Jews and Jewish Communal Identity in Early America

Jewish communities in the Americas followed in the wake of European contact with the western hemisphere at the end of the 15th century, and were a byproduct of the process of European colonization. Early Jewish settlements relied on a combination of economic investment, political negotiation, social networking, and subterfuge to establish the means of communal survival. While the Jewish experience in the Americas continued to operate within the sphere of European attitudes and modalities of behavior brought over to the western hemisphere by the colonizers, the remoteness of these New World communities and the friction caused by competing inter-imperial goals eventually allowed Jews to take advantage of new economic opportunities and expand their social and political range beyond what was feasible for Jewish communities in Europe in the same period. New World colonization shifted the ways that Jews were seen within European cultures, as contact with Indigenous peoples of the Americas and the importation of Africans as slaves allowed Europeans to see Jews as comparatively less alien than they had previously been defined. While Jews, as individuals and as communities, continued to face discriminatory treatment (such as extraordinary taxation, prohibitions on voting and officeholding, scapegoating, and social exclusion), they were able to exercise many of the status privileges accorded to those with European Christian identities. These privileges included the capacity to freely pursue economic activities in trade and agriculture and to exploit enslaved peoples for their labor and for other purposes. With this elevated status came tension within the Jewish community over assimilation to European Christian norms, and an ongoing struggle to preserve Jewish identity and communal distinctiveness.

Lauterpacht in Jerusalem

This is the first of two chapters to explore the theme voice underscoring Israel’s ambivalence towards the right of petition in the draft Human Rights Covenant: the right of individuals to present grievances before the United Nations. The chapter revisits Hersch Lauterpacht’s Jerusalem lecture, delivered on the occasion of the Hebrew University’s semi-jubilee. Lauterpacht’s ‘reproach’ of Israel’s cool attitude towards the right of petition is assessed against the backdrop of his own investment in Zionism and human rights, and in light of interwar Jewish experience with the right of petition. The chapter traces the involvement of Jacob Robinson and Nathan Feinberg, Dean of the Hebrew University Law Faculty and Lauterpacht’s host, in the Bernheim petition—and their resentment of the need of Jewish national institutions to approach the League of Nations through the confines of individual legal standing. These ideological sensibilities framed Jewish representation politics before and after Israel’s establishment.

Incivility and danger: theorizing a Muslim undercaste in Europe

Positing Muslim positionality in Europe as an undercaste helps to make sense of how cultural stratification, rooted in associations with incivility, has resulted in deep and unrelenting inequalities experienced by diverse Muslims. Based on two years of ethnographic research with a Muslim community in Berlin as well as a survey of secondary research, this paper both theorizes and empirically showcases the process by which Muslims have become synonymous with incivility, and how this affects opportunities and inclusion across the educational, economic, residential, and private spheres. By drawing parallels with other instances of caste-based status differentiation in the West, specifically the Jewish experience in Europe and Black experience in the USA, it further illuminates how cultural stratification through associations with incivility (as a modern secular coding of impurity) that endures for generations functions in the contemporary world. Employing the concept of caste deepens the cultural turn that has replaced economic or legal explanations of Muslim marginality in Europe. And it awakens a dormant sociological vocabulary that allows for a more precise theoretical understanding of this empirical social phenomenon and thereby the possibilities—and limits—of pluralism in modernity.

THE WAY TO UNITY: THE IDEA TO CREATE THE WORLD CONGRESS OF FREE UKRAINIANS

Summary. The history of the Ukrainian diaspora/emigrants makes up an integral part of the Ukrainian history. The article traces the path of foreign Ukrainians to unification in order to defend the interests of the entire Ukrainian people. The successful Jewish experience may serve as the vivid example. The latter lived scattered for ages, but united and established World Jewish Congress in 1936, being able to declare the State of Israel in 1948. The purpose of our study is to trace the origins of the idea to consolidate the Ukrainian emigrants and to establish the only coordinative institution for the whole Ukrainian nation from all over the world in the 1920s, its evolution and the practical measures for its implementation. The successful experience of the Ukrainian diaspora can serve as a model for the modern Ukrainians, while the analysis of the mistakes of the latter can help to avoid them at the contemporary stage of state formation. Methodology. The methods to solve the aforementioned problem are the following: 1) the method of historical comparison of the Ukrainian and Jewish experience of consolidation; 2) historiographical analysis and synthesis; 3) inductive and deductive reasoning. The scientific novelty of our research is in the comprehensive step-by-step study of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians. Conclusions. The powerful centers of the Ukrainian political emigration appeared in the 1920s. They aimed to restore Ukraine’s unity and independence. However, there was disagreement among them, given the fact that they struggled for power in 1917–1920. S. Petliura was one of the first competent political leaders, who realized the necessity of consolidation. His associates A. Shulgin and V. Prykhodko made the first attempts to organize the World Ukrainian Congress in the 1930s. The idea was supported in Galicia and in the USA, though it wasn’t implemented. The same process may be noticed in the Jewish diaspora at the same time; however, they summoned the World Jewish Congress in 1936 and declared their own state. Because the Ukrainian politician leaders failed to create a single political center, the Soviet diplomats became the legitimate representatives of Ukrainians during and after the World War II. The establishment of the Pan-American Ukrainian Conference (PAUC) in 1947 is thought to be the pre-condition for summoning the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, as it was one of its key tasks. A. Melnyk was one of the most active lobbyists of the Ukrainian unity. He also introduced the idea of the organization superstructure. PAUC made a few attempts to summon the congress in the 50s – 60s of the 20th century, but none of these were successful. Consequently, the Ukrainian emigrants were disappointed with its PAUC’s ability to accomplish the task successfully. Despite this fact, in January 1967 PAUC published/promulgated the manifesto on summoning the World Congress of Free Ukrainians launched the active propaganda campaign, and the long way of the Ukrainian nation to consolidation met with success in November.

Co-Option and Erasure

Much of the rhetoric around racism and racialized discrimination in Israel centers on Israeli Jewish treatment of Palestinians. However, an examination of the experience of Mizrahi Jews can also be instructive as to the ways that racism and white supremacy function within Israel—through a privileging of Ashkenazi Jews, whose experiences are used to define the contemporary Israeli Jewish experience. For example, Israeli Jewish artist of Yemeni descent Leor Grady’s work addresses the marginalization, erasure, and exile of Yemeni Mizrahi Jews in Israel. In his video work Eye and Heart, Grady highlights how, in its absorption into Israeli folk dance, traditional Yemeni dance has been uprooted from its site of origination and “whitewashed.” Through a discussion of this work and others alongside which it was shown in the exhibition Natural Worker, I argue that Grady’s articulation of the co-option of Yemeni culture by the dominant Ashkenazi (white) Israeli mainstream demonstrates how racialization plays out in the cultural realm of Israel. This method of privileging whiteness can be seen in the Israeli co-option of other Mizrahi and Palestinian cultural elements, such as couscous, hummus, and Arabic words such as “yalla.” This examination of Grady’s work allows for an understanding of how this privileging of whiteness functions within the Jewish Israeli context.

Migration, Exile, and Homecoming in the Book of Ruth

My article examines various artworks from Europe and Israel that portray and are inspired by the Book of Ruth. While in Jewish sources such as the Talmud (Yevamot 47b) Ruth is seen as an immigrant and a convert to Judaism, European artists since the seventeenth century highlighted different episodes and aspects of the biblical story that suited their social, political, and religious worldviews. Notably, the expansion of colonialism during the nineteenth century transformed the depictions of Ruth. While in the canvases of painters such as Pieter Lastman and Jan Victors Ruth is depicted as a model of religious identification, in the paintings of Joseph Anton Koch and Francesco Hayez she epitomises “oriental” otherness. Furthermore, while early European painters underscore the immigration of Ruth, Hayez represents Ruth as a dweller of the “East.” Zionist artists were influenced by European traditions of depicting the Book of Ruth but developed a unique fusion between strategies of identification and differentiation. Artists such as Ze’ev Raban (1890–1970) portrayed the story of Ruth as both ancient and contemporary, while imitating and appropriating Palestinian tropes in order to imagine the Zionist narrative of homecoming. The contemporary Israeli artist Leor Grady (b. 1966), on the other hand, addresses questions of immigration and homecoming while exploring the Book of Ruth in his solo exhibition Bethlehem (2019, Tel Aviv). While Raban’s illustrations ignore the Jewish experience of exile, Grady’s oeuvre epitomises what the Israeli historian Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin sees as “exile within sovereignty.” Instead of recounting a linear historical narrative that begins with exile and culminates with the return to the Promised Land, Grady underscores that every return is also a departure and every departure a return. In this manner, Grady foregrounds the voices silenced by Zionist historiography and challenges the exclusion of the Palestinian narrative.