the stereotyped Jew was greedy, cowardly, unpatriotic and secretive. 2 He was also depicted as smart, but his intelligence was not considered a virtue. 3 Myths were in essence defined in the investigation as important and persistent stories","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128886835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"SOME PROBLEMS IN THE RABBINIC USE OF THE QAL VA-CHOMER ARGUMENT","authors":"H. Maccoby","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2012-070105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2012-070105","url":null,"abstract":"The qal va-chomer (a fortiori) argument is a logic of analogy, not of classes or sets (the subject-matter of Aristotelian logic), and this makes it suitable for legal, rather than scientific, argument. What makes it an exact reasoning is a special rule (unknown to Greek rhetorical use of a fortiori), namely the rule of dayyo, which lays down that the conclusion must not contain anything that was not present in the premises. For example: If a moderately good child deserves one sweet, a very good child all the more so deserves one sweet (correct); deserves two sweets (incorrect). Nevertheless, a qal va-chomer argument is not as unchallengeable as a syllogism, and the rabbis recognised various grounds of challengeablity. Especially interesting in this respect is the disagreement between the Sages and Rabbi Tarfon in Mishnah Bava Qamma 2:5. Is the qal va-chomer argument entirely logical, or does it contain an aspect of intuition? Can an argument be challengeable, yet rational? Is challengeability indeed a positive advantage in the search for rationality? This paper takes into account the view of the dayyo principle expressed in the Talmudic (Amoraic) discussion of b. Bava Qamma 25a, which makes it appear an arbitrary rule, rather than a principle of reasoning. This view is characterized as a falling-away from the more rational standpoint of the Mishnah. Also discussed is the relatively relaxed application of the rule of dayyo in aggadic discourse. An apparently flagrant breach of the rule in Mishnah Makkot 3:15, going far beyond the leniency of even aggadic discourse, is argued to be due to a mistranslation.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131201654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ULTRA-ORTHODOXY IN MANCHESTER","authors":"Z. Wise","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2012-070103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2012-070103","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the social, political and cultural milieu in which the Machzikei Hadass (Upholders of the Faith), the principal ultra-orthodox community in Greater Manchester was founded in the mid 1920s. Like its counterparts in late nineteenth century Eastern Europe, MH (as it is always known) was a reaction to a perceived slide from strict, 'Torah true' orthodoxy. In this case what they saw as a hybrid of modern orthodoxy and worse; genteel Anglo-Jewish compromise. The hard core of MH founders were hassidim of the Rebbes of Belz, Galicia and mostly related both by geographic origin and by kinship. This tightly knit group of (to quote Prime Minister Harold Wilson) 'politically motivated men,' waged a thirty years war against the Manchester Jewish establishment and emerged triumphant. Their descendents now represent over one quarter of all the Jews in Greater Manchester and will form a majority by the middle of the present century.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116599345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"THE ‘ROMAN CATHOLIC QUESTION’ IN THE ANGLO-JEWISH PRESS, 1890-1925","authors":"S. Mayers","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2012-070102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2012-070102","url":null,"abstract":"Anglo-Jewish reactions to late 19th and early 20th century Catholic discourses about Jews have received little attention. This article partially fills this gap through an examination of Anglo-Jewish newspapers from 1890 to 1925, a timeframe which includes the Dreyfus Affair, the Hilsner blood libel and the ratification of the British Mandate in Palestine. Three different newspaper editorships have been examined, the Jewish Chronicle edited by Asher Myers, the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish World under the control of Leopold Greenberg, and the Jewish Guardian as the paper of the League of British Jews. It is this article's contention that a more aggressive reaction to Catholic hostility is notable in the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish World when they were controlled by Leopold Greenberg, a political Zionist, than the Jewish Chronicle under Asher Myers or the Jewish Guardian. The Jewish Guardian was unconcerned about Catholic hostility to Zionism though it was occasionally alarmed by generalised anti-Jewish threads that were woven into it. It was also critical of English Catholic writers who argued that Jews could never be proper Englishmen, but whereas Greenberg relished the opportunity to 'hit back' on his own, the Jewish Guardian preferred if possible to allow Christians to defend Jews.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130516391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"YITZHAK OREN’S FANTASTIC SCIENCE: TWO STORIES","authors":"G. Abramson","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2012-070106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2012-070106","url":null,"abstract":"Until recently, Israeli literary scholars have dismissed fantasy as insignificant for ideological and political reasons. Yet there has been a long tradition of fantasy in Jewish literature. Now, thanks to the Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov’s precise conceptualisation of fantasy as a distinct literary genre, we are able to define works of the Fantastic with greater clarity. The Hebrew writer who most immediately comes to mind with respect to fantasy is S. Y. Agnon, whose works are replete with ghosts, magic, strange creatures and events. In this article I examine two stories by one of his younger contemporaries, the Israeli author Yitzhak Oren from the point of view of Todorov’s generic classification. I ask whether defining Oren’s stories according to Todorov’s generic system helps us to read them. I believe that applying Todorov’s categorisation to Oren’s fiction certainly determines the way we read it and that this has implications with regard to other Hebrew authors, Agnon in particular, and to the work of some younger Israeli experimental writers. There is a strange belief that modern Hebrew literature avoids fantasy, or at least that it has done so until recently. Perhaps the genre of fantasy was not recognised because it did not suit the criteria of the arbiters of the Hebrew literary canon as it was being formed at the turn of the 20th century, perhaps because of the perceived nature of fantasy at that time. The fantastic genre is still often characterized as escapist, nonserious, and ‘minor,’ exiled to the ‘edges of literary culture.’ Moreover, these canonisers saw Hebrew literature from the start as committed to the development of the national consciousness, to an extent a guide for social thinking, about which it had to be explicit not obscure. Realism was, therefore, the reigning genre. Israeli literary scholars have, until recently, similarly dismissed fantasy as insignificant for ideological and political reasons. In its early years Israeli literature was recruited into the enterprise of nation building and the writers were obliged to address concerns of Israeli individual and social identity. Literary characters were rarely distinct from their national and social origins, unlike characters in fantastic fiction. In any case the * Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University of Oxford; Editor of Journal of Modern Jewish Studies. Email glenda.abramson@stx.ox.ac.uk 1 Carter Wheelock, ‘Fantastic Symbolism in the Spanish American Short Story’, Hispanic Review 48:4 (Autumn, 1980), 416. 2 Ásdís Egilsdóttir, ‘The Fantastic Reality: Hagiography, Miracles and Fantasy’, http://www.dur.ac.uk/medieval.www/sagaconf/asdis.htm Glenda Abramson, ‘Yitzhak Oren’s Fantastic Science: Two Stories’, Melilah 2010/5 92 writers of the third and fourth aliyot had largely, although not exclusively, been influenced by Soviet socialist realism. Barukh Kurzwell, the leading Israeli scholar of Hebrew literature, himself of Central European origin and br","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116009764","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"PLANT MOTIFS ON JEWISH OSSURARIES AND SARCOPHAGI IN PALESTINE IN THE LATE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD: THEIR IDENTIFICATION, SOCIOLOGY AND SIGNIFICANCE","authors":"C. Crewe","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2011-060102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2011-060102","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114034859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘WE ARE ALL GERMAN JEWS’: EXPLORING THE PROMINENCE OF JEWS IN THE NEW LEFT","authors":"Phillip Mendes","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2011-060104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2011-060104","url":null,"abstract":"Jews were disproportionately involved in the 1960s student movement known as the New Left. Drawing on research data from primarily the USA and Australia, we explore some of the key factors that contributed to this prominence including the significant number of Jewish students at key universities, the impact of left-wing family backgrounds on many Jewish students, and the general influence of Jewish cultural values and experiences. We argue that Jewish student radicals incorporated the whole spectrum of Jewish identity from those who either rejected or expressed ambivalence about their Jewishness to those whose radical and Jewish commitments were closely aligned. We also explain why the Jewish contribution to the New Left had so little impact on mainstream Jewish political culture.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"109 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123464746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}