Anti-Semitism and Orthodoxy

2021 ◽  
Vol 155 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Eliyahu Stern
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Race And Religion ◽  
The Way

This article explores the way theories of race and religion feature in the construction of Jewish identity and anti-Semitism. It focuses on the writings of the nineteenth-century French intellectual Ernest Renan and the leading Eastern European Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin.

scholarly journals Tożsamość żydowska na pograniczu kultur i narodów

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Author(s):  
Irmina Jaśkowiak
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Anti Semitism

Identity construction is one of the fundamental human needs. The process takes place in two areas simultaneously: internal, self-reflexive and external, associated with a sense of belonging to a particular group. The Jews, until the beginning of the nineteenth century constituted quite uniform society voluntarily separating themselves from other communities. As a result of emancipation and assimilation processes, various influences affect their identity. As a consequence the Jews faced two difficulties. The first one was the dilemma between own nation and territorial homeland while the other was the progressing deep internal divisions. At present Jewish identity is most of all national and ethnical identity strongly reinforced by historical memory and fight with anti-Semitism. After the period of the twentieth century crisis and in the light of the western world secularization it has become also cultural identity.Identity construction is one of the fundamental human needs. Theprocess takes place in two areas simultaneously: internal, self-reflexiveand external, associated with a sense of belonging to a particulargroup. The Jews, until the beginning of the nineteenth century constitutedquite uniform society voluntarily separating themselves fromother communities. As a result of emancipation and assimilation processes,various influences affect their identity. As a consequence theJews faced two difficulties. The first one was the dilemma betweenown nation and territorial homeland while the other was the progressingdeep internal divisions. At present Jewish identity is most of allnational and ethnical identity strongly reinforced by historical memoryand fight with anti-Semitism. After the period of the twentieth centurycrisis and in the light of the western world secularization it hasbecome also cultural identity.

American Judaism and Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodi Eichler-Levine
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
American Jews ◽  
American Judaism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race And Religion

Thinking about American Jews, race, and religion entails confronting the instability of those terms. This chapter examines the history of Jews and race in the United States through three lenses. First, it looks at the history of how Eastern European Jews have been “raced” in America, and in particular how they became “white.” Second, it considers Jewish interactions with other groups, such as blacks, Native Americans, and Asians, and how Jewish identity has been co-constituted with and against that of other groups. Third, the chapter looks at internal Jewish diversity and the challenges presented by Euro-centric models of Jewishness. The chapter concludes by considering Jews, race, and religion in the age of Ferguson.

The Tribe Versus the City-State: An Architectural Conundrum for the Jewish Project

Images ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-165
Author(s):  
Stanley Tigerman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Abstract“The Tribe versus the City-State” challenges the convention that suggests that the latter is preferable to the former. Throughout millennia the Jews struggled with tribalism, initially by building the First Temple as a means to coalesce tribal differences. Nonetheless, tribalism was used as a rationale to castigate Jews because it reinforced their being discrete from other, more homogenized populations. Over time, the City-State replaced tribalism because of its purported value as a melting pot that further coalesced differences into a more manageable whole. For the Jews however, the City-State exacerbated anti-Semitism in late Nineteenth Century Eastern European pogroms culminating in the Twentieth Century's holocaust. This paper addresses the architectural manifestations of these very different ways of aggregating populations. The Illinois Holocaust Museum project is presented as an example of building for the Jewish project in the context of temporality.

Nathan Birnbaum

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jess J. Olson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Central European ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Theodor Herzl ◽  
European Jewish ◽  
Anti Jewish

Nathan Birnbaum (b. 1864–d. 1937), also known by the pseudonym Mathias Acher (“another Mathias”), was a journalist, theorist of Jewish nationalism, and political activist. Birnbaum was a pioneer in the emergence of both secular Jewish nationalism and Orthodox political organization. Deeply affected by his exposure to rising anti-Semitism in fin-de-siècle Vienna and alienated by what he would term “assimilation mania” (Assimilationssucht), Birnbaum’s ideology was shaped early by two themes that developed throughout his career: belief that there was an intrinsic, unique Jewish identity, and that this identity could be activated as a solution to the oppression afflicting European Jews. Birnbaum’s early work integrated models of central European nationalism filtered through the writings of Moses Hess, Peretz Smolenskin, and Leon Pinsker. In the wake of anti-Jewish violence in Russia in 1882, Birnbaum and other Jewish students at Vienna University founded Kadimah, the earliest Jewish nationalist organization in central Europe. He cultivated an important presence among central European Jewish nationalists, and he was a significant influence on a young generation of “cultural” Zionists. In the early 1890s, he coined the term “Zionism” (Zionismus) to describe Palestine-oriented Jewish nationalism. When Theodor Herzl arrived in Zionist circles in 1896, he sidelined Birnbaum along with nearly everyone else who had preceded him in the movement, but Birnbaum’s opinion on the nature of authentic Jewish identity was already evolving. He eventually became an internal, and ultimately outside, critic of Zionism, concluding that an organic Jewish identity already existed in the folkways, Yiddish language, and communities of eastern European Jews. As an extension of this, he led in organizing the first conference of the Yiddish language in 1908. In the aftermath of the conference, Birnbaum deepened his engagement with the Yiddish language and eastern European Jewish culture and increasingly turned his thoughts to issues of spirituality and religion. After the outbreak of the First World War, Birnbaum announced himself a “ba’al teshuva,” a penitent returnee to Torah-observant Judaism. He was embraced by the Agudah, and his skills as a journalist and activist were put to use in Agudah organizing. Now Birnbaum revolutionized his understanding of the foundation of Jewish identity. Maintaining the ideal of Jewish authenticity as the only route to Jewish cohesion, Birnbaum rejected his earlier ethno-nationalist understanding of Jewish identity, replacing it with Orthodox religious observance and belief in the Torah. He aligned himself with a Hasidic religiosity that was an organic extension of his admiration for eastern European Jewry. A transformation that earned him respect in the Orthodox world and derision among the secular nationalists he had left behind, Birnbaum considered his change consistent with his views on Jewish authenticity. As the situation of European Jewry declined in the late 1920s and 1930s, Birnbaum felt vindicated in his dim view of the possibility of Jewish life outside of a religious identity, and wrote in this vein for the rest of his life. He died in Scheveningen, The Netherlands, in 1937.

From Dreyfus in the Colony to Céline’s Anti-Semitic Style

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-94
Author(s):  
David Fieni
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Way

Orientalist philology brought people deemed Semitic together under the rubric of Semitism, and it subsequently broke up this forced grouping into the distinct categories of Jew, Arab, and Muslim. Chapter 3 demonstrates how the Dreyfus Affair exacerbated tensions between Jews, Muslims, and European residents of French colonial Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century. It explores the history of philological Semitism, discusses the legal status of Jews and Muslims in Algeria, and summarizes how the Dreyfus Affair affected Algerian politics and business. In order to think through the stylistics of French colonial anti-Semitism, the chapter examines pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish texts from the Algerian press of the 1890s. It ends with a close reading of Céline’s Bagatelles pour un massacre, demonstrating the way that popular literary philology reveals a lasting fracture between Jews, Arabs, and Muslims, while also exposing a process of psychological minoritization of the French majority population.

Lombroso's Jewish identity and its implications for criminology

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Knepper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Professional Life ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Positivist Science ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Recovering Lombroso's Jewish identity is important for understanding the context in which he lived and worked. Italian statehood and positivist science had particular meaning relative to Jewish emancipation. Lombroso turned his back on Judaism and Jewish tradition, but interacted over the years with a circle of Jewish colleagues. Salvatore Ottolenghi, Pauline Tarnowsky, Helen Zimmern, Max Nordau and Jean Finot influenced his professional life in more than one way, as did members of his family, such as David Levi. Lombroso contributed to the defence of Jews from the surge of anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century and he even managed a measure of critical analysis in his discussion of Jews and crime. Although he failed to overcome the prejudices and misconceptions at the centre of his outlook, the Lombroso who engaged ‘the Jewish question’ emerges as a more complicated and conflicted character than the Lombroso associated with ‘the criminal man’.

Cholera, Health for All, Nation-Building, and Racial Degeneration in Nineteenth-Century Romania

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 161-187
Author(s):  
Calin Cotoi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Way

The emergence of social modernity in the Romanian principalities can be traced to the founding of quarantinist outposts against the last waves of plague and the first waves of cholera. The crisis of this sanitary arrangement opened the way for a series of failed but productive projects of modernization. The collective political body was imagined and created through the nationalization of the medical profession and the attempts to create a sanitary social body. The failure to connect urban and rural bodies inside a democratic all-embracing network opened up spaces for discourses questioning the identity of the collective body. Was there a “Romanian element”? What did that mean and was it degenerating? Demographic anti-Semitism and the first attempts to think of socioeconomic and sanitary failures in terms of racial degeneracy emerged from the fissures of the national sanitary system. Bacteriology was able to partially absorb these critiques and propose a larger interventionist project in the space opened by the old-style sanitary police.

scholarly journals Distinguishing "anti-Judaism" from "anti-Semitism": Recent championing of Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic

Sociologija ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jovan Byford
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
The Way

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continuity in the ideology of the Eastern European far right has been apparent in the extent to which the restoration of right-wing ideas was accompanied with widespread rewriting of history and the rehabilitation of contentious historical figures, many of whom, 40 years earlier, had attained notoriety for their antisemitism and fascist and pro-Nazi leanings. This article examines a specific example of postcommunist revisionism in Serbian society. The principal aim of the article is to explore the rhetoric of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880 - 1956), a controversial Serbian Orthodox Christian philosopher whose writing includes overtly antisemitic passages, and elucidate the strategies that his supporters have been deploying to promote him and maintain his popularity while countering objections of antisemitism. The paper focuses on the way in which the controversy surrounding Velimirovic?s antisemitism was managed around the time of his formal canonisation in May 2003. The author argues that unlike the Roman Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations, eastern churches, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, have as yet not formally addressed from a doctrinal or ecclesiological perspective the problem of Christian antisemitism. Due to the unwavering traditionalism justifications and denials of antisemitism must be constructed in such a way that they present the bishop?s views as consistent with the prevailing secular norms of ethnic tolerance.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

A Distinction No Longer of Use: Evolutionary Discourse and the Disappearance of the Trope/Figure Binarism

1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Common Part ◽  
The Way

Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document