{"title":"Sewing Mothers: Re-envisioning Jewish-Christian Relations in Sholem Asch’s “On a Carnival Night”","authors":"Ruthie Abeliovich, Yonatan Moss","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10071","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A close examination of early twentieth-century literature written in Hebrew and Yiddish reveals that many of its first representations of Christianity put a central emphasis on Mary. This fact has been overlooked in previous scholarship fixated on the role of Jesus. Our article aims to fill this lacuna by focusing on Mary’s appearance in a short, controversial story published in 1909 by Sholem Asch. Through a close reading of Mary’s encounter with the matriarch Rachel, we define Asch’s ‘maternal model,’ an alternative paradigm for Jewish-Christian relations. We argue that the marginalization of Mary from the scholarly conversation is not a slipup. Rather, it is part of a gendered scheme that prioritized Jesus over his mother and narratives of persecution and victimhood over care and obligation. We show how Asch’s artfully constructed fictional formation offers a political position founded on empathy and interconnectivity.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"2016 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135148910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“A Native of Poland Professing the Arts in London”: The Unconventional Jewish Life and Thought of Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767–1838)","authors":"D. Ruderman","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10070","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay offers a new reconstruction of the fascinating life and works of Solomon Yom Tov Bennett (1767–1838), a Jewish engraver and biblical scholar who emigrated from Belarus via Copenhagen and Berlin to London. While Bennett’s intellectual path might appear similar to several other notable Polish Jewish immigrants to Western Europe, he is quite distinctive for his remarkable coadunation of art and thought, for his unusual focus on biblical studies, for opening social and intellectual connections with some of the most famous and accomplished Christian intellectuals of London, and for his self-determination and drive to complete his life-long ambition of serving Western civilization by rewriting and correcting the entire standard edition of the English Old Testament, a task of translation, he fervently believed, that could only be fulfilled by a learned Jewish Hebraist like himself.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45314873","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Slavuta, Zhytomyr, and Vilna: The Intersecting Stories of the Romm and Shapira Publishing Houses","authors":"Ada Gebel","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10069","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article outlines key intersections between two Eastern European Jewish printing businesses during the nineteenth century. The first is the Shapira printing house, located first in Slavuta, and later in Zhytomyr. The second is the Romm printing and publishing house, Vilna, the largest Jewish printing house in Eastern Europe at the time. The first significant interaction between these two printing houses was a fierce disagreement over the printing rights of the Babylonian Talmud. However, they progressed to an economic cooperation in further printings of the Babylonian Talmud. Eventually, Romm’s printing house purchased Shapira’s printing house and closed it as part of preparations for the printing of another edition of the Talmud. The cultural contexts discussed in the article are part of and shed light on predominant tensions within European Jewish society at the time: the dispute between the Ḥasidim and the Mitnaggedim, and the dispute between maskilim and traditionalists.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48781085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Angels of Destruction (Mal’akhei Ḥabalah): Two Millennia of Jewish Horror","authors":"Kobi Kabalek, N. Zinger","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10068","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article traces the meanings and uses of the Hebrew concept mal’akhei ḥabalah [angels of destruction], a common designation for monsters that has been mentioned in Jewish texts for over two millennia. Thus far, scholars have considered mal’akhei ḥabalah only in isolated contexts. In contrast, we examine these monsters’ long history, which provided Jews with familiar horror images and figures to visualize and embody experienced and anticipated fears and threats. We argue that Jewish references to them were intended to horrify in order to deter people from sin and to express God’s might and authority, thus maintaining religious and communal order in Jewish societies. At the same time, mal’akhei ḥabalah were used to articulate the crises that threatened and challenged the existing social and political order. Although mal’akhei ḥabalah developed within religious interpretations, by the modern era they expanded their applications and relevance for various avenues of Jewish life.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-07-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44481096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture, written by Jason Lustig","authors":"J. Schneidawind","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10067","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45604564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"If This Is a Woman: Studies on Women and Gender in the Holocaust, edited by Denisa Nešťáková, Katja Grosse-Sommer, Borbála Klacsmann, and Jakub Drábik","authors":"Catharine Aretakis","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10066","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10066","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46538874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rabbi Kook in Žeimelis: A Big Data Analysis","authors":"Isaac Hershkowitz","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10064","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this study I demonstrate a distant reading of Rabbi Kook’s early writings from the Žeimelis period, using advanced tools of big data analytics. Analyzing frequent words and phrases in the Žeimelis corpus is coupled with a comparison to the most important corpus of Kook’s writing: Shemonah Qevaṣim. This parallelization illustrates the clear and consistent differences between the corpora—verbal and phrasal—as well as some similarities. The Žeimelis period can be described as more particularistic in nature, with an emphasis on traditional rabbinic writing: a strong linkage to rabbinic classical sources, a clear differentiation between Halakhah and Kabbalah, and a wide perspective on numerous subjects, yet without blending them into one. Kook’s original teachings were not abandoned in later phases but rather reshaped in a more sophisticated manner. A pan(en)theistic disposition dominates his later works, effecting content and form in unique ways, and creating a more complex and intertwined philosophy.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42549505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction. Crossing Borders: Identity, Gender, and Memory in the Southeast European Jewish Milieu","authors":"Mirjam Rajner, Katja Šmid","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10065","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2023-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49085930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Writing for Its Own Sake","authors":"Yaniv Hagbi","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10062","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"156 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134952796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}