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The emergence of World Zionist Organization at the end of 19th century and the increasing sympathy of world Jewry for political Zionism have strengthened the sense of the need to obtain a Jewish national home in Palestine. In a positive way, the end of the First World War and the decision of the League of Nations to place Palestine under British mandate favored regional development, especially of the Jewish community living there. Under the foreign administration, the Jewish people borrowed the proper aspects of the British model of parliamentary democracy and adapted them to the needs of the Yishuv, at a time when Jewish ideal enjoyed support and admiration, due in particular to Zionist diplomacy in Western Europe and the United States. Trying to maintain a good relationship with the British administration in order to fulfill its interests, the Jewish community in Palestine has thrived in various areas such as: political-institutional organization, economy, defence and demography, rapidly reaching a high level of development. These factors contributed tremendously to the birth of a modern democratic Jewish state. The reality of the simultaneous operation in Palestine of the three sets of institutions, those of the Yishuv, those of the Zionist Organization and those of the British administration represented a unique and remarkable fact. After Israel gained independence, the attempt to provide continuity to pre-state institutions represented a reality that was reflected in the flawless formula of the permanent institutions, in order to meet the needs of the new state in a situation of internal and international crisis.
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The studies aimed to figure out the basics parts of the mosaic which makes up the historical-spatial formation called Europe and, this way, partially answer the question of its identity. The central motive of the study winds around the determining spiritual line that accompanies the whole history of Europe. The question is whether in the future the European Union can lean on economism and its unified bureaucratic administration only, from which only the tradition of nationalistic Europe can profit.
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This article provides an overview of the Bund from the establishment of its precursor organization in 1890 until World War I. First it takes into account the historical conditions that led to the rise of a distinct Jewish socialist movement in the Russian Empire to then focus on its three spheres of activity: (a) economic difficulties, as a Jewish workers’ movement engaged in union-organizing and strikes, (b) political challenges, as a Jewish revolutionary movement working to overthrow the Tsarist system and (c) national obstacles, as a movement fighting for Jewish civil rights and Jewish national autonomy, the advancement of Yiddish language and culture, and the organisation of Jewish self-defense against pogroms. Appended to the article is the translation of an early Bundist pamphlet, The Town Preacher (1895), which presents the movement’s ideas in a simple, popular form, based on the story of the single strike of Jewish tobacco-workers in Vilna.
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In contrast to the global dispersion of the post-Second World War Bund, examination of its previous history as a powerful and influential force in Jewish life is usually confined to the former Pale of Settlement. Without disputing its centers of gravity in Russia and Poland, the paper argues for the inclusion also of the effects of migration and transatlantic network-building within this picture. It follows Bundists abroad, exploring how emigrants transnationalized the in practice Bund rather than by design. The article connects the histories of the Bund in Tsarist Russia and independent Poland with those in Argentina, Switzerland, and the United States, highlighting local adaptations as well as the dependency of the Bund “back home” on global networkbuilding. The author argues that only by taking such a transnational perspective we can fully grasp the Bund’s impact on modern Jewish history.
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When resuming its activities in postwar Poland, Tsukunft’s aim was first and foremost to reconstruct its pre-1939 structures, including the renewal of its publishing operations. After 1945, the youth organization revived the publishing house SIB and its main press organ, “Yugnt Veker”. The main purpose of these efforts was to bring back the Yiddish language, to mark its presence, and to resume work on the “Jewish street”. Attempts were also made to attract new members and sympathizers for the Bund’s youth organization. Brochures published by SIB and articles in “Yugnt Veker” provided information on the history of Tsukunft and the Bund, while periodicals also described the activities of regional Tsukunft organizations, were a platform for the political views of members of the youth organization on the current political situation of Jews, and polemicized against the Zionists.
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Since the 1970s, a period marked by a massive aliyah1 of Soviet Jews to Israel, Russian-Israelis have created a distinct literary culture characterized by hybridity and translingualism. While most texts in this corpus are in Russian, they do not fall neatly into the categories of Russian metropolitan literature or literature of the global Russian diaspora. In their thematic repertoire, the range of human experience they reflect, and specific vocabulary they also claim affiliation within Israeli literature. Even those writers from the former Soviet Union who made a linguistic shift away from Russian continue to navigate between literary traditions; their Hebrew has inherited cognitive models and interpretive approaches characteristic of Russian culture, and they project a view of reality that is essentially dualistic or "contrapuntal" (in E. Said's terms1 2). Such works as Boris Zaidman's novels Split Tongue and Hemingway and the Dead-Bird Rain, Alona Kimhi's books Victor and Masha, Weeping Suzanne, and I, Anastasia, or the original Hebrew poetry of Šivan Beskin represent an "accented," cross-pollinated version of Hebrew. This writing in-between the two tongues estranges both languages and at the same time establishes a dialogue between them and the cultural traditions they represent.
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The privileged place to learn about Hebrew pedagogy is the Bible and rabbinical literature and thus it is of primary interest especially to the religious systems that grew out of it. Nevertheless, from a formal point of view, it offers a priceless contribution to the reflection on educational values as such. The aim of this article is to put forward some basic impulses of Hebrew pedagogy that may be inspirational even today for both teachers and pupils.
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The point of departure of the presented text is a polemic with Adam Leszczyński’s Facebook entry condemning the inclusion of a photograph showing a mask of a Jew among a group of carollers (supposedly without a commentary), featured at the Ethnographic Museum in Cracow. In her reply the author of the text, simultaneously one of the Museum curators, not only explains the intention of including this particular depiction into museum space but also reconstructs the entire complex context and history of the motif of the Jew mask among the carollers. At the same time, she poses a question about the role played by an ethnographic museum and the limits of publicistic commentary (and associated abuse)."I found masks showing Jews and Gypsies, present in assorted caroller groups, disturbing. Upon numerous occasions I was asked why do we show such caricatures? What about the feelings of Jewish and Romani visitors, facing such depictions of themselves and asking: is this my museum, a museum about me?How did the Jew character find himself among carollers? Did this take place when older carol singing became linked with the Church ritual theatre? How did the Jew-rabbi appear amidst the canon of carollers (together with King Herod) or the Jew Trader among those singing together with the turoń? Perhaps this is a distant trace of the commedia dell-arte, an echo of the Pantaloon (Venetian trader) dramatis persona and the Servants? Or is the reason entirely different? It is worthwhile to exploit the opportunity provided by the omittance of the commentary on the part of a recognised journalist and historian, as well as his propagation of false information about its absence. The crux of the matter is, after all, the existence of a mask portraying a Jew as pars pro toto of the entire permanent ethnographic exhibition. This is not the first time when the nature of this object, i.e. the disguise and hence the disclosure of exiting but concealed contests, makes itself known. The context of the ethnographic museum constitutes an excellent backdrop for such reflections”.
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This article tries to diversify the understanding of the Jewish experience in interwar Europe by analysing the work of Jewish Cultural Self-Government in interwar Estonia. Estonia’s Jews were granted self-government in 1926, and the institution worked until the summer of 1940 when the Soviet Union occupied Estonia. The institution created a public law forum for the Estonian Jewish community where they could independently manage cultural and edu-cational affairs. The authoritarian turn in spring 1934 meant increasing control over minor-ity autonomies, but the institution survived until summer 1940 without any significant re-strictions. Finally, by focussing on some members of the Jewish Cultural Council, the article discusses the possibility of using prosopographic methods to study the history of Jews of Estonia.
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The ambivalent attitude of socialist memory politics towards the Holocaust during János Kádár’s regime (1956–1989) is reflected in the history of personal collections. Although museums did collect Holocaust memorabilia, this was not encouraged or publicised. Because of such delayed and restrained collection, the objects relating to persecution are mostly to be found in family homes. Since the end of socialism did not change this attitude, the contemporary memorial landscape of the Holocaust covers not only the institutions dedicated to the history of persecution but also the (second- and third-generation) survivors’ homes. On the other hand, the public collection of the victims’ documents – albeit in an incomplete, unprofessional, and politically motivated manner – had already been established during the Kádár era, and within the framework of a non-Jewish, party organisation. In this paper, we will attempt to describe the activity of the Committee for Persons Persecuted by the Nazis (Ná-cizmus Üldözötteinek Bizottsága, NÜB), the first organisation to specifically collect Holocaust memorabilia. Through examples, we will show the extent to which privately owned personal material traces contributed to the building of public collections in the post-communist period. The study particularly focusses on the collecting strategies and practices of the post-1990 Hungarian Auschwitz Foundation (Magyar Auschwitz Alapítvány) and the state-run Holocaust Memorial Center (Holokauszt Emlékközpont, HE), thus completing the institutionalisation process of Holocaust-related materials. We argue that the post-war era’s memory politics and memory processes, mainly in the 1960s and 1980s, influenced both the biography of the objects and the histories of the world around them. Therefore, through the stories of the objects, we can better understand the relationship between institutional and personal memory. We seek to answer the question of what happened to the tangible heritage of the Holocaust during the Kádár era and how the survivors related to their preserved objects in the 2010s.
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This article analyses the issue of the registration of independent Jewish religious communities, i.e., Jewish religious communities unaffiliated with the Association of Jewish Communities in Poland (AJCP). For several years, the possibility of establishing independent Jewish religious communities has been challenged by the AJCP, which claims that the Act on the State’s Relationship with Jewish Religious Communities in Poland exhaustively regulates the legal situation of all Jewish communities in Poland. In a number of Supreme Administrative Court’s decisions on disputes between independent Jewish religious communities and the AJCP, the possibility of registering independent Jewish religious communities has been confirmed. In addition, the Supreme Administrative Court developed a test for assessing the identity or separateness of two religious associations for the purpose of registering new ones. The article attempts to systematise the elements that constitute this test, referring, inter alia, to the material and formal identity of the internal law, the criteria of membership and the will of the persons forming the religious association. Moreover, the Supreme Administrative Court’s decisions are reviewed from the perspective of compliance with the standard of protection of freedom of conscience and religion established by the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
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1. Ernst Israel Bornstein: Die lange Nacht.' Ein Bericht aus sieben Lagern. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am, Main, 1967, 246 s. 2. Hilburg, Erwin K. J.: Der Chassidismus (Germania Judaica, Neue Folge 24 25, Vil. Jahrg. Heft 2/3, 1968, p. 31). 3. Urzidil, Johannes: Der lebendige Anteil des jüdischen Prag an der neueren deutschen Literatur (Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts, Tel-Aviv 1967, Jg. 10, Nr. 40, pp. 276-297). 4. Simon Hart et Joseph Polišenský: Praha] a Amsterodam v 17. a 18. století - Prague et Amsterdam aux 17-e et 18-e siècles. (Československý časopis historický - Journal historique tchécoslovaque XV, 1967, pp. 827-846). 5. Vyskočil, Josef: K problematice dialogu marxismu s křesťanstvím a judaismem - Les problèmes d’un dialogue entre, d’une part, le marxisme, et, de l’autre part, le christianisme et le judaïsme. (Filosofický časopis - Journal de Philosophie, 16/1968, pp. 699-720). 6. Sadek, Vladimír: Martin Buber (1878-1965) a jeho pojetí náboženství - Martin Buber (1878-1965) et ses conceptions religieuses. (Prostor, Prague 1968/2, pp. 77-86, ronéotypé.)
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Reviews of: 1. Charles Wengrov: Haggadah and Woodcut. An Introduction to the Passover Haggadah Completed by Gershom Cohen in Prague. Sunday, 26th Teveth 5287 / December 30, 1528. Schulsinger Brothers, New York 1967. Passover Haggadah, Shmuel Mohr, Bene-Beraq, 1988. 2. Shammai Waks: Grief is My Song (Ma trojer lid) Los Angeles, 1966, 104 pages. 3. Růžena Bubeníčkovi, Ludmila Kubátová, Irena Malá: Tábory utrpení a smrti. - The Camps of Suffering and Death, Svoboda, Prague, 1969, 490 pages. 4. Arnold Pauckert: Der jüdische Abwehrkampf gegen Antisemitismus und Nationalsozialismus in den letzten fahren der Weimarer Republik. Hamburg, Leibniz-Verlag, 1988, 311 S.
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Reviews of: 1. Malá pevnost Terezín, SPB-Naše vojsko, Praha 1976 (Малая крепость Терезин, Прага 1976, 367 страниц) 2. Mendel Metzger: La haggada enluminée. Étude iconographique et stylistique des manuscrits enluminés et décorés de la haggada du XHIe au XVIe siècle
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