Jewish Culture and History
Abstracts of articles in Issue 1.1
- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Suburbs:
Social Change in Anglo-Jewry Between the Wars 1914–1945 by David Cesarani
- The belief in upward social mobility is cherished
in Anglo-Jewry today, but it is substantially a myth. The inter-war years
saw some dramatic
cross-class mobility registered unambiguously by occupational
and geographical change. But for a more significant section of the Jewish
population, the
experience was one of stasis or sideways movement. Occupations
and addresses changed, but this only gave an illusion of genuine social
mobility. And far
from being a period of 'fusion' with the 'old community', it
was time of extreme friction and fission between and within each stratum
of Jewish society.
It was not until after 1945 that a largely homogenous suburban
and predominantly middle-class Anglo-Jewry emerged. Nor had it arisen
as a
consequence of any merger between ‘new’ and ‘old
community’. The latter had simply disappeared by a process of inanition
and been supplanted by new men (and women) and new money.
- Insanity and Ethnicity: Jews in the Mid-Victorian Lunatic Asylum
by Leonard D Smith
- There is currently much interest in how members of ethnic
minorities experience the psychiatric system. In mid-Victorian provincial
England, the presence of Jews as a small but significant minority was reflected
in the population of lunatic asylums that served cities such as Liverpool,
Manchester, and Birmingham. Case evidence suggests certain patterns of symptom
presentation and behaviour among Jewish asylum patients. In some instances,
delusional ideas and other symptoms of disturbance show a clear religious or
cultural content. The response of the asylum authorities to Jewish patients
varied from the sympathetic and accepting to the unthinking and prejudiced.
Culturally determined behaviour could easily be interpreted as part of the
manifestation of mental disorder.
- ‘Alien Dick Whittingtons’: The National
Imagination and the Jewish East End by Benjamin J Lammers
- This article explores the ways in which East London and its
Jewish population were represented in travel literature, with particular
attention to the inter-war period. In this period the East End was portrayed as
respectable, in great contrast to its earlier reputation, as well as colourful
and exciting. These new characteristics were often attributed to the area's
Jewish population, and are best understood in the context of shifting notions
of national and metropolitan identities. As concern grew that the
Americanisation of London was replacing the 'English' spirit of its citizens
with a dull cosmopolitanism, the East End, and the Jews in particular, were
seized upon by some as proof that certain areas of London retained a liveliness
and vitality that was particularly English. However, there were others who
portrayed East End Jews as unalterably foreign and thus a threat to the nation.
These works demonstrate the central place of Anglo-Jewry in discussions of
national identity. In addition, they indicate the importance of accounting for
the variety of discursive strands concerning Jews when considering their place
in British society.
- The Uses of Benevolence: Charity Among Jewish
Immigrants in Manchester, 1905–1930 by Rainer Liedtke
- A central focus of research into nineteenth and
twentieth century British-Jewish history has been relations between native
and immigrant Jews and
immigrant culture. The investigation of social relations among
Jewish immigrants, however, still relies heavily on sources generated
by the native
Jewish elite and tends to be rather patchy. This article endeavours
to provide an insight into everyday life within the immigrant milieu
by shedding light on
one particular welfare association, the Manchester Jews Benevolent
Society, which was founded by Eastern European immigrants in British
Jewry’s second
city in 1905. An analysis of the organisation’s inception and activity
until the 1930s tries to locate its place and function within a transforming
provincial Jewish community. The society’s history provides an insight
into class differences within the immigrant milieu and demonstrates the efforts
of a stratum of immigrants to preserve certain elements of their Jewish
heritage while striving to improve their standing within their immediate social
environment as well as Manchester’s native Jewry.
- Minority Rites: The Strange History of Circumcision in English
Thought by Madge Dresser
- Recent debates over the rights and wrong of Jewish circumcision
in Britain seem curiously uniformed by any historical understanding. This
article considers the significance of the circumcision motif in mid-eighteenth
century Britain, and goes on the investigate the way in which this motif has
been subsequently deployed by political religious and medical writers up until
the twentieth century. It is argued that the language in which Jewish
circumcision has been discussed can be categorised into four distinctive
rhetorical modes or discourses: namely those of traditional Tory English
nationalism; enlightenment rationalism; British evangelicalism; and British
medical professionalism. As only a handful of Jewish Studies scholars, such as
Frank Felsenstein, Sander Gilman, Roy Wolper and Sarah Kocher, seem to have
previously addressed this topic in any sustained manner, this article derives
much of its argument from original primary research.
- Document: The Bolivian Jewish Connection: Germany to South
Africa Via a Southampton Pig Farm by Tony Kushner