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Judith Montefiore's life has attracted attention principally by association with that of her husband Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), the pre-eminent Jewish figure of his age. This article emphasises instead Judith's pioneering role as a Jewish woman travel-writer and influential female voice in the world of Jewish letters and international Jewish politics. To Jews in the Holy Cities of Palestine and the ghettos and shtetls of Eastern Europe, Judith was—like her husband—a beacon of hope, an example to follow and an instrument of change. Her activities drew on a rich vein of Jewish tradition and a series of profound encounters with Middle Eastern and, to a lesser extent, Eastern European Jewries, which shaped her spiritual world. These paradoxes are easily conceptualised by the contrast between Judith's different worlds: the Jewish world that underpinned her marriage, structured her spirituality and infused her life with meaning, and the world of the English gentry and dissenting middle classes, with whom she mixed socially, and whose spiritual style, values, expectations, and mode of life shaped her in other, equally profound ways. This article argues, however, that it was the interaction and cross-fertilisation between these different worlds that enabled Judith to carve her distinctive path in life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolf Beck, born in 1863 at Cracow (Poland), joined the Department of Physiology of the Jagiellonian University in 1880 to work directly under the supervision of the prominent physiology professor, Napoleon Cybulski. Following his suggestion, Beck started experimental studies on the electrical brain activity of animals, especially in response to sensory stimulation. Beck placed electrodes directly on the surface of brain to localize brain potentials that were evoked by sensory stimuli. He observed spontaneous fluctuations in the electrical brain activity and noted that these oscillations ceased after sensory stimulation. He published these findings concerning the electrical brain activity, such as spontaneous fluctuations, evoked potentials, and desynchronization of brain waves, in 1890 in the German language Centralblatt für Physiologie. Moreover, an intense polemic arose between physiologists of that era on the question of who should claim being the founder of electroencephalography. Ultimately, Richard Caton from Liverpool showed that he had performed similar experiments in monkeys years earlier. Nevertheless, Beck added new elements to the nature of electrical brain activity. In retrospect, next to Richard Caton, Adolf Beck can be regarded, together with Hans Berger who later introduced the method to humans, as one of the founders of electroencephalography. Soon after his success, Beck got a chair at the Department of Physiology of the University at Lemberg, now Lviv National Medical University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography is presented of the Jewish immigrant to Gympie, Queensland and tobacco shop owner Isaac Gortatowsky (he changed his name to Isaac Gorta). He was born in Briesen, West Prussia (which is current day Wabrzezno, Poland) in the mid 19th century. Gorta married the Irish Catholic immigrant Julia Mary Conroy (Julia Gorta, or Julia Gortatowsky, became her married name) and had his children baptised in St. Patrick's Church in Gympie.

Based on personal memory and interviews with former classmates the author outlines the lives of 12 men from the professional middle class, who between 1939 and 1947 attended a segregated “Jewish class” of a renowned Budapest grammar school. The article follows their youth, education, survival of the Holocaust and their careers at home or abroad till the end of the twentieth century. Additionally, as far as it became known, one or two generations of ancestors, siblings, and spouses, and one or two generations of offspring are also presented. Finally, central issues of the lives of the “boys,” such as emigration, political conformism, and, above all, assimilation to the majority society will be discussed in separate chapters. These life and family histories may be regarded as typical of a not insignificant segment of Budapest Jewish society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on ethnic life stories written by early twentieth-century Romanian-Jewish immigrants to the US, and attempts to determine to what extent these narratives correspond to the generalised pattern of ethnic life writing at the time, as well as what particularises their texts. I analyse the memoirs of M.E. Ravage, Konrad Bercovici, Maurice Samuel and Edward G. Robinson, all of them born at the close of the nineteenth century but publishing their memoirs at different moments in history. I first trace the images of Romania that spring from these texts, ranging from the legal and educational discrimination portrayed by M.E. Ravage and Edward G. Robinson, to the existence of pogroms and other anti-Jewish feelings foregrounded by Konrad Bercovici, and to the nostalgic shtetl atmosphere evoked in Maurice Samuel's books. I then consider the place of the US in these authors' writings, starting from its utopian image prior to emigration to its more complex image after settlement in the new location. Finally, I show how their return journeys to Romania at different moments in time and the persisting prejudiced atmosphere they found there contributed in all cases to these authors becoming strong supporters of American democracy and its openness to critical debate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A biography is presented of the Jewish former head of the Central Medical Library at the Medical School in Belgrade, Serbia Lela Mevorah, with a particular focus on her contribution to medicine in Serbia from 1945 through the early 1970s. She was born on January 17, 1898 in Belgrade, Serbia and volunteered as a nurse at age 16 in World War I. The impact that the Jewish Holocaust had on Mevorah's family, including in regard to her father's 1943 death from Nazis in a gas van, is discussed.