Category: Focus

Focus

Tunis and Paris Face Off: Images of the Jewish Home and Environment among Tunisian Jewish Francisés Émigrés in France

ABSTRACT During the 1950s and 1960s of the twentieth century, many of the Tunisian Jews emigrated from Tunis to Paris. A significant number of them, especially those educated and raised in francisés environments, experienced difficulties resulting from feelings of loss, displacement, and disappointment, as expressed in the mental maps of their life stories. The study examines memoirs of four men and three women, who were educated and raised in a francisé environment and emigrated from Tunis to Paris during the studied period. It seeks to answer the question: “How do the francisés immigrants in Paris shape the memory of the Jewish home in Tunis, while referring to the space in Paris?” Based on memory and home space theories, the article tries to answer the research question by breaking down home space into Jewish and non-Jewish, and by comparing the home in Tunis with the one in Paris. A main conclusion: the pillar of support changed from the Jewish religious space in Tunis to non-Jewish education in Paris, which decreased the weight of communalism in the immigrant’s life.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Gilat Brav

Dege Feder, Dancing Mobile Geographies: Ethiopian Jewish Contemporary Dance Migrations in Israel

ABSTRACT Ethiopian Israeli multimedia artist Dege Feder embodies Jewish and African diasporas in her dances. She uses the structures of Ethiopian eskesta dancing as a basis for contemporary experimentation. Feder migrated from Ethiopia to Israel during Operation Moses (1984-1985). ABSTRACT Her work determines Israeli contemporary art from an Afrocentric foundation through its East African Jewish migrations. By manifesting the corporeal evidence of her migration and assimilation, her work re-establishes perceptions of Israeli physicalities, culture, and nationalism. This article argues that the migratory aesthetics in Feder’s cultural production determine a post-melting-pot conception of Israeli nationhood for mobilizing collective memory and mapping emotional and corporeal cartographies of Jewish diaspora. Her dances and videos Amaweren’ya (2018), Rewind/Repeat (2020), and Mesnko (2023) embed Ethiopian memory within the corporeal territory of contemporary Israeli arts. Feder’s work establishes an Ethiopian Jewish contemporaneity by refusing binaries between traditional and contemporary aesthetics that have historically sidelined artists of color.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Hannah Kosstrin

Creative Cartography: Transmitting Literature and Knowledge Teaching Eastern European Jewish History

ABSTRACT The contribution explores an interdisciplinary and creative approach to the transmission of Central and Eastern European Jewish history and culture. In a course at Sciences Po Paris, students were invited to reflect on the circulation of ideas, historical narratives, and cultural dynamics through Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob. Creative cartography was introduced as an innovative method that combines academic rigor with artistic expression. This approach encourages students to create maps that represent spaces and narratives through emotions, subjective experiences, and diverse materials. This collaborative and imaginative process aims to deepen the understanding of historical and social phenomena while transforming teaching and learning practices. The dossier includes six articles that engage with all seven “books” of The Books of Jacob. It highlights how combining scholarly analysis with artistic practices can deepen understanding and offer new perspectives on the transmission of historical knowledge.

issue 27 / n.1 (2025) by Ewa Tartakowsky

The Great Depression and its Effect on Hungarian Jews

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the Great Depression on Jews in Hungary, with a specific focus on university students and lawyers—two fields in which the presence of Jews was highly contested. Instead of focusing on the Jewish economic elite, we discuss two groups that were targets of the most vehement attacks of the antisemitic middle class. Our aim is to present the direct and indirect consequences of the Great Depression on Jews, as well as its impact on the rise of political antisemitism. We also explore how far it can be understood as a catalyst of radicalization, as the Hungarian economy’s deterioration led to the swift rise of the radical right-wing into power.

issue 26 / n. 2 (2024) by Péter Buchmüller and Ágnes Kelemen

Jewish News and Reflections on the Great Depression in Czechoslovakia

ABSTRACT The article explores how the Great Depression was reflected in Jewish newspapers, particularly the Czech-language Zionist periodical Židovské Zprávy (Jewish News). It highlights the key issues that Zionists considered crucial during the economic crisis. Additionally, the article provides an overview of the status and economic situation of the Jewish minority in the former Czech lands, including their integration into the Czechoslovak economy. The crisis exacerbated disparities between the Czech lands, Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Rus, as well as between internal and border regions. Alongside topics related to the impact of the crisis and the differing conditions of the Jewish minority in various regions of Czechoslovakia, Zionists also addressed the effects of the crisis on Palestine.

issue 26 / n. 2 (2024) by Daniela Bartakova

Jews, the Great Depression, and the “Lithuanianisation” of the National Economy

ABSTRACT The article examines how the Great Depression affected the Lithuanian Jews, their relationship with ethnic Lithuanians, and their relationship with the Lithuanian state. It places particular emphasis on how the depression shaped the state’s core project—the “Lithuanianisation” of the national economy. Through case studies ranging from Jewish agricultural credit across labor migration to Klaipėda to the Lithuanian Businessmen’s Union’s (LVS) efforts to strengthen ethnic Lithuanians economically, the article argues that both the government’s and the LVS’s responses to the depression dramatically reshaped the lives of Lithuanian Jews. The “Lithuanianisation” of the national economy transformed formerly predominantly Jewish towns economically, socially, and culturally. However, as Jewish migration to Klaipėda shows, Lithuanian economic nationalism also provided opportunities for Jews seeking a livelihood outside of the shtetls. At the same time, the rise of the Nazis in Germany made Lithuanian Jews more dependent than ever on the existence of an independent Lithuania.

issue 26 / n. 2 (2024) by Klaus Richter

The World Economic Crisis. Jewish Experiences and Responses in Latvia

ABSTRACT The chapter explores the Jewish experience of the economic crisis in Latvia. Due to local socio-economic structures, Latvian Jews were overtly represented within economic sectors hit most severely by the crisis and therefore suffered differently than non-Jewish Latvians. Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods and sources in Latvian, Russian, German and Yiddish, the chapter presents examples for Jewish reactions to the crisis on a collective and individual level: the Jewish credit cooperative, the Jewish soup kitchen, and the activities of Mordehai Dubin, leader Latvia’s Agudas Israel party. These show that although Jews in Latvia were a heterogeneous group, they often confronted the crisis with united efforts which were rooted in civil society and sometimes organized beyond ethnic borders. Nevertheless, Latvian nationalists and fascists used the crisis to stir hatred against Jews. Particularly the politics of Kārlis Ulmanis’ authoritarian regime after 1934 hit the Jews often more severely than had the economic crisis.

issue 26 / n. 2 (2024) by Paula Oppermann

Looting and Killing are Permitted: Rumors in the November 1918 Pogrom in Lviv

ABSTRACT The extensive violence of November 1918 in Lviv, the Eastern Galician capital, left hundreds of Jews injured and dozens of dead. The presented paper is an attempt to understand a critical aspect of the dynamics that drove the violence of the pogrom. It seeks to illustrate the mechanism and role of rumors, shedding light on their influence and significance in driving the violence of the pogrom. Based on rich primary sources, it describes the rumors that were circulated and how people perceived the violence. One of the main goals of this paper is to emphasize the unintentional role of the Jewish militia in creating fear, uncertainty, and paranoia in the minds of Poles. The paper examines the key role of the print media in the process of validating the rumors. The investigation considers the significance of Poles’ knowledge about Jews based on prejudice.

issue 25 / n. 1 (2024) by Jan Kutílek

David Diringer’s Refugee Itinerary: From Foreign Student in Fascist Italy to Academic in Post-War Britain

ABSTRACT While David Diringer (1900-1975) is known for his contribution to the history of the alphabet, his life is presented here as a case study in intellectual migration in the first half of the twentieth century. Numerus clausus restrictions in the newly independent countries of Eastern Europe and the lack of provision for higher education in Palestine prompted many Jewish students including Diringer to take up the advantageous conditions offered to foreign students by the new Fascist government in Italy. As one of the small cohort successful in obtaining the requisite Italian citizenship to launch a university career, Diringer’s trajectory was disrupted by the loss of his position and his expulsion from Italy following the 1938 racial legislation. As a refugee academic in Britain, unsuccessful in attempts to reach the US or return to post-war Italy, he was precariously dependent on grants until he finally obtained a university position in 1948.

issue 25 / n. 1 (2024) by Anna Teicher

“Good Moral Conduct” in an Italian Concentration Camp: Women’s Daily Lives in Ferramonti di Tarsia, 1940‒1943

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the situation of female inmates in the Italian internment camp of Ferramonti, 1940-1943. Women formed a minority among the internees, who consisted largely of Jews from central and eastern Europe. Historical accounts of the camp of Ferramonti have been based mainly on the testimony of male members of the camp’s Jewish self-administration, who focused on the camp’s successful institutions and the flourishing social and cultural life among the internees. A somewhat different picture emerges from the testimony of former female internees. Based on female voices from Ferramonti, this article examines women’s lives in the camp: their work, health, daily chores, and gender relations. It argues that women’s bodies in Ferramonti were subject to rigid surveillance by both the camp inmates and the Fascist authorities. It also shows that the specifically male and rather positive perspective on Ferramonti promoted the postwar myth of Italians as “brava gente.”

issue 25 / n. 1 (2024) by Susanna Schrafstetter