This dissertation looks at ways in which memories of traumatic events are revisited and reshaped by mnemonic communities during the Second Temple period. I focus on the social dimensions of traumatic memory that shape collective identity. I consider ways in which the earlier sites of memories of the exodus, the destruction of the first temple, and the Babylonian exile are reactivated and reshaped by mnemonic communities in constructing exclusive collective identities through discourses of exile, separation, and restoration. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from post-Holocaust thought that I outline in Chapter 1, I argue that the language in Ezra-Nehemiah (Chapter 2), 2 Maccabees (Chapter 3), Daniel (Chapter 4), and Damascus Document and Pesher Habakkuk (Chapter 5) is consistent with processes of identity formation in which trauma is construed as a founding, generative, and integrative identity. In developing themes of collective trauma and memory, I focus on Marianne Hirsch’s work on postmemory and Dominick LaCapra’s theories on founding traumas and the conversion of absence and loss. I apply these theories to the aforementioned Second Temple texts by arguing that notions of purity and impurity are established through the memory and postmemory of catastrophic events, including the destruction of the first temple, Babylonian exile, and the persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167-164 B.C.E. The producers of these texts mask structural trauma (i.e., the transhistorical absence represented as the loss of an original identity) in its representation of historical trauma and narrate the process of restoration as the recovery of an original identity and unity, which never existed as it is represented in the texts. Chapter 6 is an analysis of notions of purification, hybrids, and multidirectional memory. Engaging with the work of Bruno Latour, I discuss the production and proliferation of hybrids, which emerge from discourses and practices of separation and purification. I use Latour as a segue into Michael Rothberg’s work on multidirectional memory, which shows that those whom some communities attempt to mnemonically and discursively eliminate or purify often share a collective pasts and/or identities.

This dissertation looks at ways in which memories of traumatic events are revisited and reshaped by mnemonic communities during the Second Temple period. I focus on the social dimensions of traumatic memory that shape collective identity. I consider ways in which the earlier sites of memories of the exodus, the destruction of the first temple, and the Babylonian exile are reactivated and reshaped by mnemonic communities in constructing exclusive collective identities through discourses of exile, separation, and restoration. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from post-Holocaust thought that I outline in Chapter 1, I argue that the language in Ezra-Nehemiah (Chapter 2), 2 Maccabees (Chapter 3), Daniel (Chapter 4), and Damascus Document and Pesher Habakkuk (Chapter 5) is consistent with processes of identity formation in which trauma is construed as a founding, generative, and integrative identity. In developing themes of collective trauma and memory, I focus on Marianne Hirsch’s work on postmemory and Dominick LaCapra’s theories on founding traumas and the conversion of absence and loss. I apply these theories to the aforementioned Second Temple texts by arguing that notions of purity and impurity are established through the memory and postmemory of catastrophic events, including the destruction of the first temple, Babylonian exile, and the persecution by Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167-164 B.C.E. The producers of these texts mask structural trauma (i.e., the transhistorical absence represented as the loss of an original identity) in its representation of historical trauma and narrate the process of restoration as the recovery of an original identity and unity, which never existed as it is represented in the texts. Chapter 6 is an analysis of notions of purification, hybrids, and multidirectional memory. Engaging with the work of Bruno Latour, I discuss the production and proliferation of hybrids, which emerge from discourses and practices of separation and purification. I use Latour as a segue into Michael Rothberg’s work on multidirectional memory, which shows that those whom some communities attempt to mnemonically and discursively eliminate or purify often share a collective pasts and/or identities.

Dissertation Abstract “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938.” Tatjana Lichtenstein Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Department of History, University of Toronto This dissertation examines the efforts of Jewish nationalists to end Jews’ social marginalization from non-Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands between the world wars. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish nationalist movement sought to transform Czechoslovakia’s multivalent Jewish societies into a unified ethno-national community. By creating a Jewish nation, a process challenged by the significant socio-cultural differences dividing the country’s Jews, Jewish nationalists believed that they could restore Jews’ respectability and recast the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as one of mutual respect and harmonious coexistence. The dissertation explores Jewish nationalists’ struggle to make Jews at home in Czechoslovakia by investigating a series of Zionist projects and institutions: the creation of an alliance between Jews and the state; the census and the making of Jewish statistics; the transformation of the formal Jewish communities from religious institutions to national ones; Jewish schools; and the Jewish nationalist sports movement. Exploring a Jewry on the crossroads between east and west, the dissertation delves into broader questions of the impact of nationalism on the modern Jewish experience. Within the paradoxical context of a multinational nation-state like Czechoslovakia, Zionists adopted a strategy which sought integration through national distinctiveness, a response embodying elements of both west and east European Jewish culture. The study thus complicates the history of Zionism by showing that alongside the Palestine-oriented German and Polish factions, there were significant ideological alternatives within which ideas of Jewish Diaspora nationalism co-existed with mainstream Zionism. Moreover, the study points to the continuities in the relationship between Jews and the state. As in the time of empire, Jews cultivated partnerships with the political elite, a strategy developed to balance the interest of the state and its Jewish minority. In the interwar years, Jewish activists thus looked to the state for assistance in transforming Jewish society. This dissertation seeks to broaden our understanding of Jewish responses to nationalism, the relationship between Jews and the modern state, and more broadly, about the complex ways in which marginalized groups seek to attain respectability and assert their demands for equality within modern societies.

Can we be accountable to privilege? Can we find a space for coherent anti-racist secular Ashkenazi Jewish identity in North America, where Jews have been deeply implicated in structural violence? Can we be agents of both complicity and change? This auto-ethnography describes a haunting; focusing on the ghostly presences of my deceased uncle Larry Treiman and Bruno Bettelheim, child psychologist and director of the residential treatment facility where Larry was institutionalized as a child, it creates a deeply personal explanation for how the whitening of Ashkenazi North American Jewish identity, the shifts in discourses of madness and major sociological and economic change in Chicago and New York over the second half of the 20th century constituted my subjectivity and my privilege. This text proposes accountability through genealogy, teasing out the possibility for ethical thought and action through cultivating a deeply personal relationship to the ghosts that make us.

Can we be accountable to privilege? Can we find a space for coherent anti-racist secular Ashkenazi Jewish identity in North America, where Jews have been deeply implicated in structural violence? Can we be agents of both complicity and change? This auto-ethnography describes a haunting; focusing on the ghostly presences of my deceased uncle Larry Treiman and Bruno Bettelheim, child psychologist and director of the residential treatment facility where Larry was institutionalized as a child, it creates a deeply personal explanation for how the whitening of Ashkenazi North American Jewish identity, the shifts in discourses of madness and major sociological and economic change in Chicago and New York over the second half of the 20th century constituted my subjectivity and my privilege. This text proposes accountability through genealogy, teasing out the possibility for ethical thought and action through cultivating a deeply personal relationship to the ghosts that make us.

Dissertation Abstract “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938.” Tatjana Lichtenstein Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Department of History, University of Toronto This dissertation examines the efforts of Jewish nationalists to end Jews’ social marginalization from non-Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands between the world wars. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish nationalist movement sought to transform Czechoslovakia’s multivalent Jewish societies into a unified ethno-national community. By creating a Jewish nation, a process challenged by the significant socio-cultural differences dividing the country’s Jews, Jewish nationalists believed that they could restore Jews’ respectability and recast the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as one of mutual respect and harmonious coexistence. The dissertation explores Jewish nationalists’ struggle to make Jews at home in Czechoslovakia by investigating a series of Zionist projects and institutions: the creation of an alliance between Jews and the state; the census and the making of Jewish statistics; the transformation of the formal Jewish communities from religious institutions to national ones; Jewish schools; and the Jewish nationalist sports movement. Exploring a Jewry on the crossroads between east and west, the dissertation delves into broader questions of the impact of nationalism on the modern Jewish experience. Within the paradoxical context of a multinational nation-state like Czechoslovakia, Zionists adopted a strategy which sought integration through national distinctiveness, a response embodying elements of both west and east European Jewish culture. The study thus complicates the history of Zionism by showing that alongside the Palestine-oriented German and Polish factions, there were significant ideological alternatives within which ideas of Jewish Diaspora nationalism co-existed with mainstream Zionism. Moreover, the study points to the continuities in the relationship between Jews and the state. As in the time of empire, Jews cultivated partnerships with the political elite, a strategy developed to balance the interest of the state and its Jewish minority. In the interwar years, Jewish activists thus looked to the state for assistance in transforming Jewish society. This dissertation seeks to broaden our understanding of Jewish responses to nationalism, the relationship between Jews and the modern state, and more broadly, about the complex ways in which marginalized groups seek to attain respectability and assert their demands for equality within modern societies.

The TaRYaG count, that is the traditional enumeration of the 613 commandments contained in the five Mosaic books (Torah), has gained a prominent place in Judaism. The count is based on a dictum found in the Babylonian Talmud and attributed to R. Simlai, a Palestinian rabbi of the late third century. No one did more to see this count achieve the importance it has than Moses Maimonides, the prominent 12th-century Jewish philosopher and perhaps the most important post-talmudic jurist of all times. M. offered an impressive methodology, made up of rules of individuation, identification and interpretation - in all, fourteen rules - to support his proposed enumerative scheme and used it to critique all previous such attempts. By his own account, Maimonides undertook this project with the sole aim to provide a comprehensive outline for his upcoming Code of Jewish Law. This thesis demonstrates the enormous difficulties inherent in such a project - difficulties that could not have passed unnoticed by such an accomplished author - and seeks to uncover any other reason or reasons that may have prompted him to adopt such a constraining count. The thesis concludes by speculating that Maimonides may have found it convenient to use the TaRYaG scheme in order to introduce into the list of commandments the beliefs in the existence of God and in His unity - beliefs that had previously not been considered commandments. An ancillary product of the dissertation is the discovery that many of the commandment designations proposed in the enumerative scheme are abandoned in the Halakhot, a discovery that was noted, albeit only partially, by less than a handful of scholars over the past eight hundred and fifty years. The dissertation examines the proposed solutions and rejects them on a number of counts. A systematic analysis of these occurrences suggests a more consistent solution and reveals an aspect of Maimonides that has not been sufficiently appreciated, Maimonides the exegete and legal philosopher. The agenda-oriented research also examines some of the important innovations contained in M’s list of positive commandments, the hermeneutics behind them and the politico-philosophical ideas that may have informed them.

This legal comparative study explores the nature and development of rabbinic thought on intermarriage. One could hardly phrase the query that lies at the heart of this work better than the Talmud itself: "Is she forbidden or permitted?" (bSanhedrin 82a). This challenge, posed to Moses as part of an exegetical exploration of the problem of intermarriage, asks so much more than whether an Israelite might marry a Gentile. It points to conflicts between biblical law and narrative, biblical and rabbinic law, as well as incompatibilities within rabbinic halakhah. The issues of status, national identity and gender loom large as the various legal and narrative sources on intermarriage are set on an hermeneutic collision course. In this way many rabbinic sources display a deep understanding of the complexity inherent to any discussion of intermarriage in rabbinic tradition. Considering intermarriage as a construct that lies at the intersection between identity and marital rules, we begin this study of rabbinic legal systems with an analysis of the notion of intramarriage and Jewish identity in halakhah as expressed through the system of the asarah yuchasin (ten lineages). Discussion of various systems dealing with intermarriage follows, including qiddushin (Jewish betrothal/marriage) and the status of the offspring of intermarriage, the concept of the qahal (congregation of God), the arayot (levitical incest laws) as well as the individual legal rules related to marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Gentiles. The role of narrative in the representation of case law and rabbinic engagement with these legal systems forms an integral part of our analysis of the law. The overall conclusion of the dissertation is that rabbinic approaches to intermarriage were characterized by multiplicity and diversity. Rabbinic tradition engaged with the issue of intermarriage through a wide variety of often unrelated and incompatible legal systems. Furthermore, it is apparent that conflicting attitudes towards the interpretation and implementation of these rules are represented in both tannaitic (c. 70-200 C.E.) and amoraic sources (c. 200-500 C.E.), such that several key problems related to intermarriage in early rabbinic tradition remain unresolved.

In the summer of 1391 anti-Jewish violence spread across the kingdom of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. Unprecedented numbers of Jews were murdered and even more were forcibly converted. These converts, known as conversos, formed a new, self-perpetuating social group, which, together with the rest of Spanish society, remained deeply conscious of its distinct ethnicity and culture. A century later, testimonies to the Spanish Inquisition depict a converso community with a continued, if varied, affiliation to Judaism. This dissertation investigates the economic, social and political factors that promoted Jewish identification among the first two generations of conversos in Majorca following their baptism in 1391. It employs previously unexamined and unpublished archival sources to argue that corporate fiscal obligations had a major impact in shaping the converso community in Majorca, just as they shaped Jewish social and communal life prior to 1391. Conversos organized collectively in order to meet royal fiscal demands, settle their corporate debt and fund social welfare following the disruptions of 1391, adopting administrative models of the former aljama. The monarchy continued to relate to the conversos as a distinct corporate entity in the same ways it had dealt with them as Jews. Royal efforts to prevent converso emigration to the Maghreb, where many fled to renege on Catholicism, carried overtones of the same proto-mercantilist policies that motivated its failed attempts to revivify the island’s Jewish aljama. Publicized restrictions against conversos, many of whom continued to cultivate prior commercial and family relationships with Maghrebi Jews, contributed to popular assumptions that Majorcan conversos at sea were Judaizers, spurring targeted anti-converso and anti-Jewish piracy. Conversos thus remained entrenched in the same socioeconomic structures, and employed the same licit and illicit strategies to cope with royal exploitation, as when they were Jews. This perpetuated a group identity that was unmistakeably anchored in their Jewish past, and which could promote other aspects of Jewish affiliation. In 1404 the conversos established a formal confraternity which replicated the social welfare programs and administrative techniques of the former aljama within the framework of a Catholic pious society, representing one of the first necessary adaptations to Christian life.

This dissertation investigates ways in which early Jewish communities conceptualized the production and collection of writing. Through a study of 11QPsalms-a, the Qumran Psalms Scroll, it shows how modern book culture (shaped by the canon, codex, print, authorial copyright, and scholarly editing) has distorted our understanding of ancient texts and fostered anachronistic questions about their creation and reception. Taking seriously what early Jewish texts have to say about their own writtenness and building upon earlier scholarship on scriptural multiformity, the dissertation also uses theoretical insights from the field of Book History to study the identity, assembly, and literary context of the Psalms Scroll as an example of the ancient textual imagination. Physical and discursive evidence suggest that no concept of a “Book of Psalms” existed as a coherent entity in the ancient Jewish imagination, but that psalms collections were conceptualized and created in looser, unbounded ways. New metaphors made possible by electronic text, which likewise cannot be constrained into the categories of print book culture, can encourage new ways of imagining ancient concepts of fluid textuality as well. After a study of the status and compilation of the Psalms Scroll (Ch. 1-2), the dissertation engages the question of Davidic authorship (Ch. 3). David was not imagined as the author of a particular psalms collection, but as the inaugurator of a variety of liturgical traditions. The identity between an individual figure and a specific text should be unbound in favour of a looser relationship, allowing for the continuing growth of traditions inspired by the figure. Chapters 4 and 5 present a reading of the Psalms Scroll and Davidic lore alongside two other traditions: Ben Sira and angelic ascent literature. Both possess literary links with the Psalms Scroll, but also shed light on the ways in which ancient communities imagined writing and understood their own relationship to their texts. Thus, reading across canonical and generic boundaries embeds psalms traditions in a richer context of reception and provides a fuller picture of the ancient textual imagination. The conclusion makes a comparative gesture toward the Nachleben of psalms collecting in Syriac Christianity.