In the late nineteenth century in Europe and to some extent in the United States, the Jewish upper middle class--particularly the more affluent families--began to enter the cultural spheres of public life, especially in major cities such as Vienna, Berlin, Paris, New York, and London. While many aspects of society were closed to them, theater, the visual arts, music, and art publication were far more inviting, especially if they involved challenging aspects of modernity that might be less attractive to Gentile society. Jews had far less to lose in embracing new forms of expression, and they were very attracted to what was regarded as the universality of cultural expression. Ultimately, these new cultural ideals had an enormous influence on art institutions and artistic manifestations in America and may explain why Jews have been active in the arts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to a degree totally out of proportion to their presence in the US population. Jewish cultural activities and aspirations form the focus of the contributions to this volume. Invited authors include senior figures in the field such as Matthew Baigell and Emily Bilski, alongside authors of a younger generation such as Daniel Magilow and Marcie Kaufman. There is also an essay by noted Los Angeles artist and photographer Bill Aron. The guest editor of the volume, Ruth Weisberg, provides an Introduction that places the individual contributions in context.

An author and subject index to selected and American Anglo-Jewish journals of general and scholarly interests.

This multicultural reference work on Jewish folklore, legends, customs, and other elements of folklife is the first of its kind.

Displays of Jewish ritual objects in public, non-Jewish settings by Jews are a comparatively re-cent phenomenon. So too is the establishment of Jewish museums. This volume explores the origins of the Jewish Museum of New York and its evolution from collecting and displaying Jewish ritual objects, to Jewish art, to exhibiting avant-garde art devoid of Jewish content, created by non-Jews. Established within a rabbinic seminary, the museum’s formation and development reflect changes in Jewish society over the twentieth century as it grappled with choices between religion and secularism, particularism and universalism, and ethnic pride and assimilation.

This Handbook of Jewish Languages is an introduction to the many languages used by Jews throughout history, including Yiddish, Judezmo (Ladino) , and Jewish varieties of Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Berber, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Hungarian, Iranian, Italian, Latin American Spanish, Malayalam, Occitan (Provençal), Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Syriac, Turkic (Karaim and Krymchak), Turkish, and more. Chapters include historical and linguistic descriptions of each language, an overview of primary and secondary literature, and comprehensive bibliographies to aid further research. Many chapters also contain sample texts and images. This book is an unparalleled resource for anyone interested in Jewish languages, and will also be very useful for historical linguists, dialectologists, and scholars and students of minority or endangered languages. This paperback edition has been updated to include dozens of additional bibliographic references.

Iran, Israel, and the Jews have a relationship that is in the news all the time. But it cannot be understood just in modern terms. Its roots are 2,500 years old. This volume surveys that history through case studies and broad overviews—from the first intensive contacts under Cyrus the Great, through Persian influence on Judaism evident in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Babylonian Talmud, into the Middle Ages and the flourishing of Judeo-Persian literature and culture, and finally into modern times, when the political, social, and cultural ties are multifaceted and profound. Written by experts in both Iranian and Jewish studies, these essays convey the richness and complexity of a long and tumultuous relationship between two ancient and great civilizations, which continues to shape the world today.

This volume aims to show through various case studies how the interrelations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Iberia were negotiated in the field of images, objects and architecture during the Later Middle Ages and Early Modernity. . By looking at the ways pre-modern Iberians envisioned diversity, we can reconstruct several stories, frequently interwoven with devotional literature, poetry or Inquisitorial trials, and usually quite different from a binary story of simple opposition. The book’s point of departure narrates the relationship between images and conversions, analysing the mechanisms of hybridity, and proposing a new explanation for the representation of otherness as the complex outcome of a negotiation involving integration. Contributors are: Cristelle Baskins, Giuseppe Capriotti, Ivana Čapeta Rakić, Borja Franco Llopis, Francisco de Asís García García, Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, Nicola Jennings, Fernando Marías, Elena Paulino Montero, Maria Portmann, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Amadeo Serra Desfilis, Maria Vittoria Spissu, Laura Stagno, Antonio Urquízar-Herrera.

Presentations of offerings to the emperor-king on anniversaries of his accession became an important imperial ritual in the court of Franz Joseph I. This book explores for the first time the identity constructions of Orthodox Jewish communities in Jerusalem as expressed in their gifts to the Austro-Hungarian Kaisers at the time of dramatic events. It reveals how the beautiful gifts, their dedications, and their narratives, were perceived by gift-givers and recipients as instruments capable of acting upon various social, cultural and political processes. Lily Arad describes in a captivating manner the historical narratives of the creation and presentation of these gifts. She analyzes the iconography of these gifts as having transformative effect on the self-identification of the Jewish communities and examines their reception by the Kaisers and in the Austrian and the Palestinian Jewish press. This groundbreaking book unveils Jewish cultural and political strategies aimed to create local Eretz-Israel identities, demonstrating distinct positive communal identification which at times expressed national sentiments and at the same time preserved European identification.

Does the design of the Tabernacle in the wilderness correspond to God’s blueprint of Creation? The Christian Topography, a sixth-century Byzantine Christian work, presents such a cosmology. Its theory is based on the “pattern” revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai when he was told to build the Tabernacle and its implements “after their pattern, which is being shown thee on the Mount.” (Exod. 25: 40). The book demonstrates, through texts and images, the motifs that link the Tabernacle and Creation. It traces the long chain of transmission that connects the Jewish and Christian traditions from Syria and ancient Israel to France and Spain from the first through the fourteenth century, revealing new models of interaction between Judaism and Christianity.