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This article explores power relations in gathering Holocaust survivor life stories. Through the case study of Slovakian Jewish survivor, Vera Karoly, it asks whether her testimony was given or taken. Using Hank Greenspan's work as its inspiration, it contemplates the various forms of testimony and cultural production that were produced relating to Vera. The author himself is part of that process and it includes a reflexive approach to how he confronted the Holocaust. The ethical issues raised when a Holocaust survivor is reluctant to give testimony are to the fore, analyzing in this case how it led to a form of counter-memorial to the (im)possibility of speaking about the Shoah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article underscores the transformative impact of victim–survivor voices in reshaping public discourse on child sexual abuse (CSA). The research project took as the backbone for analysis the Malka Leifer case that spanned 15 years and is linked to the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse's report of Case Study 22, which examined responses in ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools to child sexual abuse. Adopting a mixed methods research approach, this study combines qualitative media analysis of 102 news articles and 8 in-depth focus groups to investigate the impact of media outlets in amplifying victim voice and influencing public discourse, and how this impacts the subjects of mediatised public crises. Drawing on the theorising of Couldry and Cottle, the article considers the capacity and limitations of survivor-advocates to leverage media power in the contemporary media system. By exploring the 'Privileging Victim Voice' frame, this paper sheds light on how victim–survivor advocates utilised mainstream, local religious, and social media to solidify their central place in the narrative and its reportage. The media analysis served as the foundation for a 'peer conversation' style of focus groups with Jewish community members to investigate local impacts of the case's media reportage. The focus group methodology sought to represent this diverse community as wholly as possible. Findings reveal the significant power of journalists' framing and sourcing practices, and how Jewish institutional child sexual abuse is framed by media outlets within the Australian media landscape. Further, it showcases the broader implications of public inquiries, such as Australia's Royal Commission, in empowering victim–survivors and centreing their narratives in media reportage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates reactions of Jews to the perceived risk of antisemitic incidents in Germany by using a mixed-methods design. First, findings from qualitative interviews with 21 German Jews are presented: They perceive Jewishness as a stigmatized identity which ‘spoils’ everyday interactions, often simply because it is linked to the ‘weight’ of German history. We derive two analytical types of reaction to perceptions of stigmatization: defensive efforts to hide one’s Jewish identity and intervening engagement to actively combat antisemitism. In the second part of the paper, we report the findings of a quantitative survey of 295 Jews living in Germany to answer the question who choses which type of reaction. Especially the characteristics of the area where Jews live and the specifics of their Jewish identity are important correlates for explaining variance in their reactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the gloomy forecast of "The Vanishing Diaspora", the end of the second millennium saw the global emergence of a dazzling array of Jewish cultural initiatives, institutional modalities, and individual practices. These "Jewish Revival" and "Jewish Renewal" projects are led by Jewish NGOs and philanthropic organizations, the Orthodox Teshuva (return to the fold) movement and its well-known emissary Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism, and alternative cultural initiatives that promote what can be termed "lifestyle Judaism". This range between institutionalized revival movements and ephemeral event-driven projects circumscribes a diverse space of creative agency. Indeed, the trope of a "Jewish Renaissance" has become both a descriptive category of an increasingly popular and scholarly discourse across the globe, and a prescriptive model for social action. This article explores the global transformations of contemporary Jewishness, which give renewed meaning to identity, tradition, and politics in our post-secular world in two different sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, we interrogate the relations between "diaspora" and "homeland" by analyzing two case studies: the Jewish revival movement in Budapest, Hungary, and the Jewish renewal initiatives in Israel. While the first instantiates a diasporic movement anchored in a post-denominational and post-secular attempt to reclaim Jewish tradition for a new generation of Jew-llennials (Millennial Jews), the second group operates against the Orthodox hegemony of the institutional Rabbinate by revisiting religious ritual and textual study. By proposing new cultural repertoires, these movements highlight the dialectic exchange between center and periphery. The ethnography of religious revival decenters the Israeli Orthodoxy as "the homeland" and positions the diaspora at the core of a network of cultural creativity and renewal, while remaining in constant dialog with Israel and other diasporic communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithuanian art studies as an independent branch of science began to take shape in the First Republic of Lithuania between year 1918 and 1940. During 22 years in a multinational free state, it followed a winding path of mastery, professionalism, and the formation of a critic’s thought. However, if the origins, development, and forms of interwar Lithuanian art studies already are being explored, the Jewish art studies are still waiting for its first investigations. The purpose of this article is to broaden the scope of Lithuanian art research by incorporating the layers of interwar Jewish art studies conducted in the Yiddish language. Using the combined methodology of research as method of source studies, the aspects of social history of art and the comparative method, the Jewish art studies were analysed as a specific phenomenon which functioned alongside Lithuanian art studies. Throughout this research, over 1,000 Yiddish publications were reviewed to find the answers to the never previously discussed questions – how many Jewish art historians and critics contributed articles to the Yiddish press, what kind and quality of publications about Jewish art were featured, what aspects of Jewish art, artists, and society did Jewish art critics emphasise, and what kind of relationship existed among art critics, artists and public. The article also encompasses the short biographies of the most prominent Jewish authors in the field of art criticism.

Data literacy for students in nonquantitative fields is important as statistics become the grammar of research and how the world’s decisions are made. Statistics courses are typically offered by mathematics or statistics departments or by social and natural sciences such as economics, political science, psychology, and biology. Here we discuss how to construct a statistics course for students in nonquantitative fields, with a goal of integrating statistical material with students’ substantive interests, using student-focused teaching methods and technology to increase student involvement. We demonstrate this kind of hybrid course with the example of an introductory applied statistics class, taught at both the University of Toronto’s Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies and the United States Naval Academy.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Leningrad-based Jewish intellectuals began to explore the settlements of the former Pale of Settlement in search of their ethnic and religious identity. Starting in 1982, Ilya Dvorkin, a physicist by training, together with a few friends, undertook several such shtetl expeditions to the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics. They visited the hometowns of their ancestors and explored important sites of Hasidism. Based on interviews and extensive archival material, this article investigates Jewish encounters with the abandoned material heritage of the shtetl and confrontations with the immaterial narratives of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims to: determine the meaning of symbols and symbolism both linguistically and terminologically, understand the value of symbols among Jews, clarify the meanings of numbers and their significance for Jews, highlight the exaggeration of Jews in their reliance on interpretation to explain the ambiguities in the altered texts, open the door for many researchers and scholars to explore topics related to comparative religions, and enrich the library of theology and comparative religion, which focuses on aspects of Jewish studies and their history. Research Methodology: the inductive method and the deductive method. Jews rely on symbolism to understand their sacred texts, and through this, rabbis integrate this religion, opening the door widely to the alterations that have affected this religion. Among the most prominent findings of the research: A symbol linguistically is a gesture or indication using the eyes, eyebrows, lips, and mouth. The definitions of a symbol have varied according to the science or art in which the term is used. A symbol is a sign that refers to a meaning that exists independently, representing it and replacing it. A symbol in the Old Testament is an expression or indication of what will happen in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a tribute to the Jewish literary critic Professor Leon Yudkin, who died in 2013. He was a prolific writer: the author of more than a dozen works and editor and co-editor of another five books. The range of his interests was prodigious, from individual writers like Shmuel Agnon, Joseph Roth and Else Lasker-Schüler to the Prague Circle, French feminist writers, German Expressionism and, above all, a series of authoritative surveys of Hebrew, Yiddish and Israeli literature. Much of this article focuses on his last book, posthumously published, Fiction Derailed: Form for the Modern (2020), an exploration of the modern novel. His greatest legacy was as a pioneer, someone who opened up the study of Jewish and especially Hebrew and Yiddish literature in the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Polish Jew journal as a pivotal second-tier record for advancing Holocaust studies and Jewish genealogy. Traditionally underutilized in academic research, this periodical provides a unique repository of names and narratives of Holocaust victims, filling crucial gaps in primary record collections. The investigation centers on the journal's potential not only to contribute names to existing databases of Holocaust victims—many of whom are still unrecorded—but also to enhance genealogical methods through the integration of network analysis. By examining Polish Jew, this study illustrates how second-tier records can extend beyond mere supplements to primary data, acting instead as vital tools for reconstructing complex social and familial networks disrupted by the Holocaust. The paper proposes a methodological framework combining traditional genealogical research with modern network analysis techniques to deepen our understanding of Jewish community dynamics during and after World War II. This approach not only aids in identifying individual victims and survivors but also in visualizing the broader interactions within Jewish diaspora communities. This research underscores the significance of Polish Jew in the broader context of Holocaust remembrance. It offers a novel pathway for the future of Jewish genealogical research, advocating for the strategic use of second-tier records in scholarly investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data literacy for students in nonquantitative fields is important as statistics become the grammar of research and how the world's decisions are made. Statistics courses are typically offered by mathematics or statistics departments or by social and natural sciences such as economics, political science, psychology, and biology. Here we discuss how to construct a statistics course for students in nonquantitative fields, with a goal of integrating statistical material with students' substantive interests, using student-focused teaching methods and technology to increase student involvement. We demonstrate this kind of hybrid course with the example of an introductory applied statistics class, taught at both the University of Toronto's Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies and the United States Naval Academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christians and Jews in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Castile relied on income from local taxes levied on commercial transactions to maintain the fabric and the effective administration of their communities. The consumption tax imposed by the crown, the alcabala (also known as the sisa), was a major source of royal revenue so that traders were doubly taxed on the sales of their produce. The mechanism for the collection of these taxes and the way in which the tax-farmers were appointed to these lucrative posts showed some similarities between the two faith communities. A dispute described in a fourteenth-century rabbinic responsum reveals, however, that the process within one Jewish community (aljama) was less structured than that followed in the Christian municipalities (concejos). Furthermore, it portrays the considerable emphasis placed by the protagonists on the legal injunctions of Jewish law (halakha). The conflict between the various elements within the Jewish leadership and their attempts to influence rabbinic authority are an illustration of rivalry and contention and of the bids to dominate judicial process within a late-medieval Jewish community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Munich Agreement and the Vienna Arbitration led to the first displacement of Jewish residents. Representatives of the regime saw the loss of territory as an opportunity to resolve the 'Jewish question.' On November 4th, 1938 an operation was launched to deport the Jews to their home villages and the ceded territories. It is estimated that 700 Jews remained imprisoned in 'No Man's Land' on the border of Slovakia and Hungary. Two camps were established where these Jews were concentrated. This study illustrates the events in the case study of the town of Čadca and the local Jewish population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed article is devoted to improving the classification of literature on Jewish studies kept in the collections of both the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine and other scientific libraries. Ukraine inherited from the former USSR a significant number of collections of literature in the area of Jewish studies, which include, in particular, the collection of the Department of Jewish Studies at the Institute of Manuscripts in Vernadsky Library. The issue of systematization, classification and cataloguing of the Judaic literature still remains not fully resolved. This state of affairs can be illustrated by looking at the classification of the languages of the respective texts. In particular, the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), widely used in modern Ukraine, indicates the following classification possibilities for the Hebrew language within Class 8 of the Classification: 811.4 Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Congo-Kordofanian, Khoisan languages 811.41 Afroasiatic languages 811.411 Semitic languages 811.411.16 Hebrew 811.411.16'02 Biblical Hebrew 811.411.16'03 Mishnaic 811.411.16'04 Rabbinical 811.411.16'08 Modern Hebrew. The potential of this classification is quite limited and it uses concepts borrowed from different branches of linguistics. For example, not all variants of the Hebrew language can be correctly classified as Jewish languages. On the other hand, many Jewish languages are non-Semitic and should be classified within their respective language families. It is not our intention to classify the Jewish languages on the basis of purely linguistic para�-meters; the main goal of our study is to unambiguously relate a particular language and therefore the study, to the context of Jewish studies regardless of how correct and consistent the used classification system is for a particular sphere or knowledge. This allows us to conclude that the Ukrainian version of the UDC has sufficient potential for classifying research in the field of Jewish studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Rescuing the History of American Jewish Dissent on Israel" by Eric Alterman discusses the overlooked history of American Jewish criticism of Israel from 1948 to 1978. It highlights the efforts of organizations like the American Jewish Committee (AJC) to influence Israel's treatment of Palestinians and Arab minorities. The author, Eric Alterman, delves into archival research to shed light on these historical events, providing a valuable resource for scholars interested in this topic. [Extracted from the article]

This article addresses the explicit utilization of Christian discourse about hell and purgatory within the writings of sixteenth-century Italian Jewry. The vast majority of Jewish texts about hell (gehinnom) from the period ignore Christian discourse on the topic or only allude to it obliquely. Three unpublished Hebrew sources, two of them drawn from informal marginalia, demonstrate a more open approach, in which the infernal cosmography and terminology of Christianity are consciously and explicitly appropriated. These sources not only serve as important case studies for Jewish understandings of hell during the period but also can shed broader light on the types of cultural maneuvering that characterized Jewish cultural life in the Christian milieu of Cinquecento Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This forum brings together eight scholars of various disciplines who take stock of queer perspectives on Jewish Studies, introduce new lines of research, and show the many ways in which queering Jewish Studies energizes the field. The authors also discuss the particular promise of Jewish trans studies as well as the nexus of queers and Jews in the age of rising populism. Overall, the forum serves as a primer for those interested in how to teach or do queer Jewish Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 2018 survey of twenty-first-century American Judaism entitled The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice their Judaism Today, Jack Wertheimer references a 2015 Pew Research study that presupposes the secular-religion binary as the analytical metric for its determination that both the American public and American Jews are becoming less religious. Nonetheless, Wertheimer's use of this analytical frame prohibits him from making sense of many details of the twenty-first-century American Jewish life that he seeks to describe. Indeed, any survey of the contemporary American Jewish scene is remiss if it does not discuss the rise of orthodox Jewish feminism, current trends towards substantial denominational change, and/or the emergence of a "post-ethnic" Judaism. Even so, recent historical-ethnographic accounts have outpaced analytical challenges to the secular-religion binary. Contemporary historians and ethnographers find themselves forced to choose between an analytically deficient model and a default rejection of analytical tools altogether. Arguably, the roots of the current impasse are derived from the influence of what scholars refer to as the secularization thesis. Therefore, to overcome this impasse, ethnographers and historians of American Judaism need access to a more refined categorical lens. In this essay, I argue that they may find the analytical support they need by turning away from the secularization thesis and turning toward far more complex accounts of the relationship between Judaism and modernity provided by the canon of modern Jewish thought. Such a turn yields an analytical category we may refer to as the "new secularity" which, when applied to studies in Jewish life in America (and potentially elsewhere) sheds light on communal realities that the secular-religious account misses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As instructors of Jewish Studies struggle to find ways for their students to be more engaged in their learning, it is worthwhile for educators to consider whether art-based assignments are effective at reaching this goal. This article examines what students gain when their study of a biblical chapter is paired with the generation of an art product on that chapter. The study evaluates a pictorial summary assignment to retell the narrative and a dramatic production assignment to analyze the messages of a biblical chapter. The findings suggest that art-based assignments help students read Jewish texts more closely and make more personal connections to them more so than when no pictorial component is included with verbal-based assignments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Rufino Blanco Fombona (1874–1944) and Rómulo Gallegos (1884–1969) is generally understood as reinforcing the then-common Venezuelan representation of race as biological and binary – as separable into either "white" or "non-white", with the latter category including all mixed-race people who made up 60% of Venezuela's total population at the time. These authors' narratives attempt to reinforce these binaries by racially classifying Jewish immigrants at the beginning of the twentieth century – by understanding where they fit within this racial taxonomy. Instead, as I show, these attempts destabilise the categories themselves, leaning first on biological determinism, and then on cultural and ethnic profiling. To make this argument, I analyze Blanco Fombona's Judas Capitolino (1912) contextualised by his writings on race outside of his fiction, alongside Gallegos's short-story "Los inmigrantes" (1922). These works take biologically deterministic positions on race in their caricatures of Jews and mixed-race individuals, demonstrating the inability of Jewish immigration to whiten what Gallegos denotes as the"raza autóctona", the Venezuelan mixed-race individual that he believes to be barbaric and impure. Without the correct shade of whiteness to lighten Venezuela's mixed-race majority, the "raza autóctona" will take over positions of power, becoming a ruling "barbarocracia", threatening the white order and dooming Venezuela's (white) future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fin de siecle was a transformative period for gender identity in Austro-Germany. As women gained more social and sexual independence, many men began to suffer a crisis of masculinity. Gustav Mahler was no exception. Issues of gender identity, sex, and masculinity are woven into the composer's biography. Mahler's relationship with masculinity is further complicated when contextualized within his Jewish heritage. Otto Weininger's Sex and Character of 1903 chided Jewish men for their inherent femininity and added a new, gendered dimension to antisemitic criticism. Attempting to escape this presumed Jewish effeminacy, Mahler became celibate and adopted a lifestyle that mirrored the values of the Körperkultur movement which promoted pure, Christian masculinity to counter the rise of the new, sexually liberated Viennese woman. Musically, Mahler looked to works such as Wagner's Parsifal, which acted as a gendered religious parable for the triumph of chaste masculinity over the inherent corruption and degeneracy of women. Gustav Mahler therefore becomes a privileged space for the examination of gendered Jewishness in the rapidly changing landscape of fin-de-siècle Vienna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, titled "Chapter 4: How Strongly are the Two Sets of Attitudes Correlated?" from Canadian Jewish Studies / Études Juives Canadiennes, explores the correlation between attitudes towards Jews and attitudes towards Israel. The author notes that there is a low to moderate positive correlation between anti-Jewish and anti-Israel attitudes in national samples, suggesting that the two sets of attitudes are related but not the same. The article presents data from a survey conducted in Canada, which found a correlation of 0.339 between attitudes towards Jews and attitudes towards Israel among the non-Jewish adult population. The correlation varies across different Canadian groups, with stronger correlations observed among those who self-identify with the hard right, supporters of conservative parties, and individuals over the age of 64. The article concludes that for most individuals and groups, anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitism, and pro-Zionism is not necessarily philosemitism. [Extracted from the article]

The document is the editors' foreword for Volume 37 of the Canadian Jewish Studies / Études Juives Canadiennes journal. The foreword explains that the volume was delayed due to the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and the subsequent war. The editors express their intention to provide scholarly reflection on how the conflict and the debate over the conflict are impacting Canadian Jewish life. They highlight a survey conducted by Robert Brym, which reveals that Canadian Jews feel threatened amid a surge in anti-Israel sentiment, while most non-Jewish Canadians view their Jewish neighbors positively. The survey also shows that the Israel-Hamas war and the Israeli government's shift to the right have eroded Canadian Jews' emotional attachment to Israel. The editors emphasize the importance of rigorous social research to understand the experiences and fates of Canadian Jews. They express gratitude to the peer-reviewers and others who helped fast-track the publication of this urgent report. [Extracted from the article]

This document is a compilation of recent research articles, reports, and resources related to Jewish studies. It covers a wide range of topics including Canadian Jewish populations, racial and ethnic consciousness, Jewish education, political cleavages, Jewish migration, Jewish-Muslim relations, sexual misconduct, Jewish diversity in Israel, Jewish orthodoxy, and Jewish community studies. The reports focus on specific Jewish communities such as San Diego, Greater Portland, and the Long Beach area, as well as topics like experiencing Israel through sport and antisemitism on US college campuses. The resources provided include journal articles, opinion pieces, a podcast, research resources, reports from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and tables of contents from edited volumes and other journals. The document aims to offer library patrons a diverse range of perspectives and information for their research on Jewish studies. [Extracted from the article]

In the face of changing societal conditions, how can we social scientists take stock of the changes and position ourselves and our work effectively? As a social psychologist studying contemporary Jews and their relationship being Jewish, I have used a navigational approach to deepen our understanding of how social actors reckon with the changing circumstances of their lives. This approach includes several foci. The first is attending to the sense-making of social actors over time, which involves discerning the considerations that compel them and also constrain them. A second feature of a navigational approach involves keeping tabs on emerging features of the societal landscape. I find it useful to employ the metaphor of the "gameboard" to represent that contextual grounding. A third focus of a navigational perspective is reflexive, one that asks us to revisit our analytic "habits of practice." Our theories and conceptions, our methods and modes of inquiry and discovery deserve to be examined as circumstances change. To illustrate the value of a navigational approach I analyze some longstanding ideas about the gameboard that were encoded in two major sociodemographic studies in the 1990s—in the 1990 National Jewish Population Study and in the 1991 New York Jewish Population Study. A few years later I was able to offer a different framing in the Connections and Journeys Study that provided a more dynamic portrayal of present-day realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jews and geography have been inextricably related for millennia. This paper examines the importance of geographic analysis in fostering an understanding of contemporary Jewry by employing geographic concepts and methods that illuminate our understanding of American Jewry. Topics covered include Jewish identity studies completed for academic journals and local Jewish community studies completed for planning in the Jewish community. It highlights some methodological contributions, including the development of a community level data set, the Decade 2000 data set, and the Century 21 data set. Also, it presents the use of distinctive Jewish names (DJNs) for examining the historical geography of a Jewish community and for selecting the best location for a facility. Several maps are shown that illustrate the importance of cartographic analysis in understanding American Jews. It shows how a geographer's "touch" has enhanced the utility of the US Jewish population chapter in the American Jewish Year Book. Finally, it connects an interest in completing academically-sound research that can improve American Jewish communities, with a plea for doing so while remaining a neutral provider of facts rather than an advocate for any particular programs in the Jewish community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of e xempla and exemplarity in Mediterranean antiquity touches the methodological borderlines and interest areas of several distinct academic disciplines. Earlier studies focused on semantics and the development from the Greek παράδειγμα to the Roman exemplum. More recently, the field of Classics has tended to examine exemplarity as a phenomenon with a distinctively Roman edge. At the same time, scholars in adjacent disciplines like ancient Judaism and early Christianity have engaged Classics scholarship on this topic in their own work. This paper extends this arena by clarifying aspects of exemplarity within two paradigmatic texts of Hellenistic- and Roman-era Judaism. We examine 1 Maccabees 2:49–68 and Josephus' Jewish War 6.99–110, both speeches set within "contemporary" histories written by Jewish authors. By examining these ancient Jewish passages, written within the Greco-Roman world, we help add clarity and meaning to what could be "Jewish" about exemplarity in ancient Mediterranean contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been noted that theos -names have a strong connection with the Jewish diaspora in Egypt. In this article, we look at two of the most common names of this type, Dositheos and Theodosios, and the practice of garbling the orthography of these names, as - θης for Dositheos, and Θη -, Θευ -, and Τευ - for names starting with Θεο -. We propose a link with a growing avoidance in the Roman period of the use of the name of Jahweh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the topic of Zionism in Jewish Studies and the need for critical engagement. The author acknowledges the sensitivity of the subject, especially in light of recent events, but emphasizes the importance of scholars engaging with different perspectives. The article highlights the range of Jewish critics of Zionism and explores various essays that offer insights into Israeli politics, religious Zionism, and alternative visions for the Jewish future. The author focuses on one particularly challenging essay that calls for restorative justice in Palestine/Israel and emphasizes the need to listen to and learn from different voices. The article concludes by suggesting that engaging with diverse perspectives can lead to imagining less violent futures. [Extracted from the article]

In the early Qing dynasty, the Jesuit missionary Louis de Poirot's (He Qingtai 賀清泰, 1735–1814) Chinese rendition of the Bible, Guxin Shengjing (The Ancient and New Testament) (古新聖經), reshaped the figure of Abraham. Contrary to the depiction by Chinese Jews of the era, de Poirot portrayed Abraham as a sage, resonating with the traditional Chinese concept of the "five cardinal relationships" (rulers to subjects, fathers to sons, husbands to wives, among siblings, and between friends), and an exemplar of virtue and faith, devoid of human flaws. Key differences emerged in translating Abraham's name, religious stature, and national identity, influenced by distinct belief systems, attitudes towards Confucian culture, and political dynamics. Analyzing these Catholic and Jewish perspectives on Abraham enhances our understanding of the Bible's contextualization and informs contemporary religious localization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper lies at the intersections of Jewish Anthropology, History, Diaspora Studies, and cross-cultural Jewish Studies. It intertwines two analytical trajectories. The first is the thematic core: extensive ethnographic research conducted among Indian Jewish communities living in Israel, some of whom made aliya over four decades ago. The second trajectory entails self-reflections on my subject-position as a non-Jewish, non-Israeli researcher conducting fieldwork among over 125 Indian Jews living across Israel. This paper delves into the process of doing Jewish Anthropology by identifying the spaces where shared cultural and linguistic "Indian-ness" intersected to dissolve boundaries of "difference" between my respondents and myself, facilitating community inroads and culminating not only in the successful accomplishment of extensive fieldwork but in creating enduring bonds of personal engagement. In stepping back to reflect on my own journey, I offer possibilities to understand certain nuances in the process of anthropological engagement, more specifically in doing Jewish Anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Saul or Shaul Yeroham Mezan is a doctor with specialization in surgery and urology, Doctor of Medicine, officer, public figure, Zionist, anti-fascist, publicist, journalist, poet, historian, and folklorist – researcher of Sephardism, political scientist and current political analyst. He was born in the city of TatarPazardjik (today Pazardjik, Bulgaria) in 1893, and died far from his homeland, as a victim of Nazism, probably around 1943. Nowadays his name is known to a few researchers, as the predominant writings about him and his work are episodic in time and fragmentary in their subject matter. His literary and journalistic works, as well as his socio-political views, remain almost unknown to the general public, including, unfortunately, to the Jewish community in Bulgaria. The objective of the paper is the French-speaking environment in which S. Mezan was formed, and his works in French in various fields of the knowledge, which prevail over the ones in Bulgarian both in quantity and in terms of scientific and social significance. The author also pays special attention to the numerous yet scattered references for the French influence on the language, the way of life and the culture of the Sephardim in Bulgaria in the book by S. Mezan dedicated to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2022, we launched the Victorian Jewish Writers Project (VJWP), a digital collection of texts written by nineteenth‐century British Jews accompanied by short articles on significant authors, places, and events of the Anglo‐Jewish world. When we began building the collection in 2021, our conceptual framework was clear: Victorian Jewry is underrepresented both in Jewish Studies and Victorian Studies, so we would create a resource to supply primary texts and some analytical information to anyone interested. Despite our familiarity with archive theory, we considered our role in the project as little more than what Latour calls intermediaries, or "mere informants." Yet, the process of digitizing and publicizing a canon, particularly a canon tied to a cultural heritage, is an inherently social act, and in this article we will explore the modes of social engagement inherent in creating and maintaining digital archives. In particular, we make use of Latour's actor‐network theory to understand the relationships forged by archives in digital spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of ongoing social violence and war, the author presents and develops his argument for controlling human violent tendencies and channeling human vital energies into constructive and morally grounded action. The essay provides a theological perspective on these issues based on midrashic exegesis.

The article is bringing forth a synthetic overview of Jewish historiography throughout the history, starting already with a brief focus on the Biblical background and Jewish Hellenistic historiography. It presents the reflections of historians of Jewish historiography on the main milestones in the story of writing the Jewish history and the processes they were part of, as well as the ideas and frameworks shaping the writing of such historiography in each of the historical periods, including the main issues and shape of the overall Jewish historiography today. It also includes a short overview of modern historiography on Jews in medieval Inner Austrian lands and in Slovenia.