Jewish History

A Historical Appraisal of Jewish Presence in Sri Lanka

by Fiona Kumari Campbell

Draft 2007 Unpublished

In terms of religious proclivities hegemonic discourses present Sri Lanka as an Island populated by the four main... more In terms of religious proclivities hegemonic discourses present Sri Lanka as an Island populated by the four main world religions:  Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. Judaism and the Jew is absent from official discourses to the extent that it is a commonly held belief that “there have never been any Jews in Sri Lanka”. Although somewhat erroneous and imprecise, the view articulated is that unlike India, there have not been any Jewish communities in Sri Lanka. This paper challenges that view by providing a preliminary historical foray into Jewish life in Sri Lanka. First is a discussion about the methods of research and climatic difficulties. The discussion moves onto consider the relationship between Jewish pogroms in the 1500s – 1700s and the conquest of the Ceylon by the Portuguese (1505 – 1656), Dutch (1656 – 1796) and finally the British (1796 – 1948). There is a brief consideration of the Jewish presence in Sri Lanka before the Portuguese conquest, shifting to a more nuanced articulation of Jewish relations under Portuguese and Dutch occupation.  The later part of the paper is concerned with identifying Jewish communal life under the British until Ceylonese independence in 1948.

“Locating 4 Ezra: A Consideration of Its Social Setting and Functions,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 28 (1997): 271-93

by Bruce Longenecker

The most likely scenario for the social setting of 4 Ezra is Yavneh, the author being a scribe who gravitated there... more The most likely scenario for the social setting of 4 Ezra is Yavneh, the author being a scribe who gravitated there after a.d. 70. He wrote his apocalypse in the hope of influencing rabbinic leaders who sought to reconsider Jewish piety and practice without recourse to the Temple. He was concerned that (1) the people's confidence in God should be reinforced, despite their sorrow; (2) the people should be instructed in the Law and encouraged to observe it strenuously; and (3) the people should be discouraged from active insurrection and militant revolt, often animated by eschatological speculation.--D.J.H. Abstract Number: NTA42-1998-2-1398

“The Wilderness and Jewish Revolutionary Fervour in First-Century Palestine: A Response to D.P. Schwartz and J. Marcus,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 29 (1998): 322-36.

by Bruce Longenecker

According to Schwartz and Marcus, Isa 40:3 had instructive, programmatic force in leading Jewish revolutionaries out... more According to Schwartz and Marcus, Isa 40:3 had instructive, programmatic force in leading Jewish revolutionaries out into the wilderness where they prepared themselves for the invading procession of Israel's God against Israel's enemies. But examination of relevant passages from Josephus' writings and the Dead Sea scrolls indicates that the evidence for the revolutionary interpretation of Isa 40:3 is relatively sparse and unimpressive. Instead, the narrative of the Hebrews' wilderness trek and conquest of the land under Moses and Joshua has far more to commend itself as the narrative precursor to the revolutionaries' retreat into the wilderness.--D.J.H. Abstract Number: NTA43-1999-1-634

9 the Wanderer's shoe

by Shelly Zer-Zion

Review of Adriano Prosperi, Il seme dell'intolleranza. Ebrei, eretici, selvaggi: Granada 1492, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2011

by Daniele Santarelli

See: http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/view_by_stamp.php?&halsid=9ftkrlelale6ugkvtksga8a9r5&label=SHS&langue=fr&action_todo=view&id=halshs-00693974&version=2&view=short_view

1492: l’anno della scoperta dell’America che una lunga tradizione di periodizzazioni pone all’inizio dell’età moderna.... more 1492: l’anno della scoperta dell’America che una lunga tradizione di periodizzazioni pone all’inizio dell’età moderna. Gli eventi e le conseguenze di quell’anno memorabile sono al centro di questa breve ma densa sintesi/riflessione di Adriano Prosperi, divisa in tre parti, di cui la prima è significativamente intitolata “Alle origini dell’antisemitismo” ...

Book Review: Food and Identity in Early Rabbinic Judaism by Jordan D. Rosenblum (Cambridge University Press, 2010)

by Julia Watts Belser

Published in the journal "Religion" (March 2012)

Re-thinking Jewish ethnicity through social network analysis

by Anna Collar

to be published in 2013 in Network Analysis in Archaeology, (OUP) edited by C J Knappett.

As a response to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the subsequent cataclysms in Judaea and elsewhere in... more As a response to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the subsequent cataclysms in Judaea and elsewhere in the Jewish Diaspora, Judaism itself underwent a series of reforms. This paper argues that these reforms (Rabbinic halakhah, standardised laws of moral behaviour) spread through the renewed strong-tie ethnic network of the Diaspora and can be seen epigraphically in the use of Hebrew names, references to the laws, and in the use of the Hebrew language itself. Visualising this process through the use of networks allows us to consider possible routes and mechanisms of information transmission.

‘„Řekla jsem si, že se prostě musím nějak přizpůsobit:” Mladé české ženy v ghettu Terezín,’ [“I Said to Myself I Simply Have to Adapt One Way Or Another:” Young Czech Women in Terezín Ghetto]

by Anna Hajkova

Soudobé Dějiny 4, 18 (2011): 603-628

Women’s memories tell different stories about Terezín ghetto than men: but which, and what are the mechanisms behind... more Women’s memories tell different stories about Terezín ghetto than men: but which, and what are the mechanisms behind it?
In the center of my research stands the adaptation and coping mechanisms of women in Terezín: How did their everyday life look like? Which roles did they take in? I analyze the gender specific aspects of Czech Jewish women’s lives in Terezín; moreover, I focus on how does it influence their narratives as we know them today. The core of my researched is based on a sample of thirty biographic interviews from the 1990s, combined with various contemporaneous sources. Having experienced the deportation chiefly in their twenties, they represent middle-class, assimilated, emancipated, mostly Czech speaking women.
The young Czech women inmates usually abandoned their pre-deportation individual course of life as a modern, independent woman and shifted towards a strongly gendered, supportive role, focusing on the family and collective. I examine the relationship between the shift in the social role of women, formation of networks and groups and their survival chances. Thus analyzing the position of women in particular and gender in general helps us recognize the power relationships within the enforced community.

A newly-discovered autograph responsum of Maimonides

by Amir Ashur

Co-authored with Prof. M.A. Friedman, Tel-Aviv University

A new letter to Maimonides

by Amir Ashur

Le cimetière juif au Moyen Age : un lieu d'exclusion ?/The Jewish cemetery in the Middle Ages: a place of exclusion?

by Philippe Blanchard

Co-authored with Patrice Georges and Claude de Mecquenem, published in the journal "Archeopages", n°25, April 2009.

Yiddish in the Former Soviet Union Since 1959: A Statistical-Demographic Analysis

by Mark Tolts

Paper presented at the conference “Yiddish in the Contemporary World”, University of Oxford, 19-21 April 1998 [Revised as of 4 May 2012]

This paper is based mainly on the results of the post-war Soviet censuses concerning respondents’ native language and... more This paper is based mainly on the results of the post-war Soviet censuses concerning respondents’ native language and second language. The statistical data on Yiddish were studied for the former union republics of the USSR and their capitals. For Belorussia, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, the data were also studied for their different regions. In the 1994 Russian microcensus, a question on the primary language of conversation at home was asked for the first time, and the respective data concerning Yiddish in the city of Moscow and Birobidzhan (“Jewish”) oblast were analyzed.

A Legal Query in Judaeo-Arabic concerning a Bashful Bride

by Amir Ashur

התפתחויות וחידושים במעמד האישה – עדותם של הסכמי שידוכין ואירוסין מן הגניזה הקהירית

by Amir Ashur

הושע הפמיניסט

by Amir Ashur

הגנה על זכויות האישה על-פי הסכמי נישואין מן הגניזה הקהירית ומקורות ערביים מקבילים

by Amir Ashur

Conference programm: To stay or go? Jews in Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, Part II - Warsaw 05/12

by Katrin Steffen

What is Jewish (If Anything) about Isaiah Berlin’s Philosophy?

by Arie Dubnov

part of a Special Issue: " Between Religion and Ethnicity: Twentieth-Century Jewish Émigrés and the Shaping of Postwar Culture". Published in Religions vol. 3, no. 2: pp. 289-319.

This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin’s political thought in a historically... more This paper has two central aims: First, to reappraise Isaiah Berlin’s political thought in a historically contextualized way, and in particular: to pay attention to a central conceptual tensions which animates it between, on the one hand, his famous definition of liberalism as resting on a negative concept of liberty and, on the other, his defense of cultural nationalism in general and Zionism in particular. Second, to see what do we gain and what do we lose by dubbing his philosophy Jewish. The discussion will proceed as follows: after describing the conceptual tension (Section 1), I will examine Berlin’s discussion of nationalism and explain why comparisons between him and Hans Kohn as well as communitarian interpretations of him are incomplete and have limited merit. I will continue with a brief discussion of Berlin’s Jewishness and Zionism (Section 3) and explain why I define this position “Diaspora Zionism”. The two concluding sections will discuss Berlin’s place within a larger Cold War liberal discourse (Section 5) and why I find it problematic to see his political writings as part of a Jewish political tradition (Section 6).
Keywords: Berlin, Isaiah (1909–1997); Kohn, Hans (1891–1971); Namier, Lewis B. (1880–1960); Shklar, Judith N. (1928–1992); nationalism; communitarianism; Cold War liberalism; Jewish political tradition

Review of Mirjam Bolle, Ik zal je beschrijven hoe een dag er hier uitziet: Dagboekbrieven uit Amsterdam, Westerbork en Bergen-Belsen [English title: To Leo with Love: Letters from Amsterdam, Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, 1943-1944] (Amsterdam/Antwerpen: Contact, 2005) in: Jahrbuch des Zentrum für Niederlande-Studien 11(2006): 229-230

by Anna Hajkova

Familles, réseaux et confiance dans l'économie de l'époque moderne. Diasporas marchandes et commerce interculturel/Trading diasporas and cross-cultural trade: Family, networks and trust in the Early modern economy

by Guillaume Calafat

Published in 'Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales', 2011

Comment entretenir des relations de commerce durables avec des étrangers, différents par leurs ethnies, leurs langues... more Comment entretenir des relations de commerce durables avec des étrangers, différents par leurs ethnies, leurs langues ou leurs religions ? Comment leur faire confiance ou s’assurer de leur honnêteté malgré la distance matérielle ? L’historiographie a coutume de mettre en avant la forte cohésion ethnique des diasporas marchandes pour expliquer leur succès dans l’économie globalisée de l’époque moderne. Dans son dernier ouvrage, Francesca Trivellato remet en question cette vision essentialiste. À travers l’étude de la correspondance d’Ergas & Silvera, une société en nom collectif sépharade basée dans le port toscan de Livourne, l’historienne montre l’hétérogénéité de leurs réseaux marchands : les juifs sépharades pouvaient coopérer tout aussi bien avec des coreligionnaires qu’avec des catholiques, voire des hindous à Goa, en fonction des perspectives de gain qu’offraient les associés potentiels. Cela ne dissolvait pas pour autant les préjugés existants entre les différents groupes. L’ouvrage incite de manière convaincante à entreprendre une analyse comparée des diasporas marchandes et offre un exemple réussi d’histoire connectée.
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How did merchants build stable commercial relations with strangers, that is, with traders from other ethnic groups, who spoke different languages, and professed different religions? How did they trust each other and monitor their agents’ honesty in spite of the long distance that separated them? A common historiographic explanation points to the supposed strong ethnic cohesion of trading diasporas in order to explain their success in the global economy of the early modern period. In her recent book, Francesca Trivellato challenges this essentialist view. Through the study of the business letters of Ergas & Silvera, a general partnership based in the Tuscan port of Livorno in the first half of the eighteenth century, the author shows the heterogeneity of its trading networks: the Sephardim from Livorno could cooperate with coreligionists as well as with Catholics in Europe and Hindus in Goa, according to the incentives offered by various potential partners. This cooperation, however, did not lead to the dissolution of existing prejudices between the different groups. The book convincingly encourages scholars to compare trading diasporas and displays a successful example of a connected “global history on a small scale”.