Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Jewish History, Historiography, and Memory – serie

Modern Spain and the Sephardim: Legitimizing Identities addresses the legal, political, symbolic, and conceptual consequences of the development of a new framework of relations between the Spanish state and the descendants of the Jews expelled from the Iberian kingdoms in 1492 from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to its unexpected consequences during World War II. This book aims to understand and explain the unchallenged idea of the Sephardim as a mix of Spaniard and Jew that emerged in Spain in the second half of the nineteenth century. Maite Ojeda-Mata examines the processes that led to this ambivalent conceptualization of Sephardic identity, as both Spanish and Jewish, and its consequences for the Sephardic Jews.

The compelling argument of Eastern European Jewish American Narratives, 1890–1930: Struggles for Recognition is that narratives of Eastern European Jewish Americans are important discourses offering a response to America’s norms of assimilation, rationalized progress, and control in the early twentieth century under the guise of commitment to the specificity of individual experiences. The book sheds light on how these texts suggest an alternative ethical agency which encompasses both mainstream and minority practices, and which capitalizes on the need of keeping alive individual responsibility and vulnerability as the only means to actually create a democratic culture. In that, this book opens up novel areas of inquiry and research for both the academic world and the social and cultural fields, facilitating the rediscovery of long-neglected Eastern European Jewish American writers and the rethinking of the more familiar authors addressed.

Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was one of the best-known rabbis in early modern Europe. In the course of his life he became an important Jewish interlocutor for Christian scholars interested in Hebrew studies and negotiated with Oliver Cromwell and Parliament the return of the Jews to England. Born to a family of former conversos, Menasseh was versed in Christian theology and astutely used this knowledge to adapt the content and tone of his publications to the interests and needs of his Christian readers. Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) is the first extensive study to systematically focus on key titles in Menasseh’s Latin works and discuss the success and failure of his strategies of translation in the larger context of early modern Christian Hebraism. Rauschenbach also examines the mistranslation of his books by Christian scholars, who were not yet ready to share Menasseh’s vision of an Abrahamic theology and of a republic of letters whose members were not divided by denomination. Ultimately, Menasseh’s plans to use Jewish knowledge as an entrée billet for Jews into Christian societies proved to be illusory, as Christian readers understood him instead as a Jewish witness for “Christian truths.” Menasseh’s Jewish coreligionists disapproved of what they perceived to be his dangerous involvement in Christian debates, providing non-Jews with delicate information. It was only a century after his death that Menasseh became a model for new generations of Jewish scholars.

In 1917 only Britain would have taken the decision to favor a Jewish “national home” when the opportunity occurred to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, for it had been interlocked with the Hebrew Bible since political and theological crises in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England released the so-called Old Testament from its defined role as a christological premonition of the New Testament. Britain, the Bible, and Balfour unpacks the tumultuous history of the idea of a unique Jewish home state—and the development of Zionism—as it took shape over the course of several centuries in England. The author argues that, in fact, the theopolitical vision of Zionism is a peculiarly British phenomenon with roots that go back to the English Reformation. The religious and political battles over the Bible, the role of Hebrew scripture, the monarchy, and national identity provided the fortuitous, if providential, groundwork for the recovery of a vision of the Jewish people as a unique community with a mandated home. Zionism emerged from this context as a powerful movement that advocated for the return of the land and the people as a divinely ordained religious and political project. Yet, as this volume demonstrates, that idea is explicable only on the basis of the contextual events in early modern England, and would take nearly five hundred years to become a geopolitical reality. This volume provides a critically important genealogical account and illuminates the fascinating history of how England became the surprising progenitor of a revolutionary idea.

In 1917 only Britain would have taken the decision to favor a Jewish “national home” when the opportunity occurred to dismantle the Ottoman Empire, for it had been interlocked with the Hebrew Bible since political and theological crises in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England released the so-called Old Testament from its defined role as a christological premonition of the New Testament. Britain, the Bible, and Balfour unpacks the tumultuous history of the idea of a unique Jewish home state—and the development of Zionism—as it took shape over the course of several centuries in England. The author argues that, in fact, the theopolitical vision of Zionism is a peculiarly British phenomenon with roots that go back to the English Reformation. The religious and political battles over the Bible, the role of Hebrew scripture, the monarchy, and national identity provided the fortuitous, if providential, groundwork for the recovery of a vision of the Jewish people as a unique community with a mandated home. Zionism emerged from this context as a powerful movement that advocated for the return of the land and the people as a divinely ordained religious and political project. Yet, as this volume demonstrates, that idea is explicable only on the basis of the contextual events in early modern England, and would take nearly five hundred years to become a geopolitical reality. This volume provides a critically important genealogical account and illuminates the fascinating history of how England became the surprising progenitor of a revolutionary idea.

Taking early 21st century Britain as a case study, Rethinking Holocaust Film Reception: A British Case Study presents an intervention into the scholarship on the representation of the Holocaust on film. Based on a study of audience responses to select films, Stefanie Rauch demonstrates that the reception of films about the Holocaust is a complex process that we cannot understand through textual analysis alone, but by also paying attention to individual reception processes. This book restores the agency of viewers and takes seriously their diverse responses to representations of the Holocaust. It demonstrates that viewers’ interpretative resources play an important role in film reception. Viewers regard Holocaust films as a separate genre that they encounter with a set of expectations. The author highlights the implications of Britain’s lessons-focused approach to Holocaust education and commemoration and addresses debates around the supposed globalization of Holocaust memory by unpacking the peculiar Britishness of viewers’ responses to films about the Holocaust. A sense of emotional connection or its absence to the Holocaust and its memory speaks to divisions along ethnic, generational, and national lines.

In Identity and Violence in Early Modern Granada: Conversos and Moriscos, Tanja Zakrzewski argues that Conversos and Moriscos, despite being distinct sociocultural groups within Spanish society, still employed the same arguments and rhetorical strategies to establish and defend their place within society. Both Conversos and Moriscos relied on contemporary notions of honour, authority, and loyalty to emphasize that they are true Spaniards - not despite their New Christian heritage but because of it. This book offers an entangled narrative of their history and examines how their notions of honour and hispanidad shaped their socio-cultural identities during the time of the socio-cultural identities during the time of the Alpujarras Rebellion.

This edited collection brings together leading scholars in their field to discuss the Yemenite Children Affair including the health crisis, the public demand for an investigation, and the public discourse surrounding it. The Yemenite Children Affair was a tragic health crisis in which about 1,000 babies and toddlers died between 1949 and 1954. In most cases, the parents did not witness the death of their children and did not attend their funerals. Over the years, rumors spread that the babies had not died but were kidnapped by the Israeli authorities and sold to childless Ashkenazi or Holocaust survivors in Israel and the United States.These rumors eventually created a public demand for an investigation. The contributors to this book analyze the policy and health challenges surrounding immigration to Israel in the 1950s, Operation Magic Carpet, the archives on the Yemenite Children Affair and public discourse surrounding it, testimonies at commissions, among other topics. Scholars of Jewish studies, Israel studies, Middle Eastern studies, public health, and political science will find this book of particular interest.

Jewish studies has been a vibrant academic discipline for many decades, and since the establishment of the Association for Israel Studies in 1985 to engage in research on the history, politics, society, and culture of the modern state of Israel, the two disciplines have worked along parallel tracks in universities. This book focuses on the vibrant academic field of Israel studies and its complex and dynamic relations and intersections with its “older sibling” Jewish studies. Scholarly contributions from around the globe illustrate that the ongoing and growing interest in Israel studies, in particular since the early 2000s, must be analyzed and understood in its relationship to Jewish studies. Only this will allow scholarship to reflect on not only the intersections between the two fields but also on the prospects of cross-pollination between the disciplines for research and teaching. This will become ever more vital in an increasingly globalized world with shifting concepts, borders, and identity concepts.

Jewish studies has been a vibrant academic discipline for many decades, and since the establishment of the Association for Israel Studies in 1985 to engage in research on the history, politics, society, and culture of the modern state of Israel, the two disciplines have worked along parallel tracks in universities. This book focuses on the vibrant academic field of Israel studies and its complex and dynamic relations and intersections with its “older sibling” Jewish studies. Scholarly contributions from around the globe illustrate that the ongoing and growing interest in Israel studies, in particular since the early 2000s, must be analyzed and understood in its relationship to Jewish studies. Only this will allow scholarship to reflect on not only the intersections between the two fields but also on the prospects of cross-pollination between the disciplines for research and teaching. This will become ever more vital in an increasingly globalized world with shifting concepts, borders, and identity concepts.

Opportunism combined with anti-Semitism led non-Nazi businessmen to acquire the largest German-Jewish companies in the period 1933–1935. These hostile takeovers were made possible by the Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, which recalled loans previously extended to Jewish firms. Thereby Germany's largest banks obtained new loan fees, new supervisory board seats and became the house banks for the new Gentile-owned firms. The German judiciary did not defend Jewish property rights, because judges shared the same conservative mindset. Scholarship has previously not discovered this 1933–1935 paradigm because of a focus on Berlin government or Nazi Party actions, instead of the Jewish companies. In addition, a failure to distinguish between multi-million dollar enterprises and tiny shops caused scholars to emphasize the year 1938, when thousands of mom-and-pop shops became bankrupt.

Ze’ev Jawitz (1847–1924) was one of the foremost intellectuals of the First Aliyah and a leader of the religious faction within the Hibbat Zion movement and the Zionist Organization. During his life he experienced the transition from living in the Diaspora to settling in the homeland, and he faced complex problems along with rare opportunities.The Life and Thought of Ze’ev Jawitz: “To Cultivate a Hebrew Culture” is based on rich archival material, most of which has never been published. It moves along two axes: historically, it follows Jawitz’s life through the places where he lived: Jerusalem, Russia, Germany and England, and intellectually, it analyzes Jawitz’s literary and philosophical work against the backdrop of his time.

German Jews and Migration to the United States, 1933–1945 is a collection of first-person accounts, many previously unpublished, that document the flight and exile of German Jews from Nazi Germany to the USA,. The authors of the letters and memoirs included in this collection share two important characteristics: They all had close ties to Munich, the Bavarian capital, and they all emigrated to the USA, though sometimes via detours and/or after stays of varying lengths in other places of refuge. Selected to represent a wide range of exile experiences, these testimonies are carefully edited, extensively annotated, and accompanied by biographical introductions to make them accessible to readers, especially those who are new to the subject. These autobiographical sources reveal the often-traumatic experiences and consequences of forced migration, displacement, resettlement, and new beginnings. In addition, this book demonstrates that migration is not only a process by which groups and individuals relocate from one place to another but also a dynamic of transmigration affected by migrant networks and the complex relationships between national policies and the agency of migrants.