This article discusses Joseph Schechtman's writings on Jewish migration from Arab countries during the period from the 1948 War through the early 1960s. The article examines how Schechtman's writing combined his Revisionist Zionist worldview with his expertise as a researcher of population transfer. I discuss Schechtman's distinction between the migration patterns of differentJewish communities from Arab and Muslim countries and his decision to focus on the migration of Jews from Yemen, Iraq, and Libya. I argue that, as in his earlier studies on population transfer in Europe and Asia, Schechtman positioned the migration of Jews from Arab countries to Israel within the framework of population transfer, and thus as forced migration. The article discusses three key stages and aspects that Schechtman examined in his writings: the position of Jewish minorities in Arab countries, the characteristics of the migration process, and the resettlement and integration stage in Israel. Among other aspects, the article explores Schechtman's perception of population transfer as a solution to the minority problem in nation-states; his view of Jewish history in Arab and Muslim countries and his use of the term "refugees" to refer to Jewish migrants from these countries; and the parallel he drew between Palestinian refugees andJews from Arab countries regarding their migration process, integration, and resettlement.
This article offers a close reading of Job: The Story of a Simple Man (1930) by Joseph Roth, delving into the novel's intricate engagement with political and spatial concerns intertwined with the diverse possibilities for "modern redemption" confronted by Jews in the early twentieth century. Through the narrative of the Singer family's migration from an Eastern European shtetl to New York City, Roth critiques the process of urban modernization and dismisses the spatial transformation into the Western metropolis as a viable answer to the "Jewish question" (Die Judenfrage). Employing biblical allusions, Roth redirects the potential for modern "Promethean redemption" toward theological and eschatological dimensions. In doing so, Roth also contributes to the perpetuation of the Habsburg Myth by exploring the political potential to transcend the constraints of segregation and binarism inherent in the modern nation-state.
This article analyzes the diplomatic statecraft of the Revisionist Zionist activist and scholar Joseph Schechtman in the days leading up to the founding of Israel in 1948. It focuses on Schechtman's leadership of the Revisionist Party at the meeting of the Zionist Actions Committee, the executive body of world Zionism, in Tel Aviv in April 1948. The key diplomatic question the executive body faced that spring was what to say and do about the United Nations Resolution 181 of November 1947, which had called for the creation of aJewish state, an Arab state, and an international Jerusalem in British Mandate Palestine. The Schechtman-led Revisionists argued that Zionists ought to affirm what he saw as the essential principle of the Resolution - that the Jews had a right to a state - while rejecting the details contained in the Resolution, especially the specified borders of the Jewish state. According to Schechtman, the Arab side had chosen war, and so the Jewish side was no longer bound to the inoperable details of the Resolution. The Zionist Actions Committee did not adopt Schechtman's approach, instead defaulting to a kind of diplomatic ambiguity on the UN question. Yet David Ben-Gurion would advance a very similar position to that of Schechtman's Revisionists leading up to the declaration of Israel's independence on May 14, 1948. The article stresses the important kinship between the Jabotinsky disciple Schechtman and the labor leader Ben-Gurion on the means of attaining independence, as well as on the fundamentally political character of state building.
The predominant image of Joseph Schechtman emphasizes his enormous productivity and adherence to advocacy of right-wing Zionism. He wrote a lot, but it wasn't objective, some say. Maybe, but Schechtman deserves much greater illumination than that simple evaluation. His efforts - investigations of violence in Ukraine's civil war, writings on Revisionist Zionism, activities in Poland, studies of Nazi policies and population transfer, and then discussions of the Palestinian Arabs, Jews in Arab lands, and dissidents in Russia - each could stimulate a heated debate. In this essay, I examine the formation of this Russian-Jewish intellectual, an & eacute;migr & eacute; in Europe, who helped develop Revisionist Zionism. Additionally, I register the transmission of his Eastern European ideas to an America beginning to establish its own social sciences and expand its universities. Schechtman, I argue, helped give voice to a conservative movement in America and Israel that put faith in state power exclusively. His activities helped to lay the foundation of a Jewish social science that rivals the best that Jews have given the world. His political and scholarly activities were sometimes overlooked in his own time, but our day begs for greater elucidation of this not-unambiguous figure.
This essay uses the idea of Yemeni-Israeli falafel to highlight the in-between place of Middle Eastern Jews in Palestine and Israel and to challenge ideas of authenticity and cultural appropriation. Although falafel is often thought of as a "traditional" Levantine dish, it is unclear where or when it originated. It is likely an adaptation of Indian fried vegetable fritters, brought to the Middle East in the late nineteenth century by British colonial forces. If this is right, Yemeni Jews encountered falafel as it entered the region and cannot be said to have appropriated the dish. Moreover, Yemeni Jews began selling falafel as a nondominant group in Palestine as part of an immigrant strategy of survival. Finally, this essay argues that the use of the term "cultural appropriation" in this case is misleading because it analogizes the organic transformation of immigrant foodways with military conquest and the appropriation of land. This is both intellectually unproductive and exacerbates conflict.
The aim of our research was to analyze the forced displacement and attempted escapes ofJews in the General Government during the Holocaust (based on Krakow and the surrounding area as a case study) using historical and geographic information systems (HGIS). The article covers the following topics: the methodology, current state of research, and archival sources for researching the Holocaust, their specificity, the research assumptions, and a proposed template for collecting and processing the abovementioned data - that is, a model of a unified database for spatial and historical analyses. The purpose of the database is to synthesize historical and spatial data by means of HGIS systems and collected documents (Polish, German, Jewish) concerning the fate of Jews in the General Government. Some points of reference include the research conducted by members of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, the Polish Center for Holocaust Research (Warsaw Ghetto and "Aryan Side" Database), and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum (Map of the Warsaw Ghetto). The assumptions, postulates, and results of the research conducted to date are illustrated through the personal histories of three Jewish families from Krakow, their wartime escapes, their return to their places of origin, and their hiding places, demonstrating the many factors that influenced their eventual fates.
This article explores Joseph Schechtman's position on Ukrainian-Jewish relations and mutual understanding. Focusing primarily on the period ofthe Revolution of 1917-20, the article analyzes Zionist pamphlets written by Schechtman and published in Odesa and Kyiv in 1917 and 1918 as well as his contributions to both Jewish Zionist (Evreiskaia mysl', in Odesa) and Ukrainian (Nova rada, in Kyiv) periodicals. Schechtman's writings are juxtaposed with works by other Ukrainian Zionists (Nahum Syrkin, Mattityahu Hindes, Joseph Fisher), exploring the idea of Ukrainian-Jewish common interests and the rationale for the Ukrainian-Jewish alliance. Contrary to the view that Zionists were largely concerned with Russian thinkers and unsympathetic to Ukrainian sovereignty, this article argues that imagining the Ukrainian-Jewish alliance was an important aspect of the development of the Zionist movement in the former Russian Empire. This calls for a reevaluation of the standard view of Ukrainian-Jewish relations as self-perpetuating antagonism.
In this extensive interview with award-winning Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, the dramatist discusses his creation of his play Ghetto, the history of the Vilna Ghetto and its theatre, and his views on Holocaust drama and theatre in general.
This paper examines the ways in which the figure of Ahasver, the so-called "Wandering Jew," was utilized by the early German queer magazine culture (1896-1933), with particular attention to literary texts that explore homosocial and homosexual desire between men. Ahasver is an ambivalent figure, with cultural connotations shaped and reshaped over centuries. Coined a "thoroughly un-Jewish figure" by Hans Mayer, he has been employed as an antisemitic projection figure and a personification of the Jewish people, as well as a symbol for resilience, rebellion, or particularity. Against the backdrop of the key topics in the queer magazines' literary texts - conceptualizing nonheteronormative sexuality, affirming male homosocial and homosexual desire, imagining communities and gay genealogies - the figure of Ahasver is employed in a variety of ways that draw from but cannot be subsumed under any of the aforementioned configurations. While he is an overdetermined figure, Ahasver is defined by three main characteristics: immortality, boundless mobility, and solitude. Drawing on queer kinship theory and analyzing three literary texts from one of the leading queer magazines of the Weimar Republic, this article examines Ahasver as a figuration of kinship rupture and social isolation and traces how the figure challenges the imagined union of community, nationality, and statehood.
Thomas Mann planned to publish his "Judengeschichte" ("story about Jews") Walsungenblut (The Blood of the Volsungs) in 1905/1906, but withdrew it because of an impending scandal concerning similarities between the novella's characters and his wife's family. Only in 1921 was an expensive bibliophile edition in German published, followed by French, English, and Hungarian translations in 1931 and 1936. This article offers a fresh perspective on the antisemitic stereotypes present in the novella, which have been discussed extensively in the past few decades. By understanding this novella as a story about speech, Walsungenblut is read here as a reflection on Mann's poetological standpoint toward modernity. In Walsungenblut, Mann portrays his literature as Jewish and homosexual-not in the sense of authentic Jewishness and homosexuality, but in the sense of antisemitic and antihomosexual constructions.
This article examines David Vogel's novel Married Life (Haye nisuim) throughthe lens of macaronic literature, introducing the concept of "queer macaronic" to analyze the complex interplay between Hebrew and German languages, cultural spheres, and gender dynamics in interwar Vienna. While macaronic literature traditionally refers to the playful blending of languages for satirical effect, Vogel transforms this tradition within the charged context ofJewish-German relations. His innovations create a literary space where linguistic hybridity becomes inseparable from questions of gender, power, and Jewish identity in modernity. Through close readings of the novel's linguistic choices, including transliteration, grammar, and narrative perspective, this article demonstrates how Vogel's narrative strategies transcend binary constructions of language (Hebrew/German), gender roles, and cultural belonging (Jewish/non-Jewish). The tragic relationship between Rudolf Gurdweill, a Jewish writer, and the Austrian Baroness Thea von Takow - culminating in the death of their child - represents more than failed assimilation; it reveals the impossibility of cultural synthesis in pre-Holocaust Vienna. By positioning Vogel's work within both the European tradition of macaronic literature and Hebrew modernist writing, this study illuminates how his innovative use of Hebrew-German "married life" challenges conventional understandings of Jewish cultural belonging while expanding the possibilities of Jewish diasporic writing. This analysis offers new insights into both Jewish literary modernism and the broader study of multilingual literature's role in negotiating cultural identity.
Poet Uri Zvi Greenberg has been celebrated for his powerful poetry and forceful visions of Jewish nationalism. This article offers a view of the celebrated poet and his fashioning of body and gender, through the story of the short-lived Yiddish journal Albatros (1922 Warsaw-1923 Berlin). As Berlin would prove to be his final European home for a time, it also became the place where Greenberg parted with his Yiddish (before his eventual return to bilingual writing in Hebrew and Yiddish with his return to Europe in 1930). This article looks at a pivotal moment in Greenberg's life and writing, a short span where Greenberg moved from Europe to Palestine and from Yiddish to Hebrew, all in the span of several months. This article will show how in this moment Greenberg would produce some of his best poetry, where rage and gender intersected to fashion Jewish masculinity. In fact, Greenberg conducted a literary tour de force, lashing out in rage against Europe and its co-opted emblem, Jesus, in an attempt to reshape the Jew and direct Jewish masculinity toward a different, perhaps better, existence.
The article focuses on a shelved early novel written by one of the most prominent Hebrew (female) writers, Lea Goldberg (1911-70). Goldberg worked on her novel, entitled Avedot (Losses), during the mid-late 1930s, but it was first published only in 2010, forty years after her death. The novel takes place in Berlin of 1932-33, the last months of the Weimar Republic and the first months after the rise of Hitler, and its protagonist is a Hebrew poet who had already settled in Israel/Palestine, but had traveled to Berlin to complete his doctoral dissertation. The article suggests a queer reading of this novel that highlights not only its queer temporality and the dominance of the notion of "no future" (as defined by Lee Edelman), but also its subversive attitude toward nationality, gender, and hegemonic (heteronormative) norms. By revisiting Goldberg's shelved, allegedly marginal novel - alongside Michal Sapir's 2018 Ha-rikud ha-moderni (The modern dance), which includes a queer adaptation of Avedot - this article seeks to allude to the queer potential that is already a part of Goldberg's original text, even before its queer revision.
Joseph G. Weiss (1918-69) was one of the great early students of Gershom Scholem and made significant contributions to the research of Hasidism. Unfortunately, his innovative studies did not always receive the attention that they deserved and many of his important findings were ignored or even credited to other scholars. This article explores his many scholarly innovations across a variety of Hasidic topics, including his studies of R. Nahman of Bratzlav, the Mei HaShiloach of R. Mordechai Yosef of Ishbitz, and of Habad Hasidism. It also addresses important concepts within the Hasidic tradition, including Hasidic meditation, service through corporality, and Hasidic quietism. Weiss's unique methodology, which combines both intellectual and social history in his analysis of Hasidism, is also addressed, as is his use of typologies in describing various trends within Hasidism. Utilizing both Weiss's published works as well as his correspondence with various scholars, we also trace the trajectory of his tragically short life, his complex relationship with Gershom Scholem and how this interfaced with his scholarly development, from Budapest to Jerusalem, and ultimately to London, where he directed the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London and edited its Journal ofJewish Studies. We thus hope to shed light on one of the great pioneers in modern Hasidic scholarship and his enduring contributions to the field.
The Russian Civil War pogroms and Ukrainian Hasidism have been extensively researched. Yet little is known about their convergence, that is, the impact of the pogroms on Hasidism and its most popular Ukrainian school, Chernobyl. The following eyewitness testimonies of the 1919-21 pogroms, preserved in the Elias Tscherikower Collection of the YIVO Archives, reveal the experiences of Chernobyl Hasidic leaders, or rebbes (Heb. tzaddikim), and their families duringthese catastrophic events. They reveal Hasidic rebbes as the primary targets of pogromists; yet record instances of aid and protection from secularist Jewish youth and certain Christian neighbors.
