Tag: Migration

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

Hachsharot in Greece, 1945 – 1949: Camps or vocational centers?

ABSTRACT
Drawing on rich and eloquent sources, both institutional and personal, this article outlines how internal documents of the American Joint Distribution Committee, press reports, and personal testimonies present vocational training in the hachsharot for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Greece. How do these sources communicate with each other, and what problems are they silent about? Through their close examination, I seek to paint a more accurate picture beyond the Zionist idea of aliyah and to interconnect Holocaust survivors’ attempts to move from Greece to Palestine with the Greek Civil War, the Cold War, and the situation in the Middle East. To this end, I analyze the attitudes of local and transnational actors as well as personal recollections of the multifold postwar experience of these vocational training centers in Greece.

issue 21 / n.1 (2022) by Kateřina Králová

Understudied Patterns of Jewish Migration between the Habsburg Central Europe and the United States

ABSTRACT
In this article, the author investigates the discussion on migration from Habsburg Central Europe to the United States, highlighting the movement of artists and musicians in popular entertainment as an understudied migration pattern. During the fin de siècle, migration and mobility for social, economic, political and/or professional reasons determined the patterns of everyday life; in turn, a new quality of mobility determined Habsburg Central Europe. Drawing on the example of the migration movement between the Habsburg Empire and the United States, the paper examines the place of Jewish migrant experiences in the broader context of masses of people on the move. To this end, the article compares experiences of migration such as migration of single men, women but also children and presents findings from oral history interviews of Jewish migrants, newspaper articles and correspondence.

issue 20 / December 2021 by Susanne Korbel