Halál Qumránban

Author(s): Nóra Dávid / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2009

The question of death and burial at Qumran has been a subject of debates already since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Normally, we could study this practice based on the archaeological data and on the written sources. In this paper we can see, that in the case of Qumran it is not so easy. The cemetery found next to the site of Khirbet Qumran has been excavated only in a very small part, and even this is not properly documented. On the one hand, the known scrolls hardly speak about everyday practices, such as birth or death, but on the other they have strict rules about purity – rules relating the corpse, as the highest source of impurity. Furthermore, we can study possible parallels of burial practices at Qumran, both in the field of archaeology and written sources. Within the framework of this paper my aim is not to solve the problem of “Death at Qumran”, but rather to give an insight into the problem and the method of investigation.

Identity Stereotypes And Communal Identity: Representations of Jewish Immigrants to Palestine by 19th Century Hebrew Journalists

Author(s): Gideon Kouts / Language(s): English Issue: 5/2019

Tensions between the Jewish communities, particularly in the context of the division between “Ashkenazim” and “Sephardim” produce reciprocal images, which, according to social psychologists, create stereotypes that ”attach” some characteristics to this or that community. Stereotypes can also have a function in the formation and transformation of cultural identities, including in their historical concept, as diagnosed by cultural studies scholars. The claim regarding discrimination against oriental communities in shaping the cultural identity of the State of Israel is well known. It could be assumed that the phenomenon, as known to us in its present dimensions, is as old as the State of Israel. However, the previous waves of immigration as well created a situation of Communal Identification. Texts and reports from the years 1878- 1884 written by notable Hebrew journalists of the time, demonstrate that the attempt to identify “Ashkenazi characteristics” and “Sephardi characteristics” was already obvious in 19th century Palestine. We make use of texts by Yehiel Bril, founder and editor of the first Hebrew newspaper in Palestine, The Lebanon (1863) and Eliezer Ben Yehuda, founder of the Modern Hebrew press in Palestine since 1884. In 1878, Bril wrote a text as a letter to a friend, analyzing “communal problems” of Jerusalem. In this text and another one written three years later, the observations of Bril, are more sympathetic to the Sephardim, although he also knows how to qualify his praise. In 1883, Bril visited Palestine again and found new comparisons of Sephardic and Ashkenazi characteristics. During the visit of Bril in Palestine, another top Hebrew journalist was already there. The newcomer, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the renovator of Hebrew language, created his own press “Empire” in Jerusalem. Ben-Yehuda, native of Russia, expressed already its preference to Sephardic pronunciation of Hebrew language, but in his writings, he enlarges the “Sephardic superiority” (however, mixed with “orientalist” approach) also to other stereotypical personal and social characteristics. It appears that communal tensions existed already in the 19th century. The stereotypes existed, although their contents were not always similar to those of today. However, the communal identity was supposed to merge into a national identity. Nevertheless, identity, as Habermas urges, “is not something given, but also, and simultaneously, our own project”. There is apparently no clear agreement on such a project, even in Israel and the Jewish World of our days.

„Áldott népem, Egyiptom…”

Author(s): Csaba Balogh / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2012

Isaiah 19,16-25 is an intriguing text in the Old Testament with a generous view on non-Israelite nations. The open-hearted universalism of this passage is often brought in connection with the eschatological expectations of the Israelite community in the Persian or Hellenistic periods. However, a closer analysis of some particular details of this text (vv. 18, 19 and 23) reveals that the picture of the future in Isa 19,16-25 is more deeply rooted in (pre-exilic) history than previously thought. This view of the future, expressed in thoroughly historical terms, shows profound awareness of the Assyrian view of the world. YHWH, the God of Israel, exerts his dominion in an indirect manner, by means of the great power of the prophet’s era, Assyria, the creation of YHWH’s hands (v. 25), to whom Egypt with all other nations is subdued (v. 23). The text has close connections with the history of the 7th century B.C., especially the era of King Manasseh of Judah, who—to believe the testimony of non-biblical texts—was actively engaged in shaping the co-ordinates and defining the power zones of a world under Assyrian control.

Ki a főpap: Ábrahám vagy Jézus?

Author(s): Károly Dániel Dobos / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2015

This paper presents a case study of the emerging new paradigm describing the ‘parting of the ways’ between the evolving Jewish and Christian centers (later called ‘orthodoxies’) as a slow evolution process. The point of departure for my analysis is a short passage in Genesis Rabbah, a well-known narrative Midrash, edited in Palestine in the 4th/5th century CE. The short text sample aims to characterise Abraham, the legendary founding father of the Jewish community, as a legitimate heir of Melchizedek, a mythical figure of the Hebrew Bible and at the same time the symbolic representative of the eternal priesthood. In this paper, I try to demonstrate that in order to fully appreciate the encoded message of the rabbis in Genesis Rabbah we have to contextualise the text in the history of Late Antique Jewish-Christian polemical encounters. In my analysis, the rabbis’ effort to present Abraham as a legitimate High Priest of Israel is best characterised as a covert response to the earlier Christian demand, articulated first in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to introduce Jesus as a new and legitimate representative of the priesthood, whose redemptive death on the cross once and for all eliminated the need for sacrifices.

Between Self-Defense and Loyalty - Jewish Responses to the Numerus Clausus Law in Hungary, 1920–1928

Author(s): Judith Szapor / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Enacted in September 1920 in Hungary, the numerus clausus law, the first antisemitic law in postwar Europe introduced discrimination against Jews in higher education. Ostensibly a remedy for the “overcrowding” of universities, the law breached the previous, liberal era’s concept of equal citizenship. This survey of Jewish responses to the law between 1920-1928 is based on the coverage of Egyenlőség, the representative weekly of assimilated, Neolog Jews. The arguments voiced by contemporary commentators against the numerus clausus law highlight their precarious position, between fighting to maintain full membership in the Hungarian nation while also nurturing a sense of Jewish identity; ultimately, they reflect their views on the prospect of assimilation itself.

An Open Secret? - The Dissemination and Reception of News about Auschwitz in Hungary in 1944

Author(s): Gergely Kunt / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

In this paper, I analyse diaries from 1944 to explore the extent to which ordinary Hungarian civilians were informed of the genocide of the Jewish population. The diaries indicate that information was sparse among the Hungarian population, and mainly obtained, directly or indirectly, from BBC radio broadcasts. The reactions of individual Christian and Jewish dia­rists varied according to the amount of credit they gave to the broadcasts or the rumours circulating within their social circles. However, both Jews and Christians tried not to give credit to the rumours as the idea of gas chambers and mass gassings was simply inconceiv­able to the majority of the examined diarists. Even Jewish diarists who had received news of the on­going genocide and feared for their lives thought it more likely that they would be executed by volley fire. For them, this method of mass murder posed a more realistic danger.

The Moral Witness - The Eichmann Trial and Its Aftermath

Author(s): Carolyn J. Dean / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This lecture addresses how “bearing witness to genocide” became a central trope of contemporary Western moral culture. The 1960/61 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem put victims of genocide centre-stage and affirmed the pre-eminence of the Jewish Holocaust survivor in European and especially American politics and culture. The lecture revisits the Eichmann trial to understand its contribution not simply to bringing the world’s attention to the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust, but also to understanding how the trial shaped the pervasive figure of the Jewish “witness” who marked the Holocaust as a caesura in human history. The Holocaust survivor remained the iconic witness even when, after the 1990s, the witness to genocide became a more generic symbol of suffering humanity in the shadow of all state-sponsored mass violence against persons and cultures. The lecture suggests that only by placing the witness to genocide in a longer historical trajectory can we understand why the Holocaust remains iconic in spite of the occurrence of many other genocides since.

The Rabbinic Responsa Literature as a Source for Learning about the Religious Life during the Holocaust - Individual and Community Life

Author(s): Moshe Tarshansky / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The Rabbinic Responsa literature has been developing over many centuries. This literature doesn't record theoretical systematic topics chosen by the rabbis, but rather answers to questions posed to rabbis, by persons, dealing with various real-life situations they are facing. As such, it reflects the historical conditions of life at the given time and place, and the issues the people were concerned with. Therefore this literature can be utilized as a historical source, although it was not meant to be so, and therefore it is often lacking basic historical details, such as names of those involved and dates. The Holocaust period too, produced such literature, unique due to the extreme conditions. Even in the most difficult times in the ghettos and in the concentration camps, Jews sought spiritual religious guidance and turned to Rabbis, who were expected to give immediate rulings on grievous issues dealing with life and death, with no precedent, and with no option of looking up sources in books or consulting with other rabbis. Sometimes questions and answers were recorded during the difficult times, but in most cases they were noted down by survivors after liberation. Questions were asked after the end of the war as well, dealing with consequences of the Holocaust, and also they reflect those times.

TEMATYKA ŻYDOWSKA W TWÓRCZOŚCI JÓZEFA PANKIEWICZA W KONTEKŚCIE SPOŁECZNO-POLITYCZNYM

Author(s): Michał Haake / Language(s): Polish Issue: 42/2018

The paper examines Jewish motifs in Józef Pankiewicz’s works. The artist created them in the 1880s in Warsaw, occupied then by the Russian Empire and inhabited mostly by Poles and Jews. Most of these pictures were published as woodcuts and autotypes in newspapers disseminating positivist ideology and social program. Until now, the researchers have focused on analyzing only the style of these pictures, treating them as a short phase on the way to later symbolist, truly modern Pankiewicz’s art. A close scrutiny of his works from the Warsaw period reveals a specific visual representation of Jewish figures. They are depicted as isolated from other people, covered by shadows, placed in the oppositional relation to the traditional symbols of Warsaw, such as the King Sigismund’s Column and the Mermaid Statue, as well as to Christian architecture. The author of the paper draws the conclusion that the tensions in Polish-Jewish relationships which increased in the 1880s, being rooted in the political and economic history of Warsaw and shaped by contemporary persecution of Jews in the Russian Empire, are visualized in Pankiewicz’s works.

AUDYCJE W JĘZYKU JIDYSZ W POLSKIM RADIU PO II WOJNIE ŚWIATOWEJ

Author(s): Anna Rozenfeld / Language(s): Polish Issue: 42/2018

The initiator of the establishment of Yiddish broadcasts in postwar Poland was Jonas Turkow. The first program in Yiddish was broadcasted by the Polish Radio (Polskie Radio) from the city of Lublin on January 6, 1945. For the first time in Poland’s history Yiddish could be heard on the airwaves. It was also the first attempt to revive Yiddish and, most importantly, it came from a state institution before any Jewish organizations and institutions came to existence after World War II. After Jonas Turkow had left Poland, this activity was taken over by the Department of Culture and Propaganda in the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP) in Warsaw. Between 1950 and 1958 the broadcasts were aired by the Jewish Section of the Polish Radio External Service and they could be heard only abroad. In January 1958, the Jewish Section of the Polish Radio was closed down by the decision of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party.

„STARAJCIE SIĘ O DOBRE IMIĘ, O SPOKOJNOŚĆ SUMIENIA” – TESTAMENT TEKLI KRONENBERG

Author(s): Anna Dybała-Pacholak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 42/2018

The main goal of publishing this source is to make available a document of the type that remains unexplored and unrecognized, especially within the field of Jewish studies. The nineteenth-century testament of Tekla Kronenberg deepens our knowledge about the Kronenberg family in general and its female members in particular. In notary deeds we find primarily male testaments. It is therefore relevant to publicize a female testament which may prove helpful in historical research on women. It is possible to examine this document from various perspectives, such as the value of charity, the attitude toward converts, the extent of social bonds (what things were left and to whom? were inheritors mainly male, or female?). In addition, an analysis of the means of expressing emotions regarding particular persons mentioned in the testament enables us to make a quality assessment of family bonds. As a result, it sheds new light on a Jewish family’s life.

NAJNOWSZE PUBLIKACJE W JĘZYKU POLSKIM POŚWIĘCONE DZIEJOM BUNDU. PRÓBA PRZEGLĄDU

Author(s): Magdalena Kozłowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 42/2018

W roku 2017 przypadła sto dwudziesta rocznica powstania Bundu (Der Algemajner Jidiszer Arbeter Bund in Lite, Pojln un Rusland) i setna rocznica zainaugurowania jego autonomicznej działalności w Polsce. Dzieje Bundu stały się tematem niezależnej debaty akademickiej stosunkowo późno, nie znaczy to jednak, że pamięć o ruchu nie była do tego czasu podtrzymywana. W środowiskach partii nie brakowało historyków amatorów, którzy – pragnąc ocalić od zapomnienia żydowskich arbetsmenczn i ich ideały – nie stronili od mitologizacji i gloryfikacji ruchu. Jednak poza publikacjami związanymi poniekąd z członkami partii i powstającymi przede wszystkim w jidysz przekonanie o jej roli w historii podawano w wątpliwość. Kamieniem milowym w historiografii dotyczącej Bundu stała się opublikowana w 1972 r. praca Henry’ego J. Tobiasa, historyka z University of Oklahoma, poświęcona działalności partii w Rosji do roku 1905, będąca cennym studium do dziś . Autor, korzystając ze źródeł w jidysz i po rosyjsku oraz ze wspomnień byłych działaczy ruchu, wnikliwie przeanalizował kształtowanie się polityki Bundu na tle wydarzeń w Rosji i historii Socjaldemokratycznej Partii Robotniczej Rosji. Wiele kwestii poruszonych przez Tobiasa wyznaczyło kierunek późniejszych badań . Jego zainteresowania dotyczące zwłaszcza tożsamości narodowej były kontynuowane głównie przez następne pokolenie badaczy – sympatyków Bundu – w latach dziewięćdziesiątych.

DOBROCHNA GORLIŃSKA, ŻYDZI W ADMINISTRACJI SKARBOWEJ POLSKICH WŁADCÓW CZASU ROZBICIA DZIELNICOWEGO

Author(s): Marcin Starzyński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 42/2018

Review of: Dobrochna Gorlińska, Żydzi w administracji skarbowej polskichwładców czasu rozbicia dzielnicowego, Wydawnictwo TowarzystwaNaukowego „Societas Vistulana”, Kraków 2015, ss. 372. Review by: Janusz Spyra

BARBARA KALINOWSKA-WÓJCIK, MIĘDZY WSCHODEM I ZACHODEM. EZECHIEL ZIVIER (1868–1925). HISTORYK I ARCHIWISTA

Author(s): Janusz Spyra / Language(s): Polish Issue: 42/2018

Review of: Barbara Kalinowska-Wójcik, Między Wschodem i Zachodem. Ezechiel Zivier (1868–1925). Historyk i archiwista, Archiwum Państwowe w Katowicach, Katowice 2015, ss. 328. Review by: Janusz Spyra

АНТИСЕМИТСКИ СТЕРЕОТИПИ И ПРОПАГАНДА У СРБИЈИ 1941 - 1942

Author(s): Milan Koljanin / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2003

Anti-Semitic stereotypes on the German occupying territory in Serbia were, basically, the measure of occupying authorities taken against the Jews. Occupying soldiers and domestic German inhabitants were all guided by them. A role of one of the major means of ideological-publicity influence, especially during the fights for destruction of insurgent movements, was assigned to Anti-Semitic stereotypes. Within the basic invaders’ objectives and under their control, quisling Serbian administration used Anti-Semitic stereotypes to find its place in Serbian “new line-up of powers”, ideologically and politically. Judging by prevailing influence of 2 resistance movements among the population and after the great defeat of insurgent in autumn of 1941, the reach of Anti-Semitic stereotypes was very limited. For it a bit serous and effective perception of these stereotypes, the main conditions were missing: traditional, social and political ones. Without these, it was impossible to bridge the gap between the sullen and tragic reality of defeated people exposed to mass destruction, on one side, and a projected picture of happy peasants’ Serbia in “new Europe” on the other. As a result, publicity action, by which concrete German and imaginary enemies were supposed to change their places, was loomed to failure from the very beginning.

İsrail'de Yahudi Dini Terörizmi

Author(s): Menderes Kurt / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 4/2018

When religious terrorism is in question, the first thing that comes to mind is “Islamic” terrorism. It is seen that this phenomenon, which is identified with Islam, is not specific to it but other religious communities also use and legitimize terrorist acts through religious discourse. One of the best examples of this is Religious Jewish Terrorism. Religious Jewish Terrorism, relatively similar to the thought of Islamic radical terrorist organizations, has been strengthened by the power of the right in Israel since 1977. Religious Jewish Terrorism, legitimizing the right to terrorism by referring to the Jewish religious law, Halakha, regards all kinds of acts of violence against Arabs as legitimate and it has a structure that aims at Mesianism and Jewish liberation. Within this framework, terrorist organizations against Palestinians have been carried out for a long time and various organizations have been established. However, there is not much information about these organizations and their actions in the literature. Religious Jewish Terrorism is either overshadowed by terrorist organizations that are effective in the establishment of the state or other religious terrorism movements. Therefore, this study deals with the problems such as the origins of religious terrorism, doctrine, legitimacy discourse, effectiveness, and man recruiting methods in Israel. Finally, it analyses Al-Halil atttack and the assassination of Rabin, which constituted the peak of Religious Jewish Terrorism.

MESTO LOGORA U OKUPACIONOM SISTEMU U SRBIJI (1941-1944)

Author(s): Milan Koljanin / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/1997

German camps were the pivot of the invador’s system of occupation in Serbia. The formation of camps was begun after the assault of the Third Reich on the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941 and was practically finished by July of the following year. There were five principle camps in Serbia: two in Belgrade (in Banjica and the Fair), and the others in Niš, Sabac and Veliki Bečkerek/Petrovgrad. The purpose of the camps was to isolate, torture and (or) liquidate real or potential opponents and even entire nations (Jews and Gypsies). The prisoners served as hostages for German mass reprisals for losses suffered in their battles against the rebels and, from the summer of 1942, these prisoners were also used for labor in work and concentration camps in other occupied lands and the Third Reich. In the second half of 1942 a system of work camps was also formed in Serbia, usually near mines (Bar, Trepča etc.) and on farms in Banat. In May 1942, German camps in Serbia began co-operating with those in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška and, from the beginning of the following year, with German camps in the Independent State of Croatia. The main German camp in occupied Serbia and the whole of the European southeast was the camp situated at the Belgrade Fair. It would be wrong to call these places concentration camps since they represented a subsystem in the European system of German camps (work, concentration and death camps). The question of the number and makeup of the prisoners in German camps in Serbia has still not been answered properly and requires a comprehensive study based on a specific methodology.

‘Jewish Regions in the Early Modern Central and Eastern Europe’. Conference held at the German Historical Institute and University of Warsaw, Warsaw, 6–7 November 2018

Author(s): Maria Cieśla / Language(s): English Issue: 119/2019

Documente privind activitatea cultului mosaic pe raza Direcției Regionale de Securitate Galați (1952-1960)

Author(s): George Enache,Alin Marius Savin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2018

During the first two decades of the Communist government, Zionism represented a major priority for the Communist political police (the Security). The persons who were particularly under survey were the Jewish religious leaders, suspected of promoting Zionist ideas and other standpoints favouring the United States, the great enemy of Communism. The documents comprised in the present study reveal new pieces of information regarding the way the Security used to collect information from the Jewish community of towns such as Galați, Focșani, Tecuci, Brăila or Tulcea. They also convey new data regarding the situation of the Synagogues and of the Rabbis from the area of Lower Danube, during the first decades of the Communist regime.

NOVIJA KRETANJA U ISTRAŽIVANJIMA SAVREMENE ISTORIJE U FRANCUSKOJ

Author(s): Ubavka Ostojić-Fejić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/1995

The magazine »Annals« has commenced a critical review of a movement which it represented for more then half a century and which sovereignly ruled French modern history, precisely on the magazine’s 60th anniversary (1929—1989). It was asked why after half a century of coperation, established in 1929, between historians and representatives of other social sciences — especially sociology — this cooperation is no longer effective, or not as effective as it used to be and why a new epistemological classification was necessary. This is caused by the general atmosphere of change from one epoch to the next, the memory of the crucial events of the 20th century, which are slowly passing from the sum of individual memories into the sphere of collective memory, thereby inspiring a different type of interest. The repeated insistence on the existence of many layers of history, on the phenomenom of »long duration«, has numbed the sensibility of some French historians, those glose to annalists, to events which represent the »new« in history, and this at a time when reality in most parts of the world has disputed the models of »medium« and »short« duration (conditions and events), so readily used in modern history: for instance the social practice which in the sphere of modern history produced and kept up »real socialism« in the countries of East Europe. Some of the significant topics attracting the attention of French historians are: the social and political crisis in France between the world wars, the Second World War, the Resistance and the embarrassing question of collaboration, especially in view of the persecution and extradition of Jews, problems of colonial history and decolonization and, the most recent problem matter, the forms and crisis of socialism as practiced in France and other European countries.