This thesis embraces a cross-disciplinary approach to the examination of Jewish body culture, and integrates aspects of Jewish studies with new theories of gender and visual culture, thus contributing specifically to the field of Jewish body culture in relation to the visual arts. It demonstrates that at the fin de si??cle the Zionist artist, Ephraim Moses Lilien, integrated Nordau's concept of 'Muscular Jewry' and Buber's notion of a 'Jewish Cultural Renaissance' in order to figure the 'New Jew'. It establishes that Lilien's figuring of 'Muscular Jewry' as a visibly athletic, explicitly heterosexual, male body, bearing Jewish distinction, was developed as a crucial strategy to overcoming the twin dilemmas of Jewish alterity: antisemitism and assimilation. By proving that Lilien's art serves as a crucial model for both regenerating the Jewish male body and resisting antisemitic projections of decadence and degeneracy, this thesis expands upon current scholarship. It applies Margaret Olin's theory of ' visual redemption' to Lilien's figuring of the 'New Jew' and Daniel Boyarin's articulation of Homi Bhaba's Post-Colonial theory of mimicry as imitation, inversion and resistance to determine how Lilien's images functioned as an art of resistance against the dominant Christian European culture. By demonstrating how Lilien drew upon the modern and rebellious Jugendstil to figure the 'New Jew' and produce a new, defiant and authentic Jewish visual culture, this thesis proves he transformed the image of the diaspora Jew into the New Hebrew or Israeli tsabar, forty years before it became part of Israeli identity. Nevertheless, this thesis also uncovers the double-binded predicament inherent to Lilien's quest; despite his attempt to use mimicry of the athleticised, hyper-masculine, genetically pure, normative body as a strategy to resist antisemitic rhetoric and invert its projection, the closest parallel to Lilien's figure of 'Muscular Jewry' remained this same image which became instrumental to eugenic campaigns across Europe, particularly in Nazi Germany. Ultimately what is exposed by this thesis is the illusion underpinning Lilien's figuring of the 'New Jew'; that the Christianised Eurocentric body culture, designed to eradicate decadence, degeneration and Semitism, could resolve the problematic struggle for a Jewish national identity.

This research was conducted to determine the extent to which Jewish adults perceive themselves ethnically and/or religiously Jewish and how a range of personal characteristics, attitudes and practices related to the importance of ethnic and religious identity. A random sample of 540 individuals was taken from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver's mailing list comprised of Jewish individuals in the Lower Mainland that identify with the Jewish community This sample completed a survey on the importance of Jewish ethnic and religious identity. There were significantly more people who felt it was very important or somewhat important to be ethnically Jewish than felt it was very important or somewhat important to be religiously Jewish: 92.1% versus 59.8%. Three hypotheses were tested to examine the relationship between the importance of ethnic and religious identity (dependent variables) and the importance of ethnic and religious identity and certain personal characteristics, attitudes and practices. Cross-tabulations and analysis of variance were done to test these hypotheses. A fourth hypothesis was tested with logistic regression which was used to build a model to predict whether a subject would rate "ethnic" Jewishness as "very important" vs. "not very important" and "religious" Jewishness as "important" or "unimportant" based on a set of predictor variables. The findings indicate a significant relationship between the two dependent variables, very few personal characteristics were related to the dependent variables, and a significant relationship was found between all the attitudes and the majority of the practices and the two dependent variables. The most important predictor of whether a subject would rate "ethnic" Jewishness as "very important" or "not very important" was the global attitude score. The most important predictors of whether a subject would rate "religious" Jewishness as "important" or "unimportant" were global attitude and attitudes and practices reported as important because they are divinely ordained. When global attitudes were taken out of the logistic regression model due to their high degree of overlap with the global practices, the most important predictor of whether a subject would rate "ethnic" Jewishness as "very important" or "not very important" were the global practices, proportion of Jewish friends, and attitudes and practices reported as important because they provide a connection to the Jewish people. The most important predictors for whether a subject would rate" religious" Jewishness as "important" or "unimportant" were marital status, global practice, denominational affiliation and attitudes and practices reported as important because they are divinely ordained. The individual's sense of identity and the factors that contribute to that identity are important aspects in the psychological functioning of members of ethnic, racial and religious minority groups. The information gathered from this study aids those in the helping profession in understanding the important and unique role religion and ethnicity plays in individual lives as well as identifying ethnic and religious priorities for community services. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This study provides a Benjaminian reading of Soviet Yiddish cultural and intellectual history from the 1920s to the 1980s and retrieves the legacy of Soviet Yiddish antifascist thought and activism as a constitutive element throughout its existence. The interconnected ideas of antifascism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism are introduced as important reading keys for Soviet Yiddish culture, for its ideas of ‘Jewishness’ and for its varied responses to the Holocaust and its memory – as represented in works of literature, film, theater and monuments. In attempting to ‘decolonize’ this antifascism and Holocaust memory in dialogue with postcolonial studies and critical race theory, this study makes sense of the Soviet and Yiddish cultural ecosystems with the help of Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘cultural hybridity’ and posits not persecution and antisemitism as the ‘engine’ of Soviet Yiddish history – but its very intellectual engagement with, and activism against, those two forces in ‘rhizomatic’ fashion. As such, it contributes to the renaissance in research into antifascism in the longue durée and its links to communist internationalism. Besides illuminating a counter-memory of the Holocaust, this story about Soviet Yiddish activism and brave memory-work also uncovers the Cold-War-generated stakes of our postwar conception of ‘Jewishness.’ These conceptions have both needed Soviet Yidishkayt as their ‘other,’ and simultaneously silenced and forgotten it. Ultimately, this study hopes to reopen this archive of thought and memory as a repository of tools to be used in the current moment of rising transnational fascism as well.

This dissertation investigates enduring forms of Jewish “presence” in Tunisia, but a presence in the near-absence of Jewish communities. French colonialism, Zionism, and Arab nationalism led to the mid-twentieth century immigration of Tunisia's Jewish population to France and Israel-Palestine. Minor Differences examines the century-long de-nativization process by which the Jews of Tunisia went from being seen as Tunisian or Ottoman subjects, to a minority of “nonnative” outsiders. If the historical Jew indexes a past “Golden Age” in Tunisia, then the contemporary Jew is a subject of curiosity––and hostility through her association with the Israeli state. Through the prism of Jewish absence, I examine social relations among the few Jews who stayed in Tunisia, as well as between Jews and Muslims. I draw on a wide array of historical and literary sources as well as two years of fieldwork in a variety of sites, some intuitive and some unexpected: a boxing gym, a Hebrew class, a photography studio, a cemetery, and a synagogue; all of which inform my research, three of which I explicitly discuss in this dissertation. In these cultural sites, my research revealed a phenomenon I call “minor differences”: a paradigmatic instance of this anthropological pattern is the common distinction made between two nearly identical dishes, the “Muslim” madfouna and the “Jewish” bkaila. The “narcissism of minor differences” is a phrase used by Freud to describe an inclination toward aggression that facilitates cohesion between members of a family, or community. Provoked by Freud’s limited theorization of this peculiar form of narcissism, my research develops and applies it to understand the small ways people construct Otherness in everyday life—even, and perhaps especially, the Otherness of an absent cultural presence; and my fieldwork illustrates how it is through these “minor differences” that Jews and Muslims in Tunisia define themselves historically and contemporaneously. I show how minor differences are used to divide people and treated as proof of their essential cultural difference but also how these same “differences” can be used to foster connection, smooth out bumps in social relationships, and argue for broader solidarities. Ultimately, minor differences form the basis of major distinctions in inherited and ascribed forms of social belonging.

Carmel College, a Jewish Day School, was established to provide Jewish education for the children of the Durban Jewish community. Inasmuch as the school has always had a small contingent of non-Jewish students, a decision was made in 1994 to fill the school to capacity with non-Jewish students. Although, Carmel is in essence, a multi-cultural school in that it has a nearly fifty per cent non-Jewish population, implementing a multi-cultural education programme would be counter-productive to the goals of Jewish education. In that Orthodox Judaism is not assimilatory, it can be conjectured that Jewish education is incompatible with multi-cultural education. This study investigates the attitudes of the Jewish community towards the educational transition taking place in Carmel College, as a result of the change in the student population ratio. The study commenced with a generative phase which comprised of a review of relevant literature, document analysis, semi-structured interviews and a situational analysis. Issues that emerged from this phase of the research became the focus of further investigation using questionnaires. Findings have revealed the dilemma of managing a Jewish school in a multicultural environment. Whilst parents believe in the importance of Jewish education many are unaware of its unique and separate nature. The filling of the school with non-Jewish students has raised important issues. The findings indicated that Jewish studies teachers feel inhibited in their classes and are unable to deal with sensitive issues. The increased enrolment of non-Jewish students has not only created greater potential for assimilation but undertones of cultural dissension within the student body were also evident. As there is little provision made for multi-culturalism, non-Jewish students are recipients of a curriculum which lacks relevance and is foreign to their needs. If Carmel is to continue to provide Jewish education for its community it will have to re-structure the curriculum in order to provide a more intense Judaica programme for Jewish students and at the same time cater more effectively for non-Jewish students. To this end, parents and other stakeholders will have to be enlightened about the purpose of Jewish education and the need for change. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Natal, 1996.

Access to abstract permanenty restricted to Ball State community only. / Access to thesis permanenty restricted to Ball State community only. / Department of Sociology

Contemporary studies demonstrate that non-marital sex (heterosexual penetrative sex) is on the rise and opinions about it have become more liberal, as shown by The Pew Research Center and a study published in 2014 by ChristianMingle and JDate. Pew research also revealed that there are 5.3 million Jews in the United States and one out of five ethnic and cultural Jews report having no religion (Lugo 23). The combination of these two societal trends has caused new issues to emerge in the age-old debate within educational, civic and religious communities about non-marital sex. The conflict over non-marital sex can be traced through the writing of contemporary cultural and feminist critics and parallel trends in rabbinic thought. Socio-sexual change (here explored through the rise in non-marital sex) does directly affect Jewish religiosity and identity. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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This project focuses on the autofictional family novels, crafted from the mid-1970s onwards through the early 2000s in French and Serbian by the women writers of Jewish Sephardi origin, born in the French-ruled Maghreb (Annie Cohen, Annie Fitoussi, Nine Moati, Gisèle Halimi) and ex-Yugoslavia (Frida Filipović and Gordana Kuić), respectively. It is situated at the many intersections of Slavic, Jewish, Gender, and Memory Studies. Through the lens of feminist and decolonizing interpretive strategies, I analyze and connect these texts as a translingual and largely unknown archive of Sephardi women’s contemporary writing. Applying the methodological took-kit of Comparative Literature, I unsettle and frustrate a narrowly conceptualized—monolingual and mono-ethnic—vision of literary production. This emerging archive carves out a space in which the uniqueness and difference—ethno-cultural and gender, alike—of Sephardi women’s lived experiences throughout the 20th century becomes foregrounded in the full complexity of their poetics against the politics of erasure, silencing, invisibilization, and oblivion.  In this connective and comparative thesis, I re-discover the corpus as a transmediterranean feminist project, which destabilizes the notion of literary canon and articulates its anti-ethnocentric instantiations. Additionally, I tease out Sephardi identity as a tenuous and performative phenomenon, produced in and through the act of writing by the generation of Sephardi daughters, as they grapple with ambiguous and provocative maternal legacies. Language or, more precisely, languages themselves—Serbian and French, traversed, interspersed with, if not interrupted by Judeo-Spanish/Djudezmo, Spanish, and Judeo-Arabic—serve as the crucial poetic means of this identity performance. Finally, the corpus under my scrutiny performs what Marianne Hirsch deems postmemorial work, in that it harbors and preserves the memories of the foremothers in the narrative flow of these autofictional matrifocal family novels, which are, in turn, to be remembered by the reader.