While it is widely recognized that Zionism was inspired and shaped by modern European nationalism, Orthodox responses to Zionism (whether nationalist or anti-nationalist) are typically viewed as internal Jewish affairs. This dissertation argues that these responses, like Zionism itself, must be understood in their Eastern and Central European contexts. When appropriately contextualized, the anti-Zionist Agudat Yisrael and the Zionist Mizrahi movement take on a different meaning than that assigned them in the conventional narrative. In particular, these movements were not the natural and inevitable results of preexisting ideological differences but, rather, were a product of power struggles that, themselves, shaped and consolidated differing ideological positions.

This dissertation examines a key transformation in the history of Jewish nationalism in the 1940s - the decline of autonomist visions in Jewish national thought oriented toward Jewish life as a minority community in Eastern Europe, and the emergence of a Jewish ethnic-nation state in Palestine as the dominant mode of Jewish national expression. The main argument advanced in this dissertation is that this shift cannot be explained exclusively as a Jewish response to the Holocaust, but ought to situated as part of the larger process of the homogenization of the nation- state in East Central Europe during the war and in its immediate aftermath through genocide and ethnic cleansing, population transfers and the rejection of international norms regarding the protection of minorities. Drawing on a variety of archival and published sources in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, this study reconstructs the vibrant Jewish postwar planning scene in New- York, Palestine and London. From the start of the war tens of Jewish leaders and scholars, many whom had bee recent refugees from Europe, turned to plan for the Jewish future after the war. This dissertation examines how these Jewish leaders and thinkers grappled with the question of the future of the Jews as they debated whether Jews would be able reintegrate into Eastern Europe after the war, learned about the extermination of European Jewry and observed the ethnic transformation of the multiethnic East Central European landscape through wartime and postwar population transfers and ethnic cleansing.

This dissertation critically examines the question of language revival in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Hebrew literature. Focusing on major texts that participate in the political and aesthetic endeavor of reviving Hebrew as an exclusive national language, this study traces the narrative of revival and explores the changes and iterations it underwent in the course of several decades, from the 1890s to the early 1920s. Informed by a wide range of critical literary theory, I analyze the primary tropes used to articulate the process whereby Hebrew came to inhabit new discursive roles. Building on close readings of canonical texts by authors ranging from Ahad Ha’am and Mikha Yosef Berdichevsky to Hayim Nahman Bialik, Rachel Katznelson, and Yosef Hayim Brenner, I argue that while modern Hebrew literature largely rejected the philological assumption that Hebrew was a dead language, it nevertheless produced a discourse around the notion of “revival,” in a manner that deferred the possibility of perceiving Hebrew as fully living. My readings show that while many of these texts contemplate linguistic transformation in terms of revitalization or birth, the national mission of language revival is in fact entwined with mourning, and ultimately produces the object of revival as neither dead nor fully alive. Dwelling on the ambivalence and suspension of that moment, and examining a range of nuances in its articulation, I explore the roles that Hebrew language and literature play in nationalization, Zionism, and the constitution of a new Hebrew subjectivity.

This dissertation is a contribution to the fields of the history of the Hebrew book and early modern Jewish cultural history. It is a study of Sefer Ḥasidim, a text that originated in the medieval Rhineland, in its first two printed editions (of 1538 and 1581, respectively). By analyzing these editions closely, and by comparing them to their manuscript antecedents, it is possible to determine how the work of printing changed Sefer Ḥasidim and how printing shaped readers’ understanding of the text. These investigations advance the argument that the printing of Hebrew books was a creative act, not merely a process of reproduction and dissemination. Like all creative productions, moreover, these editions can be read as witnesses to the particular social and cultural contexts from which they emerged—in this case, a period of upheaval in Jewish life and European society. Moreover, the varied cast of characters who produced these editions—printers, editors, proofreaders, press workers, among others—were influenced by commercial, intellectual and religious interests unique to the sixteenth century and to Italy. These interests left their mark on the texts of Sefer Ḥasidim that emerged from their presses (in the form of censorship and emendations), as well as their associated paratexts (e.g. prefaces, tables of contents and introductions). Part one of this dissertation focuses on the first printed edition of Sefer Ḥasidim, produced by a group of Jewish silk entrepreneurs who called themselves “the partners” in the city of Bologna. It contains two chapters. Chapter one examines who the partners were and their social position within Bolognese Jewry, as well as the legal and institutional framework that regulated the production of Hebrew books in Bologna. Chapter two is a close reading of their edition of Sefer Ḥasidim and a comparison to the extant Sefer Ḥasidim manuscripts. This chapter highlights three areas where the partners innovated: They ascribed the authorship of Sefer Ḥasidim to the medieval pietist R. Judah he-Ḥasid; they prefaced the text with a lengthy table of contents; and they censored the text to eliminate a number of references to Christianity and Christians. Part two focuses on the second edition of Sefer Ḥasidim. It contains three chapters. Chapter three examines the people who created this edition: the Christian printer Ambrosius Froben of Basel and his Jewish and Christian associates. Chapter four focuses on the many paratexts that accompanied Froben’s edition. These documents present Sefer Ḥasidim as a canonical work of scripture and aggadah (rabbinic lore) intended for young students. Chapter five focuses on the text of Sefer Ḥasidim in Froben’s edition and the emendations Froben and his editors introduced. The chapter highlights three kinds of emendations: censorship of anti-Christian passages; the removal of phrases in languages other than Hebrew; and the introduction of punctuation and glosses. Taken together, these emendations create the impression that Sefer Ḥasidim was a “classic” of far greater import than it may have had at the time of its composition. This dissertation closes with a conclusion that describes how the data contained in the previous chapters might be useful for students of the history of the book and Jewish modernity.

This dissertation argues that interethnic romance narratives reflect and express central religious, political, racial, and gendered identities and agendas of Jewish American literature and culture in the early twentieth century. Chapter One shows that fin-de-siècle Reform Jewish women authors employed interethnic romance narratives to express a belief in America as exceptional as a place of religious and gender egalitarianism. Chapter Two turns to journalist and fiction writer Abraham Cahan, who wrote interethnic romance narratives to weigh the balance between idealism and pragmatism, socialist universalist values and the principles of Jewish nationalism in determining the character of Jewishness in America. Chapter Three demonstrates that Jewish American women’s popular fictions of interethnic romance in the 1920s employed interethnic romance plots to show women’s independence and mobility in light of early feminism and to express the limitations of feminist discourse when it ran counter to their ethnic identities. Chapter Four describes how narratives of interethnic romance written by Yiddish writers I. I. Shvarts, Joseph Opatoshu, Isaac Raboy, and David Ignatov employ tropes of interethnic romance together with geographical border crossings into non-immigrant or non-Jewish spaces, co-locating physical dislocation and disorientation and intimate interpersonal desire and unease. Together, these studies demonstrate the significance of interethnic romance in the American Jewish collective imaginary in this period and reveal the flexibility and longevity of this central theme in American Jewish discourse.

This work is a comprehensive study of the Sephardic Romancero and the historical, political and cultural elements that have contributed to the maintenance of the romance tradition in Sephardic life. The investigation begins with an overview of the past studies of the Sephardic Romancero and is followed by a survey of the history of the Sephardic Jews, both in Spain and in the Spanish Diaspora. An historical approach to the literary and linguistic aspects of the Sephardic Romancero follows and this approach is then applied to a musical study. The concluding chapter discusses the uses and functions of the romancero in the Sephardic world, particularly among the Sephardic women and the social processes that have contributed to the maintenance of the romance tradition in Sephardic culture.

No description available.

The motivation for writing this thesis derives from the lengthy conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and its effects on Jews who have been engaged politically and intellectually in challenging a paradigm most prevalent among Australian and other diasporic Jewry since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The paradigm asserts that Israelis’ right to live safely within secure borders must be of exclusive concern. To challenge this exclusively therefore, by speaking in support of Palestinian justice and needs for similar basic conditions of life which have not yet been met, is viewed by many Jews as disloyalty and even as antisemitism. Australian Jewry has become known as Zionism’s ‘last bastion’. What were the particular conditions in Australia that led to Zionism and identification with Israel becoming the key symbol of Jewish identity within the Jewish community? The Zionist project has been sustained by deeply held metaphors. These include the historically-based claims and lived experiences of victimisation and vulnerability as Jews, whether individual and collective. Through revealing and synthesising the complexities and contradictions that are inherent in Jewish-Zionist subjectivities today, the thesis hopes to illuminate more generally questions of identity formation, diaspora and community, power and victimisation, and the unifying force of discourse. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Science, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 372-396). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-222). Also available on the Internet.