»Erez Israel from the Air 1937–38«

In September 1938, German-Jewish merchant, publisher and patron Salman Schocken, who emigrated to Palestine in 1934, presented an album of 40 aerial photographs of the Land of Israel as a sign of gratitude to the well-wishers on his 60th birthday the previous year. The pictures were taken by Hungarian-Jewish photographer Zoltan Kluger, who had worked in Berlin since the 1920s and became the »chief photographer« of Keren Hayesod and the Jewish National Fund after his immigration at the end of 1933. There is only little information about their collaboration on this extraordinary project and the album of which a copy has been preserved in the Archives of the National Library of Israel. »Erez Israel from the Air 1937–38«, as the album is also known, with Klugerʼs stunning aerial shots, shows a unique view of historical and biblical landscapes, the Judean Desert and the Jordan Valley, but first and foremost they are a visual record of the architectural history of the Yishuv: starting with the settlements of the First Aliya, the founding of Kibbutzim and Moshavim, the urban development of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, up to the Stockade and Tower settlements since the outbreak of the Arab revolt in 1936. They are presented in the following article. Readers are invited to view the whole album and the photographs at a higher resolution online here: https://rosetta.nli.org.il/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE38046962.

Biecz – Brody – Bila Cerkva: Trade Contacts against the Backdrop of Everyday Life in the Seventeenth Century

Biecz – Brody – Bila Cerkva: Trade Contacts against the Backdrop of Everyday Life in the Seventeenth Century This study examines the report of the death of the Jewish merchant Rubin Josefowicz (9.02.1663). This study uses the report to fulfil three goals. First, it sheds light on Brody’s Jewish past. A copy of documents from the town of Biecz is for the moment the earliest complete source which describes in detail the trade activity of a Jew from Brody. Secondly, the report reveals additional evidence of the trade history within the borders of the Polish‑Lithuanian Commonwealth. Finally, the investigation reveals aspects of merchants’ everyday life in the town of the Carpathian foothill region.

Birth, Berat, and Banishment

The paper analyses the claims to Habsburg subjecthood advanced by the prominent Jewish merchant Haim Camondo following an Ottoman imperial order banishing him from Istanbul to Cyprus in 1782. As the Jewish merchant was the holder of Habsburg and British berats, the Camondo affair came to concern the European ambassadors in Istanbul. Eventually, the merchant and his family were able to escape to Habsburg Trieste with their lives and most of their fortune secured. How the European ambassadors, the Ottoman government, and Haim Camondo translated their understandings of legal belonging and identification to each other during the affair, omitting aspects which did not help their respective cases, sheds further light on notions of imperial subjecthood at a crucial period of transition of these concepts in the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Analysing the web of cultural and political translations in which the Camondo family was caught up also adds to our understanding of trans-imperial families and contributes to the history of (national) identification and subjecthood.

Eastern theocracy in Northern Eurasia: “The Ways of Russia” in the historiosophy of I. I. Bunakov-Fondaminsky

The article examines the question of the evolution of the philosophical and historical views of the Russian intellectual and politician Ilya Isidorovich Fondaminsky (1880–1942; literary and political pseudonym “Bunakov”). A native of a Jewish merchant family who studied phi­losophy in Berlin and Heidelberg and an active socialist-revolutionary, I.I. Bunakov-Fon­daminsky became one of the key figures of the Russian emigration. During the German oc­cupation of France, he received Orthodox baptism and ended his life in a Nazi concentration camp (in 2004, he was canonized by the Patri­archate of Constantinople). The author fo­cuses on the historiosophical concept of “Ways of Russia”, set forth by I.I. Bunakov-Fon­daminsky in the articles of the 1920s and 1940s in the Parisian emigrant magazines “Modern Notes” and “Novy Grad”. According to Bunakov-Fondaminsky, historical Russia is “The East in the North”, and its fate is the history of the “eastern theocracy in the north of Eura­sia”, for several centuries “irradiated” by the western waves.

18th-Century Judeo-Arabic Documents from the Prize Papers Collection

The Prize Papers Collection held at the National Archives in Kew contains more than 280 letters and documents in Judeo-Arabic (Arabic written in Hebrew script) taken from the British cartel ship Venus in 1800. Most of the letters and documents belonged to Shlomo Bū Shaʿra, an Algerian Jewish merchant who travelled between Algeria and Europe on business during the late 18th century. This article introduces the Judeo-Arabic documents from the Prize Papers Collection. It applies a linguistic analysis to a sample of 15 letters and documents, and transcribes and translates three documents written in Arabic and Judeo-Arabic scripts.

XIX-wieczne czytelnie krakowskich Żydów postępowych

The article discusses activities of two Reading Rooms which were created in the milieu of the progressive Jews in Krakow, Galicia in the 19th century: The Israelite Reading Room (1871) and The Reading Room of the Jewish Merchant Youth (1882). Both Reading Rooms fostered not only readership but also social integration, education, and became centers of Polish patriotism. They contributed to the development of Jewish publish libraries.

Merchants of Helsinki

This article analyses a New Year’s revue from 1929 by Helsinki-born Jac Weinstein (1883–1976) and the image of the Jewish merchant. Many stereotypes concerning ethnicity and gender are at play in the revue and the line between humour, Jewish self-deprecation and antisemitic depiction of the Jew becomes blurred. The questionable business ethics of Jewish merchants is one of the core themes of the revue.The article asks what role ethnic stereotypes played in Jewish humour before the height of National Socialist racial antisemitism, and what purpose such performances served. It examines the various stereotypes found in the couplets, sketches and one-act plays in Weinstein’s kleynkunst performance against the background of transnational Jewish performing arts and current research on Jewish entrepreneurship and antisemitism in Finland.

Merchant Colonies

This chapter discusses the merchant colonies who invited Jewish merchants into their cities on exceptionally propitious terms, constituting the west European region of emancipation. Raison d'état and shifting trade patterns induced governments in such cities as Ancona, Livorno, and Venice to grant Jews extensive privileges of residence and trade, worship, and communal autonomy. In Bordeaux, Jews originally gained privileges as New Christians; over time they emerged as Jews and received confirmation of those privileges. In Livorno and Bordeaux, those privileges entailed virtual parity with Christian merchants. Meanwhile, Hamburg's Senate first attracted a Jewish merchant colony by extending privileges but later, by imposing heavy taxes, drove it away. In Amsterdam and London, which had ceased granting charters to foreign merchant colonies, Jews found themselves in the novel and ambiguous situation of functioning without a charter. They therefore gained rights on an ad hoc basis, becoming members of an emerging civil society. The Jews of Bordeaux, Amsterdam, and London were to make virtually seamless transitions from corporate or civic parity to equal citizenship.