Jewish Cultural Studies

''לחם צר ומים לחץ' – לחמהּ של קהילת המורדים במצדה'

by Guy Stiebel

בתוך: סטרינסקי א' ורז א' (עורכים), מלח הארץ כרך 6, סדרה למחקרי ים המלח, הוצאת מאגנס, ירושלים, תשע"ב, עמ' 116-104.

Visions of Jewish Modernism

by Barbara Mann

Mentsh: on being Jewish and queer (contributor)

by Miodrag Kojadinovic

Global Affinities: Portuguese Marranos (Anusim), Traveling Jews, and Cultural Logics of Kinship (2011)

by Naomi Leite

Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 2011.

This dissertation explores issues of identification, relatedness, and belonging on a global scale, through an... more This dissertation explores issues of identification, relatedness, and belonging on a global scale, through an ethnographic study of Portugal’s urban Marranos (descendants of fifteenth-century forced converts to Catholicism) and foreign Jews who travel from abroad to meet them. Although not Jewish according to Jewish law, given centuries of intermarriage, Marranos are nonetheless widely considered to be part of “the Jewish family,” “lost brethren” who should be welcomed back to the Jewish people. Many Jews view them within the metanarrative of Jewish destruction and survival, the “eternal spark” that remains despite the Inquisition’s attempted elimination of Judaism from the Portuguese landscape. However, for numerous local reasons the present-day Marranos are not welcomed by Portugal’s tiny normative Jewish community. As a result, the urban Marranos, who feel strongly that they are Jews by descent, turn to foreign Jewish travelers as sources of educational, spiritual, and material assistance in their bid to join the Jewish world and attain recognition as Jews in the present.

Based on two years of fieldwork in Marrano organizations in Lisbon and Porto and traveling alongside Jewish tourists and outreach workers, the dissertation undertakes a processual analysis of the constitution of ancestral Jewish identity and of the role of transnational, cross-cultural affective ties in affording a sense of global Jewish belonging. The primary questions driving this work are, first, how and why do far-flung people come to feel that they are related to one another, and what terms do they use to characterize and think through that feeling of relatedness? Second, to what extent are their perceptions of essential connection disrupted or transformed by face-to-face contact? By interrogating the cultural logics of kinship writ large—the language and conceptual frameworks people use to articulate and make sense of their feelings of relatedness to one another—and then examining how those logics play out “on the ground,” this study provides a fine-grained ethnographic analysis of the mechanisms through which global and ancestral imaginings become concretized in social interaction. Ultimately, I argue, physical proximity remains the productive sphere for identification and belonging, even as global interconnection provides new opportunities for encounter.

Gentile on My Mind; Updike, Bech, and the Limits of Ethnic Representation

by Derek Royal

Critical Insights: John Updike. Ed. Bernard F. Rodgers, Jr. Salem Press, 2011. 33-48.

Jewish Funerary Monuments from Niš: A Comparative Analysis of Form and Iconography, El Prezente

by Jelena Erdeljan

Jewish culture and national mythology

by Iulia Anghel

Exploring Jewish Space: A Conceptual Approach

by Anna Lipphardt

(together with Julia Brauch and Alexandra Nocke), in Jewish Topographies – Visions of Space, Traditions of Place,ed. by Brauch/Lipphardt/Nocke, Heritage, Culture, and Identity series (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 1-23

For the introduction article follow the link below, if you want to learn more about the book as a whole check out the... more For the introduction article follow the link below, if you want to learn more about the book as a whole check out the Ashgate website

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&pageSubject=348&title_id=9846&edition_id=10562

Between History and Memory: Auschwitz in Akropolis, Akropolis in Auschwitz

by Magda Romanska

Theatre Survey (2009) Vol. 50, No.2: 223-250.

AWARDS:

2011 AQUILA POLONICA ARTICLE PRIZE

The biennial prize, funded by Aquila Polonica... more AWARDS:

2011 AQUILA POLONICA ARTICLE PRIZE

The biennial prize, funded by Aquila Polonica Publishing, is awarded by the Polish Studies Association to the author of "the best article written in English during the previous two years on any aspect of Polish studies."

FROM THE AWARD COMMITTEE:

Romanska’s article "succeeds taking a relatively difficult and opaque subject, Grotowski’s 1962 re-staging of Wyspiański’s Akropolis against the background of Auschwitz, both accessible and rewarding for readers who are not specialists in Polish theatre. While Romanska’s analysis remains grounded in theatre, and her conclusion is ultimately about theatrical production, she raises many questions about history, memory, and national mythology that most readers will want to learn more about. What is particularly impressive is the scope of the article, which ranges over the entire twentieth century. [...] Romanska’s work makes a convincing argument that we need to be paying more attention to theatre in Poland."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2010 GERALD KAHAN SCHOLAR'S PRIZE

Awarded by the American Society for Theatre Research, for “best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal.” The winning essay is judged as "displaying originality in the broad field of theatre and performance, exhibiting critical rigor, showing an acquaintance with related research in theatre and performance, and promising future professional development in the field.”

FROM THE AWARD COMMITTEE:

Romanska’s essay offers“an excellent unpacking of both Stanislaw Wyspianski’s 1904 drama, Akropolis, and its production history. Her essay made use of extensive sources to tell a complicated story-layered text, performance, and context, paying attention to the original script as well as performances, especially, those directed by Jerzy Grotowski. The essay provides a missing, though essential, analysis of a production that is often cited, but perhaps rarely understood in its full context. The methods of historiography and documentary analysis are excellent and provide an instructive model for future performance scholarship.”

Judeoconversos de Jerez y el obispado de Cádiz a fines del siglo XV

by Gonzalo Carrasco

'En la España Medieval', 2006 (29), pp. 311-345.

English title: "Conversos from Jerez and the Bishopric of Cadiz at the End of the Fifteenth Century"

Many of the conversos of Jerez and the Bishopric of Cadiz, among other places, were affected by social rehabilitation... more Many of the conversos of Jerez and the Bishopric of Cadiz, among other places, were affected by social rehabilitation measures at the end of the fifteenth century. This often took place after having been summoned by the Inquisition due to a previous sentencing of a family member. The statistical study of the rehabilitation lists (1495-1497) allows not only for an understanding of the sentences that befell this harassed group, but also reveals social trends in the converso collective of southern Andalusia. The converso community comes to light by way of a thorough onomastic, geographical, family and labour study. The study points towards new hypotheses that reveal the complexity of converso society at the brink of the Modern Age.

Die Integration der jüdischen Gemeinschaft in die arabisch-islamische Gesellschaft von al-Andalus auf Grundlage ihrer Sprachzeugnisse

by Maria Angeles Gallego

White, whole wheat, rye: Jews and ethnic categorization in Washington, DC

by Gabriella Modan

Two Kings, One Crown, and Raban Gamliel's Court: Between Strategies of Justifying Authority and Signification of Time

by Amit Assis

Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature XXIII (2009), pp. 53-75. [in Hebrew]

This paper deals with two stories: the diminution of the moon (BT Hulin 60b) and the argument between Raban Gamliel... more This paper deals with two stories: the diminution of the moon (BT Hulin 60b) and the argument between Raban Gamliel and Rabi Joshua about the sanctification of the new moon (Mishna, Rosh HaShana b, 8-9). The two stories deal with authoritative hierarchy and in both stories the figure of the moon and the determining of the date play an important role. Despite the distance in time and genre between these two stories, the paper will show they share some important characteristics which are opposed to texts that stand for a solar calendar.
I argue for a common strategy of justifying authority in both these stories, a strategy which does not base itself on a claim for authentic representation of a higher source of authority held by the ruler. Rather, it tells us that he who said the right thing in the discussion was forced to concede his superiority, and agreed to do so. This strategy does not focus on the ruler but on the subject of ruling, the one who accepts a ruler upon himself; it doesn't justify authority by attributing the one who holds it with some inner value but by narrating a drama of the one who accepts authority upon himself.
The strategy of justifying authority parallels a certain claim for authority by the archaic-epic past, described by Bakhtin as the Epic Distance. The paper will describe two etiological models: the Epic model in which the present is demanded to reflect the glorified past by simply obeying its higher place in hierarchy; and the model practiced by the two stories hereby interpreted in which the archaic past does not remain complete and static as it does in Bakhtin's epic model. In this second model the story describes a complication in the archaic past, and the present cult and culture is required to resolve this complication. The first model tends to design stories which describe a whole reality and a poetic justice while the second one tends to shape justice and authority relationships as paradoxical.
The two strategies of justifying authority, and the two models of appeal for authority by the past, are considered in the paper as appropriate for two calendars accepted by Palestinian Jews of that time. The lunar calendar used by the sages is seen as represented and practiced according to a certain etiological model and a certain strategy of justifying authority, as exemplified in the two stories. The priestly solar calendar, here exemplified by the book of Jubilees, is justified and practiced according to the opposed etiological model, and the opposed strategy of justifying authority.
Therefore, this paper connects the attribution of significance to calendar to the role played by past and present in creating authoritative significance, and the role of authority in significance itself.

Author-ity

by Amit Assis

Mafte'akh: Lexical Review of Political Thought 2e (2011), pp. 1-28. [This essay also has an Hebrew version online: http://mafteakh.tau.ac.il/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/2-2010-08.pdf]

The term 'Author-ity' describes the hierarchic structure of representation and the representational structure of the... more The term 'Author-ity' describes the hierarchic structure of representation and the representational structure of the claim for authority, hence implies the hierarchic structure of semiotic activity as such, using the authority of the author as a model.
The essay poses a theo-political and a literary alternative to Rolan Barthes' Oedipal patricide of the author and poses an alternative way in which the God-Author disappears based on the rabbinical myth of the diminution of the moon, and rabbinic textual practices.

Modernity and the Cities of the the Jews edited by Cristiana Facchini

by Cristiana Facchini

The City, the Ghetto and two Books. Venice and Jewish Early Modernity by Cristiana Facchini

by Cristiana Facchini

In 1638 two books written by two Venitian rabbis were published in Venice. They were both destined successfully to... more In 1638 two books written by two Venitian rabbis were published in Venice. They were both destined successfully to reach wide circulation over the following decades. This article aims at exploring the intimate connection between Venice, a city which deeply influenced the imagination of European culture during the early modern period, and its Jewish ghetto, the first of its kind to be founded within Catholic lands.

The author suggests that it was here in Venice, within the liminal space of the ghetto, that the theory of Jews as merchants, marked by undertones of utilitarianism was finally drafted. It also suggests that, in conjunction with this well-known theory, other theories based on religious tolerance were elaborated.

The paper also invites the reader to view the ghetto as a space capable of enacting special religious encounters, mainly driven by an interest in religion and rituals. Therefore, the very specific local and tangible conditions of the urban environment – the city and the ghetto – performed a very important undertaking, for example, debates over the place and role of Jews in Christian society.

Happy Birthday!

by Reb Chaim HaQoton

This essay explores the varying rabbinic opinions on birthday celebrations. This essay explores the varying rabbinic opinions on birthday celebrations.

“War Commemoration and the Interpretation of Judges 5:15b-17”, Vetus Testamentum.

by Jacob Wright

As a prelude to a forthcoming article (“Deborah’s War Memorial”, ZAW 123), this study examines the influential... more As a prelude to a forthcoming article (“Deborah’s War Memorial”, ZAW 123), this study examines the influential interpretation of F. M. Cross and B. Halpern, according to which Jdg 5:15b-17 describes participation in battle. In identifying problems with this interpretation, I point to suggestive comparative evidence for war commemoration in the Bible and the Aegean world, as well as to more recent studies of war commemoration.

Shofar - Between the Holy and the Profane

by Guy Stiebel

Published in: Vukosavović F. (ed.), Sound the Shofar - A Witness to History, Jerusalem, 2011, pp. 30-31.

‘Hillel Zeitlin's Zohar, The History of a Translation and Commentary Project’, Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 10 (2004), pp. 119-157 (Hebrew)

by Jonatan Meir

'התהוותו וגלגוליו של מפעל תרגום וביאור ספר הזוהר להלל צייטלין', קבלה: כתב עת לחקר כתבי המיסטיקה היהודית, י  (תשס"ד), עמ' 157-119.