<p>The present study explores the relevance of ethnic boundary maintenance for the development of Diaspora synagogues in the Graeco-Roman world. By investigating the possible relationship between ethnicity and synagogue development, the synagogue will be analyzed as a communal and ‘religious’ institution that contributed to the maintenance of a specific ethnic identity within a Diaspora context that challenged its very survival and existence. The main goal of the present study is to provide a new perspective of development and maintenance for Diaspora synagogues that eschews the idea of a dichotomous relationship between these synagogues and the Jerusalem Temple. Instead, a socio-historical approach will be presented that focuses on Jewish communities as a distinctive ethnic group that existed alongside other similar groups in the Graeco-Roman world and sought to maintain their collective ethnic identity. The synagogue served as a key driving force within this process of maintenance.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Chasing Yiddishkayt: Music for Accordion, Klezmorim Concertino, Strings, and Percussion is a four-movement composition that combines the idioms of klezmer music with aspects of serialism. I aimed to infuse the piece with a sense of yiddishkayt: a recognizable, rooted Jewishness. In order to accomplish this goal, I based each movement on a different klezmer style. I used the improvisatory-style of the Romanian Jewish doina as the foundation for Movement 1. For Movements 2 through 4 I selected tunes from the 1927 Hoffman Manuscript-a fake-book assembled by Joseph Hoffman in Philadelphia for his son, Morris-as the starting point in my process, and also for the generation of pitch material. Each movement places the tunes in a different serialist context through the use of abstraction, manipulation and regeneration. The orchestration of the composition is designed as a modified a concerto structure that alternates between featuring the accordion and contrasting the klezmorim concertino (fiddle, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, tuba, and accordion) with the orchestra. Depending on the context, the percussion section functions as part of the concertino and the orchestra. In the monograph, I place the composition in a historical and musical context. In Chapter 1, I trace my travels to Kraków, Poland for the Jewish Culture Festival, where I began to explore and understand the intricate language of this music. In Chapter 2, I provide a summary of the history of klezmer music by looking at it through the context of a musical style that has developed across regional and cultural boundaries, and has drawn influences as far and wide as the Turkish maqam system in Constantinople, to the Moldavian Roms (Gypsies), to czarist Military bands, to jazz and swing, and to rock and roll. I conclude the chapter with a brief survey of four contemporary klezmer musicians of the new generation. In Chapter 3, I look at the modal structure of klezmer music. I used the work of Joshua Horowitz as the starting point for my research on various modal progressions and tetrachords. I then applied this research by analyzing a set of thirty freilechs in the Hoffman manuscript. In Chapter 4, I present an analysis of my composition as well as historical background for the tunes that I used as source material. I outline my future research goals in Chapter 5. / Music Composition / Accompanied by one .pdf score: Chasing Yiddishkayt.pdf .

This dissertation focuses on the influence of political and social history in the novels of Ana María Shua, an Argentine author who critiques her own contemporary society based upon her nation’s history and her Jewish ancestry. It examines the relationships between individuals, such as parents and children, spouses, or friends to demonstrate that people are unable to change their own situation: the circularity of time and the repetition of the past will always haunt the inhabitants and marginalize them. This work analyzes Shua’s five novels: Soy paciente (1980), Los amores de Laurita (1984), El libro de los recuerdos (1994), La muerte como efecto secundario (1997), and El peso de la tentación (2007). These selected works explore the transformations of the protagonists through their interactions with their environment in order to prove that the individual will remain isolated within the hierarchies and institutions created by contemporary society. The introduction offers an overview of Shua’s biography and literary works as well as an exploration of the connections between the history of Argentina and the author’s novels. Chapter 1 focuses on the influence of history in the present and future of the protagonists in Los amores de Laurita, El libro de los recuerdos, and La muerte como efecto secundario. Chapter 2 makes use of Michel Foucault’s system of power to explore the way in which society victimizes the protagonists. The chapter studies: Los amores de Laurita, La muerte como efecto secundario, and El peso de la tentación. Chapter 3 analyzes the hierarchies established in the institutions and how they convert the body of the individual into a jail. The novels studied include: Soy paciente, La muerte como efecto secundario, and El peso de la tentación. Chapter 4 demonstrates how the history of Argentina is represented in the political and social institutions of El libro de los recuerdos, Soy paciente, and El peso de la tentación. It connects the contemporary desire of a utopian future with Jewish tradition and the hope of a messiah. The conclusions recapitulate the pessimistic, dystopian future that remains for each of the protagonists. / Spanish

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My ethnographic study follows young Swedish Jews as they navigate their lives before and afterthe 7th of October 2023. From eating matzo and gossiping in the synagogue to severing one’s connections with Israel or joining the Israel Defence Forces, these individuals provide a window into the various Jewish experiences in Sweden. Often with notable personal agency, my interviewees make sense of their inherited or chosen Jewishness through creative ways of doing Judaism. I joined them for a poetry reading, football matches and a synagogue visit and pondered the meanings of community in their lives. My curiosity about community led me to explore such matters as the interplay of Swedish and Jewish identity, kippahs as community markers, and group pride as a way to both remember and survive. As life has changed for many Jews this past year, I also explore the effects that this has had on the Jewish community in Sweden.

This thesis focuses on two issues among the many comprising the broad subject of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews according to Jewish law. The issues are: (1) the prohibition against selling real estate in the land of Israel to non-Jews; and (2) the prohibition against intermarriage. / The prohibition against selling real estate in the land of Israel to non-Jews is based upon a Rabbinic interpretation of the phrase "lo Tehanem" from Deut. 7:2. In the period of the "Rishonim" (from Maimonides till Radbaz) the general view was that this prohibition was still in force and applied to contemporary non-Jews. From the beginning of the modern era, however, this prohibition, as a result of the new reality facing the struggling Jewish settlement in the land of Israel, became problematic. / The prohibition against intermarriage underwent a reverse development. During the Talmudic period most of the Rabbis, guided by the context of the Biblical text, argued that the Biblical prohibition only concerned the "Seven Nations" who used to live in Canaan at the time of the conquest and the settlement. But at the beginning of the modern era a rabbinic consensus gradually emerged that this Biblical prohibition related not only to the "Seven Nations" or "Ancient Pagans", but to all non-Jews at all times. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Christian canon comprises of sixty six book. Of these the majority, thirty nine to be precise, stem from the Jewish religion. These books, comprising the Hebrew Bible direct or guide the adherents of Judaism till today. Christians consider the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament in the light of a new revelation in Jesus Christ. This thesis questions the last premise, firstly in the light that Messianic Jews or present day Jewish Christians, also still adhere to their heritage as stemming from the Old Testament. Secondly, it should be noted that due to missionary influence both the Old Testament (Hebrew) culture and African culture were discarded. In the light of so many correlations between the Old Testament values and culture and African values and culture I set out to trace whether there is more to the Old Testament than the deductions we, Africans, have inherited from the Western minds down the centuries, as we in the process could have tapped into their (unconscious?) anti-Jewish motivations. As a start in this wide field, I focus on the three pilgrimage festivals, Passover, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles, prescribed in the Old Testament. I go back in history, through the eyes of Messianic Jews, to learn about the celebrations and interpretations that surround these festivals. Once I have gained that insight I contrast it with the general Christian interpretations and celebrations and where there is room for implementation of Messianic Jewish insight I put these forward towards liturgical enrichment and worship enhancement in the Lutheran Church. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

This work aims to understand human moral psychology under modern liberalism by analyzing the mature work of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I seek to understand and evaluate Nietzsche's claim that liberalism, rather than being an overturning of slave morality, is an extension of the slave morality present in both Judaism and Christianity. To ground Nietzsche's critique of liberalism theoretically, I begin by analyzing his "master" and "slave" concepts. With these concepts clarified, I then apply them to Nietzsche's history by following his path from Judaism to liberalism and beyond--to his "last man" and Übermensch. I find that Nietzsche views history as a series of overcomings wherein a given mode of power maintenance runs counter to the means by which power was initially attained. Liberalism, as the precursor and herald of the "last man," threatens the end of overcoming and therefore compromises the future of human valuation and meaning.

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise presents an excellent subject for the study of Jewish social progressivism in Portland in the early years of the twentieth-century. While Wise demonstrated a commitment to social justice before, during, and after his Portland years, it is during his ministry at congregation Beth Israel that he developed a full-fledged social program that was unique and remarkable by reaching out not only within his congregation but more importantly, by engaging the Christian community of Portland in interfaith activities. In so doing, Wise broke off from the traditional role expected of rabbis by bringing social causes to the fore over traditional Jewish observances. This thesis examines the years and contributions of Stephen Wise in Portland between 1900 and 1906. An overall study of the Jewish community in Portland is presented along with a general description of the condition of how both German and Eastern European Jews through their settlement, business occupation, and pace of assimilation came to envision their integration into the American mainstream. In order to fully appreciate Wise's commitment to social progressivism in Portland, this study will look to detail how Liberal Judaism, Ethical Culture, and the Social Gospel movement provided Wise with the means to combine his rabbinate with public advocacy in the prophetic tradition. The thesis then focuses on Wise's social activities and struggles against child labor, gambling, and prostitution with a special interest on the Chinese Exclusion Acts that struck the small but active Chinese community of Portland.

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