A conference on Polish‐Jewish relations

A Special Skill. V. V. Chepko, Goroda Byelorussii v pervoy polovine XIX veka. Ekonomicheskoe razvitie (The Economic Development of the Towns of Byelorussia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century). Minsk: Byelorussian State University, 1981. 144pp. 1.20 roubles.

Jewish Anti‐Fascist Committee. Shimon Redlich. Propaganda and Nationalism in Wartime Russia: The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR, 1941–1948. Boulder, Col.: East European Quarterly, 1982.236 pp. (East European Monographs, 58).

Unwelcome Guests David Prital (ed.). In Search of Self: The Soviet Jewish Intelligentsia and the Exodus. Jerusalem: Mount Scopus Publications, 1982. 262pp.

Antisemitic Classic. Lev Aleksandrovich Korneev. Klassovaya sushchnost sionizma (The Class Essence of Zionism). Kiev. Politizdat Ukrainy, 1982. 263 pp. (Critique of the Ideology and Policies of Anti‐Communism Series). 10,000 copies. 1.20 roubles.

The Super‐Powers in the Middle East. Adeed Dawisha and Karen Dawisha (eds.). The Soviet Union in the Middle East: Policies and Perspectives. London: Heinemann Educational Books for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1982. 172 pp. Tables. Index. (Political Science/World Affairs). £5.50; and R.V. Borisov, SShA. Blizhnevostochnaya politika v 70‐e gody (United States Policy Towards the Middle East in the 1970s). Moscow: Nauka, 1982. 216 pp.     

Polish‐Jewish Relations: An Issue of Extraordinary Complexity

Joshua D. Zimmerman (ed.), Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. University of Rutgers Press, 2003, 226pp. Maps. Index. $35.00 cloth. ISBN 0–8135–3158–6     

Seeing New China at 45 with Their Own Eyes

MS. Kallistratos, a young journalist from Greece, raised her video recorder to record the solemn occasion when the military band struck up the strains of the national anthem of the People's Republic of China. Kallistratos was at the reception for foreign experts in celebration of China's 45th National Day held in the garden of the Beijing Friendship Hotel. Behind Ms. Kallistratos stood her     

Anti‐semitism and the Jewish community of Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne

After briefly outlining the historical development of the Jewish community in Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne, this article examines the extent to which anti‐Semitism was a major concern in the life of modern North‐East Jewry. The focus of this discussion is on the 1930s and 1940s, a period when anti‐Semitism assumed greater significance. What this artcle revals is that on Tyneside, even though the fear of anti‐Semitism gave rise to active responses from within the local Jewish community, anti‐Semitism remained small scale. The experience of Newcastle's Jewish community should caution us against overstating the prevalence of anti‐Semitism in British society.     

“Three serpents with tongues and eyes of flame”: the 1905 pogroms in Russian‐Jewish literature

Despite the fact that the 1881/82 pogroms had a much greater effect on Jewish thinking, representing a watershed in the Jewish strategy of assimilation, the 1905 pogroms were much more widely mirrored in literature. The Silver Age period of Russian literature had a great impact on new stylistic strategies that were capable of depicting the horror and avoiding the sentimental, documentary or didactic extremities. The following article discusses what new ways were found by S. An‐sky, David Aizman, Aleksandr Kipen and Semion Yushkevich to express in the language of art the incomprehensible.     

Thinking with restriction: immigration restriction and Polish Jewish accounts of the post-liberal state,empire, race,and political reason 1926–39

This paper investigates how educated Jewish observers struggled to understand the causes of the global immigration restriction that so impacted East European Jewry in the 1920s and 1930s, and uses their competing explanations, convictions, and uncertainties to reveal underlying structures of Jewish political understanding in the interwar period more broadly. Efforts to explain restriction, the ways in which it seemed both to target Jews and to be part of a general closure of the developed world, and questions of timing demanded reflection on the most fundamental questions of the interwar political order. Did state policies flow from economic reason, and did nationalisation, democratisation, and socialisation of domestic politics alter this causal pattern? In a world where closed borders were the default, what difference did statehood or statelessness make? What was the meaning and implication of the deployment of “race” in others' debates about restriction, and what role did global race-thinking play in determining population policies? What was the causal significance of specifically anti-Jewish animus, its nature, and the role of Jews' own choices in determining their situation? Analyzing a number of loci of Jewish social policy debate, the essay focuses particularly on the diasporist emigration activist Il'ya Dizhur, the Zionist sociologist Aryeh Tartakover, and the cooperative-movement activist Majer Pollner.     

‘Seeing through their Eyes’: Towards Understanding Risk and Protection Perspectives of Young Bedouin Children in the Unrecognised Villages of the Naqab

This article is based on a participatory, context-informed study that examined perception of ‘risk’ and ‘protection’ among 30 Bedouin children aged four to five. It was conducted in the Bedouin unrecognised villages — Southern Israel and utilised photography, drawings and verbal explanations. The analysis yielded seven themes representing children’s perceptions of risk and protection. It indicated that children facing extreme adversity were aware of numerous risk conditions, including a lack of infrastructure and the fear of losing their homes, thus adversely affecting their well-being. Children’s insights, and suggested modes of protection, as the study findings reveal, are crucial for promoting children’s welfare.     

From guest‐motif to lost homeland and re‐found exile: the development of a paradigmatic motif in the assimilatory process in Russian‐Jewish literature

Jews were strangers when they started to live within the borders of Tsarist Russia at the end of the eighteenth century, and they continued to be outsiders even when the integration, acculturation and assimilation process went on. The guest‐motif is an essential element of the home and exile dichotomy, often quoted in general terms, but rarely investigated closer in the texts. This motif may represent a special interest in Russian‐Jewish literature as one of the more emblematic topics of literature on assimilation that became a paradigm. The panoramic overview of the motif includes prose works by Iakov Rombro, Grigory Bogrov, Aleksandr Kipen, David Aizman, Andrei Sobol, Lev Lunts, Isaak Babel, Vladimir Jabotinsky and Friedrich Gorenshtein.     

The history and culture of the Jews as reflected in post‐Communist Polish historiography and related activities

A Jewish European Modern Intellectual. Moses Gaster: Memorii, Corespondenta (Moses Gaster: Memoirs and Correspondence). Edited and annotated by Victor Eskenasy. Bucharest: Hasefer Publishing House 1998. xxxv+467pp. (Romanian with English and German summaries)

A Very Selective Reading. Cecil D. Edy, Hungary at War (Pennsylvania State University Press 1998), xx+318pp., price unknown

’Setting the Record Straight‘. The Story of Two Shtetls, Bransk and Ejszyszki. An Overview of Polish‐Jewish Relations in Northeastern Poland during World War II. A Collective Work, Toronto/Chicago: The Polish Educational Foundation in North America 1998. Part 1 190pp., part 2 240pp.

A Symbol of the ‘Story‘. Michael Moshe Checinski, My Father's Watch, New York and Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House 1994, 248pp. Glossary. Hard/softcover, US$30; $14.95

A Curious Experiment. Robert Weinberg, Stalin's Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland. An Illustrated History, 1928–1996. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 ix + 105pp. Biblio. Illus. Notes. Index     

Gambling and the family: From the stress‐coping‐support Perspective 1

Abstract

Aims: To apply the stress‐coping‐support perspective to the study of the effects of problem gambling in the family. Specifically, to examine the ways in which family members cope and the nature and sources of support they receive. To compare coping strategies of family members of gamblers with those of individuals living with other addictive behaviour in the family. Design: Cross‐sectional interview and questionnaire study of close relatives of problem gamblers. Participants: Sixteen close family members of gamblers from separate families, mainly parents and partners. Data: Semi‐structured interview; adapted version of the Coping Questionnaire (CQ). Findings: Data from the CQ and qualitative analysis of interview data suggested considerable use of ‘engaged’ (specifically controlling) ways of attempting to cope with such problems, comparable to the use of such strategies by relatives of people with alcohol or drug problems, but little use of ‘tolerant‐accepting’ and ‘withdrawal’ ways. Interview data on the support received (or not) by family members confirmed previous research showing that relatives of people with addiction problems often feel unsupported, but particularly appreciate positive emotional and practical support for themselves and their problem gambling relatives. Conclusions: The stress‐coping‐support perspective, previously applied to families with alcohol and drug problems, also offers an appropriate framework for understanding problem gambling and the family.