Jewish Diaspora

The paper seeks first to provide an overview of the New Christian and Jewish colonizers and their networks on each of the three islands before the consolidation process began around 1650. After this introduction, I will discuss some of the trading connections through the use of some biographical examples so as to provide some understanding of the micro as well as the macro structures of Jewish and New Christian networks in the Caribbean and wider Atlantic worlds.

Discussing the Jewish space requires a comprehensive approach on its traditional typologies: religious space and for purification, space dedicated to study, and space for community gatherings. Simultaneously reflecting these coordinates and overlapping their physical attributes with their formal limitations, spiritual valences, and possible contextual meanings, the Jewish space might be an absolute community space. In spite of the vicissitudes of History and social and political persecution, generally, Jewish architecture used to mime and retrieve specific elements from the adoptive nations and features of the prominent styles of the period. The gradual emancipation and liberation of Jews from the " traditional " ghetto, by the mid nineteenth century, allowed the "opening" of Jewish quarters, the flourishing of Jewish life (especially cultural), and, above all, the development of an architecture as an expression of this newly achieved social condition. Jewish communities contributed, often essentially, to the rising of the urban life quality, and, generally, to the prosperity of the cities that gave them this chance. Hence, the two valences of Jewish architecture: one identitary, and the other programmatic. Meanwhile, the synagogue has always provided the " centrality " of life for all the Diaspora communities. During the last century, the community centre has pursued this role, too. Under these circumstances, which would still be the meaning of the " Diaspora " ? How might we define the " exile " , the " home " , and the " homeland " ?

» Palabras clave: traducción, Biblia, diáspora sefardí, exégesis. › Resumen El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar dos distintos paradigmas de traducción de textos sagrados: la traducción "literal" directa del hebreo de la Biblia de Ferrara (1553) y la traducción libre de los salmos de Daniel López Laguna-Espejo fiel de vidas que contiene los Psalmos de David en verso, obra devota, útil y deleitable (1720)-, obra inserta en el género de la reescritura bíblica, desarrollado durante el siglo XVII y comienzos del XVIII. Se trata de comprender un modo particular relación de los autores de la diáspora sefardí occidental con su religión y su cultura a partir de la exégesis de los textos sagrados que reflejan los dos criterios de traducción aquí expuestos. Se intentará demostrar que las diferencias exegéticas de la obra de López Laguna están intrínsecamente relacionadas con su condición de judío nuevo-converso al judaísmo en Jamaica luego de escapar de la Inquisición en Portugal-, lo cual implica que sus creencias religiosas están atravesadas por la cultura católica ibérica.

The Jewish Diaspora applies to all communities of Jews who throughout history, by reasons of exile or escape, evictions or migrations, reside in any part of the world outside their homeland of Israel. The results of these displacements have always been the same – Jews of the Diaspora surviving through methods of acculturation, assimilation, and accommodation. This paper examines the Diaspora of Jews to Asia with arguments supporting the application of Port Jew theories and how they could be, and should be, used to evaluate the history of Jewish settlements throughout southern and eastern Asia.

Looking over the historical emergence of the concept of “race,” critical race theorists remind us that this concept arose concurrently with the advent of European exploration as a justification and rationale for conquest and domination of the globe beginning in the fifteenth century of the Common Era (CE), and reaching its apex in the early twentieth century CE. Geneticists tell us that there is often more variability within a given so-called “race” than between “races,” and that there are no essential genetic markers linked specifically to “race.” This paper investigates the social construction of “race” in historical perspective.

Recently, communities of Israeli immigrants have been formed in Australia. Although Israeli immigrants in Australia now number over 10,000, their Israeli communities have been little studied. The diasporic
identity of Israeli emigrants in Australia, termed ‘Ausraelis’ in this thesis, is the focus of this study. It explores questions about the national, religious and host-society affiliation components of that identity.
The thesis is based on three data sources. The first are quantitative: the Australian-Jewish community survey (Gen08) which included 356 Israel-born respondents (out of almost 6,000 participants); the 2006
Australian Census; and data from 77 Israel-born participants amongst 602 Jewish immigrants, in a 2005 survey by Rutland and Gariano. The second are qualitative sources, collected in fieldwork: participant
observation on the Tapuz online social forum for Israelis in Australia; 18 interviews; and the responses of participants in a focus group conducted for the Gen08 survey. The third are text-based sources and
include: a review of Eton, the Israeli newspaper in Australia; literary sources in the form of fictional novels and memoirs. The methodological strategy chosen for analysis combines quantitative methods, mainly descriptive statistical analysis, subject-based categorisation and participant observation. Examining the experiences of Israeli emigrants in Australia, the study points to a shift in the push-and-pull factors for immigration from familial to economic and security-laden motives. Also revealed is a sub-group of Ausraelis, the ‘desperate’, who challenge past paradigms and perceptions about emigration from Israel. Analysing the interaction of Ausraelis with the Jewish community, the study found that most Ausraelis can be categorised as peripherals, with relatively low levels of involvement in community activities. The social cohesiveness of the Israeli community in Australia was found to be relatively strong, despite its lack of an institutional basis. With regard to religious affiliation, the study identified most Ausraelis as seculars, who employ Israeli civil religion as the primary means for transmission of Israeli national identity to their children.
The policy implications of the study point to the need for a new basis of interaction between the State of Israel and the established Jewish community on one hand, and between the established Jewish
community and Israelis immigrants on the other.

Presentation for the  Jüd. Institut f. Erwachsenenbildung, Praterstern 1 , 1020 Wien , 21.01.2020, 18:30: https://www.vhs.at/de/k/288502204

Mit Eroberung des Reiches Israel durch die Assyrer im Jahr 722 v. Chr. und der Deportation der dort siedelnden nördlichen zehn Stämme verliert sich ihre Spur in der biblischen Überlieferung. Seit der Antike regte diese Geschichte die Fantasie von Bibelexegeten an, die die verlorenen Stämme meist weit im Osten suchen wollten. Mit der Entdeckung Amerikas begannen neue Vermutungen bis hin zum Buch Mormon. Der Vortrag geht der Geschichte dieser Spekulationen nach.

In the influential 1930 proletarian novel by Mike Gold, Jews without Money, a young narrator travels with his parents to the then suburbs of Brooklyn with a “Zionist leader” to consider the real estate speculator’s offer to buy into racially segregated housing tracts. Observing the isolation of the neighborhood and the ostentatious whiteness of the Zionist developer, Gold forces implicit connections among whiteness, Zionism, and speculation in land. Reinforced by the narrator’s positive identification with a working-class Jew who proudly identifies as racially marked, the young Mikey contrasts working-class antiracism with the class pretentions and racism of Zionism. This essay explores the Jewish world in which Gold’s novel was written, looking at the ways in which Jewish writers and journalists in the Communist Party and other left-wing organizations articulated an anti-Zionist politics as part of a global critique of capitalism and imperialism. This essay argues that left-wing anti-Zionism articulated an ontologically different concept of Jewish being-in-the-world up to and after the Holocaust, one that centered solidarity and diasporic anti-imperialism in the face of fascist violence. Linking anti-Zionism with a Jewish left critique of whiteness, this essay provides a counternarrative to the assumption that assimilation, bourgeois liberalism, and support for Zionism were teleological certainties for the Jewish Left, or that nationalism was the default response to the European Judeocide.

Walking Walking Out and Walking Through_Transitional Space and Traumatic Time, In: Y. Ataria et al. (eds.), Interdisciplinary Handbook of Trauma and Culture, Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016

In the following pages I will try to propose a multi-disciplinary way of looking at walking and trauma, combining several points of view:  anthropological, religious, historical and phenomenological.  Walking in itself has been and still is the subject of well-known literary and philosophical discussions, most notably Walter Benjamin’s essay, “The Return of the Flâneur,”  as well as important scholarly works such as the essays of De Certeau  and others
I present and discuss walking within the boundaries of Jewish mysticism as a practice of exile.  Walking as ritual is a case of a-nomistic practice, that is, practice and ritual that are not included in the ritual and legal corpus of Judaism (halakha). I follow stages of processing trauma and as they correlate phenomenologically with walking and the categories of the discussion of trauma.

The phenomenon of the medieval Jewish state of Khazsaria (650-969) poses many puzzles to historians. The biggest and most important one is the question of the ethnicity of the Khazars: Were they really Jews or "only" Turks who converted to Judaism? This text tries to find an answer by analysing contempory sources.

In a book published in 2012, Le judaïsme ancien du VIe siècle avant notre ère au IIIe siècle de notre ère. Des prêtres aux rabbins, Simon Claude Mimouni suggested a new model on Palestinian Judaism after 70, defining three Judaisms: rabbinic, Christian and synagogual. The present article deals with this new hypothesis of a third, synagogual Judaism. It goes back over the sources of this hypothesis, insisting notably on the important role of Goodenough and his followers, and intends to clear up its relation to other recent historiographical models. It tries to refute the counter-arguments that are likely to be raised against this hypothesis, using essentially rabbinic literature, but also archaeology and epigraphy. It shows how the synagogual hypothesis helps to give a better understanding of a number of issues tackled by rabbinic literature (Jewish binitarism, relations between light, emanation and hypostasis, Jewish deviance, biblical canon and translation of the Bible into Greek,qedusha prayer, circumcision and patriarch). It finally opens up new prospects on some points of the hypothesis, which is still under construction: the sources of synagogual Judaism, its two components, Aramaic and Hellenist, the role of priests, the period that goes before 70 and the Diaspora, mysticism and messianism.

Dans un ouvrage paru en 2012,Le judaïsme ancien du VIe siècle avant notre ère au IIIe siècle de notre ère. Des prêtres aux rabbins, Simon Claude Mimouni a proposé un nouveau modèle sur le judaïsme palestinien d’après 70, celui des trois judaïsmes : rabbinique, chrétien et synagogal. C’est sur cette hypothèse d’un troisième judaïsme, qualifié de synagogal, que porte notre article. Il retrace les sources de cette hypothèse, en insistant notamment sur l’importance d’E.R. Goodenough et de ses disciples, et tente de la situer par rapport à d’autres modèles historiographiques récents. Il s’efforce de lever les obstacles qu’elle est susceptible de rencontrer, essentiellement à partir de la littérature rabbinique, mais aussi de l’archéologie et de l’épigraphie. Il s’attache aux questions, abordées notamment au sein de la littérature rabbinique, que l’hypothèse synagogale contribue à mieux éclairer (le binitarisme juif, le motif de la lumière et le couple émanation/hypostase, les déviances juives, le canon biblique et la traduction de la Bible en grec, la prière de laqedusha, la circoncision et le patriarche). Il ouvre enfin des perspectives sur certains aspects de l’hypothèse encore en élaboration : les sources du judaïsme synagogal, ses deux composantes araméenne et helléniste, le rôle des prêtres, la période d’avant 70 et la Diaspora, la mystique et le messianisme

Documentaries have increasingly used the first person, with a number of prominent filmmakers finding critical and commercial success with this intimate approach. Jewish filmmakers have particularly thrived in this genre, using it to explore disparate definitions of the self in relation to the larger groups of family and community.

In First Person Jewish, Alisa S. Lebow examines more than a dozen films from Jewish artists to reveal how the postmodern impulse to turn the lens inward intersects provocatively (and at times unwittingly) with historical tropes and stereotypes of the Jew. Focusing her efforts on Jewish filmmakers working on the margins, Lebow analyzes the work of Jonathan Caouette, Chantal Akerman, and Alan Berliner, among others, also including a discussion of her own first person film Treyf (1998), made with Cynthia Madansky. The filmmakers in this study, Lebow argues, are confronting a desire to both define and reimagine contemporary Jewishness.

Using a multidisciplinary approach to first person films, Lebow shows how this form of self-expression is challenging both autobiography and documentary and, in the process, changing the art of cinema and recording the cultural shifts of our time

Issue 21 (January 2016) of the online magazine CAFE DISSENSUS guest edited by Dr Navras Jaat Aafreedi, Assistant Professor, Department of History & Civilization, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Gautam Buddha University, Greater NOIDA, UP, India. A compilation of 29 articles by Jewish and Muslim (Indian and Pakistani) scholars and journalists.

The idea of a society in exile, such as that described by Marc Raeff in Russia Abroad, his study of the interwar Russian diaspora, is a useful framework for gathering together the experiences and contributions of a small group of exiles and émigré designers who came to Australia from Vienna.

Everyone has a theory about the Voynich Manuscript… so here is mine.
The Voynich Manuscript was written in the 15th century, and so far to date, no other example, in this form of writing exists in the world. My theory is that it is written in the language of the Khazars, who were Turkic Jews, and whose written language disappeared around the 13th – 14th centuries. Since it is said that there were no mistakes in the manuscripts writing, I hypothesize that it was possibly hand copied from a previously older version.
Back to the Language itself, it is not written in code. By using a simple letter exchange method, you can convert to English letters and then phonetically utilize the Hebrew language to give key root words in an agglutinative language. I first discovered that the He and Cheth, Hebrew letters were very similar to two of the Voynich characters in the manuscript, and from there plugged them into page 14 and worked slowly discovering the alphabet in use.
An agglutinative language combines morphemes to create a new word that still contains the original root words, for example: Some words are quite plain Like ‘achur’ for West, but you have to break down others ‘spquzr’ is “spq” means  entrance + “zr” means to vex awake, hence the word East.
We have similar words in the English language, remember learning about compound words in school.  An example of this in English would be ‘firetruck’.  We all know what a fire truck is, but if you were to decipher from another language you would think it was a ‘truck on fire’. The process works in the Voynich the same way, and changes will be made when new information comes to light, but this is a start in actually being able to interpret and understand what someone wrote, in the “book that cannot be read”.
When deciphering, the language comes out garbled… so first we will use our English language skills to guess and create a more readable understanding of the words, then I’ll show the agglutinative version, and last show how it was phonetically translated.  Any _______ are areas where I could not make out the letters due to erosion, blurry, or just plain missing. Notes on translation pages are just part of my research and theory.
I do hope you enjoy the last paragraph of the Voynich manuscript. I feel this paragraph is the most important as it seems to speak of a Jewish Diaspora and is very revealing.
Monica Yokubinas

From the end of the 19th century until after the Second World War, landsmanshaftn, or mutual aid societies formed by Jewish immigrants from the same hometowns, actively participated in the cultural and economic integration of Polish Jews in France. After the Holocaust, they likewise became a privileged place where survivors and recent refugees from Poland could share their traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, these societies still receive relatively little attention as historical sources of the Holocaust, a reality made all the more regrettable by the fact that they have been gradually disappearing since the 1980s. This article explores the possibilities of gaining access to a “lost world” despite rare and scattered sources, a rich tapestry of sociability and memories of the Holocaust woven into the post-war landsmanshaftn.

This article will challenge the assumption that the challah bread is not of Ashkenazi origin but instead of Sephardic origin. It claims to uncover the place of challah bread in history through a historiographical analysis, followed by a study of old sources that mentions it-even including the first recipe-thus, bringing down the previously established postulates. This article also purports to offering an explanation on the link between Ashkenazi and challah bread, which has made it the paragon-alongside the gefiltefish-of the Jewish cuisine from Eastern Europe. Resumen Este artículo pretende poner en tela de juicio el origen de la preparación culinaria del pan trenzado llamado Jalá, arrojando luz que no es de origen askenazí, sino sefardí. Pretende ahondar en las investigaciones sobre la presencia del pan jalá en la historia a través de un análisis historiográfico, seguido de un estudio de fuentes antiguas que lo mencionan. A continuación, proporciona una descripción de la primera receta de jalá, haciendo tambalear los postulados previamente establecidos. Este artículo pretende también ofrecer una explicación sobre la razón del vínculo que existe entre la cultura askenazí y el pan trenzado, para, a fin de cuentas, postular un origen sefardí para la jalá. Palabras clave: alimentación; historia de España; jalá; judíos; sefardí; askenazí. 66 Hélène Jawhara Piñer https://doi.org/10.46661/meldar.5275

“The Golden Age” of the Kabbalah among émigrés from Iberia began in the last decades of the sixteenth century. This was the culmination of a complex, lengthy, and gradual process in which the Kabbalah developed, took shape, and moved from the esoteric world of the initiated to the general public. We have a relatively great deal of information on the spread of Kabbalah in the new conditions of the sixteenth century. However, did the process occur only after the expulsions from the Iberian peninsula or had it begun before then? This article discusses the status of the Kabbalah in Jewish society, its dissemination, and its influence on the intellectual and religious world of the Jews of Spain between the persecutions of 1391 and the expulsions at the end of the fifteenth century. From this perspective, the article examines the writings from that period and their role as links in the chain of the development of the Kabbalah among Iberian Jewry and its descendants. The article discusses works that were written in this period and presents the well-known Kabbalists and their contribution to the dissemination of the Kabbalah. Thus the article refers to how the Kabbalah was studied and the framework of study of the yeshivot in which it was taught—by way of examining the information we have and clarifying claims asserted in previous research. An additional aspect of the article discusses the role of Kabbalists in the community and estimates that role to have been an important factor in enabling the spread of the Kabbalah in society. On the basis of the data presented in the article, it then goes on to address the main issue at hand: the identification of a gradual increase in the status of the Kabbalah over the course of the fifteenth century (notably, nearly all of the evidence we have refers to the Castilian sphere and not to that of Aragon). This increase is expressed in the Kabbalists’ activity in the main schools and the presence of major yeshivot in which the head of the yeshiva inculcated his disciples with esoteric learning. An additional manifestation of the spread of the Kabbalah and its penetration into the central rabbinic discourse is found in the fact that Kabbalistic considerations started to inform mainstream halakhic rulings in works written before the expulsion.
Consequently we may conclude that part of the process that led to the spread of the Kabbalah in the century after the expulsion began already in the fifteenth century, a century that in many ways shaped the Sefardi heritage that the émigrés took with them to their new homes.

The relocation of Jews after the Holocaust depended on many factors, and as time passed many survivors did not return to their previous homes, or decided to relocate shortly after returning. This paper examines the Jews of Cluj (Kolozsvar) and by extension Transylvania and Romania during the months and years following the Holocaust. Romania by various estimates, depending on whether the population counts are Romanian or Hungarian, at one time had a Jewish population upward of 700,000 yet today that number is fewer than 10,000. What happened, how and why is explored in this work.

This is a short intellectual biography of my father, Hans J. Epstein, focusing on his interest in falconry, via medieval history, and later his interests in naturalism (mostly lepidopterology). It is also of interest in terms of some of his contacts in the US, figures like Ernst Mayr, and Bill Cottrell.

Many commentators agree on two basic conclusions about the development of 2 Maccabees: (1) the letters in 2 Macc 1:1-2:18 were not written by the author of the rest of the history and (2) the account of the rededication of the temple in 2 Macc 10:1-8 has been relocated or inserted in the text.  In contrast to the positions of these scholars, the primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the author of 2 Maccabees deliberately composed 2 Macc 10:1-8 for its current position in the epitome.  To this end, we will respond to the arguments against both the location of this passage and its composition by the author of the rest of 2 Maccabees, contentions which depend on finding evidence of narrative disruption, distinctive language and style, and conflicting content between 2 Macc 10:1-8 and its context.  Ultimately, we will see how the account of the repossession and purification of the Jerusalem temple is essential in accomplishing one of the main goals of the history, namely the explanation of the origin of Hanukkah, and is interconnected with the rest of the narrative with regard to its placement, language, style, and content.

This paper attempts to assess the complex relationship between the Left and the State of Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 war. It does so by analysing the complex relationship between the Soviet Union, Israel and the biggest Communist Party in the Western World, i.e. the Italian one (PCI). Importantly, it attempts to differentiate between the Soviet campaign against its Jewish Dissidents and the Italian PCI's anti-Zionism. A threefold conclusion is reached: The Soviet campaign against its internal dissidents' right to expatriate, while assuming anti-Semitic tones, was not animated by cultural anti-Semitism, but political motivations; secondly, the Italian PCI's position on Israel cannot be reduced to the Soviet position; thirdly, claims of PCI's anti-Semitism seem to be disproved by primary sources pointing out the Communist Party's rejection for such practices.

The kingdom of Naples hosted ancient, conspicuous, and prosperous
Jewish communities. The Apulian “Giudecche” were particularly rich
and developed because of their commercial role. In Puglia, the Jews
played a central role in cross-cultural trade and loan activity. The
Sephardic from Puglia adopted the same settlement strategies as the
“Port-Jews” and resided in the main port cities and along the commercial
routes. The Speranza’s family fully reflects this approach and after the
expulsion of the Jews from Southern Italy they moved to the territories of
the State of the Church, where they were authorized by the Holy See to
set up a bank in Vetralla.

Keywords: Migrations, Sephardim, ethnic minorities, tax.

In an era when identity politics is being co-opted into wider nationalist agendas and diversity increasingly embroiled in ethnic division and separatism, how have artists engaged with cultural translation to open up the act of interpretation?

Vittorio Dan Segre, emigrato in Palestina nel 1939, ha intitolato il suo memoir «Storia di un ebreo fortunato». Un titolo che ben si adatta alla vicenda di un altro ebreo italiano, Dario Soria (1912-1980) che scelse, nel 1939, come terra di rifugio gli Stati Uniti d'America. Nel 1944 i familiari di Dario rimasti a Roma, dopo un lungo silenzio, emersero dalla tragedia della persecuzione e della guerra: i contatti epistolari tra New York e Roma si erano interrotti nel 1942. Una lettera, giunta in America dopo la liberazione della Capitale, li riallacciò. Con la gioia del ritrovarsi sani e salvi, Dario e i suoi familiari ripresero allora i progetti di lavoro che avevano iniziato negli anni precedenti il conflitto, progetti transnazionali che combinavano risorse, relazioni ed esperienze di due mondi. Grazie alla lettura di un epistolario che abbraccia il periodo 1939-1958 (lettere di Dario Soria, del padre Lello Soria e dello zio Giorgio Soria)1 racconto in questo saggio un periodo della vita di Dario Soria e mi soffermo su un aspetto della sua vicenda personale: quello che lo vede imprenditore in campi diversi dall'industria alimentare a quella discografica.Le storie individuali possono fare da utile contrappunto alle analisi generali sul fenomeno della diaspora ebraica (Stille, 1991). La brillante carriera di Dario Soria offre l'occasione per riflettere sul mondo degli affari americano così dinamico rispetto a quello italiano degli anni della Ricostruzione, un mondo dominato dal consumo di massa, dalla novità della radio e della televisione, dalla pubblicità (Fasce, 2012). Era un mondo che tanto affascinava lo zio di Dario, il banchiere romano Giorgio, che accompagnava e sosteneva il nipote nella sua avventura oltreoceano, dagli investimenti nella Buitoni Products Inc. alla creazione della etichetta discografica cetra-Soria. Gli affari dei Soria tra le due sponde dell'oceano furono condotti in modo innovativo e brillante, ma contavano su un capitale sociale e reti etniche non sufficienti per consolidarsi nell'universo spietato delle grandi corporazioni e dei potenti interessi delle associazioni di categoria dei produttori2. Alla fine, Dario Soria rinuncerà a gestire la società cetra-Soria che aveva creato con l'apporto della famiglia di origine e continuerà la sua carriera di successo come produttore e manager discografico nelle grandi majors, alla emi prima e poi alla rca Victor. La «fortuna» di Dario Soria è stata il frutto delle iniziali risorse familiari e delle capacità imprenditoriali, sviluppate nel corso delle sue esperienze lavorative oltreoceano.

Neturei Karta is a Jewish group that usually considered belongs to larger ‘ultra-Orthodox’ Judaism. This group established its community in Jerusalem since early 19th century, but never acknowledges the modern state of Israel and its administration. Its members never take Israeli Shekel notes, never join the Army Reserve, which is compulsory for adult Israeli, never sing Israel’s national anthem, never celebrate Israel Independence Day, and never set foot to the holiest place in the Judaism, the Wailing Wall – but they pay taxes to the state they hate so much. This paper explores the nature of this group and its position against Zionism. The main focus is about their anti-Zionism ideology in connection with the notion of Jewish ‘homeland’ and ‘diaspora’. Neturei Karta is a transnational religious phenomenon. It may differ from other transnational religious groups in its challenge to Zionism on the issues of ‘(Jewish) homeland’ and ‘Jewish diaspora’. This dissident voice within the Jewish history is deemed important to reassess the the exercise of power by Israeli in dominating and colonizing the Other, the Palestinians.

Seit geraumer Zeit lässt sich eine Neuorientierung in den kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Debatten um Migration, Kulturkontakt, Imperialismus und Globalisierung feststellen, in denen der Begriff der Diaspora eine zentrale Rolle spielt. Die diasporische Situation – das (Über-)Leben als ethnische oder kulturelle Gemeinschaft in der Fremde – erweist sich als Paradigma der globalisierten Welt. Der Begriff der Diaspora gestattet, sich globalen Phänomenen in Gesellschaft, Kultur und Literatur zuzuwenden, die sich einer nationalstaatlichen Zuordnung entziehen, obwohl sie durch das Vokabular und die Denkmodelle, die für die Beschreibung des Nationalstaats entwickelt wurden, mitgeprägt sind. Die Diaspora situiert sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen kosmopolitischer Losgelöstheit und einem radikalen Nationalismus, der sich nicht länger territorial definiert.
In diesem Band soll der Begriff in seinen unterschiedlichen Dimensionen und in seiner Bedeutung für die aktuelle kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Debatte vorgestellt und diskutiert werden.

Jews have for centuries contributed much to Polish culture and society. Jews were an integral part of what it meant to be Polish. Unfortunately, from a height of over 3 million before the Holocaust, only an estimated 10-20 thousand Jews still live in Poland today. Poland now finds itself at a crossroads of sorts, where long-standing official policies, some church teachings, and personal belief systems conspire in the exclusion of Jews, while a still relatively small but growing segment of the population genuinely desires to welcome Jews back into the cultural, political, and social life of the country. This practical guide is designed to help people realize the goal of opening Poland’s doors (and the doors of other Eastern European countries) to Jewish people for the enrichment of the nation and all its residents.

The war between the Mongols and the Korean state Goryeo lasted a total of 52 years (from 1218 to 1270). We are still puzzled:
1. Why did this war last so long?
2. Why didn't the Mongols destroy the Goryeo state?
3. Why did the Mongols send their princesses to Goryeo after the war?

I try to give answer to these questions while referring to Israel background of these two nations, based on letters of Mongolian emperors to the government of Goryeo as cited in Yuan Gaoli Jishi (元 高麗 紀事) published by Wang Guowei (王國維, 1877–1927) in 1917. This source has been overseen with by most historians.

This essay has two parts. In the first, I focus on the dangers of what
Zygmunt Bauman called allosemitism. I draw on recent Polish history and paint
a dynamic portrait of diasporic life in contemporary Poland, which has become
divided into two opposite and often warring camps: the one convinced that those
who claim Jewish descent should embrace “pure Jewish identity,” understood in religious
terms, versus the other, which still leans towards assimilation and experiments
with a mixed form of allegiance and “identitarian concessions.” In the second part,
I analyze the case of Jacques Derrida as the paradigmatic example of the “impure”
Jewish (non)identity, which I endorse and propose as the way out of the dilemmas
confronting diasporic Jews today, who are caught in the net of the dominant identitarian
categories.

Israeli playwright Yehushua Sobol is a well-recognized contributor to Holocaust drama.  His plays are not only an important contribution to the animated discussion about the holocaust in Israeli society but have also legitimated and enabled a public conversation about the holocaust in Germany since the 1980s.  And Sobol's work is certainly an important source when wishing to either teach or discuss the genre of Holocaust drama in general.  However, literature can be surprising—and a play is not always exclusively dedicated to the historical period and events that it describes. Ghetto,  the earliest and best known of Sobol's Holocaust plays, was originally written in Hebrew. It features a number of characters whose political ideologies reflect a number of contemporary social, economic, and political facets of Israeli society.