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Jewish Political Studies Review Abstracts
Volume 10, Numbers 1 & 2 (Spring 5758/1998)
The Jewish Chautauqua Society (JCS), founded in Philadelphia
in 1893 by Reform Rabbi Henry Berkowitz, evolved from an
organization dedicated to popularizing Jewish knowledge among
Jews to one devoted to teaching non-Jews about Judaism. Modelled
on Chautauqua Institution, the Society established reading
circles, a Correspondence School for Hebrew Sunday School
teachers, religious schools for the children of Jewish farmers,
published textbooks, and, beginning in 1897, held annual
assemblies for more than forty years.
Since 1939 the Society has been under the sponsorship of the
National Federation of Temple Brotherhoods, a lay Reform
organization. It expanded the programs of the JCS, and today
primarily supports rabbinic resident lectureships on Judaism at
colleges and universities throughout the United States, an
outgrowth of university lectures that the JCS began in 1909.
Since its inception, the JCS has sought to combat anti-Semitism,
dispel prejudice, and create understanding -- through education
about a minority and religious ethnic component of American
society.
The majority of the Jews of Iraq in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries lived in three major cities: Basra, Baghdad
and Mosul. In the first half of the nineteenth century a process
of modernization began in the Jewish community, paralleling the
policy of Westernization and modernization in the Ottoman Empire,
as reflected in the Tanzimet. The Jewish community was declared a
millet, a religious community enjoying internal autonomy in
religion and education. Like other minorities within the empire,
the Jewish community was granted equal rights and security of
life and property.
The recognition of the Jewish community as a millet affected
its reorganization. The hakham bashi, elected by the 80-member
General Council, served as the head of the community, though
actually, absolute control was in the hands of a narrow class of
merchants, bankers, and rich landowners. Economically, the Jews
engaged in foreign and domestic trade and in banking, two areas
which they came to dominate.
The mid-nineteenth century marked the beginning of
development, progress, and prosperity within the Jewish
community, which was reflected both in growing economic affluence
and the modernization of education. The introduction of modern
education, in which the Jews preceded the Muslim society around
them, inaugurated a new era of far-reaching change in the
community life.
The Jews of Iraq were not characterized by any significant
rifts, splits, or polarization. They succeeded in maintaining
their religious framework and their collective and communal
uniqueness.
This article grapples with the impact of communal self-liquidation of North African Jewry in general and the Algerian
diaspora in particular, during the 1950s and 1960s, based on new,
primary source materials -- the emigration destination being
France. The influx and integration of North African Jews into
France during this period provoked a revolution in the French
Jewish community, leading to the demographic domination of the
North African Jewish component of French Jewry, after that
community was dominated for many years by the Germanic and
Eastern European components. What were some of the causes for
emigration into France? What challenges were posed by French
society for the new arrivals? What were the emigrants'
contributions to the geographical expansion of French Jewry, and
to Jewish communal life in France? These and other aspects
featured in this study are part of a book manuscript in progress,
entitled: The Jews of France and their Social and Political
Transformation: 1945-1995.
The role of the "religious element" in the contemporary
Ukrainian Jewish movement is examined in the wider context of
Jewish politics in that country. Analyses focus on the reasons
for and objectives of the political advancement of Ukrainian
rabbinic leaders in the second half of the 1990s and the growth
of their influence on Jewish community-building in post-Soviet
Ukraine. Also discussed is the political nature of the rabbinic
leadership and the place of Jewish spiritual leaders as a ruling
group within the disposition of political forces in the local
Jewish community.
Hans J. Morgenthau's legacy has been undergoing a scholarly
reevaluation. From an earlier perception of Morgenthau as a
one-dimensional advocate of pure realpolitik, more recent
scholarly literature has been emphasizing significant
transcendent themes in Morgenthau's thought, that reflect his
concerns relating to the importance of morality in statecraft,
man's philosophic quest, and even spirituality. Drawing on his
teaching, unpublished works, and lesser known published works,
this work contends that Morgenthau had significant spiritual
concerns that underlined his assumptions about man's behavior in
the political realm, upon which his understanding of
international behavior was ultimately based. Morgenthau's
sensitivity to spiritual concerns also seemed to run parallel to
his strong sense of Jewish identification which he expressed
during the course of his lifetime and in particular through his
involvement with the causes of Soviet Jewry and Israel, during
the final decade of his life.
It is argued here, that Protestant theologian Reinhold
Niebuhr had a significant impact on Morgenthau, with whom he
believed that without an understanding of the spiritual forces
which drive man, man, his power seeking, and his political
behavior in society could not be fully understood.
This essay extends an interpersonal model to rabbinic
interpretation of biblical foreign policy. Specifically, a wall-
boundary analysis is made of ancient Israel's relation to four
categories of nations: (a) Amalek and the Canaanites, (b) Ammon
and Moab, (c) Edom and Egypt, and (d) the other nations. King
Saul's counternormative behavior is discussed toward (a) King
Agag of Amalek and (b) the Hebrew priests of God at Nob. Wall
permeability becomes normative with an unassaulted inner
boundary. When the boundary is under assault, however, wall
permeability is expressly forbidden.
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