Focus Archives - Page 2 of 18 - Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History

A Modern Lycaon: Recalling Ovid’s Metamorphoses in The Merchant of Venice

ABSTRACT
The article examines the role of “wolvish” characteristics and their association with Jewish identity in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Scholars have long noted the tendency of non-Jewish characters in the play to identify Shylock as canine. But this canine character, although fixed in its essence to Shylock, never remains the same, fluctuating between the various designations of “dog,” “cur,” and “wolf.” The essay argues that whereas the “dog” and “cur” designations function as manifestations of Christian typological thinking, the description of Shylock as a “wolf” belongs in a mythic view of humans and their place in the world. Thus, in The Merchant of Venice it is not only the human-animal distinction that remains unstable, but also the category of the “animal” itself. At stake is the accommodation of two different conceptions of animality: one belonging in Christian typology, and the other rooted in a mythical natural history. The distinction between these different categories, far from being trivial, has political, legal, and theological implications.

issue 23 / n.1 (2023) by Noam Pines

Tza’ar ba’ale hayyim: Jewish Animal Rights Advocacy and Vegetarianism, from Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Ha-Kohen Kook’s A Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace to Jonathan Safran Foer

ABSTRACT
Tza’ar ba’ale hayyim is one of the fundamental principles in Jewish law, enunciated in the Bible and then accepted as a mandatory norm in Talmudic tradition, banning any form of unnecessary pain on animals, and requiring people to minimise physical and psychological animal burden, especially, but certainly not exclusively, in ritual slaughtering. Over the hundred years, following the development of meat industry aiming to maximise profits to the detriment of animal’s fundamental rights, and with a dramatic impact on the natural environment, several rabbinical authorities have interpreted this principle in broader terms, recommending people to opt for vegetarian diets that are not only morally preferable, but also ethically more recommendable as environmentally more sustainable. The aim of this paper is to offer a succinct view on the meanings and interpretations of Jewish vegetarianism, from its biblical inception, through the rabbinical debate, to more recent interpretations among religious and secular authorities.

issue 23 / n.1 (2023) by Piergabriele Mancuso

Kids f or Calves : Children Against Slaughter in Fin – de – siècle Jewish Literature

ABSTRACT
Several canonical works of Modern Jewish literature, written in Hebrew and Yiddish at the turn of the twentieth century, distinctly depict an anti-slaughter stance. Jewish approach to animal slaughter has been largely ambivalent, from the biblical creation story in Genesis 1, where human nutrition was limited to plants only, to various restrictions on the practices of killing and consuming animals—in many cases, due to the religious obligation to care for animals (tza‘ar ba‘ale hayyim). In this article, I seek to critically analyze three literary works, in which the anti-slaughter stance is voiced by children protagonists: Mordecai Ze’ev Feierberg’s “The Calf” (“ha-’Egel,” 1899), Mendele Mocher Seforim’s “The Calf” (“Dos Kelbl,” 1902), and Sholem Aleichem’s Motl the Cantor’s Son (Motl Peyse dem khazns, 1907). These stories will be examined in the light of the religious ambivalence toward animal slaughter and contextualized within relevant socio-historical conditions.

issue 23 / n.1 (2023) by Naama Harel

Troubling the Boundaries: Human and Animal Spaces in Yitzhak Orpaz’s Nemalim (Ants) and Italo Calvino’s La formica argentina (The Argentine Ant)

ABSTRACT
The essay explores the portrayal of insects in literature, focusing specifically on the representation of ants in Yitzhak Orpaz’s Nemalim (Ants) and Italo Calvino’s La formica argentina (The Argentine Ant). Both stories delve into the dynamics of species interaction, specifically into the response of two married couples whose homes or apartments are invaded by ants. Despite the humans’ efforts, particularly those of the husbands’, to regain control of their territory, they are unsuccessful. Throughout the narratives, the ants, functioning as a superorganism, exhibit a greater degree of agency compared to the human characters. The house or flat transforms into an anthill, effectively reverting the anthropized space into a natural environment. Consequently, the two species intertwine, mingle, and hybridize. This analysis will be conducted through the lens of animal studies, highlighting the themes of animal agency and Otherness, which are particularly significant when considering insects. Additionally, the essay will draw upon the concept of consilience between the humanities and sciences.

issue 23 / n.1 (2023) by Anna Lissa

Man, Interrupted: Abjection, Animality and Agency in Donkey by Sami Berdugo

ABSTRACT
Donkey’s presence is an essential characteristic of the Israeli Palestinian landscape. This essay addresses the donkey as an agent of a subjectivity that has been denied by the Israeli establishment, through a reading of Sami Berdugo’s novel, Donkey (2019). The essay examines the political functionality and biopolitical significance of the donkey as a metaphor, companion, and scapegoat. I argue that Berdugo portrays the donkey as the agency that enables a transition from object/other to subject. This subjectivity is built on human/animal continuity and fluidity; in his novel, Berdugo collapses the boundaries between his protagonist and Donkey and renders what in life resists power, domination, and eventually the different forms of death. The essay analyzes the alternative sociopolitical matrix that Berdugo portrays in which animality mobilizes a change; it also examines Berdugo’s literary strategy of “interrupting” the hegemonic cultural tyranny that has established, for years, rigid boundaries between humans and animals and by that denies freedom. Berdugo challenges “accepted” categories such as heteronormative sexuality, masculinity, and standard Hebrew through abjection and perversion; he “interrupts” and teases out the tyrannies of sexual and gender normativity by questioning and queering heteronormativity. Challenging the “accepted” and revealing its under-the-surface wounded matrix, is a literary concern that Berdugo has had for a long time; however, in Donkey he criticizes the Israeli tragic biopolitical condition, and he also challenges the narrator’s traditional stance. The essay discusses ecological and biopolitical issues that reveal the tragedy of both humans and donkeys in Israel, and particularly in the southern periphery. Reading the Israeli reality through the human-cum-donkey prism renders the neglected peripheries as an alternative Israeli existence, which forms the sociopolitical subtext of Berdugo’s novel. It is here, in the periphery of mental and material poverty, that Berdugo insists on the very idea of life.

issue 23 / n.1 (2023) by Riki Traum

Jewish Converts’ Inheritance Rights in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany: The Case of a Nun in the Convent of Santa Scolastica in Buggiano

ABSTRACT
“As defined by the Fortunati-Ergas case, catechumens and neophytes have a right to their allotted share of the estate of their parents, even while their mother and father are still alive, notwithstanding the privileges accorded the Jews of Livorno by Grand Duke Ferdinando I in 1593.” This claim, written in Florence in 1825, tried to depict the Fortunati-Ergas case as a bridgehead breaking the guarantees offered to the Jews living in Livorno since the end of the 16th century. Papal laws explicitly offered converted Jews the right to immediately inherit from one’s parents, as if they were orphans. On the other side, the so-called Livornine, issued in 1593, opposed this principle and stated that converted Jews could not inherit from their Jewish relatives. In the 18th century, the Fortunati-Ergas case became the battleground among canon laws and civil laws, defending or contrasting the right to inheritance of converted Jews. Sara Ergas was a Jewish woman from Livorno who did not follow the decision of her husband Moisè Ergas, a rich Jewish merchant who converted to Christianity together with their small child, taking the new names of—respectively—Francesco Xaverio Fortunati and Maria Maddalena Fortunati. Sara remained fiercely Jewish, and never satisfied the claims over her goods made by the apostates in Florence (where they had moved after their conversion), engaging in a legal battle that, as shown in this article, proved the Livornine to remain a strong pillar defending the Jewish privileged status in Livorno till the unification of Italy.

issue 22 / n.2 (2022) by Samuela Marconcini

The Fascist Government, the Holy See and the Prohibition of “Mixed” Marriages 1935-1938

ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1936, during the war against Ethiopia, dictator Benito Mussolini began sending directives to Italian authorities in Africa against so-called “mixed unions,” from which “mixed-race” children were born. In the fall of 1938, the Fascist government permanently banned marriages of Italian citizens “of the Aryan race” with “Camites” and “Semites” of any citizenship. This essay tells the story of that course and documents the fact that the 1938 ban on “racially mixed marriages,” which unilaterally amended the Concordat, constituted a clear victory for Mussolini over the Holy See and the Catholic Church. It thus demonstrated the strength that fascism had at that time.

issue 22 / n.2 (2022) by Michele Sarfatti

Conversion Paths of Trieste’s Jews in 1938-1939

ABSTRACT
During 1938-1939, a large number of conversions of Jews to Catholicism took place in Trieste. It was not only Triestine Jews who converted, but also many foreign Jewish refugees, Austrian, German and Hungarian above all, in transit through the Adriatic port on their way to the Americas. The research has been carried on the basis of the documentation conserved at the Archiepiscopal Curia of Trieste, and has made it possible to analyze many individual paths, thus enabling the reconstruction of the personal motivations for conversion; the reactions of the Jewish community and those of the local Church. The essay also examines conversions in mixed marriages, also paying attention to gender roles in conversion paths. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of the catechumenate and the correspondence between parish priests and the Curia, in order to understand the attitude of the city priests towards the racial laws.

issue 22 / n.2 (2022) by Tullia Catalan

Judeo-Arabic Popular Nonfiction in Morocco during the First Half of the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT
This article is a first-of-its-kind exploration of the vernacular Judeo-Arabic popular nonfiction printed in Morocco between the early twentieth century and the 1960s, in the form of single pages, pamphlets or small books. This literature provided readers with knowledge pertaining to Jewish law (halakha), ethics, culture, history, and Zionist ideology, in order to reinforce Jewish religious and national identity. I suggest here that vernacular-speaking literatures emerged in Morocco in the early twentieth century following interwoven, mutually influential processes. The four processes that precipitated vernacular Judeo-Arabic nonfiction in Morocco consist of (1) the opening of local Hebrew printing houses across Morocco’s cities; (2) the emergence of new elites within Morocco’s Jewish communities; (3) the rejection of the obligation to observe religious strictures, coupled with secularization processes; and (4) the advent of a Jewish national movement, i.e. Zionism.

issue 22 / n.2 (2022) by David Guedj

Category: Focus