Smallpox or Chickenpox?: Anglo-Jewry, Communal Security, and the Outbreak of Antisemitism, 1960–1962

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

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.


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


One People? ◽  
1993 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sacks

This chapter discusses the crisis of contemporary Jewish thought. The problem that threatens to render all contemporary Jewish thought systematically divisive is not the absence, but paradoxically the presence, of a shared language. Jews use the same words but mean profoundly different things by them. The point was dramatically illustrated by an utterance delivered at a key moment in modern Jewish history: the State of Israel's Declaration of Independence. The chapter then looks at the history of the impact on Jewish consciousness of the two decisive events of the present century: the Holocaust and the birth of the State of Israel. It also considers the third component of contemporary Jewish thought: the concept of peoplehood. Enlightenment thought had stressed the idea of universal humanity on the one hand, and the abstract individual on the other, freed from the constraints of tradition to make his own world of meanings through his choices. This was a language into which traditional Jewish identity could not be translated, and the sense of Jewish peoplehood suffered accordingly, especially in Western Europe.


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.


2020 ◽  
pp. 100-113
Author(s):  
Tetyana Meteliova ◽  
Vira Chghen

The article is devoted to identifying the role of the Confucian component in shaping China’s foreign policy during the period of “reforms and openness”. The author analyzes the Chinese “soft power” model and its differences from the classical one, the theoretical foundations of which were formulated by J. Nye, and discovers the China’s “soft power” features in foreign policy and establishes its meaningful connection with Confucian values and concepts. The article provides an overview of “soft power” interpretations in the main works of Chinese scholars, examines the reflection of Confucian “soft power” ideas in the state and party documents and decisions of the period of “reforms and openness”, shows the application of Confucian principles in the foreign policy of China. It is shown that the creation of effective Chinese “soft power” tools is becoming a part of a purposeful and long-term policy of the state. Such tools include the swift reform of leading media, TV and radio companies using modern technologies and focusing on foreign audience abroad, promoting China’s traditional and modern culture in foreign cultural markets, increasing China’s presence on the world market, spreading and promoting the Chinese language, “Education Export” and widening educational contacts, economic ties development and scientific and technical cooperation, public diplomacy development, support of the compatriots living abroad. Geopolitically, China’s soft power strategy is focused on developing relations with its close neighbors and creating a security belt around China. It has been proved that modern China seeks to proclaim itself as a new “soft power” center, the creation of which is a part of the State purposeful long-term policy. It is accompanied by the active appeal of Chinese ideologists to the country's traditional cultural heritage and basing of this new foreign policy on the conservative values of Confucianism, which is a kind of civilizational code determining all aspects of social life for China.


Author(s):  
А. Krylov

The article takes a look at the history and origin of the main Jewish paramilitary organizations in the British Mandate of Palestine (1921–1948). One of the myths often used in Western and Israeli propagandistic literature describes Israel as a very weak state that after obtaining its sovereignty became extremely vulnerable to the heavily armed Arab hordes that invaded it immediately after the declaration of the Israeli State. However, the analysis above shows that the first Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948–1949 was not a battle between young David against the giant Goliath. By the time of the creation of Israel all the Jewish paramilitary organizations operating in Yishuv – “Haganah”, “Irgun” and LEHI – united creating the IDF. The national army of the newborn State met all the requirements of its time, was much better equipped, trained, mobilized and armed than the soldiers of all the neighboring Arab countries, which objectively predetermined their crushing defeat.


Author(s):  
Honaida Ghanim

The colonial framework introduced a central perspective into Palestinian studies in the context of addressing Zionism, Zionist relations with the Palestinian entity, and the creation of the question of Palestine. This chapter explores the rise and shifts of the Palestinian question from the Balfour Declaration to the “deal of the century.” Informed by a sociohistorical approach, the chapter goes through historical shifts and analyzes the Palestine question within relations of interplay and entanglement with the Zionist project and, later, with the state of Israel. It focuses on the sociological dimensions of the Palestine question at the intersection of settler colonialism, theology, and state-making, on the one hand, and indigenous resistance, national struggle, and pragmatism, on the other.


2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (2) ◽  
pp. 554-558
Author(s):  
Orit Bashkin

Abstract Adel Manna’s Nakba and Survival: The Story of the Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948–1956 appeared in Arabic and Hebrew in 2016–2017. Manna’s book gives voice to the experience of the first generation of Palestinians living within the State of Israel. Here, four scholars of Palestinian and Israeli history review Nakba and Survival and weigh its importance for reckoning with the entangled history of the creation of Israel and the related dispossession of Palestinians during and after 1948.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document