Search Results (9)

This article focuses on a little-studied short story from Jewish American writer Cynthia Ozick, “What Happened to the Baby?” It explores the narrative elaboration of a distinctly feminine trauma—that of a mother in mourning whose grief is not acknowledged in a patriarchal context. My approach uses close readings and psychoanalytical insights to understand the female protagonist’s voiceless rage. The narrator of the framing narrative is a young woman trying to understand a mysterious family trauma—how little Henrietta, the daughter of her uncle Simon and his ex-wife, Essie, died. The starting point of the story is a distorted version of the accident, told to the narrator by her mother, Lily, and according to which it is Essie’s mistreatment that caused the little girl’s death. Through the narrative, the narrator encourages Essie to tell her own side of the story. In the embedded narrative, the mother reveals that it was in fact the father’s negligence that caused the death of their child. Father and mother subsequently develop differing models of mourning. Simon, a linguist, creates a whole new idiom enabling him to keep commemorating the dead child. In contrast, Essie, the mother, is determined to destroy any discourse that might account for her trauma, and to undermine the father’s very public mourning process. The narrator acts as a kind of therapist, allowing Essie’s discourse on loss to emerge after decades of repression. On the masculine/feminine, father/mother binary axis, I will observe, based on the study of this fascinating short story, that the father’s mourning involves mastering language, while the mother experiences loss through the sheer inability to speak up—at least until the narrator, Vivian, empowers her by giving her a voice. Full article

Dislocation, expatriation, and the attendant loss of homeland are concerns at the heart of Jewish literature. The dialectical relationship between identity and the sense of homeland informing the Jewish diasporic consciousness, in particular, has often culminated in nostalgic depictions of Israel in post-war American Jewish literature. In focusing on such a literary representation, this essay unravels the multidimensionality of diasporic Jewish identity. Critically analyzing Nicole Krauss’s Forest Dark (2017), it evaluates the trauma of exile and the psychic dilemma of third-generation American Jewish writers. The novelist brings about a confluence of nostos and nostalgia in Forest Dark. In evoking the visceral sense of loss, dislocation, and a painful yearning for the lost homeland, the author succeeds in tracing the lives of two protagonists, Jules Epstein, a retired New York lawyer, and Nicole, a Jewish American novelist struggling with a deep marital crisis. The text foregrounds the theme of self-discovery exemplified in the homecoming of its two central characters. Following his parents’ death and haunted by the anguish and horror of the Shoah, Jules unmoors himself from his current life and flies to Tel Aviv on a whim. Nicole, who suffers from creative blockage on account of her failing marriage, undertakes the trip to Tel Aviv hoping to recover from her soul-sickness, as it were. If Jules and Nicole do not cross paths, it still remains that their Jewish identities stem from the originary tragedy of the Holocaust. Although removed from the horrific sights and scenes of the tragic event, intergenerational trauma resonates with certain aspects of the diasporic Jewish existence. Using theoretical interventions of memory studies and the Freudian concept of Unheimlich or the uncanny, this essay explores the ethical implications that undergird Nicole Krauss’s diasporic depiction of Israel. Full article

In 1933, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two Jewish teenagers from Ohio, fashioned an ideal personality called Superman and a narrative of his marvelous deeds. Little did they suspect that several years after conceptualizing the figure and their many vain attempts to sell the story to various comic book publishers, their creation would give rise to the iconic genre of comic book superheroes. There is no doubt that the Superman character and the accompanying narrative led to Siegel and Shuster, the writer and artist, respectively, becoming famous. However, was it only the appealing character and compelling narrative that accounted for the story’s enormous popularity, which turned its creators into such a celebrated pair, or did the visual design play a major part in that phenomenal success? Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in the comic book medium in several disciplines, including history, philosophy, and literature. However, little has been written about its visual aspect, and comic book art has not yet been accorded much recognition among art historians. Since the integration of storyline and art is what allow the comic book medium to be unique and interesting, I contend that there should be a focus on the art as well as on the narrative of works in comic books. In the present study, I explore the significance of the visual image in the prototype of the Superman figure that Siegel and Schuster sold to DC Comics and its first appearance in the series American Comic Books. I argue that although the popularity of Superman’s first appearance was due to the conceptual ideals that the character embodied, the visual design of the ideal man was also an essential factor in its success. Accordingly, through a discussion of the first published Superman storyline, I emphasize the artistic-visual value of the figure of this protagonist in particular and the comic book medium in general. Full article

Given the tenuous relationship Christians have had with Jews over the centuries, not to mention division among Christianity on points of doctrine and practice, a contemporary examination of the Sabbath could be an opportunity to bring Jews and Christians into further dialogue with each other, not on the basis of a shared written text, but rather the living texts of religious experience. However, a review of the literature reveals a scarcity of empirical research on the Sabbath, especially how religious professionals practice Sabbath as exemplars in their spheres of influence. In this study, I, therefore, offer a comparative description of my findings with respect to two practical theological studies I conducted on Shabbat/Sabbath practice, one with American pulpit rabbis and the other Seventh-day Adventist pastors. As a practical theological project, I offer a theological reflection of the data, followed by implications for theological (re)construction and revised praxis for the Church and Jewish-Christian relations. Full article

Research on the relationship between religion, spirituality, and health suggests that religious involvement can help people deal with various kinds of adversity. Although there has been a great deal of work on the influence of religious involvement and religious and spiritual practices on physical, mental, and relational health, there exists a gap in the theoretical and empirical literature about the potential benefits of transcendent religious experiences on marriage and family relationships. We report some findings from a study of in-depth interviews with 198 religious American exemplar families from diverse religious, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds. The religious-ethnic make-up of the sample included: African American Christian (13%), Asian Christian (12%), Catholic and Orthodox Christian (11%), White Evangelical Christian (12%), White Mainline Christian (10%), Latter-day Saint (LDS, Mormon), (14%), Jewish (16%), and Muslim (12%). Systematic group coding resulted in the findings that, during times of adversity, transcendent religious experiences reportedly (a) provided relational meaning, (b) increased relational depth, (c) healed relational hurt, and (d) encouraged relational action. We suggest implications for theory, research, clinical practice, and pastoral work. Full article

This article considers the existence of an exilic imperative in the historical and identity hermeneutics of American Jewry. Author considers cases of (1) American Jewish identification with racial outsiders, including the appropriation of historical, cultural, and religious forms; (2) the persistent creation of American Jewish ethnoburbs, unlike other white ethnic groups; and (3) the creation of exilic fantasy literature by American Jewish novelists. The author suggests that although American conditions do not justify interpretations of Jewish social alienation, American Jews have nevertheless applied traditional Jewish exilic hermeneutics to those American conditions. Full article

H. A. Wolfson arrived in the United States at 16 from the Lithuanian region of the Russian Empire and at Harvard as a freshman five years later. He remained at Harvard until his death in 1974, as Emeritus Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy. Among the most important historians of western religious philosophy, he published on contemporary issues only until 1925 and even then only rarely. Nevertheless, his 1918 article, “Pomegranates”, deserves attention. Wolfson clearly followed debates about the American ethnic future. He carved out an original and unexpected position on that issue, and on the American Jewish future within that context. He perceptively rejected Horace Kallen’s views of a “multi-national America”, and like Israel Zangwill’s Melting Pot, he stressed that full cultural and political assimilation would occur in the United States. But unlike Zangwill, he argued that Jewish religious creativity would find a long-term place in American life, once freed of its national trappings. Strongly supporting a Hebraic renaissance and a Jewish homeland in Palestine, he also emphasized with great force that the “we”—the east-European Jewish intellectuals and the Zionists—had greatly misunderstood the promise of Reform Judaism for the diaspora. Full article

Studies of Jewish-Christian relations in the nineteenth century have largely centered on anti-Semitism, missionary endeavors, and processes of Protestantization. In this literature, Jews and Judaism are presented as radically separate from Christians and Christianity, which threaten them, either by reinforcing their difference or by diminishing it, whether as a deliberate project or as an unconscious outcome of pressure or attraction. And yet, Jews and Christians interacted with one another’s religious traditions not only through literature and discussion, but also within worship spaces. This paper will focus on the practice of churchgoing by Jewish individuals, with some attention to Christian synagogue-going. Most Jews went to church because of curiosity, sociability, or experimentation. Within churches, they became familiar with their neighbors and with Christian beliefs but also further clarified and even strengthened their own understandings and identities. For Jews, as for other Americans, the relationship between identification and spatial presence, belief and knowledge, worship and entertainment, were complicated and religious boundaries often unclear. The forgotten practice of Jewish churchgoing sheds light on the intimacies and complexities of Jewish-Christian relations in American history. Full article

Karl Löwith (1897–1973) and Erich Auerbach (1892–1957) were assimilated German Jewish scholars who came to America during and after World War II. In the early 1940s both émigrés wrotetheir masterpieces From Hegel to Nietzsche and Mimesis in Japan and Turkey. In these books, the philosopher as well as the philologist, provide a certain philosophy of history forced by the historical crisis of Europe. The differences in their viewpoints can clearly be seen in their decisive judgments on Goethe and the French Revolution. The comparison first looks at the question what impact the reality of being expelled from the German University of Marburg had on the development of their thoughts. The expanding war and the persecution of the European Jews is taken into account as well. The second focus is directed on the experience both made at the American East Coast and how this might have influenced their later writings namely Meaning in History and Philology of World-Literature. And at last the question is raised which significance the Jewish-Christian background had for Löwith and Auerbach especially for their attitude towards the religious sphere. Full article