Jewish Culture and History
Abstracts of articles in Issue 2.1
- Orientalism and the Construction of Jewish Identity
in France,
1900–32 by Nadia Malinovich
- This article explores the image of the Jew as Oriental
in French-Jewish
literature and political discourse in the fin-de-siècle and inter-war
years. During the nineteenth century, French-Jews sought to distance themselves
from their alleged ‘Oriental’ origins in order to facilitate their
integration into the larger society. Beginning in the early twentieth century,
by contrast, certain French Jews began to describe their imagined connection to
the Orient as an aspect of the Jewish personality of which to be proud. This
re-invention of the Jew as Oriental, however, was often linked to feelings of
loss and alienation, a theme which many Jewish authors emphasised in their
novels, plays and poetry. For many of these same figures, embracing Zionism
provided a way to overcome this sense of alienation. By linking Zionism to the
kind of ‘humanist orientalism’ prominent in French progressive
circles during this period, they were able to give validity to their sense of
‘feeling different’ while at the same time expressing their complete
devotion to France and to a universalist world perspective.
- Enlightenment and Exclusion Judaism and Toleration in Spinoza, Locke and
Bayle by Adam Sutcliffe
- This article explores the tensions and ambiguities
of the key, foundational arguments for religious and intellectual toleration,
articulated at the dawn of
the Enlightenment in the late seventeenth century. The author focuses on the
status of Judaism in the thought of the three most influential early theorists
of toleration – Baruch Spinoza, John Locke and Pierre Bayle. In distinct
but closely related ways, all three thinkers characterise Judaism as the
epitome of intolerance, and thus implicitly place it outside the domain of
reasonableness within which toleration can function. This exclusion highlights
a strand of intolerance ensnared within the modern definition of toleration
itself.
- Between Promised Land and Land of Promise: The Radical Socialist Zionism
of Hashomer Hatzair by Stephan E C
Wendehorst
- This article charts the history of the educational Socialist Zionist youth
movement Hashomer Hatzair in Britain from its beginnings in the wake of
the arrival of refugees from Germany in the 1930s to its consolidation and
expansion into British Jewry. The article discusses its ideology, and considers
the stance it adopted towards the Biltmore Declaration as illustrative of the
specific characteristics of its programme: the radicalism of its social and
political designs for the Jewish people, its view of the Arab question and its
pro-Soviet sympathies. Hashomer Hatzair is also situated in relation to
the Zionist spectrum in Britain and the radical British Left.
- Bagdadi Jewish Merchants in Shanghai and the Opium Trade by
Maisie Mayer
- The opium trade was legal within China between 1858 and 1917. Jewish
entrepreneurs who had immigrated to China via India were deeply involved in the
trade in this addictive, highly debilitating narcotic drug. Although plying a
legitimate trade they were the targets of trenchant criticism, most notably
from missionaries. Anti-opium groups spurred on by missionaries protested
against the opium trade for reasons of ethics as well as fear that all trade
with China might be stopped, as indeed had happened in 1839. This paper focuses
on the nineteenth-century background to the opium trade, the anti-opium
movement, the British Government's attitude to the Baghdadi merchants and the
end of the opium trade.
- Jewish Depictions of Non-Jews in the Graeco-Roman Period: The Meeting of
Joseph and Aseneth by Stephen Taverner
- The question of Jewish identity, and Jewish and non-Jewish
constructions of Jews and Judaism, is a prominent subject of debate today.
Jewish identity in
the Graeco-Roman world is an especially problematic area, since the extant
sources reveal that Judaism was very complex and embraced a wide spectrum of
practices and observances; identifying a Jew in antiquity can be an extremely
difficult business. One aspect of this problem that needs exploration but is
not often considered is the question of how Jews saw ‘Others’, and
how their characterisations of ‘Others’ framed their own
self-definition and identification. It is in this context that the following
study is offered, and while I certainly do not want to suggest that one single
piece of literature can be demonstrative of a ‘normative’ ancient
Jewish perspective, the pseudepigraphic tale of Joseph and Aseneth does
highlight some interesting trends. This study analyses a small portion of the
text (chapters 7 to 9) and notes several emerging themes: the use of biblical
and extra-biblical traditions about ‘Others’, most notably Egyptians;
the author’s conceptualisation of Jewish social superiority over
‘Others’; the pejorative representation of Egypt as the land of
sensuality and ‘the body’; and the author’s exposition of Jewish
religious superiority, especially in comparison with Egyptian animal worship.
These factors are identified and discussed in order to explore what this
information tells us about the Judaism of the author, and his or her
construction of non-Jews.
- Document:Grace Aguilar's Correspondence by
Michael Galchinsky
- Book Reviews