Jewish Culture
and History
Abstracts of articles in Issue 4.2
Special Issue: Port Jews . Jewish Communities in
Cosmopolitan Maritime Trading Centres, Edited by: David Cesarani
- Port Jews: Concepts, Cases and Questions by David
Cesarani
- Jews are commonly thought of as a pre-eminently
earthbound and urban people, a stereotype that is not wholly charitable
nor entirely
unfounded. Yet the sea has played a curious, often un-remarked,
role in Jewish history particularly in the modern era. Thanks
to new research and new approaches, the sea and the port cities that
circumscribe it may assume a
pivotal position in the great debate among Jewish historians
about the dawning and the course of modern Jewish history.
Fields of Tension: Development Dynamics at the Port-City
Interface by Brian Hoyle
- Although there is no single, simple model of the port city, the
idea of the cityport is derived from the frequently close but often tense
relationships between port functions and coastal urban development, both
spatially and over time. This essay explores the cityport concept from a
geographical perspective, outlines factors involved in cityport origins, growth
and development, introduces models of port-city linkages and the cityport
interface, and debates dimensions, perceptions and interpretations of change,
using a range of case-studies. Conclusions emphasise factors involved in the
continuing transformation of the cityport interface over time but question the
continuing interdependence between port activities and urban phenomena.
Port Jews and The Three Regions of Emancipation by
David Sorkin
- Current conceptions of emancipation are inadequate
since they tend to be geographically exclusive and chronologically truncated
as well as to
presume a bipartite eastwest divide. A more inclusive understanding of
emancipation requires defining a range of statuses (toleration, civil
inclusion, partial emancipation, full emancipation) as well as fashioning a
tripartite model (west, central and eastern Europe). The notion of the Port Jew
is integral to the status of civil inclusion and the west European
experience of emancipation.
Researching Port Jews and Port Jewries: Trieste and Beyond
by Lois Dubin
- This article traces the development of the concept of port Jews,
stressing its value for the comparative study of communities (port Jewries) as
well as social types (port Jews). Focusing on the eighteenth-century Habsburg
Free Port of Trieste and its Jewish community engaged in international maritime
commerce, it emphasizes utility as a key factor in the perception of a port
Jewry and analyses constructions of utility in Enlightenment, reforming
absolutist and Haskalah discourses. Further, it argues that comparative study
of port Jews and Jewries facilitates analysis of the respective roles of
economics, society, and culture in Jewish history.
Portmanteau Jews: Sephardim and Race in the Early Modern
Atlantic World by Jonathan Schorsch
- Using both texts and examples of social practice from various
Atlantic communities, especially Amsterdam, this essay traces some of the ways
in which individual Sephardim and the Sephardic collective wielded the social
status of whiteness in the seventeenth century in order to navigate their
ambiguous insider/outsider position as Jews or suspected Jews in a Christian
milieu. Sephardic identity was shaped in part by Iberian racism and many
(ex-)conversos found anti-blackness useful in enabling them to see themselves
(and be seen) as part of the dominant culture and class, as whites, regardless
of their religious otherness.
Germanys Door to the World: A Haven for the Jews?
Hamburg , 15901933 by Rainer Liedtke
- Hamburg, Germanys dominant port city for centuries, also
contained one of the largest, richest and culturally most productive Jewish
communities of the German-speaking lands. The supposedly cosmopolitan and open
environment of this major German entrepot provided a stable legal framework
which protected the economic interests for all minorities but failed to
deconstruct social and political barriers that prevented Jews from
participating fully in the citys formation. At the centre of the
investigation is the question of how Jewishnon-Jewish interactions
developed between the settlement of the first members of the
minority in the late sixteenth century and the onset of the Nazi period.
A Tale of Two British Port Jewish Communities: Southampton and
Portsmouth Compared by Tony Kushner
- This article explores the neglected histories of
Portsmouth and Southampton Jewry, arguing that the concept of Port Jews
needs to be extended
chronologically, geographically and with a less elitist focus.
While context with regard to location and era is crucial, it argues that
Port Jews across the
ages have something in common the importance of place. Ports have
experienced a greater cosmopolitanism than other urban settlements,
producing particular forms of the expression of Jewishness, blurring categories
of local,
national and global. In Portsmouth and Southampton it produced
positive and negative results for their Jewish minorities, encouraging freedom
and
restraint. They attempted to achieve balance between local loyalty
and diaspora connections, producing fascinating and multi-layered identities,
further
complicated in the case of Southampton through the presence of
transmigrants, a marginalised but highly significant feature of modern and
especially European
Jewish history.
The Forgotten Port Jews of London: Court Jews Who Were Also
Port Jews by David Cesarani
- The Jews of London are neglected in histories of
the city and the port, yet the development of the Jewish community since
the readmission was
shaped by its connections with both the court and the port. During
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the crown protected Jews from
rival
mercantile interests during conflicts which challenge the assumption
that ports were automatically cosmopolitan, benign places for Jewish
settlement. Jews
occupied a precarious, marginal position in the citys maritime economy.
Later, economic and social change interacted with Jewish mass
migration to foster a negative image of the Jew as port dweller.
Port Jewry of Salonika: Between Neo-colonialism and
Nation-state by Mark Levene
- Can the Port Jew model be applied to communities temporally and
geographically distinct from that of an Atlantic-orientated mercantilism? This
essay argues that it can with regard to late nineteenth century Salonika. But
it also seeks to show the model's problematic down-side. Salonika's new status
emerged under the aegis of a neo-colonialism, the culmination of which was the
bid for international free-port status in 1912. Salonika Jewry thereby found
itself at odds with the town's other ethnic communities and with competing
external national interests. In microcosm, a diasporic embrace of an emerging
world economy came face to face with its other reality, the nation-state.
Greeks and Jews in Salonika and Odessa: Inter-ethnic Relations
in Cosmopolitan Port Cities by Maria Vassilikou
- Greek-Jewish relations in Salonika and Odessa are a classic case
study of inter-ethnic relations within the cosmopolitan environment of a port
city. Both communities were part of a far-flung trading diaspora and shared
characteristics of internal cohesion. However, historians have tended to
concentrate on the differences and conflicts between the two groups. This
article suggests that both communities were internally fissured and that strong
ties existed between different strata across the ethnic-religious divide. In
business, welfare, and political activities Jews and Greeks commingled and
offered a model of integration informed by a self-conscious
cosmopolitanism.
A Port, Not a Shtetl: Reflections on the Distinctiveness of
Odessa by John D Klier
- This article emphasises the unique aspects of Odessa
and their influence on the history of East European Jewry. These included
the city's
newness (founded in 1798) and openness to settlers of any ethnic
or religious background. The numerous economic opportunities so different from the
shtetl economy of the Jewish heartland in the Pale of Settlement attracted
Jewish settlers from both the Russian and Austrian Empires. Given its unique
characteristics, the city played a major role in the development of
Jewish culture, but primarily those contributions marked by novelty
and innovation. These included the ideologies of Zionism and Jewish varieties
of
socialism, as well as a modern Jewish press in Russian, Hebrew
and Yiddish, and the modern Yiddish stage. The economic dynamism of Odessa
gave rise to
socio-economic differentiation in the Jewish community which
was far different from that of the towns of the Pale of Settlement.
The Sorkin and Golab Theses and their Applicability to South,
Southeast, and East Asian Port Jewry by Jonathan Goldstein
- The experiences of the larger Far Eastern Jewish
seaport communities tend to validate David Sorkins thesis that Jews in seaport
cities enjoyed distinct opportunities for economic advancement and political
and intellectual emancipation. Conversely, the Jews of Harbin, China, 1500
miles inland, also enjoyed these types of progress, calling into question the
applicability of Sorkin thesis in a Far Eastern context. All of the
above-mentioned communities conform to immigration historian Caroline
Golabs thesis that institutional and political development depends
on length of residence, with long-term immigrants developing institutions
more
extensively than transitory migrants. Additional research on
Jews in smaller Far Eastern seaports is needed to further test the Sorkin/Golab
hypotheses.
Conclusion: Future Research on Port Jews by David
Cesarani