“Every Jew is a Zionist,and every Zionist is a spy!” The story of Jewish social assistance networks in Communist Czechoslovakia

This article explores some of the major operations of the Czechoslovak secret police (State Security Forces, StB) against individuals involved in organising Jewish social assistance networks during the 1950s, as documented by fragments of case files preserved in the Security Services Archive in Prague. While there is much focus on victims of the Prague show trial of the so-called “Conspiracy Centre,” all of whom were members of the top echelons of the Communist Party, the individuals who tried to revive Jewish life and secure the well-being of the needy in a country swept by anti-Jewish sentiment raked up by that trial remain largely unknown. In this work, we learn who these people were and what they did, and how the Communist regime punished them for their involvement. As an original contribution, the article details the search for safe methods of delivering humanitarian aid to Czechoslovak Holocaust survivors after the expulsion of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1950, from the initial attempts to use Israeli channels to the gradual legalisation of JDC aid under Swiss cover organisations.     

East European Jewish migrants and settlers in Belgium, 1880–1914: a transatlantic perspective

This article analyses whether the Jews leaving Tsarist Russia and the Austro‐Hungarian Empire, part of the transatlantic mass migration of the end of the nineteenth century, became subject to state control. Most emigrants from Eastern Europe in this period passed through the ports of Bremen, Hamburg and Antwerp. In the 1880s only a few emigrants were not welcome in America and sent back to Europe, but economic competition and the supposed health threat immigrants posed meant the US became the trendsetter in implementing protectionist immigration policy in the 1890s. More emigrants were returned to Europe because of the newly erected US federal immigration control stations, but many more were denied the possibility to leave for the United States by the remote control mechanism which the American authorities enforced on the European authorities and the shipping companies. At the Russian–German border and the port of Antwerp, shipping companies stopped transit migrants who were deemed medically unacceptable by American standards. The shipping companies became subcontractors for the American authorities as they risked heavy fines if they transported unwanted emigrants. The Belgian authorities refused to collaborate with the Americans and defended their sovereignty, and made shipping companies in the port of Antwerp solely responsible for the American remote migration control. Due to the private migration control at the port of Antwerp transit migrants became stuck in Belgium. The Belgian authorities wanted these stranded migrants to return “home.” It seems that the number of stranded migrants remained manageable as the Belgian authorities did not make the shipping companies pay the bill. They were able to get away by making some symbolic gestures and these migrants were supported by charitable contributions from the local Jewish community.     

Limits to “Jewish power”: how Slovak Jewish leaders negotiated restitution of property after the Second World War

This article examines how Jewish leaders in post-war Slovakia negotiated the restitution of property with the legislative and executive powers in Bratislava and Prague. The Jewish leaders were affiliated with two Slovak Jewish organisations founded in 1945: the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Slovakia (Ústredný sväz ?idovských nábo?enských obci na Slovensku, ÚS?NO) and the Organisation of Victims of Racial Persecution at the Hands of the Fascist Regime in Bratislava (Sdru?enie fa?istickým re?imom rasovo prenasledovaných v Bratislave, SRP). The Secretary General of the SRP, Dr Vojtech Winterstein, was the main voice negotiating and promoting the interests of the post-war Jewish community. His invaluable collection of documents – the Winterstein collection – provides the source base for this article.     

‘Acapulco in the Atlantic’: Revisiting Sosúa,a Jewish Refugee Colony in the Caribbean

This article examines the foundation objectives, settlement history and ethnic relations of the tiny but idyllic Sosúa in the Dominican Republic. Sosúa was established in 1940 as the first and only Jewish agricultural colony resulting from discussions at the 1938 Evian conference in France, which unsuccessfully addressed the growing refugee displacement produced by Nazi Germany's relentless persecution of Jews and other minorities. Fleeing from the grasp of one dictator to the ostensible embrace of Hitler's Caribbean counterpart, Rafael Trujillo, Jews in the tropical settlement were celebrated as the solution to this underdeveloped, peasant-populated, mainly agricultural northern region. Yet, the lack of international, institutional and financial commitment, settler apathy for intensive labour, and feelings of cultural displacement meant that the colony never reached Trujillo's desired yet wildly unrealistic projection of 100,000 settlers. Instead, no more than 500 settlers passed through Sosúa from 1940 to 1947. Today, the town thrives as a transnational site of displaced settlers, sex tourism and itinerant labour, with its markers of Jewish ethnic and settlement history barely visible.     

“Live in Israel. Live the Dream”: Identity,Belonging, and Contemporary American Jewish Migration to Israel

Most current sociological literature on migration examines international moves to the United States and internal migration. Scant research addresses religious migration out of the United States. Utilizing in-depth, semi-structured interviews, we explore motivations behind recent American Jewish migration to Israel and how Jewish identity plays a role in the decision to move. We find that a combination of religious and cultural factors, Zionism, social networks, and the desire for a new start play a major role in motivating migration to Israel. Jewish identity is a common thread across these motivations. Many participants created a strong bond between their Judaism and Israel, viewing their connection to Israel as a way to belong to a larger community and demonstrate their attachment to Judaism. We discuss the implications for studying religious emigration from the United States that move beyond traditional economic models.     

Winnicott’s “Potential Space” and the Jewish Study Hall for social work students,faculty and practitioners

Abstract

The article addresses the potential interface and dialogue between academic and quasi-academic spaces. In particular, it examines the space of the Jewish Study Hall (Beit Midrash) as facilitative of the professional as well as personal development of social work students and practitioners in an Israeli college. We examine how Winnicott’s potential space concept contributes to understanding the Study Hall’s uniqueness as an extracurricular learning space within the School of Social Work. Twenty participants in the Beit Midrash for Judaism and Social Work took part in the study. Thematic analysis of transcribed sessions revealed three themes: (1) The Beit Midrash as a peaceful, safe and inclusive physical space; (2) The Beit Midrash as a space for playing out different realities; and (3) The Beit Midrash as contributing to social work training. Findings indicate that potential spaces that embrace the metaphysical world can help students engaged in religion and spirituality to complement and expand their academic training. We conclude by recommending that Winnicottian potential spaces that embrace the metaphysical world be integrated in social work programmes.     

Kill me a mosquito and I will build a state: political economy and the socio-technicalities of Jewish colonization in Palestine, 1922–1940

Theory and Society - Scholars see Israel as a settler state, comparable with North American, South African and Oceanian cases. But how was Jewish settlement-colonization in pre-Israel Palestine...     

Towards a transregional history of secularism: Intellectual connectivity,social reform,and state-building in South and Southeast Asia, 1918–1960

Theory and Society - This article argues for a transregional historical approach to explain the career of political secularism, i.e. the ideas and practices that inform the modern state’s...     

Culture,ethnicity and territoriality: a cultural history of imagined land in Manipur, 1950s–1990s

Creative literature and audio-visuals provide alternative sources to archival documents for understanding the cultural history of land. This paper is a small beginning in using creative sources in different languages of Manipur. My analysis suggests that the association between land and ethnicity is a recent phenomenon. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, creative artists represented land as aesthetic symbol for universal emotions. In the 1970s, land was de-linked from political imagination and appeared in the form of leikai (residential address). The 1980s registered the emergence of complex social forces such as ethnic nationalism and a romanticised folk culture. The most remarkable development was the exclusive use of land as a symbol of discrete identities and ethnic homelands. Whereas the ethnic gulf widened between the meiteis of the valley and the tribals of the hill areas, the struggle between the hill tribes intensified in the 1990s.     

Memory,Mourning and Meaning in a Psychotherapist’s Life

In this paper the author, a psychotherapist specializing in bereavement, recounts her personal experiences of loss and the ways in which they intersect and inform her professional life. One clinical vignette explores how unresolved grief in a patient and anticipated grief in a therapist emerge in transference-counter-transference issues. Another vignette illustrates a way in which supportive therapy can open the door to intra-psychic work with the ill or dying patient and how psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy with the aged can help them to re-imagine their lives and to form different relationships, in their minds, with significant others in their past.     

Global walls and global movement: new destinations in Jewish migration, 1918–1939

Research often argues or implies that the First World War suddenly discontinued the age of Jewish mass migration and led to increased sedentarism. Indeed, the former main destinations like the USA drastically cut down on the arrival of East European Jews. This did not, however, result in the end of Jewish mass migration. This article will demonstrate that it rather led to manifold attempts to circumvent the newly introduced and increasingly exclusive measures, to a rising complexity of transnational movement patterns, and finally to the emergence of new destinations and Jewish communities all over the globe. This movement, however, was overshadowed and impacted by the almost global rise of xenophobia and fascism. Based on local histories, statistical and legal sources, as well as reports and communications by delegates of Jewish relief organizations, this article presents a social history of the intersection between global Jewish migration and politically motivated migration management. It leaves behind the focus on “departure” and “arrival” in Jewish migration history and elaborates on the relevance and dynamics of transmigration, the dominance of migrant networks and the complex relationship between national policies and migrants' agency.     

Love,Stigma, and Resistance: “Therapeutic Microaggressions” in a Prisoners' Wives' Support Group

This article derives from ethnographies of therapeutic interventions in a support group for prisoners' wives in Israel. The study's main inductive findings reveal that love and the emotion work of prisoners' wives are constructed as the primary site for achieving the clinical objective: modifying the prisoners' wives' spoiled self and encouraging their adoption of a psychological self. The findings reveal a dramatic clash between the therapeutic emotion work of love that the group facilitators proposed and the collectivist emotion work to which the prisoners' wives subscribed. These forms of emotion work are associated with ethnic hierarchies and experiences of stigmatization by the prisoners' wives during the therapeutic sessions. In this context, the article suggests the concept of “therapeutic microaggressions” to describe how interactions in clinical sessions can reinforce inequality.     

Reportage: Beyond Prague's “Precious Legacy”: post-communist Jewish exhibits and synagogue restorations in the Czech Republic

The 10 Stars project, a linked network of restored or re-restored historic synagogues, associated buildings, and exhibitions in 10 towns around the Czech Republic, is the most ambitious single Jewish heritage project to be carried out in the Czech Republic since the fall of communism. Inaugurated in 2014, it falls within (and is the culmination of) a multifaceted program for Jewish heritage preservation and promotion in that country that was already being implemented in the early 1990s, thanks to the strategic vision of Jewish communal leaders and the active involvement and participation of municipalities, NGOs and others. As a result, in the past quarter century, the Czech Republic has seen the restoration of more than 65 synagogues, as well as the creation of regional Jewish museums and the installation of many local exhibits on Jewish history and heritage. This essay examines elements of the strategic process that achieved these results and shows how the various stages of its implementation led up to the 10 Stars.