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AJS 42nd Annual Conference Association for Jewish Studies Please Note: These samples reflect guidelines for the 2004 Annual meeting (i.e., a 500-word limit). Guidelines for the 2010 meeting require abstracts to be no longer than 350 words. | ||||
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Germans, Jews and the Novel: Reading Romance in 19th-Century Germany Building on the seminal work of George Mosse, scholarship in German-Jewish studies has often focused on the Jewish love affair with high culture, looking at the way German Jews typically elevated the writings of Goethe and Lessing, Kant and Schiller, to near religious status. Yet the same period that witnessed the creation of a German bourgeois culture dedicated to the ennobling powers of high culture also saw the emergence of bestselling illustrated magazines, inexpensive book series, and newspapers that increasingly used serialized novels to boost sales and attract subscribers. From the late 1830s on, the burgeoning German-Jewish press participated in these developments by producing its own forms of popular literature, disseminating hundreds of ghetto tales, historical fiction and novels of contemporary Jewish life that sought to navigate between tradition and modernity, between Jewish history and the German present, and between the fading walls of the ghetto and the promise of a new cultural identity as members of a German bourgeoisie. Drawing from a current book project on "Middlebrow Literature and the Making of German-Jewish Identity," this paper considers the cultural work that popular fiction written by Jews for Jews performed for its readers in 19th-century Germany. Looking in particular at German-Jewish adaptations of the German genre of the Liebesroman or romance novel, the paper considers the difficulties and tensions inherent in launching a genre of narrative fiction inevitably celebrating Jewish ideals of endogamy. The body of literature in question dealt explicitly with Jewish anxieties over intermarriage, typically rendering ideals of bourgeois domesticity synonymous with Jewish family values. Much of this literature is important precisely because it is derivative, because it sought so explicitly to rewrite contemporary European fiction with its numerous Jewish villains, dangerously seductive Jewesses and virtuous Jews who find redemption by conversion to Protestantism. At the same time, the proximity between this literature and the mainstream classics it revises enabled it to become a functional substitute for the literature it seeks to improve on, giving rise to a tradition of fiction that adapted the ethical universe of nineteenth-century melodrama to celebrate the bourgeois Jewish family as an object of desire. Jewish Attitudes towards the Polish Uprising of 1830-1831: A Panoramic View This paper is an attempt to gauge the predominant Jewish attitude towards the Polish Uprising of 1830-1 against the Tsarist regime, a military fiasco which nevertheless served as a catalyst for Polish romantic nationalism. This topic has been treated by several Polish historians, including some of the pioneering historians of the early twentieth century. But the context of perceived Polish anti-Semitism has caused many such scholars to use the issue in for apologetic purposes, frequently by highlighting and sometimes exaggerating the participation by a small group of Polish Jewish assimilationists in the Uprising (often framed anachronistically as "patriotism") and thereby ignoring the more ambivalent attitudes of the vast majority of Polish Jews. This study considers the stances of Jews across the entire cultural spectrum, from acculturated Jews and Maskilim, to more tradition-oriented Mitnaggdim and Hasidism. The case of the latter group, Hasidim, is particularly compelling: among "zaddikim" there is actually evidence of a some support for insurgents and the Polish cause in general. An attempt will be made to place the active support of acculturated Jews in perspective, while treating the traditionalist majority's stance in greater depth. Gentile Laws and Rabbinic Authority: A New Look at Gay Marriage in the Sifra Leviticus 18:3 does not specify the scope of its prohibition against following the practices of Egypt and Canaan: "Like the practice of the land of Egypt which you dwelled in, you should not practice, and like the practice of the land of Canaan to which I am bringing you, you should not practice, and in their laws you should not go." The local passage, verses 1-5, suggests that the scope is broad, but the chapter context of Leviticus 18 limits the prohibition to the list of sexual taboos that follow. The early rabbinic commentary within the Sifra exploits this ambiguity to generate a reading of the verse that simultaneously restricts the prohibition specifically to religious practices but also expands the prohibition beyond Leviticus 18's taboos. This paper examines this exegesis and considers what is ideologically at stake. Drawing on Daniel Boyarin's arguments in Border Lines, the paper argues that the Sifra's proscription of laws transmitted from gentile father to gentile father mirrors the rabbinic prescription of laws transmitted from rabbinic father to rabbinic father. The Sifra creates a gentile "diadoche" to reflect the Rabbis' own. Moreover, the paper explores how bodies, male and female, Jewish and gentile, are used to help construct this utopian rabbinic tradition. The gentile tradition, according to the Sifra, consists of gay marriage (and other marriage combinations). The paper asks why the Sifra imagines gentile tradition in this way, and suggests that its concern is to heighten the claims of rabbinic authority and, relatedly, to dramatize the problem of Jewish difference. The consequence of the Sifra's reading, concludes the paper, is that Jewish men can maximize their dominance as men and minimize their marginality as Jews. Is Religion "What You Are" or "What's in Your Heart"? Competing Definitions of Religion in Intermarried Couples In intermarried couples, competing definitions of religion create conflict within the family and in its interaction with the Jewish community more broadly. This poster will explore these definitions and their effects within intermarried families' religious practices, conceptions of Jewishness, and relationship to the Jewish community, based on ethnographic research conducted over four years in Atlanta, Georgia. This poster contributes to scholarship by adding the dimension of experience to the existing literature on intermarriage and American Judaism, through ethnographic illumination of intermarried couples' understandings of Judaism. In my sample, the Christian spouses define religion in American Protestant terms, rejecting hierarchy and valuing individualism, moral improvement, and religious tolerance. They often enthusiastically participate in, even spearhead, Jewish ritual in their families because it "touches their hearts." They see religion as essentially universal because it is individual. As a central cultural influence in American culture and history, Protestantism influences Catholic intermarried spouses' language as well, emphasizing faith and emotional experience and a personal relationship with God. But in contrast to the Christian spouses' definition of religion, Jewish spouses define religion as "what you are." "You do the traditions because that's what you are, not because of what you believe," said one intermarried Jewish woman. Jewish and Protestant views of religion coexist uneasily within intermarried families, in part because they exist within critical discourses in the American Jewish community about intermarriage. These discourses draw on both definitions of religion, with a halakhic definition of Jewishness that conflicts with the dominant Protestant conception of religion in America. Intermarried couples are well aware of these discourses and respond to them in their own lives even though the discourses rarely take into account their responses. This poster will present and analyze these couples' words about religion and participation in Judaism. The poster medium will present my informants' own words more effectively than a traditional paper format would, by allowing viewers to read, absorb, and interact with them on their own. Jewish Art(s) and the Aesthetics of Rupture and Repair: Painting, Architecture, and Historic Preservation For many years, the study of Jewish art, in its broadest sense, was characterized by the quixotic effort to identify essentialist criteria that transcended the temporal and spatial parameters of the Jewish historical experience. More recently, scholars have strived to historicize the shifting discourses and meanings that have been associated with the idea of Jewish art. The idea that certain trends of Jewish artistic expression have been time-bound and rooted in specific historical experiences informs the present panel. It seeks to explore the notion that a specific aesthetics of rupture and repair has come to define Jewish artistic expression in the modern world. Our proposed panel will explore some of the intellectual historical sources and aesthetic manifestations of this dialectic. The three papers will approach "rupture and repair" from a variety of viewpoints. Asher Biemann's paper, "Terribilità in Jewish: Fragmentary Renaissances in Modern Jewish Art and Thought," explores the aesthetic encounter of Jewish philosophers and artists with the Italian Renaissance, touching upon the writings of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Ernst Bloch, as well as on the works of Ben Shahn, Peter Blume, and Samuel Bak. Gavriel Rosenfeld's paper, "Jewish Architects after Auschwitz: Louis I. Kahn and Peter Eisenman Confront the Holocaust," compares how Jewish architects increasingly opened themselves up to reflecting on the Holocaust's implications for architectural practice over the course of the postwar period. Michael Meng's paper, "Jewish Space and Historic Preservation in Postwar Central Europe," investigates how and why the discipline of historic preservation was employed by Germans and Poles to both eliminate and preserve Jewish architectural sites in the years after the Second World War. In short, by exploring how the disciplines of painting, architecture, and historic preservation have responded to rupture and attempted to articulate an ethos of repair, the panel intends to shed light on an important dimension of Jewish aesthetics. Judaism in Antiquity and the Dead Sea Scrolls at Sixty: Four Perspectives The Dead Sea Scrolls have often been called "the most important manuscript discovery of the twentieth century," but, despite the fact that they are manuscripts written by Jews, about Jews, Jewish beliefs and Jewish practices, the Scrolls have not always played a significant role in Jewish Studies. The earliest interpreters of the Scrolls, with a few significant exceptions, were by and large Christian, and the agenda for the interpretation of the Scrolls was set primarily by scholars who, on the one hand, were interested in the Hebrew Bible but not the Jewish dimension of its interpretation, and, on the other, by scholars who came to the Scrolls as students of the New Testament or early Christianity. At the same time, the traditional canons of Jewish scholarship, both biblical and rabbinic, did not find a comfortable place for the Scrolls to reside, and they therefore were viewed to some degree as alien and other. With the passage of time, the value of the Scrolls for a broad range of subfields in Jewish Studies has gradually come to be acknowledged. Not only have Jewish scholars contributed productively to the editing of the Scrolls, an activity from which they had unfortunately once been excluded, but Jewish Studies as a "superfield" has integrated the Scrolls into a variety of the areas which fall under its rubric. It is a misnomer to speak of the Dead Sea Scrolls as a "field" of scholarship; what the Scrolls really are is a rich trove of textual data which can be mined productively by scholars working in many different fields. It has become progressively clearer in recent decades that the discovery and publication of the Scrolls have revised, re-created, and reinvigorated almost all aspects of the study of Jews and Judaism in antiquity. In this session, which celebrates the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Scrolls in 1947, we shall highlight the contributions of the Scrolls to four central areas of the study of Jews and Judaism in antiquity: history, rabbinics, biblical interpretation, and Judaism and early Christianity. The presenters will highlight what we have learned from the Scrolls, and, now that the publication of the Scrolls is completed, in what direction future studies may proceed in these disciplines. Yiddish Language and Literature Teaching in North American Universities Yiddish language and literature classes are taught in more than 100 North American universities. Yet the integration of this subject into the curricula is far from simple. Often, Yiddish language classes do not count towards language requirement, or even major or minor programs in Jewish studies. Moreover, the instructors of Yiddish often hold non-tenure appointments, and have little power over the structure of academic programs. Even in best-case scenarios, tenured or tenure-track Yiddish studies scholars end up doing research that complements other fields, as opposed to developing their own. How does Yiddish fit in the higher education? How can it be incorporated into Jewish studies as well as Germanic studies, linguistics, anthropology, and history programs? How do we modify teaching the language to be up to the science of second Language acquisition? What culture and literature courses can help us to bring students to Yiddish language classes? Yiddish scholars are often involved in close collaboration with the Jewish community, but how much outreach is "too much"? The speakers will address the place of Yiddish in North American academia from the perspective of Yiddish language and literature instructors, both tenured and non-tenured, as well as administrative directors. Our participants represent a wide range of scholars engaged with Yiddish in higher education. Ellie Kellman (Brandeis) is a veteran of Yiddish education, who has taught both Yiddish language and literature for decades. Kathryn Hellerstein (University of Pennsylvania), a world re-known scholar of Yiddish literature, who has been actively engaged in promoting Yiddish at University of Pennsylvania. Similarly, Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto), recently hired as an Assistant Professor of Yiddish, tries to incorporate Yiddish into the curricular of Jewish Studies Program, German Department and the Center for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett (New York University) is the director of the Performance Studies, who supports Yiddish both, as administrator and as a scholar. Finally, Ato Quayson (University of Toronto), the director of the Center for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto, actively incorporates Yiddish into Diaspora studies curricula on both graduate and undergraduate levels. By bringing together this group of specialists, we hope to engage into a meaningful dialogue about the best future of Yiddish teaching and scholarship in North American Academia. |
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