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Jewish anti-Christian polemical treatises comprise a well-known genre in medieval Jewish literature. It is generally thought that these books were written in response to Christian missionary pressure. Yet, when considering eastern Europe in the early modern period, one sees that this genre is almost non-existent, despite continuing Christian attempts at converting Jews. An analysis of medieval Jewish anti-Christian writings shows that rather than being necessarily a response to Christian missionary pressure, many of them are part of the larger Jewish theological enterprise. Hence, such works are prevalent in areas where Jews engaged in theology – the Islamic world, Iberia, Provence, and Italy – and almost non-existent in northern Europe (Ashkenaz), where there was little interest in theology. This pattern continued into the early modern period, at which time Ashkenazic Jews still produced almost no anti-Christian polemical works. The most important early modern, eastern European anti-Christian book, the very popular Faith Strengthened, was written by a Lithuanian Karaite Isaac of Troki (died 1594), reinforcing our knowledge that eastern European Karaite Jews did not share the Ashkenazi intellectual ethos of their Rabbanite neighbors.
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In the first half of the nineteenth century, Russian authorities had very limited knowledge of their Jewish subjects. The government relied more on its enlightened perceptions of the Jews and Judaism than on empirical observation. This situation changed radically in the 1860s, when at the onset of the Great Reforms era the government sought full and veritable information about all imperial subjects, including Jews, to facilitate the efficient policymaking by framing and answering Russian Jewish question. As a result, Russian language studies—written by Jews, Russian Christians, and Jewish converts to Christianity—on Judaism, Jewish history, society and culture started to appear. The article focuses on two such studies: Moisei Berlin's Essay on the Ethnography of the Jewish Population in Russia (1861) and Yakov Brafman's Book of Kahal (1869). Virtual polemics between Berlin and Brafman highlights fundamental differences between Russian studies of Judaism and Jewish life and classical Western European Christian Hebraism, namely, Russian scholars’ general lack of interest to the Talmud and to its alleged anti-Christian thrust, and almost exclusive focus on Jewish communal, social, and political institutes—kahal, chavurot (voluntary societies), beit din (rabbinical court) and others—and on their alleged anti-government nature.
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In this article, I examine the way in which Franz Delitzsch envisioned his masterpiece translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, first published in 1877. I focus on the aims Delitzsch attributed to his translation and on the way in which the translation project was embedded in the wider views held by Delitzsch as a Hebraist and a theologian. Furthermore, I show how Delitzsch’s conception of his endeavor structured the translation work itself.
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The main aim of this study is to present how early modern preaching in the Czech lands shaped the image of the local Jewish community in Christian eyes at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Bohemian and Moravian preachers, drawing from medieval literature, were fundamentally influenced by the traditional theological concept of Jews as a living witness to the Christian truth. At the same time, baroque sermons reused medieval exempla and miracula preserving typical anti-Jewish narratives. Due to the increasing number of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry at the end of 17th century, and the socio-economical tension between Christian and Jewish communities, catholic preachers pursued contemporary topics and criticized unpermitted contacts, allegedly leading to the inferior status of Christians. On the other hand, these critical notes usually were targeted primarily on Christian believers and their laxity in the observance of religious life, as well as ignorance of social hierarchy. Although the Czech Catholic sermons constructed the hostile perception of Jews, the preachers endeavoured to avoid vulgar anti-Judaism and partly smoothed popular anti-Jewish sentiments.
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While the use of the Jews as scapegoats is well documented, less noted is how they have provided a pretext for exploring and writing about heterodoxical ideas that otherwise might cause problems for the author. A case in point is the Adumbratio kabbalae christianae, by seventeenth-century esoteric thinker Franciscus Mercusius van Helmont. Although ostensibly designed to convert the Jews, a close examination reveals that the text was intended to inform like-minded Christians about an esoteric mode of thought that, at the time, was repudiated by Church authorities.
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This text is devoted to selected visual records produced in the face of the Holocaust by the following artists: Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski, Krzysztof Henisz, Aleksander Świdwiński, and Mieczysław Wejman. Vast majority of these works of art comes from the war period (1940– 1944), with a few produced immediately after the war (1946–1948). The author analyzes predominantly their referential layer as well as the modes of representation they employ, the dating of speciϐic objects, and the references to their accompanying historical framework. She also reflects on identity, motivations, and the degree of existential, ethical, and artistic engagement of the artists in the face of the Holocaust, which was happening right before their eyes, in their immediate vicinity. The central question Nader directs not only at the artists and their works, but also at the field of art history is one that Jan Tomasz Gross has asked: “What did you do/What was done to help the Jews?” bearing in mind that doing nothing was also an action with consequences. The most important conception developed in this text is the category of the artist – a close observer of the Shoah. Moreover, this question about Polish bystanders also makes her inquire about the foundations of the field of art history as such. The author postulates changing the episteme in the space of the contemporary and modern history of art in Poland as there still has been no response to the challenge posed by works produced in the face of the Holocaust and from the Holocaust.
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W rozdziale poświęconym muzeum jako instytucji pamięci Naomi Kramer utrzymuje, że „muzea i pomniki stanowią tradycyjnie publiczną formę przedstawiania historii danego społeczeństwa”. Badacze pamięci społecznej i współczesnych społeczeństw odeszli od tak zachowawczych wyobrażeń o pamięci społecznej i zbiorowej i zwrócili się ku procesom, przez które różnorodni aktorzy i różnorodne grupy uczestniczą w konstruowaniu przestrzeni pamięci i kontestowaniu prezentowanych narracji. Niemniej osoby zainteresowane upamiętnianiem Zagłady w Kanadzie powinny rozważyć przytoczony cytat z książki Kramer. Według spisu powszechnego z 2016 r. w Kanadzie mieszka obecnie ponad 35 mln ludzi należących do ponad 200 różnych grup etnicznych. Wielu Kanadyjczyków przyszło na świat i wychowało się poza granicami kraju. Nasuwa się pytanie, jak instytucje pamięci publicznej (miejsca pamięci, muzea i pomniki) mogą odpowiednio przedstawiać historię i doświadczenia tak niejednorodnego społeczeństwa? Co więcej, jaką rolę odgrywa upamiętnianie Zagłady w kanadyjskim krajobrazie pamięci? Innymi słowy, jak zróżnicowanie społeczeństwa kształtuje upamiętnienie konkretnego wydarzenia?
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The article author claims that Ida Fink’s „The Journey” can help attract young readers’ attention to the traumatic experiences of Jews during World War II. The analysis of the events described in the novel and, above all, the behaviour of the main character and the narrator, helps to create an understanding and empathic attitude towards the suffering of others. The article author claims that reading texts written by people who survived the Holocaust can initiate reflection that condemns racist and xenophobic behaviour and statements.
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The authors present their historical and anthropological observations concerning bone fragments belonging to a person buried in the 4th century AD in the monastical rupestral complex in Dumbraveni, Constanta county, in Dobruja (4th-6th century AD). It is believed that this person, buried inside the rupestral monastery is marked from an anthropological point of view by his natural and social environment. There are obvious resemblances with the burial rituals practiced in the Judaic desert.
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In his essay on the Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel and his evolving correspondence with Roman Catholic monk Thomas Merton, Edward Kaplan focuses on the trope of prophetic personality, which is characterized by an emotional intensity and a heightened sensitivity to injustice. Involved in religious peace movements and motivated by compassion and the indignation caused by the brutality of war, arrogant nationalism, and consumerist addictions, Merton and Heschel represent the quintessential prophetic stance in the sphere of social action. Their friendship went through a moment of crisis when the Second Vatican Council was debating the so-called Declaration on Jews. It was then that both Merton and Heschel demonstrated, through their outspoken criticisms, the full meaning of prophetic protest against the abuse of doctrinal pronouncements. As shown by their examples, a prophet is one who respects and repairs the world which is our common home and does it in the name of God.
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A comprehensive study of “The Jewish question in modern novel” printed in “Illustrated Weekly Newspaper” (“Tygodnik Ilustrowany”) in 1879 by Waleria Marrené (1832–1903) — Polish writer and publicist, critic and feminist of the positivist age, has been analyzed. The author in great depth goes into the so-called Jewish question in modern novel, represented by examples from four European literatures: French, German, English and Polish. Valeria Marrené analyses the conflict between the local community and the Jewish-origin newcomers and indicates differences in presenting subject matters interesting for her.
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After a short introduction to the history of the Jewish ethnic group in Croatia, the author focuses on their activity in banking since the 14th century. The first bank in South Slavic lands was established by a group of Jews in Split in 1592; during the following two centuries, several more Jewish banks were founded in northern Croatia. In the 19th century, as a part of the general development of capitalist economy, Jewish financial institutions grew rapidly and achieved the peak of power. In the first half on this century, the highest concentration of Jewish capital and largest number of Jewish bank managers were in the Hrvatska eskontna banka and in the Jugoslavenska banka in Zagreb. By that time also, the number of small Jewish banks in Yugoslavia was over three hundred; the influence of Jewish financial activities permeated the whole economy, commerce and banking. As it is well known, after World War II, the Jewish community in Croatia was reduced to a symbolic number. Their contribution and Hole in the cultural history of Croatia certainly deserve to be saved from oblivion.
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For the politics that took over the power in Slovenia in 1945 as well as for the majority of Slovenians, Jews were synonymous with wealthy bankers and factory owners who had been getting rich on account of the ruthless exploitation of workers and farmers. However, communists did not nationalise their property because of its origin, but due to the fact that they were the representatives of private capital and owners of industrial companies, envisioned as the foundation for the priority industrialisation of the state. One of the decisive reasons for the expropriation of these Jews after World War II was the fact that their companies had been involved in the Nazi wartime economy, that most of them had not actively participated in the resistance against the occupiers, and that their ancestors, nationality, as well as citizenship had been German. That was a terrible sin and aggravating circumstance, not only in Yugoslavia of that time but also in the other countries of the victorious coalition. The authorities did not resort to any special regulations, procedures or measures for the nationalisation of the Jewish property.
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This paper provides information about the social change that started in autumn 1938 and the way this historical period is reflected in the biographical narratives of witnesses of today’s Slovak Republic. The author analysed oral histories from 200 interviews that focused on memories of the period from September 1938 (Munich Agreement) to March 1939 (establishment of the wartime Slovak State). She concentrated on two questions: 1. Which images, moments and situations represented social change in this historical period for the witness? 2. How do the biographical narratives describe the social change at a local level, in both the public sphere as well as in private within families? The author is interested in the relationship between the communicative and cultural memory (A. Assmann) and the relationship between memory and identity.
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For centuries, Jerusalem has been in a position to be regarded as the heart of the Middle East, which has an important place in the center of the military and political policies of the leading countries in the world because of its geopolitical and geostrategic meaning and the value attributed by Christians, Jews and Muslims. In view of this reality, the work clarifies how the Jewish people have been able to clarify the diaspora life of the Jewish people, and how the Jews can do this, with the effect of this particular situation on the history of the Jews, the history of Palestine and the establishment of the State of Israel. For this reason, explaining the concept of diaspora, por Diaspora such as a large-scale concept by downloading a special Jewish Diaspora as is described. After the Jewish Diaspora, the Jews migrated to Palestine, the birth of Zionism, the entry of Palestine into the British Mandate, the UN decision on Palestine, the foundation period of the State of Israel and the period until that period, both the Middle East and Europe and other continent countries. The events affecting the whole are explained in this study. The aim of the study is to give a new source to the literature on this subject and to evaluate the problem that has existed for centuries.
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Samuel Jakub (Shmuel Yankev) Imber (1889–1942), a Yiddish and Polish poet and critic, can be regarded as the spiritual father of modern Yiddish poetry in Galicia. He wrote also for Polish-Jewish press, trying to improve the image of Jews in the eyes of their Polish fellow citizens. This matter was a major concern already in his long poem Esterke (1911), one of the high points of Imber’s oeuvre in which he called for a harmonious coexistence of Jews and Poles. In the 1930s, when antisemitism was on the rise in Poland, Imber published two collections of articles in Polish: Asy czystej rasy [The Purebred Aces; 1934] and Kąkol na roli [The Weed in the Fields; 1938], in which he sought to counteract the ways in which Jews had been portrayed by the Polish nationalist press. The article discusses the significance of the poem Esterke and of selected texts from both collections of articles.
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In January 1940, Moshe Merin became the Head of the Jewish Council of Elders of Eastern Upper Silesia. At this point, the community of Jews amounted to almost 100,000 members. Merin actively promoted his major concept of “survival by work.” He believed that only working for the Third Reich combined with obedience and subordination toward the aggressor can guarantee Jewish survival. This policy arose objections, especially among Jewish youth involved in the resistance movement. Until mid-1942 Merin was an influential figure. His wide contacts with the Nazis and relatively good living conditions of Jews in Eastern Upper Silesia dismissed alleged reasons for mutiny. Therefore, during the first two years of the war, the Jewish Council of Elders of Eastern Upper Silesia enjoyed a lot of success. The situation changed in 1943 when the Nazis created ghettos and started forced deportations to KL Auschwitz. The Jewish Council stopped functioning when Moshe Merin and his main associates were deported to the death camp.
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The article draws on a source material from The State Museum Majdanek Archives, a collection of video testimonies recorded in 1987–1989, to develop a fuller picture of social relations among prisoners of different ethnic backgrounds at the Majdanek Concentration Camp. From the fall of 1941 through July 1944, Majdanek functioned as a killing center and a concentration camp for about 150,000 prisoners from different European countries. Drawing on video testimonies as a type of oral history, the article traces the perception of Jews in the camp by Polish prisoners, their social interactions, and the interethnic social boundaries shaped by camp life.
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Review of: Vassili Schedrin, Jewish Souls, Bureaucratic Minds: Jewish Bureaucracy and Policymaking in Late Imperial Russia, 1850–1917, WayneState University Press, Detroit 2016, ss. 288. Review by: Bartłomiej Majchrzak
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