Courtship and Arranged Marriages among Eastern European Jews prior to World War I as Depicted in a Briefenshteller

1975 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Hurvitz
Author(s):  
Rachel Manekin

This book investigates the flight of young Jewish women from their Orthodox, mostly Hasidic, homes in Western Galicia (now Poland) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In extreme cases, hundreds of these women sought refuge in a Kraków convent, where many converted to Catholicism. Those who stayed home often remained Jewish in name only. The book reconstructs the stories of three Jewish women runaways and reveals their struggles and innermost convictions. Unlike Orthodox Jewish boys, who attended “cheders,” traditional schools where only Jewish subjects were taught, Orthodox Jewish girls were sent to Polish primary schools. When the time came for them to marry, many young women rebelled against the marriages arranged by their parents, with some wishing to pursue secondary and university education. After World War I, the crisis of the rebellious daughters in Kraków spurred the introduction of formal religious education for young Orthodox Jewish women in Poland, which later developed into a worldwide educational movement. The book chronicles the belated Orthodox response and argues that these educational innovations not only kept Orthodox Jewish women within the fold but also foreclosed their opportunities for higher education. Exploring the estrangement of young Jewish women from traditional Judaism in Habsburg Galicia at the turn of the twentieth century, the book brings to light a forgotten yet significant episode in Eastern European history.


2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Opfer-Klinger

Abstract The Albanian national movement was still quite young and heterogeneous when international conflicts lead to the foundation of the Albanian state in 1912/13. Located by the strategically important Strait of Otranto, it came into existence as a compromise and under the protection of the Great Powers in a time when the Osman Empire was collapsing and the South-eastern European States were practising an aggressive policy of expansion. Only a few months later World War I broke out and affected the region severely. Consequently, it took another ten years for the Albanian state to take permanent shape within the changed order of postwar Europe. At this point, however, the political self-concept of Albania had altered pertinently due to constant foreign intervention and occupation by opposing war parties. Some of these influences continue to affect Albania to the present day.


Author(s):  
Kenyon Zimmer

From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after arriving on American shores. This book explores why these migrants turned to anarchism, and how their adoption of its ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions. The book focuses on Italians and Eastern European Jews in San Francisco, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Tracing the movement's changing fortunes from the pre-World War I era through the Spanish Civil War, the book argues that anarchists, opposed to both American and Old World nationalism, severed all attachments to their nations of origin but also resisted assimilation into their host society. Their radical cosmopolitan outlook and identity instead embraced diversity and extended solidarity across national, ethnic, and racial divides. Though ultimately unable to withstand the onslaught of Americanism and other nationalisms, the anarchist movement nonetheless provided a shining example of a transnational collective identity delinked from the nation-state and racial hierarchies.


1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Rothbart

While some maintain that immigrant enterprise promotes the upward social mobility of new ethnic groups, others argue that it often contributes little to group advancement. This article examines the case of ethnic saloons owned by Eastern European immigrants in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town between 1880 and World War I. It is argued that social embeddedness eased the entry of Eastern Europeans into the business but restricted their ability to succeed. Most went out of business and returned to blue-collar work after a few years. Only the few who diversified or expanded beyond the ethnic saloon market accumulated much wealth. Thus, in this case, ethnic entrepreneurship contributed little to group advancement.


2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeşim Bayar

Following World War I, the Allied Powers signed Minority Treaties with a number of Central and Eastern European states. These treaties delineated the status of religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities in their respective countries. Turkey would be one of the last states that sat down to the negotiation table with the Allied Powers. In the Turkish case, the Lausanne Treaty would be the defining document which set out a series of rights and freedoms for the non-Muslim minorities in the newly created nation. The present article explores how and why the non-Muslim minorities were situated in the fringes of the new nation. In doing so, the article highlights the content of the discussions in the Lausanne Conference and in the Turkish Grand National Assembly with an emphasis on the position of the Turkish political elite.


1953 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 615-637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zvonko R. Rode

Expropriation of property belonging to aliens in foreign countries was unusual prior to World War I. Occasional cases could be found, but such expropriation was always restricted to one or a few owners of property who, for various reasons, came into conflict with a foreign government. Wholesale expropriation of foreign-owned property began on a moderate scale in Mexico in 1915, and was later expanded in that country. Expropriation of all kinds of property, including foreign property, was introduced by Soviet Russia after the 1917 revolution. After World War I some Eastern European countries, such as Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, began to expropriate the large agrarian estates of the former German, Austrian, and Hungarian nobility and other rich landowners. These expropriations were, by the terms of the agrarian reform laws, based upon compensation to be paid by the respective states.


2017 ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
I. Rozinskiy ◽  
N. Rozinskaya

The article examines the socio-economic causes of the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1936), which, as opposed to the Russian Civil War, resulted in the victory of the “Whites”. Choice of Spain as the object of comparison with Russia is justified not only by similarity of civil wars occurred in the two countries in the XX century, but also by a large number of common features in their history. Based on statistical data on the changes in economic well-being of different strata of Spanish population during several decades before the civil war, the authors formulate the hypothesis according to which the increase of real incomes of Spaniards engaged in agriculture is “responsible” for their conservative political sympathies. As a result, contrary to the situation in Russia, where the peasantry did not support the Whites, in Spain the peasants’ position predetermined the outcome of the confrontation resulting in the victory of the Spanish analogue of the Whites. According to the authors, the possibility of stable increase of Spanish peasants’ incomes was caused by the nation’s non-involvement in World War I and also by more limited, compared to Russia and some other countries, spending on creation of heavy (primarily military-related) industry in Spain.


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