Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Center for Judaic Studies'

My thesis is focused on the formation of Jewish Intentional Communities (JICs) in the United States. What is a Jewish Intentional Community (JIC)? I define a Jewish Intentional Community as a group of households that come together to form a cooperative housing and or shared economic structure. The form of capital exchanged may be labor, land, wisdom, tradition-al knowledge, skills, and or finances.

In this paper I use Grounded Theory to encounter the specific reasons why American Jews choose to live in JICs. JIC is a loose term. As the reader will find in many cases it means a co-housing-kibbutz development, in other cases it's an economic development, a havurah type socially focused development, or in more cases than not, some combination of all.

Kavanah means intentionality. The sages suggest that there is nothing done that is Jewish that is without kavanah, thus community is always an intentional act. Thus, it is well worth not-ing that the idea of a Jewish Intentional Community in Diaspora is nothing short of an ancient concept. Stories within Tanakh speak of making community in exile. In the days before the Inquisition, Sephardic Jews excelled in business, scholarship, and medicine. Prior to the Shoah, Yiddish culture was thriving. In the United States Yiddish Theater is considered a major contributor in contemporary comedy. This thesis delves into the history of the movement, it's influences, and specifically why millennial Jews in America are drawn this way of doing Jewish community.

There is a lack of research regarding nutrition knowledge, behaviors, and perceptions among Jews in the United States. This knowledge gap may contribute to nutritional or other health-related problems in this cohort. The purpose of this study was to investigate knowledge, behavior, and perceptions of nutrition among Jewish men and women in the United States using a mixed methods approach. Quantitative analysis demonstrated relationships between nutrition knowledge and religious affiliation (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform), average frequency intake of protein by religious affiliation, and average frequency intake of protein by kosher status. Qualitative interview themes revealed the cultural and ritual aspects of Judaism influence on food choices and behaviors, the multitude of factors that influence food choice such as peer pressure, preconceived notions of food, and the healthiness of food, and further enlightened how the media negatively portrays body image for both Jewish men and women.

Postcolonial theory, while often reserved for analysis of modern political conditions, is often overlooked in biblical studies. The purpose of this thesis is to employ postcolonial analysis to the book of Ezekiel and demonstrate its value in biblical studies. Postcolonialism critiques national origin myths as political propaganda; seeks to retrieve the voices of those suppressed by hegemony; explores the power relations involved in ethnic and religious representation and authority; and examines how gender is used in hegemonic discourse. This study begins with an interrogation of the imperial politics behind several biblical national origin myths. A polyphony of contrapuntal voices are retrieved through archaeological, textual, and comparative evidence, demonstrating a plurality of Israelite religions for both the popular, illiterate, agrarian majority, as well as for officially state-sanctioned religions of the literate, urban, male elite. Finally, portions of the book of Ezekiel, a byproduct of imperialism itself, are analyzed for its use of gendered and sexualized language in continued polyphonic conflicts over religious representation and authority during a period of imperial crisis.

This paper explores the way contemporary American Conservative Jewish communities express ideas of egalitarianism and feminism through active use of specific ritual garments (tallit and tefillin). It addresses the meanings that these garments currently have on individual, communal, and institutional levels. Additionally, it considers women’s changing roles regarding ritual and participation in these communities. It also considers that in this context, when women take on additional religious obligations they are simultaneously representing feminist and religious issues and actions, and the conversations between these ideas.

This dissertation examines the use of Leviticus 26 in four Second Temple-era Jewish texts: Chronicles, Jubilees, Words of the Luminaries, and the Damascus Document. Prevailing scholarship will cite the fact that these texts’ review the history of how Israel’s disobedience provoked the covenant chastisements epitomized by exile as proof that Second Temple Jews believed that they had fallen under the curses. The Chronicler’s views on chastisement have been attributed to extreme (Deuteronomic) doctrines of immediate retribution and human initiated repentance. A contrasting belief that true repentance, bringing salvation, was only possible through a divinely initiated recreation of the human spirit has been increasingly imputed to the latter three texts. However, this dissertation argues that Chronicles, Jubilees, Words of the Luminaries, and the Damascus Document texts’ are all fundamentally oriented to the Leviticus 26 teleological paradigm of chastisement-induced repentance, more than the concept of tit-for-tat retributive cursing generally associated with Deuteronomy 28–29. All four texts read and reference Leviticus 26 for an optimistic, reassuring understanding that the covenant chastisements epitomized by exile are a God-guided experiential process whose telos is their repentance. Israel’s suffering serves a purpose, bringing about a reversal of deliberately-committed ancestral trespass ( ma‘al; Lev 26:40–41). In conceptualizing repentance in these texts as a divinely initiated process of inner transformation, this study moves beyond the dichotomy of “human-initiated” and “divine-initiated” repentance assumed by earlier scholarship. The latter three texts draw overt—but by scholars unappreciated and/or actively denied—references to the simple meaning of Lev 26:44–45 promising that God will preserve the people and the covenant he struck with them at Sinai no matter what the people do.

This dissertation, “Towards a Poetics of I/Eye-Witness: Documentary Expression and Jewish American Poetry of the 1930s,” explores the ways in which a lens of witnessing can shed light on the ethical and aesthetic concerns embedded in the work of three Jewish-American poets. The study begins with the English writing and verse of Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) and Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980), and continues to the Yiddish poetry of Berish Weinstein (1905-1967). It situates their poetry and ancillary writings from the early thirties within the culture of documentary expression that permeated artistic creation, social action and public discourse throughout the Depression era. By focusing on poetry that deals with human catastrophe, including historical and contemporary contexts of racial injustice, Jewish persecution, personal loss and animal slaughter, my analysis weighs the burden of representation on personal and universal levels. Transcending the visual and moral divide between the “eye” and the “I,” the poets in this study use verse to document the memories, experiences, histories and testimonies of Others; in doing so, they uphold their own ethical ideals of reparation, truth and justice. In the prologue, I set the stage for the dissertation by examining the link between lynching photography and Jewish poetry embodied by the famous Jazz song “Strange Fruit.” The introduction presents the theoretical framework and historical background central to the literary analysis of the dissertation. I offer an overview of the Great Depression and the American documentary scene and demonstrate how the visual and ethical ideas of “documentary” and “witness” have been utilized in various contexts. Chapter One builds a case for a Jewish poetics of I/eye-witness in the work of Objectivist poet Charles Reznikoff. I trace the intersections of documentary form, historical consciousness, personal rectitude and justice through a selection of poetic texts and archival materials, including two long works published by The Objectivist Press in 1934, Testimony and In Memoriam: 1933. Chapter Two reflects on the emerging sense of poetic witness in Muriel Rukeyser’s early poetry and documentary writing. I locate her ideas about responsibility, utility and truth in her Jewish upbringing and education at the Ethical Culture-Fieldston School. I then offer a comparative reading of the three genres Rukeyser utilized to represent her experiences as a witness to the second Scottsboro Trial: diary entry, reportage and poetry. Chapter Three contributes new translations and an in-depth analysis of a selection of Yiddish poems from Berish Weinstein’s first published collection, Brukhvarg (1936). I focus on Weinstein’s representation of the slaughterhouse as the symbolic locus of modern suffering, and the relevance of such a trope for the historical barbarism against African Americans, as well as Jews.

From a reading of the Hebrew Bible itself it would be difficult to determine that a goddess culture existed for thousands of years prior to the appearance of the monotheistic Father God of Hebrew Scripture. As such, the repression of the Goddess during the Iron Age and the implications of this repression in our own Western culture have been evaluated throughout this dissertation. This hermeneutic study weaves together a broad range of topics that begins with an exploration into the roots of the Hebrew God-image as it emerged out of a polytheistic context that included powerful female deities. The study reveals that Yahweh once had a divine feminine consort and together they were known as Yahweh and his Asherah. Over time the feminine aspect of the Godhead was torn asunder and the divine feminine was submerged and repressed into the unconscious. The research explores the effects of this repression within the feminine psyche and the ways in which the one-sided masculinity of the Western God-image has become incorporated into the individual psychology of women. This study seeks to reclaim the deep feminine repressed by the Father God complex through an amplification of serpent symbolism that leads towards the recovery and redemption of the feminine principle in her creating, preserving, and destroying aspects.

Additionally, the research addressed the development of the God-image by examining the relationship between a negative father complex and the traditional God-image of Western culture through a psychoanalytic object relations perspective. The research shows how early object relations can color the ways in which we perceive the divine. The study suggests that when we can withdraw our infantile projections onto a God-image we are able to develop a more mature spirituality that no longer reflects a parent-child relationship. Jung devoted attention to this evolutionary process, that he refers to as the transformation of God, leading to the birth of a new God-image.

This project considers how postwar American Jewish leaders representing a diverse range of ideological commitments, including Zionism, Yiddishism, and liberal Judaism used summer camps to expose children to their ideologies. In the years following World War II, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearing that upward mobility and suburbanization threatened the integrity of Jewish life in America as they knew it. While their newfound social and economic mobility had clear benefits, a diverse grouping of American Jews participated in a communal conversation over how these changes threatened the modes by which Jews had previously affiliated with Judaism and acted as Jews. Without intervention, some argued, “authentic” Jewish culture would disappear altogether.

In search of solutions, Jewish educators looked towards the residential sleep-away camp, hoping to construct lived experiences for the youngsters as tools to counteract assimilation, and expecting to mold the increasingly suburban, affluent American youth into ideologically-imbued Jews who espoused one variant or another of Jewish authenticity. Through the elements of camps’ programs and schedules, Jews with varied ideological, political, and religious perspectives shared nearly identical goals, and aimed to meet them through nearly identical means. With a multi-generational perspective, this project aims to portray both a history of Jewish postwar anxieties and struggles for cultural preservation, and a provide an example of how second and third generation Americans more broadly negotiated their culture, purpose, and future through the intensive molding of youth.

The Judeo-Spanish romancero is a sung folk genre, and an oral tradition dating back to twelfth-century Spain derived from medieval Spanish epics and the Spanish ballad. Although the majority of the continental Judeo-Spanish romanceros were lost after the Spanish Inquisition, they are still found throughout the Diaspora. French poet Isaac Levy documented this in Chants judéo-espagnols, a 1959 anthology in which Levy compiled original fifteenth-century Judeo-Spanish romancero melodies in the Mediterranean regions. Argentine composer Jorge Liderman was inspired by Judeo-Spanish music after visiting Spain and composed Aires de Sefarad, using selections from Levy's anthology. In this study, the Judeo-Spanish romancero within the scope of Liderman’s Argentine musical compositional output are explored. In addition, the musical parameters of both the Judeo-Spanish and the Argentine romancero are investigated. A consideration of the interchange of musical characteristics of both the Argentine and the Judeo-Spanish romancero in Aires de Sefarad is presented in this research, as well as how this contributed to the emergence of a multicultural romancero.

This dissertation investigates how the Holocaust and postwar sovietization shaped the dynamics of Jewish communities and ordinary life in southwestern Ukraine. I examine the relationship between state policy and the sphere of Jewish religious practice. Two research questions motivated this study: (1) What was the trajectory of the lives of Eastern European Jews who came back from Nazi concentration camps? and (2) How did Jews negotiate their religious and public identities in an everyday setting? To examine these questions, the study illuminates the postwar life of one group of Jewish Holocaust survivors in the periphery of the Soviet Union. Literature on postwar Soviet Jewry has focused almost exclusively on the lives of elites in the center. This study enhances our understanding of Jewish integration into Soviet society.

I used oral history, collected during my own ethnographic fieldwork in Israel and Ukraine, as well as state archives to analyze processes of return and integration. Interviews with ordinary people permit a social perspective on political developments and communal reconstruction. Statistical data and official communication provide the framework necessary to show the dynamics of Jewish life. Combining archival material with oral history demonstrates that the impact of Soviet rule on Jewish life after World War II is more complex than previously portrayed. Topics examined include the liberation from Nazi concentration camps, arrival experiences in Transcarpathia, the reconstruction of private and public Jewish life in the late 1940s and everyday Jewish practice in the 1950s and early 60s.

Ordinary Jews fully integrated into society, succeeded in their careers and expressed their Jewish identity through religious practice. The findings include individual negotiation of demands in secular society and the methods of circumventing obstacles that restricted religious practice. The analysis of the interviews, however, prompts a reconsideration of postwar Soviet Jewish life with regard to persecution and emigration narratives.

This dissertation investigates the meaning and usage of a particular set of linguistically related Talmudic terms in order to show how and in what cultural context the Talmud began to take shape in the emerging scholastic centers of rabbinic learning in late Sassanian Babylonia. The term tistayem is here defined as meaning, "let it be promulgated" and is thus shown to be inherently redactional in nature. By its very meaning and the way it is employed it speaks to the ordering of extant traditions in new literary frameworks. This term has analogs both in early sources dating from Amoraic disciple circles, in which an analogous term was used to indicate the process by which different reports of statements could be combined to achieve a more authoritative version of a tradition, and in later texts from Geonic times in which the term comes to denote a specific kind of scholastic practice in which traditions were ordered for easy memorization and promulgation. Additionally, parallels to these terms are found in the literatures of Syriac speaking Christians providing avenues for comparisons between these scholastic cultures which shared scripture, language and similar modes of study as worship. Finally, this study demonstrates the ways in which increasing sophistication in usage of these terms mirrors increasing academization during the Talmudic period. As such, evidence is marshalled in support of a more gradual model of the redaction of the Talmud.

This dissertation presents a Whiteheadian interpretation of the notions of mind, immanence and process as they are addressed in the Zohar. According to many scholars, this kabbalistic creation story as portrayed in the Zohar is a reaction to the earlier rabbinic concept of God qua creator, which emphasized divine transcendence over divine immanence. The medieval Jewish philosophers, particularly Maimonides influenced by Aristotle, placed particular emphasis on divine transcendence, seeing a radical separation between Creator and creation. With this in mind, these scholars claim that one of the goals of the Zohar’s creation story was to emphasize God’s immanence within creation.

Similar to the Zohar, the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and his followers was reacting to the substance metaphysics that had dominated Western philosophy as far back as ancient Greek thought. Whitehead adopts a very similar narrative to that of the Zohar. First there is mind containing all the eternal objects which serve as potential for the creation (God’s primordial nature). Mind becomes immanent in all actual occasions through prehension (God’s consequent nature). Finally God becomes “the lure” (to use Whitehead’s phrase) in the ongoing process of nature (God as superject). In this narrative, God is not the static being, the unmoved mover as discussed by Aristotle, but rather, is portrayed as a dynamic becoming, a God of process.

Due to these significant similarities between Whitehead’s process philosophy and the Zohar with regard to the immanence of God and the process of creation, it is worthwhile to attempt a process interpretation of the kabbalistic creation story. The first part of this dissertation is entitled Philosophical Foundations, focusing on the intellectual framework of this study of the Zohar. The second part is entitled Creating a Narrative, looking at the text of the Zohar through the lens of Whitehead’s metaphysics. Finally, the conclusion looks at the narrative and discusses whether the goals of the dissertation have been achieved.

This dissertation explores the close literary, thematic and linguistic relationships between The Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade and the later pietistic text Sefer Hasidim. Despite a long-standing tendency to view the Jewish martyrdom of 1096 and the development of German pietism (Hasidut Ashkenaz) as unrelated. upon closer scrutiny, we find strong ties between the two texts. Sefer Hasidim, the most well-known pietistic text, contains dozens of martyrological stories and references that share similar language, themes and contexts as the crusade chronicles. Indeed, rather than standing alone, and unrelated to the first crusade literature, we find tales of martyrdom that closely resemble those in the first crusade narratives. Sefer Hasidim also contains numerous statements that indicate the primacy of martyrdom within the hierarchy of the pietistic belief system, while other martyrological references function as prooftext for the traditional pietistic themes distilled by Ivan Marcus and Haym Soloveitchik. The extent to which martyrological themes are integrated into the belief system articulated in Sefer Hasidim indicates that the martyrdom of the First Crusade should be viewed as formative to the development of Hasidut Ashkenaz. A close reading of Sefer Hasidim conclusively demonstrates this premise. Moreover, a similar analysis of the crusade chronicles reveals a wide range of martyrological tales described in quintessential pietistic terms; expressions of the will of God, the fear of God. and the pietistic preference for life in the hereafter, are found throughout the martyrological text.

When reading these two diverse texts side by side, we find substantive elements of a common world view spanning the period of the first crusade through the appearance of Sefer Hasidim. This allows us to understand each text through a new lens; the crusade chronicles now appear to be an early articulation of pietistic thought, while the later pietistic text now reads in part as a martyrological document of great significance.

This research consists of three case studies conducted within American Jewish day schools (JDSs). Addressing some of the issues pointed to by past researchers, this investigation focuses on the following discrete areas of Hebrew language (HL) programs: the stated visions for Hebrew language learning as noted in the mission statements and other documents of the schools and as articulated by teachers and administrators, the methodologies employed by Hebrew and Jewish Studies educators within these institutions, and the assessment practices employed by these schools and educators to determine whether the expressed goals of these programs are being met. By exploring the missions, methods, and assessment processes within these Hebrew language programs, and contrasting these aspects of the schools, we come to a better understanding of the inner workings of these programs and the issues that may be addressed in practice and future research. The following questions guided this mixed-methods study: (1) Within each JDS, what are the goals, according to the mission statement, teachers and administrators, for receptive and productive oral proficiency and literacy in HL? (2) Within each JDS, what are the instructional methodologies employed by teachers in HL and Jewish Studies? (3) Within each JDS, what formal and informal assessments, including teacher perceptions, are currently used for student placement, ongoing and recursive assessment, and outcome assessment? Findings indicate that each of these schools has articulated its missions and program goals to incorporate the development of some kind of Hebrew proficiency and Jewish identity among students. However, confusion was identified within each institution regarding planning methodological approaches and employing systematic and meaningful evaluations of student progress, both of which are found to be interwoven with the desired development of Hebrew language, Jewish identity and a Zionist orientation. In order to successfully achieve their goals and missions, clearer articulation, more consistent and research-based methodological choices, along with consistent and meaningful assessments are required.

This document examines the musical performance practices of the Igbo Jews of Abjua, Nigeria. Amongst the 50 million Igbo, an estimated 5,000 are currently practicing Judaism. Despite prior research conducted by Daniel Lis (2015), William Miles (2013), Shai Afsai (2013), Edith Bruder (2012), and Tudor Parfitt (2013), there is little to no discussion of the role of music in this community. This study of the musical practices of the Igbo Jews of Nigeria reveals that the Igbo combine traditional Nigerian practice with modern Jewish and Christian elements. This combination of practices has led to the development of new traditions in an effort to maintain a shared sense of individualized Jewish identity and unity in a time of persecution and violence towards the Igbo from terrorist organizations. This study demonstrates that the Igbo Jews view the creation of this new music as serving to rejuvenate their Jewish identity while preserving Igbo traditions. The analysis draws upon theories of Eric Hobsbawm, Philip Bohlman and Alejandro Madrid to explain Igbo practice. Data includes material gathered from fieldwork conducted in the summer of 2014 in Abuja and in the cities of Kubwa and Jikwoyi. My observations focused on the musical properties of the Shabbat prayers and zmirot (para-liturgical table songs). While the Igbo are often considered one of “the lost tribes of Israel,” my research indicates that “lost” is not so “lost” as previously believed.

Akiba Hebrew Academy was founded in Philadelphia in 1946 as the first community Jewish secondary day school in America. Akiba was a drastic departure and in effect, counter-cultural: an all-day secondary school program defined as community (not attached to a denomination and certainly not Orthodox), integrative (general and Jewish studies), and progressive, a term that carried weight in the Philadelphia marketplace, drawing talented faculty and skeptical parents to this yet unknown entity. Most Jewish parents were committed to public school education, favoring denominational supplemental religious schooling.

Despite Akiba’s status as the first of its kind in American Jewish educational history, little has been written about it as a progressive school or about its leadership. Even less is known of the influence of the curriculum or the faculty on its graduates. Using archival material, this study examines the nature of the school’s curriculum and especially the leadership of its visionary curricular architect, Louis Newman, from his selection as principal in 1951 until 1963, when he left the school for an appointment to a national curriculum initiative. It specifically explores to what degree the overt and hidden curriculum followed the founders’ initial intent. Through the use of narrative inquiry methodology, the use of participant interviews and the examination of archival material such as personal letters and communication, the study also investigates the impact of those decisions on administration, parents, faculty and early graduates in an effort to understand the influence of the school on the community and especially its students’ identities.