Louise Hecht (Ed.), Judaica Olomucensia 2014, 1-2 (original) (raw)

Miscellanea, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, n. 7 (2014)

2014

The ‘Focus’ section of this edition of ‘Quest’ is composed of very diverse contributions, authored by both junior and senior scholars. The articles cover a wide range of topics, time periods and geographical areas. We open with the Greek Islands, considered from very different points of view: Cristina Pallini and Annalisa Scaccabarozzi offer us a study of urban history, analyzing Salonika’s lost synagogues, while Varvaritis presents the ‘Cronaca Israelitica’ – the first Jewish newspaper in the Ionian Islands – and the discussions of Jewish emancipation in the late XIXth century. Then we move on to Finland, with a contribution by Tarja Liisa Luukkanen that presents the 1897 discussion concerning the legal condition of the Jews that took place within the Finnish Diet, and in particular within the clergy, illustrating the role of antisemitism and the reception of Adolf Stoecker’s ideology. From the Baltic Sea we move back to Southern Europe, with an essay by Bojan Mitrović dedicated to the forms of social integration and of nationalization of Serbian Jewry as seen through a peculiar case study. Udi Manor’s article makes us leap to the North American continent, and to Jewish New York in particular, discussing Jewish 'identity politics' through the prism of the “Jewish Daily Forward” in the early XXth century. The last three articles concentrate on the second half of the XXth century. Rolf Steininger presents the figure of Karl Hartl, the first Austrian diplomat in Israel, and his perception of the country. Michele Sarfatti carefully reconstructs how foreign (non-Italian) historiography interpreted Fascist antisemitism between 1946 and 1986. Finally, the ‘Focus’ section is closed by Anna Baldini’s attentive depiction of Primo Levi’s role in shaping Italy’s memory of the Shoah.

The “Great War” and the Jewish People: A Review Essay

Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, 2018

It is almost exactly one hundred years since the signing of the armistice that ended World War I on November 11, 1918. It therefore seems an appropriate time to reflect on the impact of the war on European history generally and, more specifically, on the world Jewish community. Today, for readers of this journal, our knowledge of world war is inseparably associated with World War II and the Holocaust. And given the nature of these massive and monstrous events this is neither surprising nor inappropriate. However, the reality is that World War I, in spite of now being in the shadows for us and its marginal presence in the writing of Jewish history, was a major force of fundamental transformation in Jewish life. Unlike World War II in which there were authentic "good guys" and "bad guys," and very important issues over which to fight, the "Great War" was, to a large degree, a colossal, ambiguous, blunder to which all the major European powers contributed. It occurred in a tense political climate that had been marked between 1904 and 1914 by a series of international crises and local wars. At the same time, all the major states were experiencing internal divisions and confronting serious economic problems. Though Germany is commonly blamed for the war its actions were certainly not the only cause

The First World War and the Jews

The Jewish Experience of the First World War, 2018

Just decades after the experience of intense persecution and struggle for recognition that marked the end of the nineteenth century, Jews across the globe found themselves at an unprecedented crossroads. The frenzied military mobilisation of European societies from 1914, along with the outbreak of revolution in Russia, the collapse of the Central European empires and the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East had a profound impact on Jewish communities worldwide. The First World War thus constitutes a seminal but surprisingly under-researched moment in the evolution of modern Jewish history. This introductory chapter explores the variety of social, cultural, and political phenomena that combined to the make the ‘war to end all wars’ such a key turning point in the Jewish experience of the twentieth century.