NEWSLETTER Winter/ Spring 2020 LETTER from the DIRECTOR
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Read the Conference Program
COVER: Stone medallion with the purported martyrdom scene of Simonino di Trento. Palazzo Salvadori, Trent, Italy. Photo by Andreas Caranti. Via Wikimedia Commons. YIVO INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH RESEARCH PRESENTS CONFERENCE OCTOBER 9, 2016 CO-SPONSORED BY 1 INCE ITS FABRICATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES, the accusation that Jews Skidnapped, tortured and killed Christian children in mockery of Christ and the Crucifixion, or for the use of their blood, has been the basis for some of the most hateful examples of organized antisemitism. The blood libel has inspired expulsions and murder of Jews, tortures and forced mass conversions, and has served as an ines- capable focal point for wider strains of anti-Jewish sentiment that permeate learned and popular discourse, social and political thought, and cultural media. In light of contemporary manifestations of antisemitism around the world it is appropriate to re-examine the enduring history, the wide dissemination, and the persistent life of a historical and cultural myth—a bald lie—intended to demonize the Jewish people. This conference explores the impact of the blood libel over the centuries in a wide variety of geographic regions. It focuses on cultural memory: how cultural memory was created, elaborated, and transmitted even when based on no actual event. Scholars have treated the blood libel within their own areas of expertise—as medieval myth, early modern financial incentive, racial construct, modern catalyst for pogroms and the expulsion of Jews, and political scare tactic—but rarely have there been opportunities to discuss such subjects across chronological and disciplinary borders. We will look at the blood libel as historical phenomenon, legal justification, economic mechanism, and visual and literary trope with ongoing political repercussions. -
JUL 15 and the History of YIVO CECILE KUZNITZ | Delivered in English
MONDAY The Rise of Yiddish Scholarship JUL 15 and the History of YIVO CECILE KUZNITZ | Delivered in English As Jewish activists sought to build a modern, secular culture in the late nineteenth century they stressed the need to conduct research in and about Yiddish, the traditionally denigrated vernacular of European Jewry. By documenting and developing Yiddish and its culture, they hoped to win respect for the language and rights for its speakers as a national minority group. The Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut [Yiddish Scientific Institute], known by its acronym YIVO, was founded in 1925 as the first organization dedicated to Yiddish scholarship. Throughout its history, YIVO balanced its mission both to pursue academic research and to respond to the needs of the folk, the masses of ordinary Yiddish- speaking Jews. This talk will explore the origins of Yiddish scholarship and why YIVO’s work was seen as crucial to constructing a modern Jewish identity in the Diaspora. Cecile Kuznitz is Associate Professor of Jewish history and Director of Jewish Studies at Bard College. She received her Ph.D. in modern Jewish history from Stanford University and previously taught at Georgetown University. She has held fellowships at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. In summer 2013 she was a Visiting Scholar at Vilnius University. She is the author of several articles on the history of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the Jewish community of Vilna, and the field of Yiddish Studies. English-Language Bibliography of Recent Works on Yiddish Studies CECILE KUZNITZ Baker, Zachary M. -
Edinburgh Research Explorer
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Edinburgh Research Explorer Edinburgh Research Explorer Divided allegiance Citation for published version: Joseph, J 2016, 'Divided allegiance: Martinet’s preface to Weinreich’s Languages in Contact (1953)', Historiographia Linguistica, vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 343-362. https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.43.3.04jos Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.1075/hl.43.3.04jos Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Peer reviewed version Published In: Historiographia Linguistica General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 22. Feb. 2020 HL 43.3 (2016): Article Divided Allegiance Martinet’s preface to Weinreich’s Languages in Contact (1953)* John E. Joseph University of Edinburgh 1. Introduction The publication in 1953 of Languages in Contact: Findings and problems by Uri- el Weinreich (1926–1967) was a signal event in the study of multilingualism, individ- ual as well as societal. The initial print run sold out by 1963, after which the book caught fire, and a further printing was needed every year or two. -
Jewish Communal Services: Programs and Finances
Jewish Communal Services: Programs and Finances .ANY TYPES of Jewish communal services are provided under organized Jewish sponsorship. Some needs of Jews (and non-Jews) are ex- clusively individual or governmental responsibilities, but a wide variety of services is considered to be the responsibility of the total Jewish community. While the aim is to serve Jewish community needs, some services may also be made available to the general community. Most services are provided at the geographic point of need, but their financing may be secured from a wider area, nationally or internationally. This report deals with the financial contribution of American Jewry to do- mestic and global services and, to a lesser extent, with aid given by Jews in other parts of the free world. Geographic classification of services (i.e. local, national, overseas) is based on areas of program operation. A more fundamental classification would be in terms of type of services provided or needs met, regardless of geography. On this basis, Jewish com- munal services would encompass: • Economic aid, mainly overseas: largely a function of government in the United States. • Migration aid—a global function, involving movement between coun- tries, mainly to Israel, but also to the United States and other areas in sub- stantial numbers at particular periods. • Absorption and resettlement of migrants—also a global function, in- volving economic aid, housing, job placement or retraining, and social adjustment. The complexity of the task is related to the size of movement, the background of migrants, the economic and social viability or absorptive potential of the communities in which resettlement takes place, and the avail- ability of resources and structures for absorption in the host communities. -
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Re: Otto Frank File Embargoed Until
Prepared for: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research Re: Otto Frank File Embargoed until: February 14, 2007 at 10 AM EST BACKGROUND TO THE SITUATION OF JEWS IN THE NETHERLANDS UNDER NAZI OCCUPATION AND OF THE FAMILY OF OTTO FRANK By: David Engel Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies New York University Understanding the situation of Jews in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation, like understanding any aspect of the Holocaust, requires suspension of hindsight. No one could know in 1933, 1938, or even early 1941 that the Nazi regime would soon embark upon a systematic program aimed at killing each and every Jewish man, woman, and child within its reach. The statement is true of top German officials no less than it is of the Jewish and non-Jewish civilian populations of the twenty countries within the Nazi orbit and of the governments and peoples of the Allied and neutral countries. Although it is tempting to look back upon the history of Nazi anti-Jewish utterances and measures and to detect in them an ostensible inner logic leading inexorably to mass murder, the consensus among historians today is that when the Nazi regime came to power in January 1933 it had no clear idea how the so-called Jewish problem might best be solved. It knew only that, from its perspective, Jews presented a problem that would need to be solved sooner or later, but finding a long-term solution was initially not one of the regime's most immediate priorities. Between 1933-41 various Nazi agencies proposed different schemes for dealing with Jews. -
Polish Jewry: a Chronology Written by Marek Web Edited and Designed by Ettie Goldwasser, Krysia Fisher, Alix Brandwein
Polish Jewry: A Chronology Written by Marek Web Edited and Designed by Ettie Goldwasser, Krysia Fisher, Alix Brandwein © YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2013 The old castle and the Maharsha synagogue in Ostrog, connected by an underground passage. Built in the 17th century, the synagogue was named after Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Eidels (1555 – 1631), author of the work Hidushei Maharsha. In 1795 the Jews of Ostrog escaped death by hiding in the synagogue during a military attack. To celebrate their survival, the community observed a special Purim each year, on the 7th of Tamuz, and read a scroll or Megillah which told the story of this miracle. Photograph by Alter Kacyzne. YIVO Archives. Courtesy of the Forward Association. A Haven from Persecution YIVO’s dedication to the study of the history of Jews in Poland reflects the importance of Polish Jewry in the Jewish world over a period of one thou- sand years, from medieval times until the 20th century. In early medieval Europe, Jewish communities flourished across a wide swath of Europe, from the Mediterranean lands and the Iberian Peninsu- la to France, England and Germany. But beginning with the first crusade in 1096 and continuing through the 15th century, the center of Jewish life steadily moved eastward to escape persecutions, massacres, and expulsions. A wave of forced expulsions brought an end to the Jewish presence in West- ern Europe for long periods of time. In their quest to find safe haven from persecutions, Jews began to settle in Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, and parts of Ukraine, and were able to form new communities there during the 12th through 14th centuries. -
A Jiddis Nyelv Szerkezete
BEVEZETÉS A JIDDIS NYELVBE ÉS KULTÚRÁBA 1 HB-N-452, AS/N-282/b, VKN-007.07 2005/2006. őszi félév Komoróczy Szonja Ráhel A jiddis nyelv szerkezete A jiddis nyelv meghatározása • zsidó nyelv • európai nyelv • germán nyelv • devokabularizált szláv nyelv • elrontott német, jüdisch-Deutsch, keveréknyelv, zsargon; • jiddisista szemlélet; • fúzionált nyelv A jiddis nyelv összetétele • szókincs, nyelvtan • hangkészlet • hangsúly Fusion language Max Weinreich: fusion language vs. mixed language Alapnyelvek (Stock Languages) Determináns nyelvek (Determinant Languages) Komponensek (Component Languages) A fúzió jellegzetességei • nem véletlenszerű • inter-komponens produktivitás • intra-komponens produktivitás • szemantikai játéktér több komponenssel • többszörös szóátvétel azonos alapnyelvből (más determináns) • komponens tudatosság • komponens, ill. alapnyelv közötti különbség felismerése A loshn koydesh komponens teljes héber (whole Hebrew) – a determináns nyelv beolvadt héber (merged Hebrew) – a sémi eredetű komponens. • Szövegelmélet (Text Theory) – Max Weinreich • Folyamatos átadás elmélete (Continual Transmission Theory) – Dovid Katz A laaz komponens BEVEZETÉS A JIDDIS NYELVBE ÉS KULTÚRÁBA 2 HB-N-452, AS/N-282/b, VKN-007.07 2005/2006. őszi félév Komoróczy Szonja Ráhel A jiddis nyelv dialektológiája A jiddis dialektológia kezdetei: • Maharil (Yakov ben Moshe haLevi Moellin) (1360-1427) a szokásokról és nyelvi (bney estraykh (bney khes בני עסטרײַך .bney rinus (bney hes), ill ,בני רינוס ;standardről • Isserlin (Yisroel ben Pesakhya) (1390-1460) • Yosselin (Yosef ben Moshe) (1423-1490) dialektus és ethnográfia • Johannes Buxtorf • Carl Wilheim Friedrich: Unterricht in der Judensprache und Schrift, zum Gebrauch für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte (1784), leírja és elemzi a dialektusokat. A modern jiddis dialektológia története: • Germanisták: Lazar Saineanu, Alfred Landau • Jiddisisták, Noyakh Prilutski (1882-1941) • YIVO, Berlin / Vilnius (1925-1939) – dialektológia, ethnográfia, folklór. -
Proposal for the Registry of the Latin American And
1 MEMORY OF THE WORLD REGISTER Collection of the Center of Documentation and Investigation of the Ashkenazi Community in Mexico (16th to 20th Century) (Mexico) Ref N° 2008-11 PART A 1.- SUMMARY The Center of Documentation and Investigation of the Ashkenazi Community of Mexico keeps, preserves and disseminates the Ashkenazi culture, the culture of the Jewish people that was on the verge of disappearing during the Nazi era. It also safeguards the historic memory of the Jewish minority in Mexico that arrived from Central and Eastern Europe. Introduction. From the end of the 19th century the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe decided to emigrate towards America so as to find better living conditions. At that moment, large groups of Jews cut their ties to the lands in which they had developed a way of life, a language (Yiddish) and a manner of being: the Ashkenazi. Their former life ended violently and forever. At first, because of the pogroms unleashed by the Cossacks and Ukrainians, at the dawn of the 20th century by the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution, but mostly from the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 30s that led to the loss of six million people and thus to the disappearance of the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe. At that moment, the Ashkenazi culture was threatened with extinction once the study centers and places for creating culture were wiped out during the Second World War. The few survivors of the Holocaust bore upon their shoulders the difficult task of rescuing themselves and their Jewish identity that had been so heavily menaced during the six years of war, the ghettos and the concentration and extermination camps. -
Sephardic Family History Research Guide
Courtesy of the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute Updated September 2008 Sephardic Family History Research Guide Sephardim Spanish Jews, who had lived on the Iberian Peninsula since 6 B.C.E, began to call themselves Sephardim during the early Middle Ages. After the expulsions from Spain (1492) and Portugal (1497), Jews fled to numerous places within Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and the New World. The word Sephardim came to refer to the Jews of these countries whose origins still remained in Spain or Portugal and who spoke Ladino and other Spanish regional dialects. Sephardic Genealogy Since the Sephardic world is so diverse and widespread, it is difficult to make generalizations about Sephardic genealogy. The sources, methods, and results of genealogical research on a family in Amsterdam, for example, differ greatly from research on a family in Aleppo or Salonika. However, there are several common characteristics: • Sephardic family names are much older than most Ashkenazi names. With Hebraic, Aramaic, Spanish or Arabic roots, Sephardic surnames are often traceable to the 11th century and even earlier. • In Sephardic naming customs, children can be named for both the living and the dead. Often, the firstborn son is named after the paternal grandfather, and the firstborn daughter is named after the paternal grandmother, so that given names may appear in every other generation. Resources at the Center for Jewish History General References Etsi (www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/1321): journal of Sephardic genealogy (French/English) Genealogy Institute Faiguenboim, Guilherme, Paulo Valadares, and Anna Campagnano. Dicionário Sefaradi de Sobrenomes. (Sao Paulo, Fraiha, 2003) Genealogy Institute CS 3010 .F35 2003 Gandhi, Maneka. -
Dovid Katz Phd Thesis University College London Submitted October' 1982
Dovid Katz PhD Thesis University College London Submitted October' 1982 Explorations in the History of the Semitic Component in Yiddish Vol. 1 I ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I entered the field of Yiddish Linguistics during the years I was privileged to study wider Professor Mikhl Herzog at Columbia University. I am profoundly grateful to Professor Herzog f or his continuous help, guidance and inspiration, during both my undergraduate enrolment at Columbia University in New York arid my postgraduate residence at University College London. I would ask Professor Herzog to regard this thesis as a provisional progress report and outline for further research. I have been fortunate to benefit from the intellectual environment of University College London while preparing the work reported In the thesis, and. most especially from the dedicated help, expert criticism and warm hospitality of my three supervisors, Professor Chimen Abrainsky and Professor Raphael Loewe of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and. Dr. Richard A. Hudson of the Department of Phonetics and. Linguistics. Professor Loewe and Dr. Hudson generously gave of their time to spend many hours discussing with me the issues and problems of the thesis. They both read the entire manuscript and made many valuable suggestions f or Improvement. Most have been incorporated into the text as submitted to the University of London. I hope to elaborate upon the remainder ii in future work. Professor Abramsky provided superb guidance in the fields of literary history and bibliography and generously made available to me numerous rare volumes from his magnificent private library. Needless to say, full responsibility for the proposals herein and. -
Max Weinreich at UCLA in 1948
UCLA’s First Yiddish Moment: Max Weinreich at UCLA in 1948 Mark L. Smith* (Photographs appear on the last page) In the summer of 1948, Max Weinreich brought the world of Yiddish culture to UCLA. He was the leading figure in Yiddish scholarship in the postwar period, and the two courses he taught at UCLA appear to be first instance of Jewish Studies at the university. His courses gave new direction to his students’ careers and to the academic study of Yiddish. From these courses there emerged six prominent Yiddish scholars (and at least three marriages) and evidence that Yiddish culture was a subject suitable for American research universities. Earlier that year, a strategically placed cartoon had appeared in a Yiddish-language magazine for youth published in New York. In it, a young man announces to his father, “Dad, I’ve enrolled in a Yiddish class at college.” His well-dressed and prosperous-looking father replies, in English, “What!? After I’ve worked for twenty years to make an American of you!?”1 The founding editor of the magazine, Yugntruf (Call to Youth), was Weinreich’s son, Uriel, himself to become the preeminent Yiddish linguist of his generation. The cartoon celebrates the elder Weinreich’s inauguration of Yiddish classes at New York’s City College in the fall of 1947, and it anticipates his visit to California the following summer. * Ph.D. candidate, Jewish History, UCLA. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the conference “Max Weinreich and America,” convened by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, December 4, 2011. -
The Status of Judeo-Spanish in a Diachronic and Synchronic Perspective Includes Six Translated Romances Plus Sample Texts of Biblical Literature and Modern Press
The status of Judeo-Spanish in a diachronic and synchronic perspective Includes six translated Romances plus sample texts of biblical literature and modern press Lester Fernandez Vicet Master thesis in Semitic Linguistics with Hebrew (60 credits) Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages University of Oslo May 2016 Abstract. The speech of the Sephardic Jews have been defined as both language and dialect, depending always on the standpoint of the analyzer, but is it a language on its own right or is it “just a dialect”? What is, then, the difference between both concepts? In the case Judeo-Spanish could be considered a language, what are the criteria taken into account in the classification? In an attempt to answer these questions I will provide facts on the origin of both terms, their modern and politicized use as well as on the historical vicissitudes of Judeo-Spanish and its speakers. Their literature, both laic and religious, is covered with an emphasis on the most researched and relevant genres, namely: the biblical Sephardic translations, the Romancero and the modern press of the 19th Century. A descriptive presentation of Judeo-Spanish main grammatical features precedes the last chapter, where both the diagnosis of Judeo-Spanish in the 20th Century, and its prognosis for the 21st, are given with the aim of determine its present state. Acknowledgements The conception and execution of the present work would have been impossible without the help and support of the persons that were, directly or indirectly, involved in the process. I want to express my gratitude, firstly, to my mentor Lutz E.