scholarly journals Cookbooks: Preserving Jewish Tradition

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-172
Author(s):  
Daniel Feinberg ◽  
Alice Crosetto
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
Culinary Traditions ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Jewish Religion

Culinary traditions have played an integral role in the Jewish religion from its very beginning. Families have continually passed down these traditions from one generation to the next as a means to preserve Jewish culture as well as to maintain their Jewish identity. The authors propose that one of the methods of preserving and transmitting these culinary traditions, traditions clearly rooted in oral tradition, has been through the cookbook. While the written cookbook continues to be popular and marketable, traditional cookbook contents are becoming increasingly available online. In saving recipes for future generations, cookbooks preserve religious, cultural, and traditional elements of Jewish life. As important as it is for Jewish libraries to consider the value of cookbooks in preserving Judaism, non-Jewish libraries, from academic to public, and from K-12 to special, can also share in this mission. Passing cookbooks down through genera- tions not only strengthens culinary cuisine and traditions, but also preserves memories, both familial and religious.

Jewish Theology and World Religions

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Know How ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Religious Other

Two of the most pervasive aspects of modern Jewish life are interaction with people of other faiths and exposure to their beliefs to a degree unknown in the past. Jewish thinking regarding other religions has not succeeded in keeping pace with the contemporary realities that regularly confront most Jews, nor has it adequately assimilated the ways in which other religions have changed their teachings about Jews and Judaism. Many Jews who grapple with Jewish tradition in the contemporary world want to know how Judaism sees today's non-Jewish other in order to affirm itself. Re-examining Jewish tradition, they seek guidance in understanding their interfaith relationships in the light of a Jewish religious mission. This book advances this conversation, exploring critical issues that Jews and Jewish thought face when relating to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. It also analyses the philosophical issues raised by pluralism, non-exclusive approaches to religious truth, and appreciating the religious other. The chapters show why formulating a Jewish theology of world religions is a priority for Jewish thinkers and educators concerned with reinvigorating Judaism's contribution to the contemporary world, and how it coheres with maintaining Jewish identity and continuity.

Torah and Magic: The Torah Scroll and Its Appurtenances as Magical Objects in Traditional Jewish Culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shalom Sabar
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Physical Appearance ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Sympathetic Magic ◽  
Special Position ◽  
Sacred Object

AbstractThis essay deals with a little noticed aspect of the Torah scroll in Jewish life and practice—namely, the usage of the scroll and its accessories in the context of sympathetic magic. The Torah is undoubtedly the holiest text in the Jewish tradition, and early on rabbinical authorities set a code that determined the fitting rules of conduct towards the scroll upon which it is written. In the course of time, the Torah scroll and the appurtenances associated with it emerged as the most sacred tangible objects in Jewish tradition and folk culture. Select Torah scrolls in various communities, especially in the lands of Islam, were elevated to a special position and were considered as possessing extraordinary protective powers. Aside from miraculous stories told about such scrolls, the popular beliefs in the power of the Torah scroll in general are best reflected in the ornamental appurtenances which enhanced the physical appearance of the sacred object. Thus, costly ceremonial objects such as the tik (Torah case) or rimonim (Torah finials) were decorated in several communities with magical designs and carefully selected texts, which reflect ideas of Jewish magic in general and are reminiscent of Hebrew amulets in particular.

Rediscovering Traces of Memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber ◽  
Chris Schwarz ◽  
Jason Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Local People ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Bear Witness

The present-day traces of the Jewish past in Poland are complex. Jewish life lay in ruins after the Holocaust. Much evidence of ruin remains, but there are also widespread traces that bear witness to the elaborate Jewish culture that once flourished there, even in villages and small towns. One also sees places where Jews were murdered by the Germans in the war: not only in death camps and ghettos, but also in fields, forests, rivers, and cemeteries. After the war, forty years of communism suppressed even the memory of the destroyed Jewish heritage. Today, by contrast, the historic Jewish culture of Poland is increasingly being memorialized, by local Poles as well as by foreign Jews. Synagogues and cemeteries are being renovated, monuments and museums are being set up. There are festivals of Jewish culture, hasidic pilgrims, and Jewish tourists; and local people who rescued Jews during the war are being honoured. In rediscovering the traces of memory one also finds clear signs of a local Jewish revival. This extensively revised second edition includes forty-five new photographs and updated explanatory texts. Together they suggest how to make sense of the past and discover its relevance for the present. This book will appeal to everyone concerned with questions of history, memory, and identity.

Spinoza’s Jewish Modernities

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel B. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Status ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
Great Culture

This introductory chapter considers why the hallmark of modern Jewish identity is its resistance to—and, at the same time, obsession with—definition. Like battles over national identity in the modern state, clashes over the nature and limits of Jewishness have frequently taken the shape of controversies over the status—and stature—of marginal Jews past and present. The Jewish rehabilitation of historical heretics and apostates with a vexed relationship to Judaism has become so much a part of contemporary discourse that it is difficult to imagine secular Jewish culture without it. Yet this tendency has a beginning as well as a template in modern Jewish history, which the chapter introduces in the figure of Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1677)—“the first great culture-hero of modern secular Jews,” and still the most oft-mentioned candidate for the title of first modern secular Jew.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 11

1998 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish Tradition

Addressing various aspects of Jewish life and religion, particularly in the last two centuries, this book examines different aspects of the Hasidic tradition; present-day contacts between Bobower Hasidism in New York and Bobowa in Poland; and how a rabbi trained in the Lithuanian tradition adapted to the very different conditions of the United States. The modifications of Jewish religious tradition practiced in the modern pre-war synagogues in Warsaw, Lódz, and Lwów are considered, as is the attempt by Hillel Zeitlyn to re-interpret Jewish tradition in the interwar years.

Conclusion

2012 ◽  
pp. 360-370
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Desire To Change

This concluding chapter examines changes to the role of yeshiva in Jewish society as well as several developments to yeshiva history after the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the changes and conflicts that had struck the Jewish world had affected the yeshiva too. Contemporary discussion of the yeshiva was frequently in the context of the Haskalah and noted its power to effect change. There is no clear answer as to what it was that persuaded young people to abandon traditional Jewish life, but the wholesale attribution of this to the Haskalah is not self-evident. It seems much more likely that the threat to traditional ways came from indifference to Jewish identity rather than from any desire to change that identity. Indifference is naturally hard to identify, and it was easier for conservatives to battle against a concrete enemy, equally eager to do battle, than to engage with an attitude that was so contemptuous of traditional approaches that it did not even bother to argue with them.

“The Iron Crucible” and Loci of Religious Contact

2020 ◽  
pp. 162-172
Author(s):  
Clémence Boulouque
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Iron Crucible ◽  
Assimilation Process ◽  
Jewish Religion

Chapter 14 focuses on the meaning and loci of religious encounters in the Bible and in the Jewish tradition, and analyzes the concept of “iron crucible,” the metaphor Benamozegh used for the complexity of religious assimilation. This metaphor, which refers to the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt, designates a place where identities intermingled and where the Jewish religion was refined through its contact with paganism—but also where, paradoxically, this blending did not preclude a sense of hierarchy in this assimilation process. This concept is a crucial aspect of Benamozegh’s system, whereby the greater the proximity, the greater the tension across religious traditions.

The Revival of Jewish Life

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-182
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber ◽  
Chris Schwarz ◽  
Jason Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Democratic Freedom

This chapter talks about the people who are creating and maintaining projects that memorialize both the Jewish life that existed in Polish Galicia for centuries and the enormity of the Holocaust during which it was destroyed. It discloses the public acknowledgment of the Jewish heritage that has been ongoing since Poland regained its democratic freedom in 1989, which led to the revival of Jewish life. It also describes the main Holocaust memorial in Kraków, which is comprised of symbolic abandoned chairs scattered through an entire city to highlight the Jewish absence. The chapter mentions non-Jewish Poles who have become aware of the past in Poland that included Jews and Jewish culture. It details post-Holocaust Poland in the 1970s that was severely restricted and in danger of facing extinction as 90 percent of Holocaust survivors had emigrated.

scholarly journals “Zwischen allen Stühlen”: Reflections on Judaism in Germany in Victor Klemperer’s Post-Holocaust Diaries

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 168
Author(s):  
Sepp
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Soviet Occupation Zone

This article focuses as a case study on Victor Klemperer’s diaristic representation of German-Jewish identity and culture after 1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR. The contribution shows how Klemperer’s professional and social situation remained very uncomfortable even in East Germany. For the diarist, the communist code ‘antifascist/fascist’, just like the code ‘German/un-German’ before it, was tantamount to concealing Jewish origin. His post-Holocaust journals provide an immediate insider’s view of Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust from the perspective of a victim of active persecution. Against this backdrop, the contribution examines how the author’s original German nationalism gradually makes way, caught between contradictory impulses of assimilation and decreed Jewish identity, for a much more complex understanding of his own cultural identity. Klemperer’s diaries highlight a number of tensions that ultimately reflect on the disjunction between living and writing: The divide between a single and changing self lies at the heart of his diaries after 1945, which depict an astute, complex psychogram of the assimilated German-Jewish bourgeoisie that survived the Holocaust and tried to continue living in communist Germany.

Digital Preservation of Indigenous Knowledge in South African Rural Communities

2022 ◽  
pp. 317-340
Author(s):  
Tlou Maggie Masenya
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
South African ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Memory Loss ◽  
Digital Preservation ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Modern Methods

Indigenous knowledge is mainly preserved in the memories of elders, and most of this knowledge is slowly disappearing in rural communities due to various factors such as death, sickness, and memory loss. Digital preservation is regarded as one of the modern methods to preserve indigenous knowledge as it can be shared with others and be passed on to future generations. But how can indigenous knowledge be documented and preserved to benefit indigenous knowledge owners and accessible for future generations? The chapter thus looked into the policy, techniques, and technologies being employed to document and preserve indigenous knowledge in rural communities. Knowledge management frameworks were also used as underpinning theories to guide the study. The findings revealed that rural communities are still relying mostly on traditional methods such as oral tradition, storytelling, and community of practice in sharing their indigenous knowledge in this digital era.

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