ZHYTOMYR NEWSPAPER “THE VOICE OF VOLYN” IN THE GERMAN INFORMATION SPACE (OCTOBER 1941-1943)

This paper aims to consider the newspaper “Voice of Volyn”, published in Zhytomyr in 1941-1943, as part of the German information space during the Second World War. The methodology of the study incorporates general scientific and special historical methods alongside with the fundamental principles of historical research: historicism, scientificity, objectivity, and systematicity. The principles of historicism and scientificity have contributed to the complex representation of the history of the newspaper “Voice of Volyn” in interconnection and interrelation with the events of that period. The principle of objectivity has facilitated the analysis of the discussed issue considering the objective historical regularities based on a comprehensive analysis of the existing specialized literature and sources. The principle of systematicity has allowed to obtain a holistic picture of the Zhytomyr newspaper “Voice of Volyn" as a component of the German information space on the occupied territory of Ukraine. The scientific novelty of the paper is conditioned by the fact that it is the first research discussing the history of the newspaper “Voice of Volyn” in the context of the German information space in 1941-1943 on the basis of a comprehensive range of historical sources. The author concludes that the activities of the newspaper “Voice of Volyn” can be divided into two periods: from October to the second half of November 1941, and from the second half of November 1941 until the end of the Nazi occupation. At the first stage, under the German military administration, the newspaper was controlled by the representatives of the independence movement, who exploited the newspaper to promote their own ideas. In the second stage, after the establishment of the German civil authorities, the newspaper “Voice of Volyn” was deprived of the independence movement’s influence and turned into an important information and propaganda press organ of the occupation authorities. The newspaper “Voice of Volyn” represented three directions of German propaganda: anti-Soviet propaganda; anti-Jewish propaganda; and propaganda aimed at supporting the occupation economic activities.

A Kaleidoscopic View of History: Al-Masʿūdī on Jewish-Christian Interaction

This article investigates the attitude of al-Masʿūdī to the world around him by focusing on a minor theme in his works: the interaction between Jews and Christians throughout history. The hypothesis of the article is that this theme, which also plays a role in the foundational texts of Islam, would provoke al-Masʿūdī to express some of his views on these religious communities, rather than merely describing their doctrines and customs in his usual non-committal way. This hypothesis turns out to be correct: al-Masʿūdī engages with the tensions between the two communities and seems to subscribe to the Christian anti-Jewish clichés that he integrates. At the same time, he uses more subtle ways to criticize Christians too. In other instances, he takes on a rather traditional supersessionist tone, with which he dismisses both communities. One has to conclude that al-Masʿūdī did not feel the need to press one specific viewpoint on these issues, which as such is telling for his historiographical style.

The Jovian Narrative

The Jovian Narrative is by far the longest of the three parts of the Julian Romance. It offers an exclusively Christian perspective on the reign of Jovian. This chapter discusses a variety of elements and characteristics of the Jovian Narrative with the purpose of analyzing the literary images of both Julian and Jovian sketched in the text. It deals with relations between the various protagonists in the text; the role of cities (Constantinople, Antioch, Harran, Nisibis, and Edessa) as scenes for the various episodes of the narrative; the anti-Jewish aspects of the text; Jovian’s rise to power and his peace treaty with the Persians; Jovian’s eastern connections and his good relations with Shapur II and his second-in-command Arimihr; and his presentation as a new Constantine.

Działalność konspiracyjna Żydów w Krakowie jako reakcja na niemiecką politykę Zagłady

This article presents a detailed history of what the underground resistance of Krakow’s Jews consisted of during the Second World War. It incorporates examples of different types of passive resistance applied as well as the history of illegal organisations that undertook aid activities and Jewish partisan actions. The activities of the partisans in the Krakow forests is scrutinised, together with how contact networks and the production of illegal documents were organised. The article contains a comprehensive analysis of the greatest military achievement of Krakow Jews, known as “attack on Bohemia”, which was remembered as a momentous occasion. Finally, the article shows the evo-lution of the idea of resistance to the Germans and their anti-Jewish policy among Jewish youth.

In the House of the Hangman One should not Mention the Noose: Jewish Voice for Labour’s Attack on the Equality and Human Rights Commission

In May 2021 Jewish Voice for Labour (“JVL”) published a combative document entitled How the EHRC Got It So Wrong-Antisemitism and the Labour Party. The document criti­cises the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s October 2020 Report of its investiga­tion into antisemitism in the Labour Party. The Commission found the Labour Party responsible for antisemitic conduct giving rise to several unlawful acts in breach of the Equality Act 2010. In addition to its legal findings, it also made critical factual findings, identifying a culture of acceptance of antisemitism in the Labour Party, which suffered from serious failings in leadership, where the failure to tackle antisemitism more effectively was probably a matter of choice. The essence of JVL’s attack on the Commission’s Report is as follows. First, it is said that the Commission did not and could not lawfully investigate antisemitism as such; to the extent that it purported to do so, its findings of unlawfulness are purportedly meaningless. Secondly, JVL claims that the Commission made no finding of institutional antisemitism. Thirdly, by failing to require production of evidence referred to in a certain leaked report, probably prepared by Labour Party officials loyal to Jeremy Corbyn, the Commission is accused of nullifying at a stroke the value of its own Report as a factual account. Fourthly, JVL claims the Commission’s Report is not just legally unten­able, but purportedly a threat to democracy. Finally, JVL claims the Commission’s analysis was not just wrong, but that it exercised its statutory powers in bad faith. This article offers a response to each of the five pillars of JVL’s attack, all of which collapse under scrutiny. As to the first pillar, the article identifies the disappearing of antisemitism as the linchpin of JVL’s argument and shows how JVL’s criticism is underpinned by a political epistemology of antisemitism denialism. As to the second pillar, it shows that the absence of the term “institutional antisemitism” in the Commission’s Report is a semantic quibble. In sub­stance, the Commission found that the conduct under investigation amounted to institu­tional antisemitism. As to the third, the article demonstrates that JVL’s complaint about the Commission’s failure to call for production of the leaked report is perverse because that report constitutes an admission of the correctness of the complaints put before it. More­over, the Corbyn-led Labour Party itself decided that it did not want the Commission to consider that material. As to the fourth pillar, the article shows that far from being a threat to democracy, the Commission’s Report grasps the nettle of antisemitism denial. It con­cludes that continuing to assume and assert that Jews raising concerns about antisemitism are lying for nefarious ends may itself be, and in at least two cases was, a form of unlawful anti-Jewish harassment. As to the fifth, the article rebuts the extraordinary charge that the Commission exercised its powers in bad faith. Rather strikingly, neither JVL nor Jeremy Corbyn was willing to take the Commission on judicial review. The article concludes by considering how the poverty of JVL’s reasoning, coupled with the extravagance of its accu­sations, invites a symptomatic reading of Antisemitism and the Labour Party as a disap­pointing illustration of left-wing melancholia.

Sebastian Münster and his Sources: The Messiah in Rome and the Convergence of Christian-Jewish Polemic and Intra-Christian Conflict

The Talmudic story of an encounter between Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and the Messiah at the gate of Rome served medieval Christians well in their polemics against the Jews. This was, it seemed, a Jewish affirmation of the truth of Christianity: not only did the legend indicate that the Messiah had already come, it also placed him in Rome, the epicenter of the Christian faith. For that very reason, however, later Protestant polemicists could hardly be expected to utilize the story correspondingly, not after rejecting the primacy of Rome. This article considers a number of Protestant responses to the Jewish Messiah in Rome tradition. Its primary focus, though, is on two anti-Jewish treatises by Sebastian Münster. As Stephen G. Burnett has demonstrated, Münster’s texts draw heavily from pre-Reformation polemical works – in other words, works that accepted Rome’s preeminence; the present article argues that Münster managed to subtly convey his own Protestant sensitivities in discussing the Joshua b. Levi story, all the same. This close reading of Münster offers a unique perspective on the convergence of Christian-Jewish controversy and Protestant-Catholic tensions, and especially on the role and development of the former in light of the latter.

From Chronology to Translation

Against the backdrop of the still-smouldering controversy over his chronological work, Broughton began to break down his contentious vision of biblical history into the raw elements needed for a new English Bible. The first signs of this were his translations of the book of Daniel into English (1596) and Latin (1599), two remarkable publications that illustrate not only the complexity and creativity that could characterize godly attitudes towards biblical translation, but also how Broughton’s longstanding interest in anti-Catholic polemics was beginning to morph into a more fraught concern with anti-Jewish controversy. Using these translations as well as Broughton’s contemporaneous debate with Cambridge professor Edward Lively over the interpretation of Daniel, this chapter argues that Broughton’s interests were drawn towards translation partly as a natural outgrowth of his interest in chronology, but partly also out of a growing desire to disseminate the findings of cutting-edge polyglot biblical scholarship to as wide an audience as possible. Drawing on previously unexamined manuscript evidence, this chapter concludes by reconstructing Broughton’s earnest but ill-fated campaign for a new translation throughout the 1590s, covering the personal, political, and confessional factors that led to Broughton’s calls remaining unanswered

Conclusion

The conclusion summarizes the new picture of Broughton offered by this book and concludes by offering reflections on three more general points arising from its analysis. The first concerns the highly prominent role that Jewish literature and languages played in Broughton’s thought. While Broughton undeniably took his interest in this area further than most scholars, the conclusion argues that he was not entirely anomalous, but rather representative of a broader tendency among reformed scholars to cultivate high levels of philological and linguistic expertise in languages of relevance to biblical scholarship, particularly Hebrew, Aramaic, Ethiopic, and Arabic. The second concerns the role of anti-Jewish controversy in the development of Christian biblical scholarship. The importance of interfaith polemics in pushing Broughton towards historical, philological argumentation is clear throughout the book, and raises a broader possibility worthy of further exploration: that anti-Jewish priorities might have played a hitherto underappreciated role in promoting historical, philological methods in Christian theology and biblical criticism. Finally, the conclusion dwells on the significance of the book’s repeated demonstration of the extent to which scholarly culture, at least in Broughton’s lifetime, was still dominated by exegetical priorities, i.e., by the demands, habits, and expectations of biblical interpretation. It concludes by arguing that it is this ‘embedded exegetical culture’, rather than any degree of historicism or critical method, that represents the most significant difference between early modern and modern biblical scholarship.

Whose Museum Is It? Jewish Museums and Indigenous Theory

Are museums places about a community or for the community? This article addresses this question by bringing into conversation Jewish museums and Indigenous museum theory, with special attention paid to two major institutions: the Jewish Museum Berlin and the National Museum of the American Indian. The JMB’s exhibitions and the controversies surrounding them, I contend, allow us to see the limits of rhetorical sovereignty, namely the ability and right of a community to determine the narrative. The comparison between Indigenous and Jewish museal practices is grounded in the idea of multidirectional memory. Stories of origins in museums, foundational to a community’s self-understanding, are analyzed as expressions of rhetorical sovereignty. The last section expands the discussion to the public sphere by looking at the debates that led to the resignation of Peter Schäfer, the JMB’s former director, following a series of events that were construed as anti-Israeli and hence, so was the argument, anti-Jewish. These claims are based on two narrow conceptions: First, that of the source community that makes a claim for the museum. Second, on the equation of Jewishness with a pro-Israeli stance. Taken together, the presentation of origins and the public debate show the limits of rhetorical sovereignty by exposing the contested dynamics of community claims. Ultimately, I suggest, museums should be seen not only as a site for contestation about communal voice, but as a space for constituting the community.

The Massacres of the Jews under Richard I (A.D. 1189–1190)

This article is a consideration of medieval religious violence during the time of Richard I set within the historiography of such writers as Nirenberg, Cohen, and Moore. This paper specifically examines a series of anti-Jewish massacres which broke out in England in the immediate aftermath of the coronation of the Crusader King Richard I. While modern violence against minorities is often attributed to the irrational actions of persons with extreme prejudice or ideologies, we find something a bit more nuanced in the situation in 12th century England. Certainly, there were long-standing prejudices against the Jews in England. However, this paper will argue that while general European antisemitism did create an undercurrent of tension across Europe and especially in this case England; similar to Nirenberg’s thoughts these passions were manipulated by those involved to the point that they became incendiary to suit specific local purposes and passions.