LOOKING TO SUCCEED? FIRST, REMEMBER WHERE YOU CAME FROM

Author(s): Barbara Jo Lewis,Hershey H. Friedman / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

This paper posits that the Bible reveals the secret of what it takes for a country (or individual) to prosper. In fact, Moses mentioned the secret several times in the Book of Deuteronomy a few weeks before he died – shortly before the Israelites entered the Promised Land. He even included it in the Ten Commandments which are repeated a second time in Deuteronomy (Moses paraphrased what God had said). He emphasized the importance of “And you shall remember that you were slaves in Egypt.” The United States has to wake up and recognize that it is in trouble. It is falling behind the rest of the world in health, education, and many other measures of well-being. America is only number 1 in incarcerating its citizens and military expenditures. Throughout history, many great empires collapsed. Indeed, the major reason the Soviet Union collapsed was because it became a thoroughly corrupt and immoral country that did not care about its people. A country that thrives is one where the people remember the hardships that their own families had to endure in the past, and then does everything possible for others to succeed.

„Nechaj vstúpiť do svojho stredu bohatstvo národov“ (cf. Iz 60,11). Dialóg antického Izraela s okolitými kultúrami

Author(s): Jean-Louis Ska / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2023

The purpose of this contribution is to show that Ancient Israel continuously borrowed important religious and cultural elements from its neighbors. Without attempting to be exhaustive, we pinpoint various influences from Canaan, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece on Ancient Israel. Canaanite religion, Egyptian Wisdom, Mesopotamian covenant diplomacy, prophetism, legislation and scribal culture, and Greek paideia help us understand better biblical literature which never developed in a ivory tower, but adopted and adapted rather than rejected the best that those cultures had to offer.

TÜRKİSTAN’DA YAHUDİ VARLIĞI VE ONLARIN SEYAHATNAMELERE YANSIMALARI

Author(s): Fatih Çolak / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 77/2023

Throughout history, Jews have had to migrate multiple times from their holy land, Canaan (Palestine), to other parts of the world – most of the time never being able to return. One region they settled into was Turkestan, the birthplace of Turkic-Islamic civilization. There has been a Jewish presence there for centuries. Referred to as Bukhara Jews, they never lost their identities, cultures, or beliefs despite having been influenced by other neighbouring cultures, particularly Muslim. However, they differ from Jewish diasporas in terms of their lifestyle and customs. They have lived in their own ghetto-neighbourhoods, and generally engaged in different crafts. Following the Russian invasion of Turkistan, they were given special rights and even dominated certain professions. However, with the collapse of Tsarist Russia and the birth of the Soviet Union, the Jews of Turkistan, as with other local cultures, were subjected to assimilation policies. As a result of this, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, those who found the opportunity immigrated to Israel, the USA, Australia and Canada. Today, Jews continue their lives in some big cities of Turkestan – especially Bukhara, Uzbekistan. In this study, we shall explore the Jewish presence in Turkestan throughout history and their reflections in travel books.

„Auflehnung gegen das Schicksal und nicht mehr zu Ändernde“. Das Prosawerk von Leo Perutz im literaturhistorischen Kontext

Author(s): Dana Pfeiferová / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2022

Can Leo Perutz’s novels, either in terms of motifs or structure, be regarded as Prague German literature, even though they were written first in Vienna and later in Tel Aviv? His most successful novels Der Meister des Jüngsten Tages (1923) and St. Petri Schnee (1933) arguably include, similar to Gustav Meyrink’s early works, occult motifs, and apply, as Franz Kafka does in Das Schloss, the structure of an inverted initiation novel. Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke (1953) takes place at the time of Emperor Rudolf II, the favourite Habsburg of the German authors of Prague (see Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott by Max Brod or Der Engel des westlichen Fensters by Gustav Meyrink). In contrast to the adventure novels of the inter-war period, which may perhaps seem trivial, Perutz’s last book is characterized by its refined composition and a return to cabbalistic mysticism.

Holocaust Reminiscenses in Digital Media Culture and Cultural Institutions (Development of Critical Thinking and Media Literacy)

Author(s): Erika Moravčíková,Viera Jakubovská,Kristína Jakubovská,Ingrida Hudecová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

The authors of the article analyse the problem of individual and collective memory through the prism of The Holocaust reminiscence. They are aware that we are living in a time when living memories of the grave crimes and catastrophes of the 20th century are fading away, as well as the complex political, social and cultural processes, taking place at present, are becoming intensified in the context of the War in Ukraine. These events and processes once again highlight the social importance of individual and collective memory and the need for its conscious formation through media and intercultural education. The aim of the authors’ endeavour is to explore four forms of The Holocaust reminiscence, : 1/ reminiscence in the form of reconstruction (authentic representation of the past); 2/ reminiscence as (re)interpretation (remembrance that refers to the past but is interpreted in the context of current findings); 3/ reminiscence as prevention and civic engagement (education and educational programmes that promote tolerance and moral qualities); 4/ reminiscence as a tool for cultural identity formation (forming collective identities and promoting social inclusion). The study will include interpretations of selected works from the field of performing arts and case studies from media culture. Attention will also be focused on particular proposals for media-educational and cultural-pedagogical activities which can be used in cultural institutions and in media education in order to develop media literacy and critical thinking.

Medycyna i nacjonalizm – stacja szpitalna na cmentarzu żydowskim we Wrocławiu

Author(s): Izabela Spielvogel / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2022

Between 1941 and 1945, in some regions of the Third Reich, Jews were allowed to function, if, among other things, they had non-Jewish spouses or were considered, according to racial purity laws, to be so-called „Mischlings”. German half-blood Jews, due to the Aryan blood element, were initially not affected by persecution to the same extent as full-blood Jews. In theory, they could, for example, seek exemption from racial laws, did not have to pay Jewish property tax or wear the Star of David. They were also spared during the first deportations. The question of the extermination of German Jews in mixed marriages or those who were categorised as being of „mixed descent” was repeatedly raised in National Socialist offices and institutions but was never finally resolved. In line with the National Socialist racial ideology, separate medical facilities had to be established for this social group, providing health care services. Such centres were set up from 1943 onwards in the larger German cities where there were still relatively large numbers of Jews. They were opened on the Gestapo’s orders as so-called hospital stations (Krankenstation). Such institutions operated in: Berlin, Breslau (now Wrocław), Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg and Cologne. An abandoned administrative building located in the Jewish cemetery at what was then Flughafenstraße 51 (now Lotnicza Street) in the Cosel (Kozanów) district was designated as the headquarters of the Wrocław facility, which egan operating on 1 July 1943.

Record of Violence. The Socio‑Political German‑Jewish Relations in Free City of Danzig in the Years 1933–1939

Author(s): Krzysztof Ulanowski / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2022

The author focuses on historical evidence to answer the sociological problem how did the Jewish citizens of the Free City of Danzig, who had lived there for several generations, come to be considered strangers for the Germans ones and were forced to leave their hometown? The method chosen by the author is based on the chronological factor, showing how each subsequent day deprived Jews of the dignity and living space in their own city. The author mentions not only the laws and regulations concerning the Gdańsk Jews as a whole, but wherever possible he refers to the individual fate of a given person or family in order to evoke the terror to those days through the prism of the personal experiences. The author presented the history of Nazi repressions towards the Jewish community in the years 1933–1939 thus exposing the sources of German planned violence hidden by the Nazis under the guise of national propaganda.

An Alternative Modernity: Zmitrok Bjadulja and His Creation of the Belarusian Jew

Author(s): Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern / Language(s): English Issue: 64/2021

A young rabbinical pupil from a remote Belarusian shtetl, Shmuel Plaŭnik, debuted as a Hebrew poet, and then moved on to Russian poetry, until, with the adoption of the pseudonym Zmitrok Bjadulja around 1910, he came to Belarusian prose and poetry and integration into the Belarusian intelligentsia. His unconventional choice of a Belarusian cultural and literary identity was in contradiction to the traditional ways of acculturation of Jews in the Russian Empire, based on entry into the majority Russian language and culture. Bjadulja not only chose what was at the time a colonial culture with no supporting statehood, but also maintained his dual identity as a Belarusian Jew, which is the basis of his autobiographical narratives, sketches and short stories. In his narrative prose, Bjadulja proposed an innovative synthesis of Slavic and Jewish elements based on his profound knowledge of Jewish sources and Belarusian folklore. This fusion profoundly shaped the imagery, motifs, style and language of his works. Bjadulja was able to bring together two stateless, marginalised and deprecated ethno-national cultures to create a utopian vision of Jewish-Belarusian coexistence and interference that, thanks to the power of his pen, became a fundamental part of the Belarusian canon in his own formation.

Wymiar edukacyjny muzealnej aplikacji mobilnej: przypadek Żydowskiego Muzeum Galicja w Krakowie

Author(s): Maria Bajak,Iryna Manczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 40/2022

Information and communication technologies are widely used in the activities of museum institutions. Among them, mobile applications play a special role, as they can improve and diversify visiting the exhibition, including increasing the involvement of the public visiting cultural institutions. Such solutions also enable the implementation of various undertakings and educational projects. The key objective of the study is to identify the ways of using mobile applications in the educational activities of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow. The article focuses on the possibilities offered by the analyzed technological solutions in educational activities on Jewish heritage. The results of qualitative research are presented in the further part of the study. The discussed topic was discussed as a part of the case study method extended with the results of an in-depth interview conducted with a representative of the Galicia Jewish Museum.

XIX. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında Doğu Akdeniz’de İngiliz-Rus Nüfuz Mücadelesinin Merkezi Olarak Kudüs

Author(s): Nurcan Yurdakul / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 1/2023

The confrontation of the two great political powers of the 19th century in the Eastern Mediterranean took place primarily in al-Quds (Jerusalem) and its surroundings. Britain's foreign policy at the time was to keep the route to India under its control whilst aware of the steps that Russia was taking in the region after the Napoleonic danger was eliminated. In other words, Britain followed a reactive eastern policy towards Russia. Russia's policy of access to warm-water ports (seas) had remained stable since Peter the Great. However, the policy of protecting Orthodox peoples with an ideological background continued to develop, influenced by the political, social and military developments in Russia. Russia, which viewed the Orthodox Arabs in Palestine and Syria as its subjects outside its borders, included this claim in all political treaties that resulted from victory over the Ottoman Empire. The fact that Russia began to gain influence over these citizens caused Britain to pursue a policy of influence in the region through the establishment of a consulate and missionary activities. As a result, Britain, unable to convert Orthodox Arabs and Jews to Protestantism, tended to protect Jews, who were Ottoman citizens, and began to encourage Jewish immigration to Palestine.

Jewish Literature & World Literature. Unlearning (Trans)Nationalism

Author(s): Dragoș Bucur / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

The present paper proposes an investigation of the concept of Jewish literature in its relation to world literature studies within an analysis of the first generation of Jewish writers who became part of the Romanian literary life following the 1923 emancipation. Born approximatively between 1890 and 1910, those authors do not form a homogenous group, representing different political orientations and relationships with their Jewish identity. One of the premises of the study is that, even if Jewish literature appears as a suitable corpus of text for world literature studies, considering its intrinsically transnational nature, it did not receive significant attention that would reflect this supposition, as researchers from both fields pointed out. Thus, studying the relationship between the two fields can inform one another and expose certain shared conflicts with the (trans)nationalist paradigm.

Semantics of Phrasemes Defining Interpersonal Relations in the Hebrew and Polish Linguistic Image of the World (Based on the Material from the Books of Prophets)

Author(s): Jolanta Szarlej / Language(s): English Issue: 39/2022

In the course of her research, the Authoress aims to show the fundamental differences in the way the linguistic image of the world is constructed in different languages (here: Polish and Classical Hebrew) at the level of syntactic structures. This component of the linguistic image of the world less frequently constitutes the object of research in the Polish cognitive tradition than, for example, lexis, which is why the Authoress considers the collected phrasemes and the meanings they convey to be particularly worth highlighting. The linguistic material that forms the basis for the research comes from the part of the Hebrew Bible called Nübî´îm, and the syntactic structures themselves are selected from the biblical material with the noun vyai ´iš, which defines man in the Bible as an individual. The structures presented here, built from a combination of the nouns xa', [;re, vyai and the prepositions B., l., l[;, la,, ta,, K. express complex and varied interpersonal relations: there are many images of closeness, cooperation, care, unanimity, but also feuds, conflicts, ruthless struggle and rivalry, with which the history of Israel was marked. Semantically, they complement the linguistic image of the intricate interpersonal relationships portrayed on the pages of the Bible.

Między wrogami i sprzymierzeńcami. Opowieść poleskiego Żyda o latach 1939–1944

Author(s): Grzegorz Berendt / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

Before the war, Eleazar Segal lived in the town of Hancewicze in western Polesie (today the Brest Oblast in Belarus). He was involved in the timber trade. AfterJune 22, 1941, he escaped with his wife to the town of Lachowicze. When in 1942the Germans murdered most of the ghetto prisoners, the Segal family fled to theforest. For the next two years, they fought for survival, with the help of Soviet partisans and then the NKGB diversionary group. Segal documents the activities of theSoviet partisans and their diverse attitudes towards Jews.

Preživší a deti holokaustu na Slovensku v rokoch 1945–1989

Author(s): Peter Salner / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2022

The author focuses on the survivors and the „children of the Holocaust“ from 1945-1989. He offers characteristics of both studied fractions of the Jewish community, also defining the research methodology employed. The study concentrates on the post-Holocaust Jewish families and the second-generation strategies under the Communist regime. Moreover, the impacts of the occupation of Czechoslovakia after August 1968 (emigration, normalization during 1970-1989) have been analyzed.

Die Enzyklopädie des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt. Hrsg. von Dominika Bopp , Sascha Feuchert, Andrea Löw, Jörg Riecke, Markus Roth und Elisabeth Turvold

Author(s): Daniel Schuch / Language(s): German Issue: 3/2023

Review of: Die Enzyklopädie des Gettos Lodz/Litzmannstadt. Hrsg. von Dominika Bopp , Sascha Feuchert, Andrea Löw, Jörg Riecke, Markus Roth und Elisabeth Turvold Wallstein Verlag. Göttingen 2020. 432 S., 32 Abb. ISBN 978-3-8353-3592-9. (€ 34,-.)

I rozpięła na szpilce jak motyla… Żydówki-rewolucjonistki w polskiej prozie antysemickiej w pierwszej połowie XX wieku

Author(s): Małgorzata Domagalska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 51/2023

After the revolution of 1905, revolutionary Jewish women began to appear among the heroines typical of the antisemitic novels of the nineteenth century. This type of female protagonist can be found in the novels written by Józef Weyssenhoff (Hetmani [The Hetmans]), Rev. Jan Gnatowski (Zły czar [Bad Spell]), and then in the 1930s in the novels by Roman Dmowski (Dziedzictwo [The Heritage]) and Jędrzej Giertych (Zamach [The Coup]). In these narratives, Poland is presented as a victim of manipulation by Jews, Germans, and in the case of the Bad Spell by Jewish Bolsheviks. In these stories, female Jewish revolutionaries implement their secret policies using their strong erotic influence to seduce Polish activists. Demonism and evil, as well as the misogynistic attitude of the fin de siècle era were employed to create their portraits. In these female protagonists, one can detect echoes of features associated with such Jewish heroines as Salome, Judith, and Herodias whose portraits were typical of the art and literature of the epoch.

Wizerunek Żydów w dowcipach rysunkowych na łamach „Muchy” (1935–1939)

Author(s): Aleksandra Guja / Language(s): Polish Issue: 51/2023

The Image of Jews in Cartoons from the “Mucha” Magazine (1935–1939) The article discusses the visual images of Jews presented in cartoons from the satirical journal Mucha between 1935 and 1939. Mucha was a major satirical magazine in Poland and the only one published during the whole interwar period. The aim of the study is to analyze the visual discourse about Jews emerging from cartoons using digital tools (MAXQDA). Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied to check which elements of the picture create a specific type of stereotype. The findings suggest that the overall image of Jews is contradictory, albeit dominated by categories related to money and trade. There are also images that do not fit into the dominant antisemitic discourse.

Anna Bikont, Cena. W poszukiwaniu żydowskich dzieci po wojnie, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2022, ss. 464.

Author(s): Edyta Gawron / Language(s): Polish Issue: 51/2023

Kanibalka Marie. Zkáza Jeruzaléma a zavržení Židů v staročeské literatuře doby lucemburské

Author(s): Daniel Soukup / Language(s): Czech Issue: 5/2023

Flavius Josephus’s Bellum Judaicum account of the conquest of Jerusalem by Romans and the famine in 70 CE depicts a scene in which the Jewish matron Mary devours her own child. The story, in which this “terrible meal” plays an important symbolic role, also entered the vernacular texts of the Czech Middle Ages through Latin literature. In the eyes of Christian exegetes, who drew detailed information about Titus’s invasion and massacre of the Jews from Flavius Josephus, the sacking of Jerusalem was a punishment for Jewish unwillingness to accept Christ. By analysing Old Czech hagiographic and homiletic texts, I will show how the “fall of Jerusalem” formed the theological concept of the condemnation of the Jews and anti-Jewish rhetoric.

Jewish Women from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the Nazi Concentration Camp Ravensbrück

Author(s): Pavla Plachá / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

The focus of this study is on Jewish women who, between 1939 and 1945, were deported from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia to Ravensbrück, the central concentration camp for women in Nazi Germany. It concentrates on women who were interned by the German security forces before they would have been included in the mass deportations. The primary reason for their internment was not their Jewishness, but their illegal activities of various kinds, whether real or merely assumed. Attention is also paid to their non-Jewish compatriots who were interned because of their various ties to Jewish women in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. With the help of a number of concrete examples, this study details the various forms and scale of these activities, which illustrate the everyday interaction of the Jewish population with the outside world. In addition to drawing on sources of an official nature, this study is also based on the recollections of survivors, in particular Jewish women. Subsequent contacts between Jewish and non-Jewish women prisoners in the concentration camp are also explored. The Protectorate Jewish women and their non-Jewish compatriots figure in this study not as passive victims of racial persecution, but as active participants in the historical events.