Sarah Bernhardt’s presence in Montréal Québec

During the summer 2021 and under the direction of Geneviève De Viveiros, Amanda Lee produced a large portion of this study based on Sarah Bernhardt’s performances in Canada as they occurred between 1800 and 1918 and were studied by John Hare and Ramon Hathron, who included in their records her repertoire and the dates of her performances as well as critical opinions from various print sources. When Montréal constructed its francophone theater and its artistic infrastructure it quickly caught up with anglophone venues. Catholic institutions became increasingly adverse to Bernhardt deemed unworthy to represent the desired link to the French Catholic cultural bridge with the former motherland, in a context that revealed itself anti-women as well as anti-Semitic for this respected actress of Jewish ancestry, yet so famous for her French elocution. Bernhardt’s sulphureous reputation festered when she was reported as accusing people from Québec to be Iroquois or under religious guidance, setting her friend Louis Fréchette apart from the benighted crowd. Conversely, contrary to the increasingly negative reception of Bernhardt’s performances in the early 1900s, and the association of Jewish immigrants with Anglophone communities, Yiddish theatre saw a massive and fragmented growth between 1905-1910. By 1913, there were a total of three permanent professional Yiddish theatre troupes in the city.

The Yiddisher Kultur Farband in Argentina: Progressive and Communist Jews (1917–1956)

Progressive and Communist Jewish identity in Argentina flourished between the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Cold War. In 1937, during the Popular Front period, Jewish Communist intellectuals organized an International Congress of Yiddish Culture in Paris. Twenty-three countries were represented, and the Congress formed the Yiddisher Kultur Farband (YKUF). In 1941, this Congress was replicated in Argentina, where the YKUF sponsored an important network of schools, clubs, theaters, socio-cultural centers, and libraries created by Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. The Ykufist or Progressive Jewish identity reflects a particular construction that is as ethnic as it is political. As “Jewish,” it aimed to transmit the secular heritage of the Yiddishkeit devastated in Europe during World War II, but as “progressive,” “radical” or “Communist,” it postulated its yearning for integration into a universal socialism led by the Soviet model. Progressive Jewish identity was shaped in the antifascist culture and by permanent tensions between Jewish ethnicity and the guidelines of the Communist Party. Above all, it was framed by a fervent aspiration of the immigrants and their children to integrate into their Argentine society.

From Eastern European Rooted Immigrant Circle to the Mainstream of American Culture – an Alfred Kazin’s Transition

Tracing the process of immigrants’ transition, it appears that in the twentieth century children of Eastern European, mainly Jewish immigrants were trying to get rid of the European past of their parents as quickly as possible in order to take the full advantage of American culture. This attitude brought serious changes in family values, social ties, and religious traditions among immigrants’ children, which was vividly presented in Kazin’s works. Moving straight toward their American future often meant leaving the Old World heritage and language behind. Many of the immigrant children regarded this type of attitude as another logical step in their development. But although this incorporation into the mainstream of the American culture was fruitful, some of them experienced a deep sense of irreversible loss over their past.

The surfacing portion of the Iceberg of the Domestic Violence Phenomenon—data from the Israeli National Trauma Registry

Background Domestic violence against women, which is an ancient phenomenon, is still thriving worldwide. The burden of domestic violence that is non-fatal on scene and its consequences in Israel are unknown. The purpose of this study was to provide evidence-based data regarding domestic violence-related hospitalizations among women in Israel. Methods The study is a retrospective cohort study of hospitalized patients included in the Israeli National Trauma Registry between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2020. All women aged 14 and older, hospitalized due to a violence-related injury in one of the six-level I Trauma Centers or one of the 15 regional Trauma Centers in Israel were included (n = 676). Results Domestic violence contributes to moderate, severe, and critical injuries in a quarter of abused hospitalized women. Among these women, 20% underwent surgery, and in-hospital mortality was recorded for 2% of the patients. For most cases (53%), the spouse or ex-spouse caused the injury. The family relationship with the perpetrator was distributed differently between the population groups. The proportion of brothers who attacked sisters was greatest among Arabs (14.4%), while the phenomenon of attacking a mother was infrequent in the Arab sub-group. In contrast, among Jewish women, the proportion of those injured by a son was high, especially among the group of Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) (17%) and other countries (26%). In a multivariable logistic regression model with at least moderate injury as a dependent variable, in comparison to Israeli Arabs, Jews had a higher odds for sustaining at least moderate injuries, while the odds of Jewish immigrants not from FSU or Ethiopia were the highest (OR = 4.5, 95% CI 2.0–9.9). The annual hospitalization risk was 1.3/100,000 and 5.8/100,000, respectively for Jews and Arabs in 2020, almost fivefold higher among Arab women in comparison to Jewish women (RR = 4.6, 95% CI 2.9–7.3). Conclusions Domestic violence prevention should pay special attention to populations at risk, such as Arab women and new immigrants, as those women are especially vulnerable and often without sufficient family support and lack of economic resources to exit the trap of domestic violence. The collaboration between social and health services, the police, and the local authorities is crucial.

The Jewish Working Class in America

Between 1881 and 1924, when federal immigration restrictions were introduced, two and half million Jews from East Europe entered the United States. Approximately half of them settled in New York City where they soon comprised the largest Jewish settlement in the world. The Lower East Side, where families crowded into tenements, became the densest place on the globe. Possessing few skills, Jewish immigrants took jobs with which they had some prior familiarity as peddlers and as workers in the burgeoning garment and textile industries. With the rise of clothing as a mass consumer good, the garment industry emerged as the leading industrial sector in the city. Jewish workers predominated in it. But conditions of sweated labor in shops and factories propelled worker protest. A Jewish labor movement sprung up, energized by the arrival of socialist radicals in the labor Bund. Women workers played a major role in organizing the Jewish working class, spearheading a series of major strikes between 1909 and 1911. These women also staged “meat riots” over inflated beef prices in 1902 and “rent wars” in the early 1930s. To be sure, garment work and the labor movement also shaped the experience of Jewish immigrants in cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Jews notably worked in other apparel industries, but the alternative for many (especially in small cities without a garment industry) was peddling and shopkeeping. Self-employed, but situated within and integrated in the working-class community, both sectors reflected the nontraditional nature of the Jewish working class. Jewish peddlers and petty shopkeepers increasingly morphed in a second generation into a middle class in higher status white-collar work. But despite this mobility, Yiddishkeit, a vibrant Jewish working-class culture of Jewish proletarian theater, folk choruses, journalism, education, housing, and recreation, which was particularly nourished by Bundists, flourished and carried a rich legacy forward in the postwar era.

Constructing the “Jewish Type”

With the emergence of new photographic technologies and processes during the second half of the nineteenth century, it became increasingly easier to pursue anthropometric research in anthropology. One group to receive particular attention was the Jewish community. This interest was due to several factors including the influx of Jewish immigrants to Britain as a result of the pogroms in the Russian Empire, easy access to subjects for the purpose of photographing and measuring them, and longstanding attempts to classify and racialize Jewish people within the human sciences. This paper will examine the construction of the supposed “Jewish type” during the late Victorian period by looking at the work of the Victorian polymath Francis Galton (1822–1911), and the Jewish folklorist and anthropologist Joseph Jacobs (1854–1916). Using the composite portraits of Jewish schoolboys that appeared in The Photographic News in 1885, the paper will explore both Galton’s and Jacobs’ visual epistemologies for constructing and representing this racial category, and the social and political factors underpinning their interpretations.

Unhealthy Immigrants: Sources for Health Gaps Between Immigrants and Natives in Israel

The study focuses on sources for health gaps between Jewish immigrants and native-born Israelis. Unlike traditional immigrant societies where immigration is viewed as economically motivated, immigrants returning to Israel are viewed as the “returning diaspora”. Because immigrants in Israel are entitled to the same health benefits and medical services as native-born, we expect Israel to attract unhealthy immigrants in disproportionate numbers. The data for the analysis are obtained from the Israeli National Health Interview Survey (2013–2015). The data set provides detailed information on health status and illness, sociodemographic attributes and origin of immigrants. Three major origin groups of immigrants are distinguished: the former Soviet Union, Western Europeans or the Americans (mostly Ashkenazim), and Asians or North Africans (mostly Sephardim). Our findings lend support to the expectations that the health status of all immigrant groups is poorer than that of native-born Israelis. The nativity–illness gap is most pronounced in the case of male immigrants (from Europe or the Americas or South Africa or Australia) and for female immigrants (from countries in the Middle East or North Africa) and least pronounced in the case of immigrants arriving from the former Soviet Union for both gender groups. Decomposition of the gaps into components reveals that some portion of the illness gap can be attributed to nativity status, but the largest portion of the gap is attributed to demographic characteristics. Neither socioeconomic status nor health-related behavior accounts for a substantial portion of the nativity–illness gap for all subgroups of immigrants.

From Ben-Gurion to Venezuelan Converts

This study analyzes the development of the unique Law of Return (LOR) of the State of Israel. The LOR is aimed at enabling the immigration of all Jews to Israel and can be viewed as an expression of Israel’s ethno-religious self-definition. The analysis includes amendments made to the LOR since its implementation in 1950 to today, and how different groups of Jewish immigrants have been affected by the law. Moreover, this paper introduces a case study that so far has not received the scholarly attention it deserves; the exodus from Venezuela and the particular case of nine Venezuelan converts to Judaism in accordance with the Conservative branch of the religion. The research uncovers that the LOR contains a core contradiction. While it should be assumed that everyone is treated equally before the law, discrepancies in the treatment of different individuals and groups of people with regard to the LOR continue taking place. The differences in treatment are due to the fact that terms such as ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish convert’ are subjective in accordance withWeber’s theory on ethnicity and the terms have been given different meanings by Jewish religious law, the Supreme Court, and the legislative power. While recognizing that the definition of these terms form the identity of the State of Israel, which is heavily contested between Orthodox religious and secular forces since its establishment as a Jewish State – this study offers suggestions for approaches to dealing with the randomness of the LOR. These consist of two main points: clarifying who should be responsible for verifying the question of who is a Jew, and listing a set of criteria that a person should meet in order to be eligible for the LOR.

Non-Proletarianization Theories of the Jewish Worker (1902-1939).

In the early twentieth century, an economic doctrine known as “non-proletarianization theory” became influential among left-wing Zionists in Russia. According to this theory, Jewish workers were unable to “proletarianize”—that is, to integrate large-scale industry; hence, Jewish territorial autonomy was required, whether in Palestine or elsewhere. This article analyzes this theory’s historical development, focusing on the works of three authors: Khaim Dov Horovitz, Yakov Leshchinsky, and Ber Borochov. I claim that discussions of Jewish non-proletarianization can be considered a specific and coherent intellectual tradition in the history of economic thought. I also discuss these theories’ relation to the anti-sweatshop campaign of the Progressive Era, particularly John R. Commons’s writings on Jewish immigrants that were recently debated in this journal.