{"title":"Sean Martin, For the Good of the Nation: Institutions for Jewish Children in Interwar Poland: A Documentary History. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017. xx + 220 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0038","url":null,"abstract":"While not exactly what its title suggests, this book is nonetheless a valuable addition to the rather slim bookshelf of books in English dealing with social welfare in interwar Poland. The title suggests that the book is a broad survey of institutions for Jewish children that operated before the Holocaust in Poland, and that it includes as well primary sources illustrating the ways in which these institutions functioned and the challenges they faced. In fact, it is primary sources that constitute most of the book’s contents; for this reason, Martin is credited on the cover with being editor and translator, rather than author (though he is listed as an author on the copyright page). The overview is provided in an extensive opening chapter based, in part, on a previous essay published by Martin....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131242144","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":"Michael Feige, ’Al da’at hamakom: meḥozot zikaron yisreelim (Al Da’at Ha’makom: Israeli Realms of Memory), ed. David Ohana. Beersheba: Ben-Gurion University Press, 2017. 567 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0045","url":null,"abstract":"David Ohana has undertaken the difficult task of compiling a collection of writings by his friend and colleague Michael Feige, who was murdered in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market in June 2016. The result is a fascinating and lavish volume that presents us with representative works of one of Israel’s most interesting and original sociologists. Ohana has assembled essays from different periods on a variety of topics, linked together by the common theme of the interrelationship between place, memory, and nationality—an issue that preoccupied Feige throughout his years of research. The book comprises five sections, each of which presents a different aspect of this trio of forces....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114231381","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":"Patrizia Guarnieri, Italian Psychology and Jewish Emigration under Fascism: From Florence to Jerusalem and New York. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. xv + 275 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Fascism exerted multiple, complex, and often perverse influences on Italian society and on the lives of Italian Jews in particular. The better-known outcomes of Italian Fascism are the development of a dictatorial regime grounded on the cult of personality, the bloody repression of political opposition, delirious imperialist adventures, the legal codification of anti-Jewish persecution, the late military alliance with Nazi Germany, and a catastrophic defeat in the Second World War. But Fascism also played a paramount role in conceiving new patterns of rural and urban development, industrial management, state and church relations, and educational reform, some of whose legacies have long outlasted the pernicious regime. Some public works, among them the embankments of the Tiber River and other aspects of urban renovation in Rome, and land reclamation in the central-southern regions of Italy, quite amazingly were not much developed beyond the regime’s endeavors in the 1920s and 1930s. Likewise, at least until recently, much of the public education system in the country—compulsory as well as academic—was regulated by principles laid down during “the infamous twenty years.” Those far-reaching influences have deeply affected Italy’s university ...","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"118 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114644334","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":"Abigail Jacobson and Moshe Naor, Oriental Neighbors: Middle Eastern Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2016. 269 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0048","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Oriental Neighbors is a timely intervention in the study of the modern history of Israel/Palestine, and in the debate regarding ethnic relations in Israel. Recent years have seen an invigorated discussion of late Ottoman Palestine’s Jewish communities and their place in the emergent Zionist-Arab conflict. There is also an intensified conversation concerning the discrimination against and exclusion of Mizrahi Jews in Jewish Israeli society since 1948. This book provides a crucial link by focusing on relations between Mizrahi Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine. (In the review I will follow the authors’ use of the term Oriental Jews)....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123949495","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":"Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup (eds.), Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017. 327 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0034","url":null,"abstract":"This volume is a collection of 17 essays originally presented at a workshop at St. Antony’s College, Oxford almost a decade ago. The essays follow an extensive introduction by the two editors that lays out both the theoretical justifications and the methodological advantages of this project, all conceived in the spirit of the so-called “spatial turn” in historiography. Beginning in the 1990s, interest in concrete places and in real or imaginary spaces became part of the new cultural history, with this topic often considered on its own in an ever-growing historical research landscape. In this case, promise the editors, the conceptual apparatus developed by the new turn would be applied to the study of minorities, specifically to the Jews in modern times, and in what may be called their German diaspora. Using concepts such as place, space, and boundaries, they explain, is a means of opening new perspectives on the intensively researched field of German Jewish history, while also newly illuminating matters of integration and seclusion, belonging and identity. The book is divided into three parts: “Imaginations,” “Transformations,” and “Practices,” and as one moves from the heavily theoretical introduction to the concrete historical contributions, the potential of this overall approach begins to unravel....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122214107","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 Jewish Liturgical Music Printing Revolution","authors":"E. Seroussi","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Orality is the hallmark of all Jewish music cultures, and most especially of their liturgical music. Orality is not simply a technique of music mnemonics and transmission among Jews through the generations; it became, as Judit Frigyesi puts it, an aesthetical ideal, and this principle applies not only to the East European Jewish traditions studied by her but to all Jewish traditions....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128658761","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":"Yaron Harel, Damesek nikhbeshah zemanit: hatziyonut beDamesek 1908–1923. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2015. 280 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0046","url":null,"abstract":"The two volumes listed at the head of this review are essentially the same book, published during the same year both in Hebrew and in English translation. This is Yaron Harel’s third work on Syrian Jewry in the modern era. Each of his previous two books on the subject received prestigious awards (the Ben-Zvi Prize and the Shazar Prize, respectively), and for his overall work, Harel was awarded the President of the State of Israel Prize in 2010....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124986989","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":"Jacob Jay Lindenthal, Abi Gezunt: Explorations into the Role of Health and the American Jewish Dream. Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2017. xxix + 187 pp; together with The Lindex: A Companion to Abi Gezunt. xi + 341 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0037","url":null,"abstract":"Is there a causal relationship between the remarkable economic success and rapid upward mobility of American Jews and behavioral patterns on their part that promoted health and the prevention of disease? Jacob Jay Lindenthal offers what he terms “a conjectural analysis” (p. xiii) to suggest such a causality, and he supports his argument with an impressive array of medical sources that scholars of American Jewry have rarely utilized. Lindenthal maintains that Jewish “values, beliefs, traditions, attitudes, and behavioral patterns” have all had a crucial effect on Jewish health (p. xv). He highlights such cultural factors among the Jews as awareness of and concern for health; an emphasis on cleanliness as mandated by Jewish law (halakhah); a cohesive family life; the promotion of education; specific childrearing practices (among them, circumcision, breastfeeding, and maintaining longer time intervals between births); a low rate of alcoholism; and communal charitable institutions and solidarity as playing a decisive role in keeping East European Jewish immigrants in America in relative good health. As he notes, Jewish immigrants in early 20...","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128498913","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":"Library Awareness and Textual Intimacy in Contemporary Jewish Culture","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"By the term “library awareness,” I refer to the way in which the library is understood in a given text and, extrapolating from the text, in a given period or place.1 It can also signify the various answers to a question about the meaning of a library: in other words, the awareness of the principal and practical meanings of libraries, the perception of them as an aggregate, and the understanding that an aggregate of books is equivalent to an aggregate of knowledge and is even connected to other perceptions of holism. This awareness is connected, naturally, to the real-world existence of libraries and collections of books, but the two are not identical. In Jewish culture (as well as in other cultures), library awareness is a diverse and fluid concept that changes with time and place. Differentiating stages or types of library awareness can contribute to an understanding of the historical, cultural, and intellectual trends of various periods. In this essay I will concentrate on the last two centuries, while touching as well on previous stages of Jewish culture....","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128997294","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":"Michal Kravel-Tovi, When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xiii + 310 pp.","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197516485.003.0049","url":null,"abstract":"“The personal is political” is a slogan associated with mid-20th-century American feminism. This slogan was a challenge to conventional thinking regarding what was domestic and what was public, and what were the “proper” spheres of women and men. In somewhat analogous fashion, whereas American law and ideology assume that religion is a private matter, in Israel, Judaism has a formal public standing. At the same time, its scope and legitimate hold on individuals is continually contested. Conversion—whereby state-empowered religious authorities accept someone as Jewish—yields a dense intertwining of individual behavior and engagement with “the political.”...","PeriodicalId":363580,"journal":{"name":"Textual Transmission in Contemporary Jewish Cultures","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129497657","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}