scholarly journals A CHRONICLE OF CALCUTTA JEWRY

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (15) ◽  
pp. 1462-1469
Author(s):  
Sayan Lodh

Studies conducted into minorities like the Jews serves the purpose of sensitizing one about the existence of communities other than one’s own one, thereby promoting harmony and better understanding of other cultures. The Paper is titled ‘A Chronicle of Calcutta Jewry’. It lays stress on the beginning of the Jewish community in Calcutta with reference to the prominent Jewish families from the city. Most of the Jews in Calcutta were from the middle-east and came to be called as Baghdadi Jews. Initially they were influenced by Arabic culture, language and customs, but later they became Anglicized with English replacing Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew script) as their language. A few social evils residing among the Jews briefly discussed. Although, the Jews of our city never experienced direct consequences of the Holocaust, they contributed wholeheartedly to the Jewish Relief Fund that was set up by the Jewish Relief Association (JRA) to help the victims of the Shoah. The experience of a Jewish girl amidst the violence during the partition of India has been briefly touched upon. The reason for the exodus of Jews from Calcutta after Independence of India and the establishment of the State of Israel has also been discussed. The contribution of the Jews to the lifestyle of the city is described with case study on ‘Nahoums’, the famous Jewish bakery of the city. A brief discussion on an eminent Jew from Calcutta who distinguished himself in service to the nation – J.F.R. Jacob, popularly known as Jack by his fellow soldiers has been given. The amicable relations between the Jews and Muslims in Calcutta have also been briefly portrayed. The research concludes with the prospect of the Jews becoming a part of the City’s history, peacefully resting in their cemeteries. Keywords: Jews, Calcutta, India, Baghdadi, Holocaust

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1/2020) ◽  
pp. 323-338
Author(s):  
Vojtěch Vrba

The paper introduces the reader to basic legal aspects of Czechoslovak help to the State of Israel in 1947–1949. During this time, Czechoslovakia exported arms, ammunition, fighter planes and other war material to the Jewish community in the Middle East. There was also a significant number of volunteers, who underwent various training courses in Czechoslovakia. These courses included training of pilots, aviation mechanics, paratroopers etc. All these operations had their legal merits and aspects. The paper analysis these aspects in general. The sources used in the paper are legal and archival documents and interviews, along with secondary sources and literature, both memoirs and historiographic.


2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 370-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katajun Amirpur

Ever since his inauguration in 2005, Iranian president Maḥmūd Aḥmadīnezhād keeps the world on its toes with his attacks against Israel. One could easily come to the conclusion that anti-Semitism and a hostile attitude towards Jews are deeply rooted in Iranian society. Moreover one could assume that the present Iranian state has to be called Islamofascist. To come to a sounder judgment, this article looks at the situation of the Jewish Iranians—present and past—and asks how the different regimes, before as well as after the revolution, treated the Jewish minority. Iran counting today some 25,000 Jews harbors the biggest Jewish community in the Middle East with the evident exception of the State of Israel.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Omer-Jackaman

The desecration of the Cologne synagogue, on Christmas Eve 1959, sparked a significant wave of antisemitic attacks in over thirty countries. In Britain some 160 incidents were seen in the early part of 1960. In 1962 organized fascism underwent a renaissance in Britain with the advent of Colin Jordan’s National Socialist movement. The Anglo-Jewish community was deeply divided on how best to respond to these two periods of communal threat. Some argued inaction and reliance on the gentile authorities, others urged greater communal defense, while a third group contended that these latest bouts of Jew-hatred underlined the veracity of the Zionist claim that the Diaspora, and Europe in particular, remained decidedly unsafe and that only in Israel was there a Jewish future. The clash among these three responses tells us much about the impact of both the Holocaust and the creation of the State of Israel on the identity and psyche of postwar Anglo-Jewry.Keywords: Anglo-Jewry, antisemitism, racism, swastika, Zionism


2013 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Anna Trembecka

Abstract Amendment to the Act on special rules of preparation and implementation of investment in public roads resulted in an accelerated mode of acquisition of land for the development of roads. The decision to authorize the execution of road investment issued on its basis has several effects, i.e. determines the location of a road, approves surveying division, approves construction design and also results in acquisition of a real property by virtue of law by the State Treasury or local government unit, among others. The conducted study revealed that over 3 years, in this mode, the city of Krakow has acquired 31 hectares of land intended for the implementation of road investments. Compensation is determined in separate proceedings based on an appraisal study estimating property value, often at a distant time after the loss of land by the owner. One reason for the lengthy compensation proceedings is challenging the proposed amount of compensation, unregulated legal status of the property as well as imprecise legislation. It is important to properly develop geodetic and legal documentation which accompanies the application for issuance of the decision and is also used in compensation proceedings.


Pólemos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Paolo Coen

Abstract This article revolves in essence around the contributions made by the architect Moshe Safdie to the Yad Vashem memorial and museum in Jerusalem. Both probably need at least a brief introduction, if for no other reason than the nature of the present publication, which has a somewhat different scope than the type of art-historical or architectural-historical journals to which reflections of this kind are usually consigned. The first part draws a profile of Safdie, who enjoys a well-established international reputation, even if he has not yet been fully acknowledged in Italy. In order to better understand who he is, we shall focus on the initial phase of his career, up to 1967, and his multiple ties to Israel. The range of projects discussed includes the Habitat 67 complex in Montreal and a significant number of works devised for various contexts within the Jewish state. The second part focuses on the memorial and museum complex in Jerusalem that is usually referred to as Yad Vashem. We will trace Yad Vashem from its conception, to its developments between the 1950s and 1970s, up until the interventions of Safdie himself. Safdie has in fact been deeply and extensively involved with Yad Vashem. It is exactly to this architect that a good share of the current appearance of this important institute is due. Through the analysis of three specific contributions – the Children’s Memorial, the Cattle Car Memorial and the Holocaust History Museum – and a consideration of the broader context, this article shows that Yad Vashem is today, also and especially thanks to Safdie, a key element in the formation of the identity of the state of Israel from 1967 up until our present time.


2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Antoun

In the Middle East over the past half-century, three religious processes have grown together. One, the growth of fundamentalism, has received worldwide attention both by academics and journalists. The others, the bureaucratization of religion and the state co-optation of religion, of equal duration but no less importance, have received much less attention. The bureaucratization of religion focuses on the hierarchicalization of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralization as political opponents. Few commentators link the three processes. In Jordan, fundamentalism, the bureaucratization of religion (BOR), and state co-optation of religion (SCR) have become entwined sometimes in mutually supportive and sometimes in antagonistic relations. The following case study will describe and analyze the implications of this mutual entanglement for the relations of state and civil society and for the human beings simultaneously bureaucratized and “fundamentalized.”


Author(s):  
Maud S. Mandel

Beginning in 1948 when war in the Middle East caused minor unrest in the city of Marseille, this chapter traces the way in which disagreements over Israel became a way to debate inequities in French minority policies at home and in North Africa. In Marseille, the gathering point for Jewish clandestine migration to Palestine, Algerian Muslims' anger toward what they perceived as French complicity in migration schemes was compounded by frustrations that French officials seemed to be favoring Jewish refugees over newly minted French Algerian Muslim citizens. Conflicts around war in the Middle East thus became an opportunity for politically active Muslims and Jews to negotiate their relationship with the French state, as the former established new parameters for political participation in the aftermath of the Holocaust by pushing the French government to support Israel, and the latter tested the limitations on a citizenship that never made good on its promises.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-247
Author(s):  
Victoria Nesfield

The Holocaust maintains a status of inviolability in the Christian religious public sphere and also the mainstream media. The scale, gravity and sheer atrocity of the Holocaust still commands a response. The article argues that questions demanded by the Holocaust of the Christian church and the free world’s passivity in the face of genocide, led to a Christian support for the State of Israel driven by guilt and a sense of moral obligation which side-lined the impact of the State on the Palestinian people. With the Israel-Palestine conflict in its seventh decade, the imperative to overcome the hegemony of Holocaust memory is more urgent than ever. Seventy years after the Holocaust, its legacy in public and theological memory dominates questions of Judaism within the polity and the State of Israel. Two legal cases, which attracted media attention, illustrate how Holocaust memory is evoked in response to questions of Jewish practice in the European polity. Two further examples demonstrate how the pernicious influence of Holocaust memory and rhetoric colour responses to criticism of the State of Israel.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (8) ◽  
pp. 3001-3012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahdi Kheyrkhahan ◽  
Hamid kalaei ◽  
Hamidreza Karkehabadi ◽  
Batool Bozorgmehr
Keyword(s):  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document