This dissertation examines the scope and limitations of the re-appropriation of the term barbarism by modern Jewish intellectuals in conversation with Third World social movements. Emmanuel Lévinas is my paradigmatic example of this re-appropriation, as his Talmudic interpretations illuminate this process, and his work is located on the axis of the encounter between Jewish and decolonial thinking. I contend that Lévinas follows a classic line of modern European interpreters who expressed their discomfort with the description of the Jewish people as barbaric. While this discomfort can be traced within this orthodox interpretation of Lévinas, I argue that his particular solution for the problem can only be explained by a more heterodox exploration. Lévinas’ positive re-appropriation of the term is part of contextual conversations that he sustained with other peoples characterized as barbarians (i.e. Third World decolonial theorists). While this re-appropriation was originally conceived in order to establish an East-East revolutionary conversation between Eastern European rabbinical interpreters and other radical Eastern projects (i.e. Maghrebi Marxism) it became an East-South decolonial conversation between Jewish and Afro-Caribbean/Latino-American intellectuals. This conversation, however, ultimately challenges the apologetic Jewish re-appropriation of exteriority in the concert of multiple barbarians. I explore the limitations of Jewish thought to engage with this community and cross from an apologetic to a critical barbarism. This dissertation, in conclusion, seeks to make an original contribution in the interrelation between Jewish and post-colonial studies. I aim to do so by first, demonstrating that the Jewish return to classical sources is historically and conceptually a decolonial counter-narrative that was influenced by (and in turn influenced) Third World discourses; second, explaining the reasons and consequences of the persistence of Jewish imagery and influences in Third World decolonial theory; third, exploring the limits of Jewish thinking and the benefits of the expansion of Jewish apologetical dialogues into barbaric critical conversations. And finally, challenging most contemporary scholarship in modern Jewish philosophy, which holds that Jewish thought and the modern re-reading of its sources can only be understood in the context of Western consciousness.

Dans cette thèse, nous étudions la relation entre la population juive et l'espace urbain de Londres comme forme de territorialisation d'une communauté en milieu urbain. Notre objet de recherche est d'une part la manière dont les représentations et les projets d'un groupe investissent l'espace urbain en l'investissant de signification et en modelant la géographie du groupe. De l'autre, on étudie l'interaction entre ces représentations et ces projets produits par le groupe et ceux produit par la société plus vaste - en relation à l'espace urbain tout comme à la place des groupes ethno­religieux dans cet espace. A cette fin, en introduisant la géographie talmudique de l'érouv et ses effets sur les pratiques des juifs qui les observent, on analyse tout d'abord ! 'évolution de la distribution de la population juive dans Je Grand Londres, du début du siècle XXème jusqu'à l'époque contemporaine, en soulignant la relation entre besoin rituels et équipements communautaires. Ensuite, on démontre Je processus de territorialisation de la communauté juive dans le nord-ouest de la ville et les effets de la création dans la municipalité de Barnet d'un nouvel équipement rituel, l' « érouv », au sein d'un grand débat public sur le rôle des communautés dans l'espace urbain. Cette étude souhaite apporter un regard sur les principales questions contemporaines autour des communautés ethno­religieuses dans les villes européennes, à savoir la concentration résidentielle, le retour du religieux comme facteur important dans l'orientation des identités et l'apport des politiques envers les communautés, ainsi que la signification religieuse de l'espace public. / This thesis explores the relation between the London Jewish population and urban space as a form of community territorialisation. The research aims to bring together two completing perspectives. Firstly, how cultural representations and projects of a group signify the urban space and affect its social geography. And secondly, the interaction between those representations and projects produced by a group and the representations of the urban space and the place of ethno-religious groups in it produced by the larger society. Having introduced the Talmudic geography based on the ritual time of Shabbat, the text analyses the evolving geography of Jewish presence in London. The shift from an initial concentration in the East End at the tum of the 201h century to the current settlement in North West London shows the relationship between ritual needs, community facilities and Jewish concentrations. The text demonstrates the distinctiveness of the Jewish population's dynamic in urban space, which seems to be a unique case among the contemporary London ethnic and religious groups, an example of Ceri Peach 's positive segregation rather than a ghetto. The text subsequently explores the creation in the 1990s of a new facility, the North West London Eruv, aimed at a local Jewish community. This project is analysed for the debate it raised about its potential demographic implications and the right of communities to religiously signify urban (public) space in a multicultural society.

This thesis investigates artifacts and concepts present in the Noahide world and how they affect Noahide identity. Five factors are analyzed, namely Noahide law, religious pluralism, ritual, sectarianism, and conversion. I consult the Hebrew Scriptures as well as early, medieval, and modern rabbinic sources to set the conceptual background of the Noahide movement before moving into the primary, contemporary sources written by Orthodox Jews, Orthodox rabbis, and Noahides. To supplement my literary analysis, I have conducted a survey of self-identifying Noahide practitioners. This survey collects data concerning religious background, religious behavior, demographics, and free responses. I aim to show first and foremost that Noahidism is a new, exclusive religious tradition which comprises the lay order of Orthodox Judaism. This is born out of a theology which requires belief in the Jewish God and Jewish revelation, a strict ritual system based on Orthodox Jewish prescriptions, and a sectarian typology which mirrors Orthodox Jewish sectarianism. Additionally, my analysis of conversion shows Noahidism is not a gateway to Orthodox conversion, but an end in itself.

During June of 2015, an anthropological and sociological study was conducted in the Dominican city of Bani. On the surface, the banilejo people appear to be devout Catholics. However, having had access to their personal lives, it was evident that their peculiar family traditions and folklore hinted at their liminal identities. This study involved interviewing 23 female subjects with questions found in the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitorial manuals. In addition, their mitochondrial DNA sequences were analyzed and demonstrated a high percentage of consanguinity and inbreeding within Bani's population. The genetic analysis of their mitochondrial DNA yielded genetic links with Jewish women from worldwide Jewish communities. Victor Turner's communitas theory and Geertz's thick description were used as the methodology. Ultimately, the sociological and anthropological analysis of their way of life evidenced how their ancestors preserved Jewish identity covertly throughout the inquisition time period (1481-1834) and how they continue to perpetuate it in contemporary times through consanguinity, and the power of superstition and taboo.

Race science is built on ideas of division and categorization. In the historian's quest to tell the story of race science, certain frameworks have been used that can greatly inhibit our understanding of this fraught topic. The impulse to study race science in the framework of the nation-state has led to certain misconceptions and lends itself to a historical narrative wherein racist concepts stop at artificially imposed borders. In addition, the national framework detracts from the individual's contributions and instead lumps these contributions together on the level of the nation-state, thus opening the door for judgments about whole nations being more or less responsible for race science. In this work, I explore contributions to race science pertaining to the "Jewish race" (which I have simplified to the phrase "Jewish race science") made by individual French writers and scholars. These contributions have been overlooked at times by historians who look to more notorious examples, such as those made by German race science theorists; in failing comprehensively to examine all significant contributions to race science, historians have often inhibited their own ability to understand Jewish race science fully. If such a historical field is to be understood, one must be aware of the full range of development of Jewish race science, both in terms of geographical scope and scholarly focus. By bringing attention to Jewish race science contributions made in nineteenth-century France, it is my intention to broaden the understanding of this field and to help bring about a new approach to the field that is less reliant on the nationalist framework in its evaluation of the nature and impact of race science.

The following thesis will examine the links between popular culture and tourism, and their impact on collective memory. The discussed material will include films produced in modern Germany and Poland, and other cultural phenomena related to the war and post-war reality. The analysis will also address the issue of Dark Tourism, strongly associated with modern tourism. Furthermore this work will explore the strategies implied by travel agencies and museums to meet the needs of modern tourists and their potential in promoting new touristic attractions.

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The thesis explores the Jewish view of Jesus Christ of Geza Vermes concept and its possible influence on the Jewish-Christian dialogue. This Jewish researcher is known primarily as a popularist of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were translated by him into English for the first time. Admittedly he is significant in the field of Jesus Studies. We present the author's perception of Jesus according to his life and work with focus on selected New Testament passages. Furthermore we focus on Messianic Judaism as a potential bridge in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, and discuss the conteporary state of these relations. A research survey was also developed on the subject of the dialogue. Finally, we summarize and evaluate the contribution of Geza Vermes' work, with emphasis on its use in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, with the support of our own research based on Czech experts,that complements the acquired piece of knowledge.

This thesis examines the progression from relatively peaceful relations between Alexandrians and Jews under the Ptolemies to the Diaspora Revolt under the Romans. A close analysis of the literature evidences that the transition from Ptolemaic to Roman Alexandria had critical effects on Jewish status in the Diaspora. One of the most far reaching consequences of the shift from the Ptolemies to Romans was forcing the Alexandrians to participate in the struggle for imperial patronage. Alexandrian involvement introduced a new element to the ongoing conflict among Egypt’s Jews and native Egyptians. The Alexandrian citizens consciously cut back privileges the Jews previously enjoyed under the Ptolemies and sought to block the Jews from advancing within the Roman system. Soon the Jews were confronted with rhetoric slandering their civility and culture. Faced with a choice, many Jews forsook Judaism and their traditions for more upwardly mobile life. After the outbreak of the First Jewish War Jewish life took a turn for the worse. Many Jews found themselves in a system that classified them according to their heritage and ancestry, limiting advancement even for apostates. With the resulting Jewish tax (fiscus Judaicus) Jews were becoming more economically and socially marginalized. The Alexandrian Jews were a literate society in their own right, and sought to reverse their diminishing prestige with a rhetoric of their own. This thesis analyzes Jewish writings and pagan writings about the Jews, which evidences their changing socio-political position in Greco-Roman society. Increasingly the Jews wrote with an urgent rhetoric in attempts to persuade their fellow Jews to remain loyal to Judaism and to seek their rights within the construct of the Roman system. Meanwhile, tensions between their community and the Alexandrian community grew. In less than 100 years, from 30 CE to 117 CE, the Alexandrians attacked the Jewish community on at least three occasions. Despite the advice of the most Hellenized elites, the Jews did not sit idly by, but instead sought to disrupt Alexandrian meetings, anti-Jewish theater productions, and appealed to Rome. In the year 115 CE, tensions reached a high. Facing three years of violent attacks against their community, Alexandrian Jews responded to Jewish uprisings in Cyrene and Egypt with an uprising of their own. Really a series of revolts, historians have termed these events simply “the Diaspora Revolt.”

This dissertation investigates how Jewish women social scientists relationally established their gendered-racialized subjectivities and theories about race-gender-sexuality-class through their portrayals of black women’s sexuality and family structures in the African Diaspora: the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, Swaziland, and the U.K. The central women in this study: Ellen Hellmann, Ruth Landes, Hilda Kuper, and Ruth Glass, were part of the same “political generation,” born in 1908-1912, coming of age when Jews of European descent experienced an ambivalent and conditional assimilation into whiteness, a form of internal colonization. I demonstrate how each woman’s familial origin point in Europe, parental class and political orientations, were important factors influencing her later personal/professional networks and social science theorizing about women of color. However, other important factors included the national racial context, the political affiliations of her partners, her marital status and her transracial fieldwork experiences. One of the main problems my work addresses is how the internal colonization process in differing nations within the Jewish diaspora differently affected and positioned Jewish social scientists from divergent class and political affiliations. Gendering Aamir Mufti’s primarily male-oriented argument, I demonstrate how Jewish internal divergences serve as an example that highlights the lack of uniformity within any “identity” group, and the ways that minority groups, like Jews, use measures of “abnormal” gender and sexuality, to create internal exiled minorities in order to try to assimilate into the majority colonizing culture. My dissertation addresses three problems within previous studies of Jewish social scientists by creating a gendered analysis of the history of Jews in social science, an analysis of Jewish subjectivity within histories of women (who were Jewish) in social science, and a critique of the either-or assumption that Jewishness necessarily equated with a “radical” anti-racist approach or a “colonizing” stance toward black communities. The data collection followed a mixed methods approach, incorporating archival research, ethnographic object analysis, site visits in Brazil and South Africa, consultations with library, archive and museum professionals, and interviews with scholars connected to the core women in the study.