Jewish
Culture and History
Abstracts
of articles in Issue 4.1
- When Did the Liberalism of American Jews Emerge? by
Geoffrey Brahm Levey
- The liberalism of American Jews is typically traced
to one of three contexts: the political realignment of the 1930s and
Roosevelt’s New
Deal; political ideas in western Europe that Jewish immigrants brought with
them in the early to mid- nineteenth century, which were then
‘triggered’ in the 1930s; or the socialist and communitarian
subculture of the eastern European Jewish immigrants in the decades
leading up to the New Deal. This article challenges each of these interpretations,
and
argues that key sentiments of what today we call a liberal orientation
may be discerned among a significant part of American Jewry throughout the
nineteenth
century.
The Jew as Russifier: Lev Levanda’s Hot Times by
John Klier
- This article explores the literary career of the
Russian Jewish author Lev Levanda (1835–88) with particular emphasis
on his novel Hot Times, an exploration of the fate of Jews in the Polish
uprising against
Russian rule of 1863. The author seeks to differentiate Jewish
intellectuals into a spectrum of categories (Old Maskilim, Young Maskilim,
Russian Jewish
Intelligentsia, and Total Assimilationists) in order to explore
the processes of acculturation, integration and assimilation that were
taking place in
nineteenth-century Russia. Levanda is an important archetype
because he was one of the most popular Jewish writers in Russian of his
day, and because he moved
between these categories in his active quest to stabilise the
role of acculturated Jews in Russian society.
The Dynamics of Diaspora: The Transformation of British Jewish
Identity by David Cesarani
- The classic model of diaspora constructs the process
of population change as spatial, along a horizontal axis, and sequential,
with one
wave following another. Taking the history of the Jews in modern
Britain as a case study, this article argues that we need to take account
of the
multi-layered character of diasporas, the possibility that vertical
alignments are as important as horizontal ones, and that ideological
currents may sweep
through the different layers of a diaspora simultaneously. The
differentiation between types of diaspora is crucial for understanding
the internal dynamics of
Jewish history and Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Each type engenders
a different sort of identity and entails different relations with the ‘host
society’.
Anglo-German Cooperation in Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem:
The London Jews’ Society and the Protestant Bishopric by Yaron
Perry
- In 1841 the British Queen and the Prussian King established a
joint Protestant bishopric in Palestine, and appointed a converted rabbi and
missionary of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews as
its first bishop. The Bishopric laid the basis for the entirety of Christian
activity in Palestine during the nineteenth century. The legal status of
Protestants in the Ottoman Empire improved. Health, education, charity and
welfare institutions were established, attracting thousands of travellers,
pilgrims, scholars and scientists to Palestine.
Early Hebrew Printing from Lublin to Safed: The Journeys of
Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi by Marvin J Heller
- Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi, an itinerant printer,
plied his trade for several decades in the second half of the sixteenth
century in
eastern Europe and the Middle East. Active in Lublin, Constantinople,
and Safed, Eliezer was the first to print books in Erez Israel. His ability
to move
between and function in these disparate locations is an example
of the fluidity of contemporary Jewish society. Eliezer’s motivation in relocating
reflects both the political and economic reality of sixteenth-century Jewish
life as well as Eliezer’s personal circumstances. The wide spectrum
of the books printed by Eliezer reflects the diverse interests and needs
of these
Jewish communities, encompassing Talmudic treatises, Kabbalistic
commentaries, and poetry.
Document:
- Isaac Reggio and the London Herem of 1842 by Marc B
Shapiro
Book Reviews