Jewish tradition faces the Soviet economy: moral dilemma of ‘shadow’ entrepreneurship in the former Pale of Settlement,Ukraine

Soviet life in the former Pale of Settlement appears in the memories of its residents as a world of living Jewish tradition existing within the professional and business activities of artisans and merchants at a time when the ideology and political structure of the Soviet Union prohibited private enterprise. That is why it occupied the shady parts of the socialist economy. Today, after collapse of the Soviet Union, it still poses moral dilemmas for those associated with its illegal activities. However, recollections about Soviet illegal enterprise also provide a space for critique of the Soviet system and a base for construction of contemporary local identity; in this way people reconcile the economic ethics of the recent Soviet past with modern capitalist reality. Narratives about illegal economic activities in the Soviet period are about the relationship between the people and the state. They are seen as a cosmological system; the Soviet state acted as an economically ineffective external force. Within its matrix was integrated a local world of human relationships with their customs and rules created the own local world of consumption and welfare. At the centre of this space is the socially and economically experienced Jewish entrepreneur whose competence is based on local Jewish tradition. Stories about illegal Soviet economic activity have become the heritage of local communities that approve of local business continuity.     

The Jews and revolution: Russian perspectives, 1881–1918

Contemporaries and historians of the Russian revolutions have often made a great deal of the Jewish role in the events of 1917. In late 1917, for instance, it was commonplace to assert that the Bolsheviks were simply part of a Jewish conspiracy. This paper takes a look at the various Russian perspectives on the revolution and its Jewish aspects, focusing in particular on the views of leading intellectuals, writers and politicians, such as S.M. Dubnov, Maxim Gorkii and Aleksandr Blok. It reveals that attitudes were not always straightforward, even amongst the liberal elements of the intelligentsia.     

National,Ethnic and Religious Identities: Hybridity and the case of the Polish Tatars

Questions of hybridity and multiple identities are over-theorised but the number of empirical studies is limited. The present study examines some of the discursive devices used in two Polish Tatar magazines for managing narratives about their national, ethnic and religious identities. The Polish Tatars are a numerically small group that have lived for more than 600 years in Catholic Poland. For them, being a Tatar, Muslim and Pole at the same time, is central to their self-understanding, and they do not want to limit the importance of any of these. Two main strategies of narrative identity management were identified, related to identity definitions and identity connections. The former gives layered understandings about Polish Tatar identity: a factual one in which a local and historical connection is made and a spiritual one in which belonging to an imagined symbolic community is stressed. The latter provides reconciliation between identities by stressing their similarities and relations, by emphasizing the contributions made by Tatars to Polish society, and by presenting the Tatars as potentially being in a unique mediating position between Islam and Christianity. In the near future, Tatars’ strategies for creating a hybrid identity might be challenged by global and more local developments.     

Attachment Theory’s Universality Hypothesis: Clinical Implications for Culturally Responsive Assessment

Attachment theory has achieved a major influence in social work practice as a basis for research and as a foundation for clinical approaches. The contention that attachment as it is contemporarily understood is a ubiquitous phenomenon has been labeled the universality hypothesis. This hypothesis is built on three assertions—that healthy attachment is facilitated through parental sensitivity, that secure attachment is normative, and that healthy attachment leads to longitudinal competence. Critics argue that contemporary attachment theory privileges a conception of child-rearing that is fundamentally based on family structures and societal conditions that ignore the cultural practices of most of the non-Western world. Although the universality hypothesis is intended as a tool for research, this author contends that it can be used as a construct to guide culturally responsive clinical work. The article will first provide an extensive review of the debate around cross-cultural attachment and then explore its clinical implications. A brief case study of clinical work with an ultraorthodox family will be used to elucidate the author’s contention.     

Circumcising the body: negotiating difference and belonging in Germany

ABSTRACT

The circumcision debate in Germany in 2012 is an exemplary case for symbolic struggles over national boundaries. The debate became a site for the negotiation of traditions practiced by religious minorities. We ask, first, how the clinical gaze constitutes Muslim and Jewish others. Second, we investigate how ‘writing around’ the debate’s center, bodily integrity, became meaningful through analogies to other practices said to harm it. We compare newspaper coverage in Germany, Israel and Turkey, and reveal transnational discursive dynamics that transgress national boundaries. We show how ‘otherness’ of Muslims and Jews remains present in a self-perceived secular, liberal imaginary.     

试析中世纪西欧对犹太人的多重态度

西欧中世纪社会同时存在着对犹太人有利和不利的态度,这些态度随着时间和地域的变化而变化。不同的阶层在同一时期,同一阶层在不同的时期都对犹太人有着不同的态度。中世纪对待犹太人的态度的复杂性和矛盾性有着复杂的社会背景。     

Intergenerational Relations: The Views of Older Jews and Arabs

The aim of the current qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of older Jews and Arabs on intergenerational family relations. Interviews were conducted with 20 men and women, 10 in each group, ages 65 and older. Five themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: family is the major component of meaning of life; two dimensions of intergenerational relations: solidarity and ambivalence; intergenerational communication; filial expectations; and home and family as sources of honor and respect. Similarities and differences between the two groups were identified and explained, using modernization theory and cultural context.     

Jewish studies underground in Leningrad in the 1980s†

ABSTRACT

This article is a first-hand report of a participant and leader of a number of underground initiatives within the “refuseniks’” community which aimed to encourage Jewish studies. These underground initiatives involved seminars (scholarly as well as public), excursions through Jewish historical sites, and the publication of a samizdat journal. In short, these initiatives sought to recover and disseminate knowledge of Jewish history and culture.     

Putting the fragments (back) together: towards a theorisation of Jewish sampling

This article argues that there is an elective affinity between the Jewish worldview and sampling. Sampling has a history much longer than its use in hip hop. Here, though, I am concerned with Jewish artists who have used sampling since the 1980s such as Steinski, the Beastie Boys, Edan and SoCalled. These artists have worked within the generic form of hip hop but have created texts that are quite distinct from texts created by African Americans. My list here is by no means definitive but is a function of the artists that I use for illustrative purposes. I suggest that the Jewish worldview, founded on ideas of catastrophe and exile, and of the bringing back together of fragments to form a new cultural whole, has a synergy with sampling which utilises fragments in the service of creating a new text. These reference points are different from the assumptions that underpin African-American uses of hip hop.     

纳粹德国排犹政策的演变及根源探析

纳粹德国从20世纪30年代上台以来一直执行着反犹和排犹政策。从排犹主义逐渐发展到种族灭绝,纳粹排犹政策先后经历了三个不同阶段。其中每个阶段都有着明显不同于其它阶段的特点,而且促使排犹政策变化的具体原因也不尽相同。纳粹对犹太人实行的迫害和灭绝政策的根源是多方面的。其中既包含着历史传统、思想基础,也包含了社会心理和国际环境。正是这几股反犹的涓涓细流在当时德国的土壤上汇成了纳粹屠犹的滔滔恶浪。