Thesis (M. Div.)--Grace Theological Seminary, 1985. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-55).

This study explored how Jewish Holocaust survivors had coped with various stress situations in their lives by identifying and articulating what were facilitative coping tactics. The goal of the study was to understand their lifelong coping process and to contribute to the field of counselling psychology by providing information on what helps survivors of the Holocaust be successful copers over a lifetime. A comprehensive category system was developed for a wide range of successful long term coping strategies. The research method involved extensive interviews with eleven Jewish Holocaust survivors who were considered to be well-functioning. Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incident Technique was chosen because it provided a structure to the information gathering and allows for a rigorous validation process. Participant's interviews were tape recorded and later transcribed verbatum. A total of 1,416 critical incidents extracted were identified. Twenty-three categories emerged in the critical incident data analysis as follows: (1) seeking social support, (2) reflecting, (3) positive reappraising, (4) emulating, (5) Jewish identity, (6) helping others, (7) enduring hardship, (8) participating in enjoyable activities, (9) accepting reality, (10) planful problem solving, (11) bearing witness, (12) affective self-controlling, (13) planful physical escaping from life threatening situations, (14) distancing, (15) initiating action, (16) believing in lucky fate, (17) belonging, (18) understanding context, (19) being responsible/accountable for self and others, (20) confronting, (21) believing in the value of education, (22) hope in Israel, and (23) believing in the supernatural. The validity and reliability of the categories were ensured through: (a) the use of an independent rater, (b) the use of an expert rater, (c) participants' cross-checking, (d) exhaustiveness, (e) participation rate, and (f) theoretical agreement in the research literature to related findings. The findings of this study contribute to the field of counselling psychology by providing a category system with descriptions of what constitute successful coping strategies for Holocaust survivors. Results of the study reveal how Jewish identity issues are intertwined in the coping process. Theoretical and clinical implications of the present study are explored, and suggestions for future research are discussed. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

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Thesis (D.Ed.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: George Z. F. Bereday. Dissertation Committee: C. T. Hu. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Cornell University, 1933. / Without thesis note. Bibliographies: p. 166-178.

In this dissertation I explore the role that religious discourses (especially the Hebrew Bible), ethnic nationalist movements, and shifting configurations of gender played in the works of German-Jewish and Irish Catholic writers during the early twentieth century. I focus on the works of Gertrud Kolmar and James Joyce because they take up oppositional and critical positions vis-a-vis not only the dominant forces of their oppression, but also towards the movements and groups which fostered their oppositional consciences. Thus, while Kolmar found a defense against German anti-Semitism in Jewish tradition, she also struggled against the misogynistic discourses within Judaism. And while Joyce was adamant in his rebellion against the British Empire and the English language, he was equally committed to challenging the parochialism, anti-Semitism, and suffocating Catholicism of the Ireland from which he fled at age 22. The works of both authors are important today because they elucidate the inextricably bound nature of ethnic, religious and gender identities, and offer insights into our continuing struggle to deal with these issues and their modern origins in the early twentieth century.

Depictions of Hasidim changed drastically around the turn of the century in Yiddish literature. This thesis tracks this change from the early Haskalah until the Holocaust. In general, depictions of the Hasid in the nineteenth century tended to be quite negative; however, the first chapter will establish a counter-narrative of maskilim who defended Hasidism, or even discerned in it positive qualities. These maskilim set the stage for the blossoming of neo-Hasidism in Yiddish literature. The second chapter is devoted to I. L. Peretz, who appropriated the Hasidic genre and transformed it into a neo-Romantic vehicle for preserving and building national identity. Peretz inspired several generations of Yiddish writers with his tales, including Aaron Zeitlin, whose Hasidic-themed poetry was a synthesis of modernism and mysticism and is the subject of the third chapter. Finally, the fourth chapter examines how Fishl Shneyerson used Hasidic concepts to create a new theory of psychology and a universal springboard for transcendence.

This dissertation is an attempt to recover abandoned pathways in religious Zionist thought. It identifies a fundamental shift in the legal philosophy of religious Zionists, demonstrating that around the time of the establishment of the State of Israel, religious Zionists developed a new way of thinking about the relationship between law and the state. Before this shift took place, religious Zionist thinkers affiliated with a variety of legal and constitutional philosophies. As shown in chapter 1, the leaders of the religious kibbutz movement advocated a revolutionary, almost anarchic, approach to law. They (in theory, at least,) only accepted rules that emerged spontaneously from the spirit of their religious and national life, even if that meant departing from traditional halakha. Others had a more positive attitude towards law but, as chapter 2 shows, differed widely regarding the role of halakha in the constitution of the Jewish state. They covered a spectrum from, at one extreme, the call for a complete separation between religion and state to, on the other, the call a rabbinic oversight of all legislation. They all, however, were legal pluralists; they agreed that a single polity may have within it a plurality of legitimate sources of legal authority and that, even in a Jewish state; other kinds of legislation may hold authority alongside halakha. In the late 1940s, this wide variety of legal pluralisms in the religious Zionist camp was replaced by a new legal philosophy: legal centralism. This doctrine maintained that all legal authority in the state must derive from a single source of authority, in this case halakha. As chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate, this shift was associated strongly with the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Israel, Isaac Herzog, whose scholarly life had been dedicated in large part to portraying the sources of Jewish law according to the image of state-centered jurisprudence that was valorized by modern legal scholars in Britain and in Palestine. Chapters 5 and 6 make clear that Herzog was not the only figure to adopt this position. It became so influential among religious Zionist leaders that it molded their constitutional fantasies, determined the way they represented themselves to the state and guided the construction of the new system of rabbinical courts. As well as identifying the shift from legal pluralism to legal centralism, this dissertation attempts to uncover its origins. Through a close reading of rabbinical court records, constitutional pamphlets, speeches, journal articles and halakhic decisions, it traces trends in religious Zionist legal philosophy to modern European jurisprudence. In particular, it demonstrates the influence of British and German jurisprudence on the thinking of religious Zionists. It also places religious Zionist jurisprudence in the context of the legal philosophy of other twentieth-century nationalisms. In so doing, it sheds new light on the conflicts between religious and secular Zionism and on the way that religious Zionists throughout the history of Israel have understood their relationship to the law and politics of the Jewish state.

This dissertation explores the nature of the contribution of the Stammaim to the narrative of the Babylonian Talmud (BT). The primary suggestion is to view the Stammaim as the authors, narrators, and editors who contributed the anonymous Stammaitic activity to the text. The goal is not to dismiss the possibility of a Stammaitic period, or a period of heightened Stammaitic activity. Rather, it is to broaden the scope of possible chronological provenances for Stammaitic activity. Once broadened, it becomes necessary to view the notion of `Stammaitic' as one defining a literary style regardless of whether it might also refer to a chronological period. The idea of the style comes first. After a Stammaitic style emerges, and once there is a period of time where the deployment of such a style becomes heightened, then - and only then - is it possible to define a period based upon the style. Nevertheless, the style is hardly confined to any period either before or after the Stammaitic period as it is currently understood. Once I have addressed the issue of a Stammaitic style that cuts across the periods, I posit that anonymity fuels the engines of three other features that are worth considering when reading a BT text: canonicity, multiplicity, and pluralism. In considering anonymity, one must analyze the impact of anonymous elements on the narrative as a whole, and specifically what the anonymity does to or for the text. When assessing what makes this or that text canonical, degrees of canonicity emerge for the different elements of a BT text. Understanding the impact of anonymity (and attribution) assists in assessing those degrees - whether based upon manuscripts or the internal workings of the text - and how degrees of canonicity are more easily manipulated by an anonymous voice. One interesting possibility also emerges that allows for anonymous actors to infuse canonicity into a tradition by manipulating attribution. Regarding multiplicity, I argue that the authors and editors of the BT pursued a general agenda of including a greater rather than fewer number of attributed sages. While any one sage of great importance can infuse authority (and canonicity) into a tradition and the words associated with it, the inclusion of a broad range of sages from different places increases the potential `market' for the text as a whole. In discussing pluralism, I deal with the manner in which the laws and customs are laid out in the BT as well as the substance of the laws and customs themselves. They are presented in such a way that the legal system that is the BT can easily operate within dominant, primary legal systems where the BT is clearly subordinate. I also suggest the possibility that the BT was crafted to be subordinate. There are many ways to read a text. In the case of the BT, I argue that an analysis of the text is well served by consideration of anonymity and the other three features. I approach the issue of the four features, as well as the matter of Stammaitic style versus Stammaitic chronology, theoretically in the first five chapters, after which I dedicate chapters to raw analyses of different types of texts and groups of texts as they help elucidate the earlier theoretical discussion.

Rabbinic law is particularly well known for its use of legal dodges and technical circumventions. This dissertation focuses on three main questions about such loopholes: 1) Why is rabbinic law so replete with them? 2) Are they always permitted, and if not, what are the parameters of their use? 3) What does the use of legal loopholes reveal about rabbinic views of the relationship between intention and action? We attempt to answer these questions by analyzing a particular subset of rabbinic legal loopholes known as ha`arama (cunning). Tracing the history and use of ha`arama from tannaitic to amoraic sources, this work places rabbinic legal loopholes in context of Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern worldviews, Greco-Roman perspectives, and later contemporaneous Zoroastrian approaches. Working with both tannaitic and amoraic materials, with Palestinian and Babylonian sources, we observe a progression within rabbinic thinking on this front: from rigid legal formalism to a concern for the inner spirit of the law, and from emphasis on the inner spirit of the law to an interest in the inner spirit of the individual legal agent.