AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY最新文献

{"title":"Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps by Joseph Reimer (review)","authors":"Sivan Zakai","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920598","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps</em> by Joseph Reimer <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sivan Zakai (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps</em>. By Joseph Reimer. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2022. 248 pp. <p>How is Shabbat celebrated at American Jewish summer camps? And what types of learning occurs when campers and staff participate in the rituals of Shabbat at camp? These are the central questions illuminated by Joseph Reimer's <em>Making Shabbat: Celebrating and Learning at American Jewish Summer Camps</em>.</p> <p>Reimer investigates three camps that, on the surface, would appear to have radically different approaches to celebrating Jewish life: URJ Camp Eisner in Massachusetts (Reform), Camp Ramah in Wisconsin (Conservative), and Camp Yavneh in New Hampshire (\"an independent camp with a substantial Orthodox population\") (19). Through his thick descriptions of Shabbat celebrations at these ostensibly different camps, Riemer demonstrates that they in fact have striking parallels: carefully planned programing, positive peer pressure, and a practice of \"guided participation\" that allows campers to learn, over time, how to participate in the rituals of Shabbat. Despite their differences, these camps all provide campers opportunities to learn <em>about</em> Shabbat by <em>doing</em> Shabbat. <strong>[End Page 699]</strong></p> <p><em>Making Shabbat</em> is divided into three sections, each of which offers a distinct scholarly narrative. Part One, \"Creating Shabbat at Camp,\" offers a sociological and historical overview of Shabbat celebrations at American Jewish summer camps. Reimer argues that \"Shabbat at camp\" was a deliberate invention of the leaders of Jewish camps established in the 1920s: Cejwin, Modin, and Achvah. These camps departed from earlier definitions of Jewish summer camps as merely institutions with large Jewish populations and steered toward a new vision of Jewish camps as places where young Jews could learn about Judaism. Leaders of these new camps, Reimer argues, framed Shabbat as \"a conscious undertaking\" designed to \"create a special camp day that feels like a traditional Shabbat, allows for Shabbat observance, and yet does not feel overly restrictive\" (32–33). They created a structure for celebrating Shabbat at camp that spread to other camps, including the three that are the focus of Reimer's work.</p> <p>Part Two, \"Celebrating Shabbat at Camp,\" offers detailed descriptions of the common rhythm that transcends Jewish camps with different denominational and educational ideologies. Reimer takes readers on a journey through the stages of Shabbat at camp, from preparations for Shabbat, to ushering in Shabbat on Friday evenings, through the Saturday rituals of Shabbat celebration","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An American Friendship. Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism by David Weinfeld (review)","authors":"Jakob Egholm Feldt","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920600","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>An American Friendship. Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism</em> by David Weinfeld <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Jakob Egholm Feldt (bio) </li> </ul> <em>An American Friendship. Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism</em>. By David Weinfeld. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. 248 pp. <p><em>An American Friendship. Horace Kallen, Alain Locke, and the Development of Cultural Pluralism</em> traces the friendship between Horace M. Kallen and Alain Locke from their first encounters at Harvard and their stay at Oxford as Rhodes scholars in 1907–8 to Locke's death in 1954 and Kallen's reflections on Locke thereafter. The book's core claim is that the cultural and social philosophy of cultural pluralism was developed in dialogue between Kallen and Locke as a lived experience, a reflection on friendship between differences. Both were original and prolific intellectuals profoundly influenced by the flourishing pragmatism of the period. Consequently, multiple intersections of American (and global) cultural, intellectual, and social history meet in Kallen and Locke's specific lives as practical and real problems. In this way, Weinfeld follows the protagonists as instantiations of wider cultural and social issues, as examples of how theory springs from lived experiences. The arch-question is \"what difference does the difference make?\" Should race and ethnicity make a difference in culture and society? <strong>[End Page 704]</strong></p> <p>The book is accordingly formed as an intellectual biography of two elitist intellectuals and professors with minority backgrounds. Weinfeld has made impressive use of archival material and includes rumors and hearsay in the margins to draw a portrait of two men with faults, feelings, grandeur, and strong passions for creating and educating for newness, for the future. He brings new and fascinating material to the fore, particularly about both Kallen's and Locke's ambiguities vis-à-vis their friendship across racial boundaries. If the question is whether Kallen and Locke have some sort of co-authorship of the concept of cultural pluralism, however, I have doubts. While the detailed biographies are interesting in their own right, it is worth a discussion of whether these details conjure up a new or revised history of the development of cultural pluralism.</p> <p>There are two central revisions of historiography in play in the book. One is that Kallen, possibly unfairly, claimed authorship of the idea of cultural pluralism. The other is that Kallen's famous protest against discrimination against Locke at Oxford was more ambiguous than it seemed. Weinfeld questions whether Kallen participated in the infamous Thanksgiving dinner for the Rhodes scholars to which Locke was not invited because he was African Ame","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking Moroccan Transnationalism: Sephardism, Decolonization, and Activism between Israel and Montreal","authors":"Roy Orel Shukrun, Aviad Moreno","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920593","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Rethinking Moroccan Transnationalism:<span>Sephardism, Decolonization, and Activism between Israel and Montreal</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Roy Orel Shukrun (bio) and Aviad Moreno (bio) </li> </ul> <p>In 1974, Maurice Elmaleh arrived in Montreal from Morocco and a year later started working at the Centre Hillel Francophone with \"a good number\" of other recently immigrated Moroccan Jews. The Centre Hillel Francophone had been founded in 1972 to regroup Montreal's Francophone Jewish students at the Université de Montréal and became, like many other student groups in the politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s, a locus for radical streams of discussion and activism. Regarding his experience at the center in the 1970s, Elmaleh wrote in 2009:</p> <blockquote> <p>There was the Kippur War, the Greater Israel Movement was gaining speed with the development of colonies in the occupied territories, the election of the Parti Québécois with an overwhelming majority. […] It was in this context that we had to define our Sephardi identity, reckon with our integration in Canada and particularly in Quebec. A parallel challenge, in no way lesser, is and will continue to be our solidarity with Israel, all while denouncing the social and economic situation of Israelis of Moroccan origin who suffer profound discrimination in that country. This without counting all the debates about Peace with the Palestinians<sup>1</sup></p> </blockquote> <p>Elmaleh's associations raise a number of important questions connecting several categories of belonging—national, transnational, ethnic, colonial, and personal. Elmaleh's experience cut across all of these categories, but the relationships between them are at first unclear. How did the election of the Parti Québécois, a nationalist, separatist party in Canada's Francophone province, Quebec, relate to wars in which Israel was implicated abroad, to Israel's negotiation with Palestinians, or to discrimination against Moroccan Jews in Israel? How did any of these relate to Moroccan Jews' struggle to integrate in Canada, and why \"particularly Quebec\"? Finally, what did any of these have to do with <strong>[End Page 659]</strong> \"defining\" Sephardi identity in Montreal? Looking at the interconnectivity between local and global developments that affected Moroccan Jews on the move, this article will seek to offer answers to these questions and provide a new perspective on a diaspora in the making.</p> <p>In the 1960s and 1970s, Canada became a major hub for Moroccan Jewish immigration during a moment characterized by global decolonization, nationalism, and the subsequent movements to reaffirm ethnic identities. Moroccan Jews in Canada, as in France and South America, wrestled with the boundaries of their postcolonial identities. Some adopted the moniker \"Sephardi\" to describe themselves, whil","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920586","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Contributors <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Ronald Gomes Casseres</strong> descends from Sephardic Jews who first landed in Curaçao in 1690. He was born and lived most of his life on that Dutch Caribbean island. He has served the historic Mikvé Israel-Emanuel community for over forty years and continues to be a leading member of the community. He has been active in numerous social, youth-care, business, nature conservation and cultural organizations and institutions in Curaçao. Now retired, one of his interests is the history of his Jewish community and its practices, and the documentation and the preservation of that heritage.</p> <p><strong>Max Modiano Daniel</strong> is the public historian and Jewish Heritage Collection coordinator at the College of Charleston. He specializes in the history of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in the United States. He also co-hosts and produces <em>El Ponte</em>, a podcast about Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) language and culture.</p> <p><strong>Ellen Eisenberg</strong> is the Dwight and Margaret Lear Professor of American History at Willamette University. Her published work includes <em>The First to Cry Down Injustice? Western Jews and Japanese Removal during WWII</em> and two volumes on the history of Jews in Oregon, titled <em>Embracing a Western Identity: Jewish Oregonians, 1849-1950</em> and <em>The Jewish Oregon Story</em>, 1950-2015. She is the editor of <em>Jewish Identities in the American West: Relational Perspectives</em>, which appeared in the Brandeis University Press Series in American Jewish History, Culture, and Life in the fall of 2022.</p> <p><strong>Aviad Moreno</strong> is a faculty member at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the head of the research hub 'Communities and Mobilities' at the Azrieli Center for Israel Studies. He is a co-editor of <em>The Long History of Mizrahim: New Directions in the Study of Jews from Islamic Countries</em> (Ben-Gurion University Press, 2021), and the author of <em>Entwined Homelands, Empowered Diasporas: Hispanic Moroccan Jews and Their Globalizing Community</em> (Indiana University Press, 2024)</p> <p><strong>Devin E. Naar</strong> is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, associate professor of history, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His first book, <em>Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece</em>, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association.</p> <p><strong>James Benjamin Nadel</st","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight over Israel by Eric Alterman (review)","authors":"Amy Weiss","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920595","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920595","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight over Israel</em> by Eric Alterman <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amy Weiss (bio) </li> </ul> <em>We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight over Israel</em>. By Eric Alterman. New York: Basic Books, 2022. 502 pp. <p>A little more than twenty years ago, historian Jerold Auerbach asked the question \"Are We One?\" in the title of his book about the identities of Jews in the United States and Israel. Eric Alterman's latest book definitively answers that question and then some by declaring \"We Are Not One.\" In examining the history of American discourse about Israel, Alterman clearly notes these debates are centered \"not in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, but in midtown Manhattan and Washington, DC\" (3). In other words, while the subjects and arguments of Auerbach's and Alterman's books differ, <em>We Are Not One</em> authoritatively reveals the fractures that have come to exist among Americans and their views on Israel.</p> <p>The chronological organization of the book offers a clear narrative, beginning with the late nineteenth-century origins of the Zionist movement and ending with the start of the Biden administration. Alterman weaves together the multiple voices, communal organizations, and governmental agencies that comprise the \"fight\" over Israel. While many readers might know (or think they know) the attitudes of American Jews or the State Department toward Israel, for instance, Alterman underscores that these entities are not a monolith. Rather, the book deftly highlights the different ideological viewpoints within and across Jewish religious movements and organizations, with an eye toward the impact of the neoconservative turn in American Judaism, as well as American Christianity. The inclusion of evangelicals is a welcome addition to this history. Theologically conservative Protestant beliefs about Jews and Israel have played a prominent role not only in shaping contemporary Jewish-Christian relations but also in influencing US-Israel relations.</p> <p>This is a comprehensive work. The book boasts an introduction, eighteen chapters, and a conclusion, all with enticing titles. While the chapter titled \"A New 'Bible'\" refers to an innovative text, it may not be what readers have in mind. The reference point is the impact of <em>Exodus</em>, both the 1958 book by Leon Uris and the 1960 film directed by Otto Preminger. \"Given the power of American popular culture to shape perceptions of reality,\" Alterman argues, it is only natural that <em>Exodus</em> served as one of the defining moments in the debates over Israel (99). Another chapter, \"'Basically, A Liberal Jew,\"' referring to a quip <strong>[End Page 693]</strong> Barack Obama made about himself to an audience at Temple Emanu-El in New York, examines the Obama administration's approach toward Israel. I","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"77 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Women, Cookbooks, and the Making of American Sephardic Culture","authors":"Max Modiano Daniel","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920592","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920592","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Women, Cookbooks, and the Making of American Sephardic Culture <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Max Modiano Daniel (bio) </li> </ul> <p>In April 1976, the <em>Los Angeles Times</em> sent journalist Jean Bennett to cover the Moroccan Jewish celebration of <em>mimouna</em> at the Em Habanim synagogue in North Hollywood. Celebrated at the conclusion of Passover by Moroccan Jews throughout the world, <em>mimouna</em> has been an occasion for Jews, often alongside their gentile neighbors, to share food and visit each other's homes. It often draws comparisons to the post-fast <em>iftar</em> meal eaten by Muslims during Ramadan as a moment of communal gathering and nighttime celebration. Among the dishes prepared and served by the congregation's women were <em>thriba</em> (walnut cookies), <em>mufletta</em> (a fluffy pancake-like bread), <em>frijuela</em> (thin pastries with glaze), and <em>dattes farcies</em> (stuffed dates). The Arabic, Spanish, and French names of these foods reflect the linguistic, cultural, and political history of Jews in modern Morocco under Muslim, Spanish, and French rule.</p> <p>Perhaps in line with the openness and conviviality characterized by the holiday—or, rather, motivated by an impulse to exoticize this event—Bennett's short article begins by playing off the reader's preconceived notions of Jewishness. She introduces the greeting \"T'rebho,\" a wish for prosperity, and adds: \"The word is Arabic. But the 325 people wishing each other a prosperous year were devout Jews.\" The need to say this assumes an expectation on the part of her readership that Arabic speakers are not Jews, despite the likely fact that the guests were conversing in French, as was typical of most Moroccan Jews in the second half of the twentieth century. The article goes on to state that, although the festivity \"has roots in the religion of the Sephardim, one of the highlights of the evening was belly dancing,\" expecting the reader to be surprised by this confluence of activities. Toward the conclusion, we are also informed that the dishes served \"are extremely difficult to make, [and] are very sweet and also expensive,\" and that it was \"extremely difficult for them to get the recipes down on paper!\" Yet a Mrs. Gabriel Dery of Van Nuys is quoted as being \"eager for the Ashkenazic Jews here to enlarge and enrich their tradition by adopting some of her customs.\"<sup>1</sup> <strong>[End Page 633]</strong> The ways Moroccan Jews are presented as Arabic speakers, belly dancers, and experts at forbidding and luxurious recipes may indeed inspire others to heed Mrs. Dery's call, but it does so by drawing on stereotypes and exaggeration.</p> <p>A dual vision of <em>mimouna</em> as both a woman-led family and communal gathering and as a so-called exotic, performative, and educational experience is emblematic of the larger discourse around Sepha","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Salo Baron, Columbia University and the Remaking of Jewish Studies in the United States ed. by Rebecca Kobrin (review)","authors":"Michael Brenner","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920597","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Salo Baron, Columbia University and the Remaking of Jewish Studies in the United States</em> ed. by Rebecca Kobrin <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Michael Brenner (bio) </li> </ul> Rebecca Kobrin, ed. <em>Salo Baron, Columbia University and the Remaking of Jewish Studies in the United States</em>. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 266 pp. <p>No other individual shaped the institutional landscape of Jewish Studies and its academic institutions in twentieth-century America as much as Salo Wittmayer Baron. Appointed as the first professor of Jewish history at a western university in 1930 at the age of 35, he molded such institutions as the American Academy of Social Research and Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, he appeared as the only historian at the Eichmann Trial, and he educated many of the next generation's leading Jewish historians. As Rebecca Kobrin writes in her very informative introduction to this volume, his arrival at Columbia was a \"transformational moment\" in American Jewish scholarship, which had been long relegated to rabbinical seminaries and teachers colleges (2).</p> <p>Baron was neither a natural choice for the committee nor the first choice when Columbia University searched for the inaugural Miller Chair in Jewish History. The most prominent scholar initially offered the position, German-Jewish historian Ismar Elbogen, turned it down, citing his responsibilities towards his students at the <em>Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums</em>, the Liberal rabbinical seminary in Berlin. Little did he expect that only a few years later he would have to run under quite different conditions to find asylum at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. In the end, the young Galician-born Baron, who had earned three doctorates and a rabbinical ordination in Vienna, was selected for the new position.</p> <p>Baron's work has been the object of various studies. A generation after Robert Liberles's 1995 full-fledged biography, this is the first systematic collection of essays on Baron's scholarship. Former students such as Robert Chazan and Jane Gerber contribute to this volume. Francesca Trivellato assesses Baron's contribution to economic history, and David Sorkin examines Baron's relationship to the Enlightenment. Bernard Cooperman takes a fresh look at Baron's oeuvre, noting that writing a world history of the Jews which includes areas that were not his specialty forced him to \"overgeneralize with simplistic characterizations of entire societies over many eras and in many lands\" (63). The real treasure, as Cooperman reminds us, is found in the long footnotes that characterize Baron's writings. Jason Lustig analyzes Baron's legacy, stating that despite the fact that \"Baron's specific scholarly findings have been largely surpassed,\" his \"general outlook still sets the terms of debate at","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jews In Contemporary Visual Entertainment: Raced, Sexed, and Erased by Carol Siegel (review)","authors":"Samantha Pickette","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920599","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920599","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Jews In Contemporary Visual Entertainment: Raced, Sexed, and Erased</em> by Carol Siegel <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Samantha Pickette (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Jews In Contemporary Visual Entertainment: Raced, Sexed, and Erased</em>. By Carol Siegel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. ix + 245 pp. <p>In <em>Jews in Contemporary Visual Entertainment: Raced, Sexed, and Erased</em>, Carol Siegel uses case studies from film and television series ranging from the 1970s to the present as a lens through which to consider <strong>[End Page 701]</strong> the relationships among Jewish representation, Jewish identity formation, and cultural stereotypes that draw from European antisemitic tropes that both racialize Jews as distinct \"others\" and emphasize their deviation from sexual and gender norms. This connection between racialization and sexualization destabilizes the cultural misconception of American Jews as a white monolith, and instead places Jews in conversation with other marginalized communities and communities of color that are similarly (mis)represented within American popular culture. Much of the book revolves around a historical deconstruction of both race and sexuality as it relates to Jews, with Siegel using the introduction to problematize the categories often employed to define Jewish identity (religion, race, ethnicity), ultimately making the case that Jews are a \"racialized group\" and, furthermore, that the intersection of race and sexuality in representations of Jews reveals a deep-seated antisemitism that connects Jews with other racialized Americans and threatens progressive goals related to gender and sexual freedom (21).</p> <p>Siegel's book is organized not chronologically but instead categorically around various case studies from film and television that present the major themes and tropes in Jewish representation that elucidate her claims. Chapters explore the presence and function of Jewish therapist figures, many of whom are often at the center of sexual-based neuroses; the dissonance between Jewish communal structures, American assimilation, and romantic/sexual desire (usually in the form of exogamous relationships that feature either hypersexual Jews objectified by non-Jewish partners or Jews pursuing non-Jewish partners); the relationships among sex, trauma, and Jewish female identity in Holocaust film; the erasure of the Holocaust in films centering on the sexual identity formation of Jews in the postwar era; the relationships among sex positivity, sexual dysfunction, and Jewishness on television; the \"minoritarian cinema\" of the Coen Brothers; and the \"erasure\" of Jewish identity in television series featuring characters defined as Jewish but removed from any Jewish context outside the racialized stereotypes they reinforce through their actions, behaviors, and ma","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Resilience and Redemption: A Transatlantic Perspective on Psalms in Espejo fiel de vidas (Faithful Mirror of Lives)","authors":"Matthew Warshawsky","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920589","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920589","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Resilience and Redemption:<span>A Transatlantic Perspective on Psalms in <em>Espejo fiel de vidas</em> (<em>Faithful Mirror of Lives</em>)</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Matthew Warshawsky (bio) </li> </ul> <p>This article studies <em>Espejo fiel de vidas que contiene los Psalmos de David en verso, obra devota, útil y deleitable</em> (<em>Faithful Mirror of Lives That Contains the Psalms of David in Verse, a Devout, Useful, and Pleasing Work</em>) by Daniel Israel López Laguna as a means of understanding the influence of a converso, or New Christian, worldview on his paraphrase of Psalms written when he lived openly as a Jew in Jamaica.<sup>1</sup> López Laguna and his poem encapsulate the transatlantic reach of the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish diaspora two centuries after the expulsion and conversion of Iberian Jews during the 1490s. Born in Portugal or France in the mid-1600s, raised in the latter country, educated in Spain, and apparently prosecuted by the Holy Office of the Inquisition of Spain or Portugal for Jewish heresy, López Laguna wrote the earliest literary work by a Jew in Jamaica, which he took to London for publication in the large Sephardic community of that city. Written in a Spanish illustrative of the poet's absorption of Baroque literary trends, <em>Faithful Mirror of Lives</em> reflects the author's geographical and spiritual trajectory by illuminating the importance of resilience and redemption in his reworking of Psalms. This article explores these themes by analyzing passages that show the hybrid nature of the poet as an emergent, or \"New,\" Jew, possibly raised as a crypto-Jewish New Christian, who uses the literary language of Catholic Spain to communicate his experience of the converso mindset. Examples of this mindset include a geographical and spiritual wandering represented in the <em>peregrino</em>, or pilgrim; praise of the elect status of the Israelite people; entreaty of God to protect conversos against enemies representative of the Inquisition and gratitude for doing so; and disparagement of talebearers, a clear reference to the <em>malsín</em>, or inquisitorial informant. Through his paraphrase of Psalms, López Laguna offers readers intimate access to how these elements of the converso worldview informed his practice and understanding of <strong>[End Page 553]</strong> Judaism. In turn, such access broadens American Jewish historical narratives to include an early modern Sephardic voice that sheds light on the hopes and fears of New Christians who resisted the centuries-long efforts of the Iberian Inquisition to prevent them from recovering their Jewish identity.</p> <p>This article builds upon the work of other scholars who have studied how <em>Espejo fiel</em> represents the Jewish identity of a diasporic former New Christian after 1492. For example, among more recent analyses of the w","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: Special Issue on Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the Americas","authors":"Devin E. Naar","doi":"10.1353/ajh.2023.a920587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2023.a920587","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Introduction:<span>Special Issue on Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the Americas</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Devin E. Naar (bio) </li> </ul> <p>The nascent field of Sephardic studies began to take shape in the 1930s. One of its pioneering figures, Albert Adatto, later reflected on his unconventional process as a scholar:</p> <blockquote> <p>I do not consider myself a scholar in the normal sense. I am making a highly enjoyable volunteer reconnaissance among the documents that have been written about our people in the English language to determine how much is relatively true, how much is based on firsthand source material, and how much is <em>bamyas</em> [lies; literally \"okra\"] or <em>bavajadas</em> [nonsense]. The gr and project of mine is being carried out with the Sephardic spirit of <em>kef</em> [enjoyment] and <em>reposo</em> [calm].<sup>1</sup></p> </blockquote> <p>While he completed his MA on the history of Sephardic Jews in Seattle at the University of Washington in 1939, Adatto did not continue with doctoral studies or become a professional scholar. Instead, he, like his sister Emma Adatto, who completed her MA on Sephardic folktales at the University of Washington in 1935, continued to follow the development of scholarship and popular writing about Sephardic Jews over the subsequent decades.<sup>2</sup> With his characteristic infusion of Ladino terms into his written English, Albert Adatto addressed a letter to David Sitton, a Sephardic leader in Jerusalem, in which he described his efforts to track as calmly and with as much good humor as possible what he perceived as the frequent misrepresentation of Sephardic histories and cultures in the United States and beyond.<sup>3</sup></p> <p>This special issue of <em>American Jewish History</em>, dedicated to Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the Americas, offers insight into both how much <strong>[End Page 509]</strong> the field has changed—in part, through its professionalization—and in some ways remained static over the past half century and more, both in dialogue with and as a reflection of broader trends in American Jewish and general culture and politics.<sup>4</sup> During that time, Sephardic studies, a multidisciplinary and transnational field, has become a recognized area of interest within the broader field of Jewish studies, although the parameters of Sephardic studies—and the very meaning of \"Sephardic\"—remain contested.</p> <h2>SEPHARDIC STUDIES AND JEWISH STUDIES</h2> <p>The study of one constituency of Sephardic Jews—medieval \"golden age\" Spanish Jewry—has been at the center of the field of Jewish studies since its foundation with the <em>Wissenschaft des Judentums</em> in the nineteenth century.<sup>5</sup> Harry Wolfson, who was the first chair of Jewish studies at an American university, established at Harvard in 1925, focused on the medieval Spani","PeriodicalId":43104,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JEWISH HISTORY","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140003722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}