Oskar Rosenfeld, the Lodz Ghetto, and the Chronotope of Hunger (original) (raw)
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The event known as the Holocaust has engendered a voluminous body of writings by philosophers and theologians, endeavoring to grapple with the challenge which the Holocaust, as an exemplar of radical evil, poses for religious belief, indeed for human values in general. This literature has been produced, for the most part, since the end of the Second World War; we possess few sustained theological reflections composed while the event was actually unfolding. One exception is Esh Kodesh [Fire of Holiness] by Rabbi Kalonymos Shapiro (1889-1943), a hasidic master known as the Piaseczner Rebbe. He was a prominent and influential religious leader in the Jewish community of interbellum Poland, especially well known as an innovator in the field of hasidic education.1 At the onset of the war, he lost his son, daughter-in-law, and sister-in-law in the aerial bombardment of Warsaw (September, 1939); his elderly mother died soon after.2 Bereft of most of his immediate family, he continued his educational and communal activities. In particular, he delivered Sabbath and Festival discourses during the years 1939-1942 and recorded them on paper. Early in 1943, he buried the manuscript of his discourses. While the author did not survive the war, his writings did, and they were eventually published in Israel under the title Esh Kodesh.3 Esh Kodesh *This paper expands upon aspects of my doctoral dissertation, written at Boston University under the direction of Professor Elie Wiesel. The paper includes research conducted as a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Jewish Studies of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I wish to express my deep gratitude to Professor Moshe Bar-Asher, Director of the Institute, for his hospitality and assistance. The paper was written during a sabbatical leave supported by Congregation Tifereth Israel of Everett, Mass.; my sincere thanks to the Congregation, its President and Board of Directors. 253
Since the advent of the early modern period, the "ghetto" has been part of the Jewish experience in Europe. Initially the term was used to denote Jewish quarters established and controlled by non-Jewish authorities in Italian towns. During the nineteenth century, when municipalities everywhere in Europe tore down the walls that had surrounded their cities, the confi nes of the Jewish quarters likewise vanished. Th e term "ghetto," however, did not pass into oblivion but became a metaphor of the relationship between the Jewish population and the surrounding non-Jewish society in these cities.
« Hunt for Jews and Golden Harvest » dans Books and Ideas, 2012
Books and Ideas, 2012
Is it possible to be at the same time a victim, a perpetrator, and a bystander of the Holocaust? What were the different attitudes of the Poles toward their Jewish neighbors before, during, and after the massive deportations of 1942? Relying on new sources, three recent books by American and Polish scholars throw new light on questions that are still hotly debated today.
The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos during the Holocaust
2009
This book is a linguistic-cultural study of the emergence of the Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust. It traces the origins and uses of the term 'ghetto' in European discourse from the sixteenth century to the Nazi regime. It examines with a magnifying glass both the actual establishment of and the discourse of the Nazis and their allies on ghettos from 1939 to 1944. With conclusions that oppose all existing explanations and cursory examinations of the ghetto, the book impacts overall understanding of the anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Germany.
Leo Baeck Institute Year Book
This article analyzes Volume 11 of the History of the Jews, entitled Geschichte der Juden vom Beginn der Mendelsohn’schen Zeit (1750) bis in die neuste Zeit (1848) (‘History of the Jews from the beginning the Mendelssohnian age (1750) until the present times (1848)’), which appeared in 1870. Specifically, it examines Graetz’s discussions of the generation of Jewish scholars and communal leaders that immediately preceded his own, comparing Graetz’s youthful diary entries concerning his early meetings or thoughts about these men with his descriptions of their lives and works in Volume 11. Making such a comparison, I argue, can reveal important shifts in Graetz’s values and compassions, as well provide some new insights into the opinions toward reform and modernism held by lesser-known figures in nineteenth-century German Jewry. The Graetz who wrote about the leading German Jews of the 1830s and 1840s from the vantage of the 1860s was not always the same man as the one who had met those figures twenty or thirty years earlier. My aim in this article is, therefore, to use Graetz’s diary, letters, and Volume 11 as the basis for an analysis of Graetz’s developing intellectual personae within the broader context of his interactions with other leading German Jews, and to reveal thereby not only the growth of his personal identity as an historian but also to uncover the evolving set of values that he and his contemporaries were instantiating in their modernization of Jewish religious practice and scholarship.