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Historicizing Identities analyzes the intersections of Jewish, French and immigrant identity in novels and films that depict Jewish migration from Eastern Europe and North Africa in the twentieth century. Through a combination of literary and historical analysis, it traces changing notions of identity during and after the collapse of the French empire between the 1940s and 1960s, and explores how Jewish writers’ and filmmakers’ perspectives vary depending on their relationships to the history of colonialism and the Holocaust. The works discussed in the dissertation consider the history of Jewish immigration through the lens of personal family stories. This approach reflects the extent to which marriage and children are at the center of logics of assimilation in France as well as traditional understandings of Jewish survival. Additionally, turning to their own families’ pasts allows these artists to insist on the particularities of their experience and to resist reductive understandings of Jewish history. In turn, close analysis of their work allows us to better understand Jewish, French and immigrant identity as historical constructions.

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In the fall of 1938, Marion Kenworthy, child psychologist, and Clarence Pickett, director of the American Friends Service Committee, began designing a bill that would challenge the United States's government's strict immigration laws and allow persecuted children to come to the United States and live in American homes. The Wagner-Rogers Bill, named for Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts and introduced in February 1939, sought to allow the entry of 20,000 refugee children from Germany. At the time, multiple domestic factors limited the willingness of American politicians to meet this problem head on: high unemployment rates after the stock market crash in 1929, an isolationist sentiment after the impact of World War I, and xenophobia. These factors discouraged the lawmakers from revising the quota limit set on obtainable visas established by the 1924 Immigration Act and allow outsiders into the United States. These few actors who supported the Wagner-Rogers Bill reflect a hidden minority of the American public and political body that fought to help Jewish refugees by standing up to the majority of citizens and politicians against higher immigration into the United States, and the story of the this Bill demonstrates what might have been possible and illuminates 20th century models of American humanitarianism and its role in creating international refugee protection. / Master of Arts / In the fall of 1938, Marion Kenworthy, child psychologist, and Clarence Pickett, director of the American Friends Service Committee, began designing a bill that would challenge the United States’s government’s strict immigration laws and allow persecuted children to come to the United States and live in American homes. The Wagner-Rogers Bill, named for Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith Rogers of Massachusetts and introduced in February 1939, would allow the entry of 20,000 refugee children from Germany. At the time, multiple domestic factors limited the willingness of American politicians to meet this problem head on: high unemployment rates after the stock market crash in 1929, an isolationist sentiment after the impact of World War I, and xenophobia. These factors discouraged the lawmakers from reforming pre-existing immigration policies to allow more outsiders into the United States. These few actors who supported the Wagner-Rogers Bill reflect a hidden minority of the American public and political body that fought to help Jewish refugees by standing up to the majority of citizens and politicians against higher immigration into the United States, and the story of the this Bill illuminates 20th century models of American humanitarianism and its role in creating international refugee protection.

This dissertation explores the metaphor of dybbuk possession as a key to modern Jewish identity, focusing on the evolution of the dybbuk possession trope in twentieth- and twenty-first century Yiddish, English, Hebrew, and Polish language Jewish literature and culture. First described in the sixteenth century, dybbuk possession - a Jewish variant of spirit possession found in many cultures - grew out of the Jewish mystical tradition, especially the kabbalistic doctrine of transmigration of souls, according to which a soul of a deceased person took possession of a living human being. The trope of possession can be viewed as a mode of reflection on the modern Jewish experience, which shows how the past continuously possesses the present, and how this haunting attachment to the past becomes an essential component of Jewish identity. Highly interdisciplinary in character and transnational in scope, this project draws upon scholarship in gender, trauma, body, memory, and performance studies. An overview of cultural background of dybbuk possession (Chapter 1) is followed by an exploration of how the dybbuk possession trope is deployed metaphorically in Yiddish classics (Chapter 2), Holocaust narratives (Chapter 3), feminist fiction (Chapter 4), as well as in a selection of film and theater adaptations of S. An-sky's iconic drama, The Dybbuk, Or Between Two Worlds (1914) produced in Poland, Israel and the United States (Chapter 5). Finally, this dissertation features an unprecedented compilation of over seventy adaptations of An-sky's Dybbuk staged since the play's premiere in 1920 (Appendix).

Sonia Kwok Wong. / Thesis (M.Div.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-129). / Abstract also in Chinese. / ABSTRACT --- p.i / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.iii / INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Purpose and Approach of the Present Study --- p.1 / Outline of the Present Study --- p.4 / Chapter CHAPTER 1: --- "A BRIEF EXPLORATION OF STUDIES ON MOSES, THE PENTATEUCH AND EXOD.3:l-4:18" --- p.8 / Interpretation of the Persona Moses --- p.8 / Redactional History of the Pentateuch --- p.9 / Dating of the Commission of Moses in Exod. 3:1-4:18 --- p.14 / Chapter CHAPTER 2: --- METHODOLOGY AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MOSES --- p.24 / A Short Exposition on Rhetorical Criticism --- p.24 / A Proposed Model of Rhetorical Criticism --- p.26 / Exod. 3:1-4:18 as a Rhetorical Unit --- p.38 / Literary Genre and Rhetorical Type --- p.41 / Defining the Rhetorical Situation of Exod. 3:1-4:18 --- p.43 / Historical Situation of the Babylonian Diaspora and Their Exigency --- p.45 / Characterization of Moses in Exod. 2:1-22 --- p.52 / Chapter CHAPTER 3: --- A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS ON EXOD. 3:1-4:18 --- p.60 / Literary Demarcation and Perspective Shifts --- p.60 / Prologue and Settings: The Fire out of the Bush (3:1-5) --- p.63 / God's Thesis: Moses' Call to a Vocation of Liberation (3:6-10) --- p.69 / Moses' First Objection: ''Who Am I? ´ح(3:11-12) --- p.75 / "Moses' Second Objection: “Who Are You? ,，(3:13-22)" --- p.79 / Moses' Third Objection: “The Israelites Will Not Believe. ´ح(4:1-9) --- p.86 / Moses' Fourth Objection: “I Am Not a Man of Words. ´ح (4:10-12) --- p.90 / "Moses' Fifth Objection: “Send Someone Else!"" (4:13-17)" --- p.95 / Epilogue: Moses' Return (4:18) --- p.98 / The Immediate Persuasive Effect --- p.100 / Chapter CHAPTER 4: --- RHETORICAL EFFECTS TO THE DIASPORIC AUDIENCE --- p.103 / Interpreting Exod. 3:1´ؤ4:18 as a Symbolic Conflict --- p.103 / Interpreting Ideologies in Exod. 3:1-4:18 --- p.105 / The Residual Persuasive Effects --- p.109 / CONCLUSION --- p.114 / APPENDIX: A REFLECTION OF THE STUDY ON HONG KONG CONTEXT --- p.117 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.120