Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or 'primitive' tribesmen. Primitivism - the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called 'primitive', non-Western peoples who were also subju…
"Around the beginning of the twentieth century, Jewish writers and artists across Europe began depicting fellow Jews as savages or "primitive" tribesmen. Primitivism--the European appreciation of and fascination with so-called "primitive," non-Western peoples who were also subju…
This book explores the fraught aftermath of the German Jewish conversionary experience through the story of one family as it grapples with the meaning of its Jewish origins in a post-Holocaust, post-conversionary milieu. Utilizing archival family texts and multiple interviews sp…
Over the course of American Jewish history, a panoply of Jewish communal organizations was founded to combat anti-Semitism and promote Jewish integration in America. In the 1980s that trend took a surprising left turn. Almost overnight a wave of Jewish Baby Boomers, inspired by …
By the end of the twentieth century, Russian-speaking Jews solidified their reputation as emigrants and refugees - a people without a home. This was because the turn of the twenty-first century saw large waves of Jewish emigration out of the former Soviet Union. This emigration …
Significant changes have taken place in both public and private Jewish life since the end of the 20th century, particularly in the realm of how Jews identify themselves. While the lengthy history of Jewish involvement in progressive social movements is uncontested, Jewish Studie…
Recent histories of American Jews between 1945 and 1960 have emphasized their celebration of rising socioeconomic status, conservatism in the face of an oppressive political climate, and complacency about their Jewish identity. Only in the 1960s, these arguments suggest, did Ame…
Flavius Josephus was a Jewish historian who lived in the first century CE. When the First Jewish War began in 66 CE, Josephus was given a leading role in the defense of Galilee in northern Palestine. He was captured by the Roman forces and accompanied them to Jerusalem where he …
This dissertation analyzes American Jewish identity and assimilation practices through Warner Bros. films produced between 1918 and 1941. It argues that Warner Bros. films not only reflected the Warner brothers? (Harry, Abe, Sam and Jack) individual identity politics, Warner Bro…
This study is rooted in several interests of the researcher: 1) Literature focusing on the importance of teacher identity development for pre-service and in-service teachers; 2) Several crises in the Jewish community including the high rates of assimilation and the shortage of t…
This study was inspired by the abundance of literature regarding the withdrawal of non-Orthodox American Jewish teenagers from an active Jewish life (Ravitch, 2002a; Ravitch, 2002b; Kosmin & Keysar, 2000; Kadushin, Saxe, Brodsky, Kelner, & Stern, 2000; BTW Informing Change & Ros…
This project emerges out of the rich data derived from ethnographic interviews conducted with 20 American Jews during 2007. It is an effort to locate the compromises and conflicted understandings in which Jews articulate their own experiences, memories and identities. It is also…
This thesis examines different elements of Jewish identity viewed through the images rendered in a fourteenth century illuminated copy of the twelfth century's Guide of the Perplexed, commonly referred to as the Copenhagen Maimonides. The highly variable economic and social stat…
As an artist, I explore my family's complicated history of lost Jewish identity and the contrary involvement. I engage in this history by reflecting on the current political climate using an archive developed by my ancestors. I use components of these varying objects, photograph…
