crisis gender and modernity Flashcards

Question

reason intelligentsia latched on to Yiddish

Answer 1

* Usually scholars have pointed to the change in attitude of the Jewish intelligentsia toward Yiddish as the key factor & have tied it to the changed atmosphere of the 1880s, in the aftermath of pogroms , when quest for integration lost its plausibility & various proto-nationalist views grew

Answer 2

- Notion that Jewish society was divided into 2 groups - a modernized intelligentsia and the “simple masses” - is a MYTH, A TROPE, used by Russian intellectuals such as Dubnov. Instead there was intricately stratified community in the throes of dramatic social change, which produced a diverse Yiddish readership & audience. When the founders of modern Yiddish literature and theatre produced works in the 1880s that were not for the simple masses, works that Dubnov and Levinsky complained about as inappropriately high-brow, their authors knew what they were doing. They were not ahead of their audiences; they were responding to the interests and needs of a growing and changing readership

Answer 3

* The greatest social transformation in Ashkenazic Jewry in Russian Empire in second half of 19th was urbanization, migration from shtetlekh to cities. * Evidence - Between 1855 & 1897 Jewish pop of Odessa increased from 17,000 to 139,000. And of Warsaw from 40,000 to 220,000. Similar processes took place in many other cities Jews played a very significant and visible role in financing and building the railways. As large-scale manufacturing and modern transport expanded, many Jewish peddlers, carters, and petty retailers--finding their livelihoods directly threatened--would be forced to abandon their villages and join the exodus to the growing industrial cities

Answer 4

* An Important facilitating factor for the rise of modern Yiddish culture was the growth of the Russian railway system. (In 1855, the Russian Empire had 570 miles of rail track. In 1890, it had more than 19,000 miles of track.) Yidishes folksblat actually had few readers in St. Petersburg, where it was published. But it could be distributed with ease, speed, and at modest expense by rail to all major cities in the Pale of Settlement. *

Answer 5

Most shtetlekh were not yet connected to the railway system, and were therefore not in contact with modern Yiddish culture in the 1880s * In the 1880s, the audience for modern Yiddish culture was in the cities, and not [or not yet] in the shtetlekh, which were bastions of tradition.

Answer 6

* Weeks- The combined effects of industrialization, railroads, state educational systems, military service, and simply a higher degree of personal mobility created a situation in which large numbers of Europeans came to perceive their identity primarily in ethnic and national terms. Nor should ideological factors be ignored: by the late nineteenth century (and, in many areas, earlier) it had come to be broadly accepted that a nation deserved if not its own state, then at least far- reaching cultural autonomy.

Answer 7

* in the particular context of Eastern Europe, the stark differences in language, culture, dress, and everyday life that separated the Jewish masses from the surrounding population made their self-definition as a nation logical, if not necessarily inevitable. Furthermore, Jews had enjoyed communal autonomy in the Polish Commonwealth. Although the Jewish kahal was abolished by Nicholas I in 1844, Jewish institutions continued to exist in the form of schools, burial societies, and religious organizations. To state matters baldly, in the mid-nineteenth century most Polish Jews lived in a quite separate world-social, cultural, institutional, even to a great extent economic-from their Christian Polish neighbours. The partitioning powers had, of course. absolutely no interest in breaking down the barriers between Polish and Jewish

Answer 8

Weeks- * a "Pole" is defined as a person who supports Polish cultural, political, and national aspirations, then a Jew ("Pole of the Mosaic Law," to use the contemporary phrase) can easily be accepted into the fold of Polishness. This conception of Jews gradually shedding their linguistic, cultural, and external differences and becoming integrated into the Polish nation was, in fact, the most prevalent proposed solution for the «Jewish question" before the very end of the nineteenth century.

Answer 9

Weeks - * Jewish identity was closely tied to scrupulous observance of traditional modes of behaviour and dress, even when these were not, strictly speaking, religious precests. Thus any Jew who dared to go against tradition by, say, dressing in "European" clothing or shaving his beard could very easily find himself treated as an apostate by his own community." Similarly, a Jewish woman who wished to live an independent existence rather than marry would have a difficult time fitting into the community the great difficulty of balancing Jewish and "European" identity should not be underestimated; Aleksander Guterman and others, for cultural assimilation (i.e., learning Polish and outwardly conforming to Polish norms of dress and behavor) of the first generation to "culminate" in conversion and a total loss of Jewishness in the second or third Conceptually, the over- whelming identification of Catholicism with the Polish nation made it quite difficult for Jews, even if Polish-speaking, Western-clad, and "enlightened" in religious practices, to be accepted as entirely Polish.

Answer 10

* But even the weekly Izraelita, the foremost "assimilationist" journal in Poland from the later 1860s to the eve of World War I, aimed not at an obliteration of Jewishness but at the transformation and further development of Jewish religious and cultural traditions as "Poles of the Mosaic Law."

Answer 11

* Traditionally Jews had followed the precept that "the law of the state is the law": that is, Jews too must obey the laws of the state where they reside. But political power had been taken from the Poles and was firmly in the hands of the Russians. Culturally and even economically, Jews who wished to prosper needed to know Russian-the only language, for example, used in education above the primary level

Answer 12

* Polish irritation at the failure of the "Jewish question" to solve itself was thus considerably exacerbated by the widespread feeling that Jewish migrants from the Pale (generally termed "Litwacy" or Litvaks) to Warsaw and other Polish cities served (consciously or otherwise) as agents of Russification. * Weeks - After that point, the only kind of assimilation still possible was an absolute and unconditional denunciation of one's roots: only the Jew turned antisemite could be accepted fully into the Polish national community.

Answer 13

* Weeks- This is not, of course, to suggest that Jews after 1905 failed to assimilate in the sense of learning Polish, donning modern fashions, or participating in Polish political and cultural life in the interwar period. On the other hand, one finds scant evidence in the post-1905 years of assimilation in the sense of becoming integrated into the Polish nation or-crucially-having even a Polish-Jewish identity validated by their non-Jewish neighbors.

Answer 14

, in the 1860s Jews in Prussia and Austria were granted equality in most respects. The Jews resident in the Kingdom of Poland, though not those living in the Russian Pale of Settlement, were granted legal emancipation in 1862. A generation or two later, many Polish antisemites would argue that the "prematurity" of this law had severely strained Polish-Jewish relations because Jews had exploited their equal rights to enrich themselves, primarily at the expense of Poles. In fact, legal equality remained for most Polish Jews something of a fiction, as restrictions on Jewish entry into higher education and government employment continued to be practiced. This reality, however, did not prevent Polish antisemites from claiming that Jews enjoyed "double rights": as Jews (in the form of being allowed separate Jewish schools and community organizations) and as "citizens."

Answer 15

* Modernization means many things: urbanization, technological advances, the rise of "the masses" in both political and economic terms, the advance of the secular over the religious. In all these areas the Polish lands did modernize in the second half of the nineteenth century. Warsaw almost quadrupled in size between 1850 and 1914, and Lódé expanded almost tenfold. The Polish capital was connected to St. Petersburg by rail in 1862 (a connection already existed to Vienna), and the railroad net expanded considerably in the ensuing half-century. In the Austrian and Prussian partitions, however, much less change took place.

Answer 16

Weeks- In the cities, the traditional separation of religious groups was harder to maintain. To be sure, Jews congregated in certain parts of towns—Nalewki street in Warsaw most famous Jews and Christians came into contact with each other more and more. By the early twentieth century it was no longer so easy to distinguish Jews, in particular those from the educated middle class, from Poles. This "blurring of categories" was denounced by antisemites in the same terms of outrage

Answer 17

* From the start, assimilation presumed an inherent superiority of Polish or "European" culture over "Asiatic" Jewish customs. Even a writer as sympathetic to the Jews as Eliza Orzeszkowa clearly expected that over time, Jews would alter their religious practices, shed "superstitions," and recognize the greater "logic" and attractiveness of modern Polish culture (itself only just developing in those years). Assimilation always retained a colonial aspect, the presumption of a more advanced, superior culture (Polish/European) "generously allowing" a more backward group to join it. It must be stressed that the negative views of traditional Jewish culture were expressed not so much by antisemites--who took such things for granted--but by liberals who compared todav's backwardness with tomorrow's enlightenment.

Answer 18

* One "large" and one and one "small" event brought Polish-Jewish relations to the boiling point. o The large" event was the 1905 Revolution or, more precisely the disappointment at its failure to deliver on Polish aspirations. This intense disappointment, combined with a general perception that Jews now opposed Polish interests, o paved the way for a "small" event: the Fourth Duma elections in Warsaw, which ended in the general Polish boycott of Jews. when Jewish electors in Warsaw demurred at the idea of sending to St. Petersburg a representative who would not promise to uphold Jewish equal rights, their rather timid protest unleashed massive outrage in Polish society, including its liberal segments Considering how little the Polish representatives in the Third Duma (1907-1912) had accomplished, it might seem absurd that anyone cared who represented- Poles, of course, cared very much indeed because of the symbolic value of Warsaw as the capital of a country that existed only in the hearts of Polish patriots.

Answer 19

the clerical antisemite Jan Jelenski emphasized the fusion of economic and religious struggle against the Jews. As good Catholics, Jelenski argued, Polish peasants must isolate themselves from Jewish economic interests and strengthen themselves by founding their own Polish cooperatives, savings banks, and stores. In a land where petty commerce and retailing were overwhelmingly dominated by Jews, the economic arguments of Jelenski must have made sense to more than a few Poles the entry of (relatively) large numbers of Jews into the free professions in the late nineteenth century could be perceived as a direct threat to Polish livelihoods and hence, in Roman Dmowski's formulation, a weakening of the very sociological foundations of the Polish nation. Following such arguments, the health of the Polish nation was dependent upon Polonizing commerce, trade, banking--in short, the middle classes

Answer 20

Krakow - the Baraneum was an institution of higher learning for women established in 1868… It offered courses in literature, science, and the arts, for which students had to register and pay tuition, in addition to free public evening lectures. Between the years 1901 and 1924, a total of 691 Jewish women were enrolled for courses there compared with 3,023 Catholic women.

Answer 21

Kraków became a centre of feminist activities, albeit with a Polish patriotic tone. Because the law barred women from involvement in political associations, those activities were limited to the cultural and educational spheres. One such centre was the Reading Room for Women (Czytelnia dla Kobiet), an association formally approved in 1895. The reading room had a library stocked with books and periodicals, many of them promoting feminist ideas.

Answer 22

also known as the Jewish Enlightenment, was a cultural and intellectual movement among Jews in Europe during the late 18th and 19th centuries o advocated for secular education, including the study of languages, sciences, and humanities, alongside traditional Jewish religious studies. They believed that education and knowledge were essential for social and economic advancement o Jewish integration into the broader European society. They encouraged Jews to adopt European customs, languages, and professions, and to participate in secular culture and politics o promoted religious reform within Judaism, - They sought to reconcile Jewish religious beliefs with modern scientific and philosophical ideas, often challenging traditional religious authorities and practices. o contributed to a revival of Jewish culture, literature, and art. Jewish writers and poets produced works in Hebrew and other languages

Answer 23

* The Haskalah did not consider Jewish law the single, central definer of a Jew’s social behaviour, and its proponents there- fore were not obliged to accept halakhic limitations upon women’s education…. they nevertheless did not depart significantly from the traditional Jewish women-excluding world in which they had grown up. As far as they were concerned, women remained outside the maskilic circle, which they considered an all-male club Werses’ generic biography of the maskilim entitled ‘The Maskil as a Young Man’, and such is supported by Feiner’s own exploration, which revealed culturally conservative Haskalah attitudes towards women.

Answer 24

* A few—Devora Efrati, Yetti Volrener and Rachel Morpurgo—can already be identified by the mid-nineteenth century.Their numbers rose toward the mid-1860s, after which we have increasing evidence of female attempts to join the hegemonic Haskalah center by authoring secular writing in Hebrew.

Answer 25

* We know of only of two women who managed to publish entire books in Hebrew: * the major obstacle that stood between a nineteenth-century Jewish woman and maskilic texts: lack of a working knowledge of Hebrew and of the Hebrew canon. The male maskil, coming from within traditional elite scholarly circles, always started his journey towards modern enlightenment after mastering a wide range of Jewish canonical texts, studied intensively in the heder and the beit midrash. But girls rarely attended a heder * To gain that knowledge as a woman you required the support and encouragement to learn modern Hebrew from your family - the good fortune that the maskilah enjoyed in not having to rebel against her family and hide her reading. However they faced isolation in friendships which men didn’t… + Depends on marriage situation- Miriam Markel-Mosessohn, who was childless, married to a maskil who gave her moral support, and enjoyed a relatively secure financial situation. It seems that she could devote most of her time to reading and writing- All

Answer 26

* Between the years 1873 and 1914, hundreds of Jewish girls disappeared from their homes, found shelter in the Felician Sisters’ convent in Kraków, and converted to Roman Catholicism- most of them were minors. * between the years 1873 and 1914, there were 340 conversions to Catholicism of individuals staying in the Felician Sisters’ convent, 14 of them of non-Catholic Christians and the rest Jews

Answer 27

* one common theme runs through the stories of the girls who ran away: the young woman’s desire to avoid an incompatible marriage arranged by her parents when she is very young.

Answer 28

Manekin * Western Galicia, specifically Kraków, as the main arena in which the stories of the thirty Galician Jewish minor girls that ran away took place

Answer 29

Jewish girls who had lived their lives in Kraków had friends with similar backgrounds and similar experiences. They could also provide each other with a sense of solidarity and social cohesiveness by attending theatre and lectures together, as even a pious woman like Sarah Schenirer did. Kraków had a visible Jewish community with Jewish neighbourhoods, synagogues, shops, and markets. in villages and small towns Jewish life was mostly confined to family life indoors. When a young Jewish schoolgirl walked out of her house, she was already on the boundary between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. This seems to be the principal reason why most of those who converted in Kraków came from the surrounding small towns and villages.

Answer 30

* the Austrian authorities refrained from introducing public high schools for women that offered matriculation exams, especially since they viewed the female nature as unfit for academic studies. As a result, only private gymnasia initially prepared their female students for the matriculation exams * Galicia was quite advanced in the development of female secondary schools. Of the 4,997 female secondary school students in the Habsburg Empire in 1912, 3,606 were in Galicia

Answer 31

* women were first admitted as regular students to universities in the Habsburg Empire in 1897, and then only to the philosophy faculties. (In 1900 they were admitted to faculties of medicine and in 1919 to law faculties

Answer 32

* Throughout the entire period of the Jewish runaway phenomenon in Galicia there was no formal response from the Jewish rabbinic leadership. It should be noted that the problem was primarily an Orthodox one…. This lack of action stood in stark contrast to the attitude of the Church, which became extensively involved in the education of girls through local convents. Kraków convents were particularly active in female education at all levels, establishing thirteen private primary schools of different types (Lwów had eight primary convent schools) as well as two private teachers’ seminaries.

Answer 33

When Anna was fifteen, her parents arranged her betrothal with the fourteen-year-old It was fully expected by her parents that Anna would follow the path of other Kraków Orthodox Jewish women, i.e., that she would marry and end her formal education. Anna wanted to continue her studies during marriage so her parents banned her from taking books from the library. She married the man after 2 years of betrothal - half a year later the marriage had not been consummated. Anna decided to flee from her home. She apparently planned her escape carefully, leaving on August 25, 1909, together with her younger sister, Leonore (Leja), who was studying at the time for her matriculation exams

Answer 34

petitioned the district court in Podgórze to (1) recognize their freedom to study; (2) permit their residence outside their parents’ home; (3) compel their father to provide appropriate living expenses; and (4) release them from his custody. In Anna’s case, the petition was based on two claims: abuse at home and interference with her studies o An appeal to the Supreme court resulted in a decision where they repealed the decision of the lower court and called for a guardian for the sisters “to protect their rights”… The sisters’ request for financial support was also granted… The court obliged the father, Wolf Kluger, to support each of the sisters with a monthly sum of 200 crowns, as they had requested

Answer 35

* not all Jewish women who sought the temporary refuge of a convent wished to abandon their religion. Anna Kluger stayed briefly in a convent so that she could pursue her desire for higher education free of parental interference. She wished to take advantage of the educational opportunities for Kraków women that had expanded considerably in the first decades of the twentieth century

Answer 36

* The period of most Guttmacher petitions, the early 1870s, was one of wrenching transition. Increased mobility and urbanization resulting from the momentous technological and legislative changes of the 1860s encouraged more and more Jews of partitioned Poland to break away from their communities. Passively traditional Jews were increasingly confronted with friends, business competitors, spouses, and children who had “mingled with the Gentiles and learned their ways,” as well as those who had “deviated from the proper path,” no longer followed “the ways of the Jewish religion at all,” preferred the company of non-Jews, or had gone so far as to convert to Christianity, each presenting what Katz has called a “possible alternative” lifestyle.

Answer 37

* Sarah Schenirer [young woman from Krakow] - was a learned religious enthusiast and Orthodox ideologue who sought to rescue the daughters of her contemporaries by providing them with an emotional and intellectual allegiance to Orthodox Judaism that their mothers lacked. est a religious afternoon school in 1917 - the Beit Yaakov movement introduced formal religious education for Orthodox girls, it also controlled & filtered their exposure to secular studies.

Answer 38

believed that through indoctrination and education, and employing the tools of contemporary youth movements the daughters of the ‘lost generation’ of orthodox Jewish women would profoundly and enthusiastically embrace their Orthodox identity. * Beit Yaakov schools explicitly discouraged higher education for their charges by refusing to prepare them for university entrance exams despite the new Orthodox primary schools, thousands of Jews continued to convert during the 1920s and 1930s or simply attended secular educational institutions against the wishes of their families

Answer 39

* Attending the theatre would be treated as a “crime against God and man.” – from an exceptionally pious house- The two became covert theatre partners * Years later, Bernard ran into Srulówna (the covert theatre goers) on the street accompanied by her children. Now she was “stooped, with a wrinkled face and dim eyes.” They chatted a bit about her father’s store, which she now ran, and of course made no mention of their past exploits. Then Srulówna was called away sharply by her husband, a bearded Jew with a long kapota.

Answer 40

Dynner- Srulówna seems to have chosen her own path, and her earlier exposure to secular western culture suggests, upon further reflection, that it was an educated decision. It almost certainly helped preserve her relationship with her parents, considering their abhorrence of that culture. And though we do not have access to Srulówna’s inner spiritual life, which may have been richer than Bernard imagined, we do have passing mention of a significant mundane factor: Srulówna had assumed the daily operation of her father’s store and may have, in fact, inherited it. These economic assets and skills suggest a kind of agency

Answer 41

* Guttmacher petitions - Nevertheless, many other petitions remind us of what women who made that choice may have had to give up: the empathic ear of a rabbinic sage like Guttmacher, family relation- ships, kinship networks, and empowerment deriving from their economic enterprises, often familial or kin-based.

Answer 42

educational success were exclusively written on behalf of sons. * In matchmaking - men were valued for their mastery of Talmudic study, in addition to their yihus (familial prestige) and wealth. In some cases, a poor young man without yihus who pos- sessed the self-discipline to achieve Talmudic expertise might be sought after by wealthy unlettered heads of families and achieve upward mobility, which provided much added motivation for study. Potential brides, in contrast, were valued mainly for their promised dowries, economic skills and assets

Answer 43

* Parents of girls who had suffered an accident that resulted in a broken hymen were sure to register the accident with a well-known rabbinic authority, lest their daughters’ virginity be doubted on their wedding night * Occasionally, a daughter ran off with a non-Jew and converted, a decision that could undermine the matchmaking prospects of any unwed siblings and cous- ins. One father of an apostate actually requested “that God quickly kill her, may her name be forgotten.”

Answer 44

* Divorce presents a more complicated picture of traditional female disabilities and modes of empowerment. In the most harrowing cases, a wife might find herself divorced after ten years of apparent infertility. While prominent rabbinic authorities denied the ability of a court to compel a man to divorce his wife after that period of time, some rabbis upheld the practice * husband might simply abandon her without granting a writ of divorce, rendering her an aguna (literally, “chained woman”), who was unable to ritually remarry.Such a status could prove, at very least, economically debilitating, since husbands were also business partners in many cases. The aguna phenomenon reached alarming proportions during this period

Answer 45

* husband might simply abandon her without granting a writ of divorce, rendering her an aguna (literally, “chained woman”) One cause was military recruitment, which separated mar- ried couples for long periods of time either due to a husband’s distant military service or his flight abroad to evade service. Another cause of the increase in agunot seems to have been the famine of 1867–70, which sparked a westward migration that separated numerous husbands and wives

Answer 46

o A pregnant woman named Basha bat Frieda was black- mailed with a threat of aguna status by her husband, who had absconded to Berlin with their daughter and converted to Christianity. He threatened to withhold her writ of divorce unless she brought him the baby to be converted

Answer 47

* Yet in the vast majority of cases, where both spouses consented to rabbinic authority, Jewish women were much less captive to marital misalliances than their non-Jewish counterparts. For although Jewish divorce rates in specific cities in the tsarist empire have been overestimated by some scholars, the rates were, of course, higher than those of Polish Catholic and Russian Orthodox women, thanks to Judaism’s relative tolerance of divorce. technically, Jewish ritual law (halakha) gave husbands the sole right to initiate divorce. However, rabbinic authorities attempted to mitigate the law, effectively giving women “more rights and a higher status than that accorded them by the Torah,” In the case of one woman who was “practically raped” by her husband, Guttmacher joined “great sages of Poland " in pressuring the husband to give her a writ of divorce.

Answer 48

* Dynner - Divorce was intricately related to Jewish gender norms in the economic sphere, since a female divorcee would not have to resign herself to poverty if, like many Jewish women, she had a trade - most traditional Eastern European Jewish women worked, as did their husbands. * Before the abolition of residential restrictions in 1862, in towns and cities with Jewish residential restrictions their lack of beards, side- locks, and other male Jewish markers that officials found so odious meant that Jewish women often became the public faces of their businesses and were more likely to apply for licenses and exemptions in their names. Widowed women and divorcees exercised ultimate authority not only in their family businesses but also in matchmaking decisions for their unmarried children

Answer 49

* Susan Glenn argues somewhat similarly that, “although women were looked upon as bread- winning partners in the Jewish family, they remained second-class citizens” as a result of their exclusion from realms like higher Jewish education and public ritual. Shaul Stampfer, however, surmises that “the economic contribution of the wives limited the authority of their husbands,” and warns scholars against a “superficial or casual use of the term ‘patriarchy’” to describe Jewish society.

Answer 50

* Female professions- The most commonly stated endeavor is trade, usually in a store or market stall (forty-eight times), followed by lease-holding, usually of a tavern or liquor dis- tilling monopoly (twenty-one), an occupation that demanded a lot of grit

Answer 51

o These economic skills and resources better enabled women to demand divorces, and the agency possessed by such women is reflected in their ten- dency to compose their petitions themselves

Answer 52

* Ironically, it was the modern embrace of European bourgeois cultural norms that tended to draw Jewish women out of the workforce and relegate them to the domestic sphere

Answer 53

Dinner: now historians recognize the family as a critical institution mediating between the individual and the larger society. Acknowledging the centrality of the home as a historical site goes hand in hand with acknowledging the role of women as historical actors * It is impossible to understand the identity-formation of children, for example, without some knowledge of what transpires within their homes. Adults, after all, model (or perform) for children how they are expected to behave, as well as (though not intentionally) the behaviour they should avoid.

Answer 54

- Parush’s work concluded - that Jewish women’s traditional educational exclusion had the unforeseen consequence of freeing women to pursue a secular education. labels this phenomenon as the ‘Benefits of marginality’; as it was precisely their marginality that paradoxically enabled women to gain access to pieces of literature which had been denied to their brothers.

Answer 55

Polish Jewish men were first stirred by the writings of the Berlin Haskalah, other early maskilim & stimulated by medieval Jewish philosophy. Whereas, their female equivalents were inducted into modernity by ‘popular’ or ‘legitimate’ Yiddish literature, which were infused with the values of the Haskalah, or even radical political tracts; these constituted better preparation for reading a ‘modern secular literary text’

Answer 56

- Sitting opposite a man named Khaim, Peretz asked the stranger whether he had ever read a modern book, to which Khaim responded “I’ve peeked into them - this much” he measured a fingertip’, but Peretz’s reply as to whether he had enjoyed such was swiftly rebutted with “God forbid! Its my wife who reads that stuff”; instead he ‘sat in the study house, poring over the holy texts’ - This brief excerpt conveys the paradox of exclusion. Precisely because Khaim’s wife was excluded from reading the Holy texts, she in turn was granted the opportunity to read modern literature, which enabled her to develop a ‘modern consciousness’ Khaim himself had little understanding of the modern texts, which had the adverse effect of fostering no comparable modern consciousness to that of his wife.

Answer 57

- Khaim’s misunderstanding is succinctly characterized by his enquiries such as - evidence: “what good are those stories?... what’s the practical purpose?” and with Peretz’s noting that “it didn’t occur to him that a writer might write the truth”

Answer 58

These women who were acculturated and modernized through their non-Hebrew ‘feminine’ reading, had significant influence on the development of modernity in Jewish society, by ‘disseminating the enlightenment spirit of modernization and secularization’ - The influence of these women was manifested in a spectrum of altered behaviours such as ‘girls refusing marriage to rabbinic scholars; secret alliances being forged with young family members in order to promote enlightenment and secular education; heretical tendencies; girls fleeing home to seek an education; radical and ‘feminist’ social perspectives being adopted ; and girls joining revolutionary movements.

Answer 59

Rakovsky is a prime example of this, in that she broke with her childhood’s traditional religious culture, abandoned her first marriage, secured a divorce against extensive family opposition, had her own career, whilst also being an active Zionist.

Answer 60

historical gender studies have enabled the rethinking of the traditional Jewish educational system in relation to female Polish Jews. Where their exclusion once historically seen as negative, now their elimination from traditional educational spheres should be viewed as what enabled them to engage with modern secular literary texts in a what men could not. Their exclusion from the Hebrew language & Jewish learning enabled them to read works that formed their modern consciousness. should not overlook darker sexism which excluded women in first place, but demonstrates that exclusion must be rethought, & seen also to contribute to female agency.

Answer 61

- Parush - In fact where women had to rely on men to teach them Hebrew, in a notable number of cases the reverse was true for European languages. In fact, Khaim’s wife actually read on of her so-called ‘storybooks’ to him, but he fell asleep. Gender aids historian to rethink realm of traditional Jewish education & its impact on Polish Jewish women.

Answer 62

example Sara-Feige Meinkin-Foner and Nehama Puhachevsky] enables the historian to revise the traditional view of the movement as an ‘exclusively male club’ Rakovsky’s ‘My life as a radical Jewish Woman: memoirs of a Zionist feminist in Poland’; for example R does not make a single reference to a maskilah throughout her entire memoir, yet, maskilim make a number of appearances [such as Asher Khabes, Meir Litvinov, and Wolf Frenkel]

Answer 63

more often it has filled in the gaps of historical knowledge, whilst suggesting new areas to be examined. - For example - according to Hyman - studies of women’s organizations point to the fight of Polish Jewish women to obtain a voice in both Jewish as well as general political discourse. - Gender is not here rethinking political organizations as a whole, but taking historians deeper into the fold

Answer 64

in a speech to a group of ‘more or less active [Zionist] women members’ Rakovsky stated ‘if we bear the same duties’ as their male comrades, ‘we should demand equal rights, and we will achieve them only when we create a special women’s commission for the National Fund, the first step to a Zionist women’s federation in Russian-Poland’; the proposal was ‘unanimously accepted’

Answer 65

gendered study - looking specifically at women’s organizations - does not lead the historian to completely rethink political organizations, but merely presents the fact that the establishment of women’s groups was predicated on the need to have their voices heard. Rakovsky felt only way in which women could demand equal rights was through a separate women’s association, demonstrates that women’s voices were intentionally stifled within political groups; a belief that is positively affirmed by the unanimous agreement of her female comrades. - Gender lends further insight into relations within political organizations, demonstrating pre-eminence of males, which in turn forced women at times to look elsewhere to enact a greater degree of agency.

Answer 66

R’s assertion in same speech that ‘our comrades take credit for our work’ and that they ‘bear the same duties’, demonstrates there was also an element of gendered exploitation.

Answer 67

Jewish man on train talks about his wife- I want to study too,' she said. "I pointed out to her that the Talmud was no storybook, it wasn't meant for women, and it even said that women shouldn't study the holy texts, and besides, the Talmud was written in the Holy Tongue. "But it was no use! If the congregation had found out, they'd 've stoned me —and they would've been right. Well, I won't keep you in suspense. To make a long story short, she pleaded and pleaded, crying her eyes out, until I finally caved. Every night I sat down with her and translated a page of the Talmud… but I knew how it would turn out”…. “she dozed off night after night. Those texts weren’t meant for women”

Answer 68

* I brought home a ton of books for my wife, a whole ton of storybooks . . . Now the tables were turned: she read to me, and I dozed off "And even today," he said, "I still don't know what good those story-books are. They're worthless for men!

Answer 69

Jewish man on train: About his wife- "She's got a stall in the marketplace, where she sells salt and herring. She's nursing a baby, and she's got two more kids to wash and comb. She's busy all day blowing their noses."

Answer 70

* Two different worlds: a man's world and a woman's world. On the one side, a world of religious texts; and on the other, a world of storybooks that you purchase by the ton… as if there weren’t enough things dividing us. It's not enough that we're either French noses, British canes, German Jews, Jewish pigs from Lithuania, Jewish schnorers from Poland, or Palestinian beggars.

Answer 71

* Perhaps he had become an antisemite. It was quite possible. Perhaps we Jews were now the warts, and these had to be cut away from Europe's beautiful nose. He might size me up with a pair of cold eyes or embrace me, saying I wasn't like most Jews

Answer 72

* But I was wrong. Polniewski recognized me, flung his arms around me, and before I could even open my mouth, he asked me what I thought about that vile antisemitism. "It's," he said, speaking Polish of course, "it's a kind of cholera, an epidemic . . .”

Answer 73

* We saw that she was always alone.(you Jewish men never have time for your wives)… You can say what you like, but you Jewish men often wrong your daughters by selling them!- - Marriage: Haskalah undertone of early marriage, critical, as women always appear to be unhappy/sad

Answer 74

- Narrator - we get a sense that the story starts out, its dark, he’s in a stage coach, with the narrator half asleep. Starts talking and I would ‘I still don’t know how he could tell I was Jewish’. [couldn’t Jewish writer writing that in early 19th c] for centuries it was obvious who was a Jew because of what they were wearing, their accent, but that’s no longer the world we are living in here. It is possible for someone to be a Jew, but in narrators self-image he looks like everyone else

Answer 75

he uncle's household was practically goyish. He didn't know whether they ate unkosher food, but they definitely didn't wash their hands before a meal —he had seen it with his own two eyes! they had long towels draped on their stairs. And you had to ring a bell before entering their home. Painted tablecloths were spread out inside . The Lublin uncle didn't follow God's commandments,

Answer 76

She was an orphan living with that unkosher family!" In Warsawshe dabbled in other things. She had a good grasp of Polish, she could read German notices fluently. She even said she could play—not a fiddle but some other strange instrument .

Answer 77

Khaim asked - where does a man get the time and the patience to make up stories?"

Answer 78

What won't a Jew do to earn money! Look at me: I couldn't take a Jewish wagon, so I'm traveling by coach. God only knows if I'm sitting on kosher cloth or not.

Answer 79

Khaim said that his wife complained about being bored while he studied "A woman doesn't study the Bible, she doesn't take part in community affairs, she doesn't have the Six Hundred and Thirteen Precepts that a man has to obey."

Answer 80

We had ice-skated together as children and often played at baking bread; we had almost become good buddies. But then I had gone to the dark and dirty heder, and he to the bright and free Polish school. When I didn't know some- thing at the heder, I was whipped, but if I could guess the meaning of a sage's question, I got my cheek pinched. Both hurt me. He, in contrast, got either a five-kopek coin or detention. He secretly taught me how to read Polish and Russian and then he lent me books.

Answer 81

Polniewski. "True politics doesn't make things up out of whole cloth. It relies only on hard facts. Antisemitisrn suppresses some facts and amplifies others. It can puff up any spark into an infernal fire, but it can never generate a new spark. It's human nature and not politics that spins the threads of history. Politics only twists and untwists those threads, ties them together and tangles them up! Antisemitism is a disease. Politics stands at its sickbed like a stupid quack who tries to prolong the illness. "Politics," he went on, "exploits antisemitism

Answer 82

the non Jew: "The town had once been prosperous: the lofts had been full ofall kinds of grain and fruit. The marketplace had been jammed with wagons, farm- ers, and brokers. Now and then, among the gray coats and the coarse, white caftans, a big landowner would show up —or at least so we were told. But a highway was built and then a railroad, which bypassed the town, excluding it from the business world. The streets were empty now, the lofts were crammed with rotten onions and hunks of cheese —the sole legacy of the good years.

Answer 83

non Jew talks about the Jewish woman when his wife was dying - she nevertheless had so much feeling, so much compassion for other people —I've never met anyone like her. And her emotions were so simple, natural, and unpretentious. She never budged from Maria's bedside. She got her husband to lend me money at a low interest rate. She was our nurse, our housekeeper, our cook, our staunchest friend. And when Maria died, it was harder to comfort our friend than me I very clearly saw that Jews aren't our enemies and that we can all live in peace."

Answer 84

Peretz thinks the Jewish man's wife and the non-Jewish man's Jewish female friend are the same person because they are both suffering was a fool. Is there only one Jewish wife suffering that kind of exis- tence?

Answer 85

* I hadn't had any relationship with my fanatically religious parents for quite a while; in fact, I had broken completely with the entire Jewish world. I lived like a free bird, giving private lessons while preparing for the university entrance exams.

Answer 86

* I'd been starving that whole month. I had no pupils; still, I'd managed to just barely squeeze by somehow or other. But now all wellsprings were dry.

Answer 87

* Should I go to the grocery store and ask for bread and sugar on credit? Hmm!That old Jewish woman was sitting there. I didn't like her. She always gazed at me with such mournful, accusing eyes. She knew perfectly well that I was Jewish, but she pretended she didn't know, and she addressed me in Russian as "Sir," though prob- ably cursing me under her breath. it made no sense asking her for credit. Not only would she refuse but she'd insult me into the bargain. * I had a few relatives in town, all of them religious, indeed, fanatical Jews, with whom I had nothing in common and with whom I never socialized

Answer 88

* Describes to a doctor the conditions of families living in poverty and dying of disease. He replies: “I see these things every day—I've been seeing them for thirty years," he continued sorrowfully. "And do you know where you can find these conditions mostly? Among the destitute Jews in the crowded suburb. Have you ever been there?" Ansky met another friend who asked her for money when she barely had any "(had just begged from another friend for 20)- "A whole family is starving to death, they've got one foot in the grave," he answered, deeply upset. "Two of them are sick!" he had met a scrawny girl who has 8 - her father dead and mother and brother were sick

Answer 89

* I saw myself with my family, in the Jewish elementary school, at the synagogue. How warm and loving were those scenes! I

Answer 90

Landlady about the shopkeeper- "Why? Is she sick? Why shouldn't she be there? That Jew bitch. She's there from five a.m. on. The hell with her!"

Answer 91

Ansky's aunt had money female landlady - fatherless children, one a drunkard who she tells off female shopkeeper all doing better than him I began tutoring Peklusha. She was myonly pupil —pro bono, of course. But I was very pleased with her. She was unusually bright. I liked hearing her solve problems quickly

Answer 92

You're Jewish, after all." It was odd. I never hid being Jewish. Nevertheless, whenever someone reminded me of it, I would redden in confusion as if I were embarrassed. Not because I was ashamed of my Jewish background, but I found its mere mention unpleasant.

Answer 93

The reading room was a cherished home for our circle. We went there not to read but to relax. The silence of the vast room with its high ceil- ing, the walls covered with books, and the friendly smile of the elderly librarian had a remarkably soothing effect on us.

Answer 94

t was the prayer usu- ally sung by women at the close of the Sabbath: "Cod of Abraham, of Isaac,andofJacob...."Irecognizedthevoice:AuntBasile.Iwasn'tsur- prised, I didn't even ask how I'd come here. I was calm and contented like after an illness, and my aunt's singing was tender and lyrical.

Answer 95

Alyosha. "They sent for my father, and that's how we found out. We've been here all day. Your aunt served us tea and all kinds of Jewish treats." "Treats!" my aunt snapped. "They didn't even want to eat a tiny piece of fish." And she left the room. "Your aunt's a dear, a darling." Anushka beamed. "It's been only a few hours, but I'm madly in love with her."

Answer 96

No Room in My Heart for Jewish Suffering’ * Universalist ethics versus her friend’s particularism * Why do you come with your particular Jewish sorrows? I feel equally close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putumayo… whose bodies the Europeans are playing catch-ball

Answer 97

* Opposed WW1 and the Bolshevik revolution and their abandonment of democracy which she saw as integral to socialism. * Criticizes her friends for reading books which are ‘kitch’- particularly for reading novels about Spinoza- leads her friend to get caught up in concern for the Jewish problem

Answer 98

* The Third Party Convention (December 1899). The Bund has inscribed on its banner the demand for equal civil rights for the Jews. * The demand for equal civil rights but not equal national rights should be included among the Bund's political demands. (2) To enable comrades to express their opinions on the national question and help clarify the subject o Essentially, the discussions focused on the need to avoid making demands which would divert the worker from his class interests by the pull of [spurious or less urgent] national interests. The danger in having the Bund's program include a demand for comprehensive equality of national rights lies in the possibility that it will blur the Jewish proletariat's class consciousness

Answer 99

Civil Rights: These rights protect individuals from discrimination and ensure their equal treatment under the law. Civil rights often include rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to a fair trial, the right to vote, and protection against discrimination based on characteristics such as race, gender, or ethnicity. national rights: These rights often pertain to issues of self-determination, sovereignty, and autonomy. National rights may include the right to govern oneself, the right to preserve one's cultural identity and heritage, and the right to territorial integrity. These rights are particularly relevant in contexts where there are ethnic, linguistic, or cultural minority groups seeking recognition and protection of their distinct identities and interest

Answer 100

Criticizes Zionism for hindering proletariat- workers of the world must unite not break off into national groups + not all Jews can fit in Israel- not viable/practical for the size of Jewish community. * But at same time wants national groups - a state such as Russia, consisting of a great number of disparate nations, will need to be reorganized in the future into a federation of national groups, each enjoying full national autonomy…. the Convention deems that the term "nationality" applies to the Jewish people

Answer 101

* the Sixth Convention formulated the program of the Bund regarding the Jewish nationality question as follows: (1) Full civil and political equality for the Jews. (2) The right, guaranteed by law, for the Jews to use their own language in all legal and governmental institutions. (3) National-cultural autonomy- the removal of all functions connected with cultural matters (e.g., popular education) from the administrative responsibility of the state and local government and the transference of these functions to the Jewish nation.

Answer 102

*(1910)- (5) All limitations on the use of one's mother tongue in public life, assemblies, the press, business institutions, schools, et cetera must be abolished, tolerated, is unacceptable. (2) All governmental institutions—central, regional and local—must use the local language when dealing with the population….

Answer 103

1906: * 1. Full democratization of the regime according to the principles of parliamentary democracy, autonomy of the national territories and guaranteed legal rights for all minority peoples. * 2. Full and unconditional [civic and national] rights to the Jewish population. * 3. Representation of all national minorities in federal, regional and local elections that shall be conducted by direct secret ballot. The right to vote shall be extended to women. * 4. Recognition of the Jewish people in Russia as a single political entity entitled to govern itself in matters of national culture. * 5. A national assembly of Russian Jews shall be convened for the purpose of forming the basic structure of a national organization. * 6. Jews shall have the right to use the national language (Hebrew) and the spoken language (Yiddish) in schools, courts and public life. * 7. Jews shall have the right to observe the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday

Answer 104

Zionist but Yiddisher as well. Did not want everyone to move to Palestine but wanted ‘doikeyt’ (hereness) a Zionism of the diaspora- cultivating Yiddish culture in the diaspora

Answer 105

1919 * * Poland undertakes to assure full and complete protection of life and liberty to all inhabitants of Poland without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race or religion. * Differences of religion, creed or confession shall not prejudice any Polish national * Polish nationals should not be restricted in their use of any language. * Polish nationals who are religious or linguistic minorities shall have an equal right to establish, manage and control at their expense charitable, religious and social institutions, schools and other educational establishments, with the right to use their own language and to exercise their religion freely therein. * Poland will ensure people can be educated in their own language, but can still force schools to teach polish

Answer 106

1921 * Every citizen possesses the right of safeguarding his nationality and of cultivating his national language and customs * Special laws of the State guarantee the full and free development of their national customs to minorities in the Polish State, aided by autonomous federations of minorities, to which statutory recognition may be given within the limits governing general autonomous federations. * National religion is Roman Catholicism – majority religion and so has the dominant position, yet all receive equal treatment

Answer 107

1922 * From an economic and social point of view a battle is being conducted against the Jewish community * In order that the position of the Jews as citizens be truly equal to that of the Poles, it is necessary to recognize the existence of a Jewish nation, and Jewish nationalism must not be used as an excuse for restrictions – fighting for national rights should not be interpreted as a surrender to civil equality * We must struggle for a regime in Poland that will guarantee free development to every national minority, which will abolish any exploitation or oppression of such a group. The other national minorities are as interested in this matter as we are. This is the political factor which caused us to consider the creation of a minorities bloc.

Answer 108

* I was twenty-six years old in 1891 when I came to Warsaw to teach Hebrew and Russian at the girls’ kheyder of Bnei Moshe in Poland. I left my eight-year-old son with my parents in Bialystok. Grandfather wanted to educate his grandson to be a rabbi. She took her daughter with her

Answer 109

* Living my independent life, along with my teaching, I didn’t forget my inner obligation to ﬁght for the freedom of women, especially Jewish women, always the most enslaved of all by self-appointed guardians who burdened them and apparently wanted to save their souls. I saw the economic independence of women as the main factor behind their personal and social liberation, and I set myself the goal of working with all my might for the their liberation. I wanted to spread that idea among the various classes of Jewish women.

Answer 110

* As soon as I moved to Warsaw, I started getting letters from female cousins and other relatives who were coming to Warsaw to study some profession. They asked me to help them get settled and I gladly agreed.

Answer 111

* My two children attended my school; I found a melamed [tutor] who taught my son Talmud, and I studied alongside him. * Even fathers who were drawn to Zionism didn’t appreciate the importance of Hebrew for their daughters, and pious Jews strictly maintained the rule that ‘‘everyone who teaches his daughter Torah, it’s as if he teaches her licentiousness.’’ More progressive fathers gladly taught their daughters other languages, but the Jewish fathers argued that Hebrew— the Holy Tongue— was for boys.

Answer 112

* I often think I was a Zionist from my earliest childhood because of my education, the kheyder , the Bible, and later, perhaps, because of the pogroms against the Jews.

Answer 113

family leant on her for help with female education I became friends with Leah Proshansky— a friendship that has lasted ﬁfty years. Not only did we feel a close personal bond, but we were also connected by the common ideal of working in our liberation movement * If all my visitors were not members of Zionist organizations, they were all Zionist sympathizers

Answer 114

* requested permission of the school board to open a seven-grade girls’ school with Russian as the language of instruction and Hebrew as a subject that would be taught more than three times a week in every grade- this was eventually allowed

Answer 115

* even though I was an avowed heretic, I was deeply rooted in Jewish tradition. I raised my children in that spirit. At Passover, for example, I did not make a Seder, but I did send the children to my friend, the Mizrachi leader, Rabbi Levi Levin-Epstein, so they could attend a Jewish Seder. On the Days of Awe, I was the only one who did not go to shul

Answer 116

* Zionism as a movement was illegal— the slightest Zionist agitation could bring the harshest punishment— and yet there were Zionist activists. Since Jewish cultural work was all that was permitted, organizations of Lovers of the Hebrew Language were founded, setting up modern khadorim and evening courses for young people, especially for boys from Hasidic circles. These courses were offered at the existing Jewish schools and were tuition-free so that they could attract students.

Answer 117

* But Jewish middle-class girls had no interest in their own national revival. The ﬁrst bearers of the idea of Hibbat Zion, rabbis and pious Jews, didn’t accept women into their ranks. The Land of Israel had to be colonized, and to their way of thinking, that was men’s work. Only after everything was ready would women be brought to the Holy Land, where they would fulﬁll their function

Answer 118

* Dr. Herzl was the ﬁrst to appreciate the role and signiﬁcance of women for the people’s liberation movement. At the ﬁrst Zionist Congress, he granted Jewish women equal rights to elect and to be elected to the Zionist Congress o I had a place in the journalists’ section right across from the speakers’ stand on the stage. I didn’t sit among the delegates— simply because no women were elected as speakers and leaders of the ﬁrst Congresses

Answer 119

* when I expressed that idea to one of the leaders, he told me with the familiar dismissal: ‘‘Comrade Rakovsky, you will not create any Zionist women’s movement.’’ * Those Zionist women’s associations turned out to be necessary prerequisites and educational institutions to train the different classes of women to work socially and politically for our liberation movement.

Answer 120

* With the emergence of independent Poland after the war, broader horizons also appeared for the Jewish women’s movement; new perspectives developed along with brand new tasks. It was the Jewish women’s movement that created the ‘‘Union of Jewish Women in Poland’’- to make young Jewish women productive, and to evoke in them an understanding of economic independence, a sense of society, and an interest in the collective.

Answer 121

* The left thought that women’s organizations were harmful in general because the struggle should be conducted in common. our primary goal was to awaken a feel for ‘‘organization’’ among the women, to spread a network of Jewish women’s associations over the whole country with a uniﬁed agenda. We hoped to educate the association’s chairwomen not to substitute the end for the means.

Answer 122

* We did get our Jewish women representatives into the Sejm and the city councils after the war; but, despite our constant, persistent struggle, we could not break through the Chinese Wall to get into the allegedly modernized Jewish community organization [ kehile ] in Warsaw

Answer 123

We hoped to educate the association’s chairwomen not to substitute the end for the means. Jewish women’s associations also ran children’s homes, held vocational courses, took care of children and orphans, engaged in social work, supported mothers and children, offered legal aid to deserted women, and established serious and honest cooperatives that were better administered by women than by men- was basically a means to get Bund elected in the Sejm by female votes

Answer 124

* the rabbis were apparently terriﬁed of evil [sexual] passions, Heaven forfend, for ‘‘the greater a man than his fellow, so is his evil impulse greater.’’ Consequently, they categorically rejected the possibility of sitting with women in the kehile ; they had no objections to sitting with Polish women in the Sejm and the Senate; but with Jewish women—‘‘one should choose death rather than sin.’’

Answer 125

* At about the same time as the Jewish women’s organization emerged in Poland— in 1918— so did a new radical women’s ‘‘Pioneer’’ movement. The ‘‘Pioneer’’ girl, the simple Jewish girl from a good Jewish home, often even from Hasidic circles, whose one and only function was to sit and wait for her bridegroom— that girl suddenly created the ﬁrst ‘‘revolution’’ on the ‘‘Jewish street- It would be a new life whose religion was the religion of work and creation. It would be a life of economic independence and social equality

Answer 126

* children, who were willing to throw away their more-or-less comfortable homes in the narrow streets of small towns, to go to Hakhshara [training camps] and prepare to be simple workers, mainly peasants, in the Land of Israel

Answer 127

* almost until the outbreak of World War I— our Jewish youth were growing up in a corrosive and savage atmosphere of brutal antisemitism. * at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war, which broke out in January 1904. The school board ordered all principals of Jewish schools to dismiss every Jewish teacher of Russian and Russian history immediately, and to hire instead the wives of Russian ofﬁcers who had gone to war. * It wasn’t easy, but Jews are used to difﬁculties.

Answer 128

* As far as I was concerned, Zionism never contradicted socialism. Perhaps before many of our ideologues— the creators and bearers of Zionist socialist thought— I was convinced that our popular movement was revolutionary; that Zionism was not simply meant to build a national home in the Land of Israel for our persecuted and suffering people, but was also rebuilding all Jewish life on new, healthy national and social foundations.

Answer 129

* my son helped me understand that the Jewish problem was part of a complex world issue that can and will be solved on an international scale; and, only then, will honesty and justice rule in the world, instead of brute force and might.- socialism

Answer 130

* In the summer of 1905, a new wave of pogroms broke, this time a military one. Irritated and embittered by the constant defeats of the Russian army in Manchuria, the soldiers and Cossacks tried to ﬁnd satisfaction through easier victories over the alleged ‘‘internal foes.’’ They beat and killed Jews in the streets, they shot at the participants in a joint Polish-Jewish labor demonstration. The enraged soldiers carried out a horrible bloodbath in Bialystok, simply shooting at innocent Jewish pedestrians To dilute the bad impression of that horrible bloodbath, the local authorities spread a rumor that a Jewish terrorist had shot the Bialystok police chief, and that the pogrom was Christian vengeance against Jewish terror.

Answer 131

Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, false accusations were spread that Jews were responsible for the murder. This led to a wave of violent pogroms targeting Jewish communities across the Russian Empire. Pogroms occurred in numerous towns and cities, including Kiev, Odessa, Warsaw more than 200 anti-Jewish events occurred

Answer 132

In April 1903, a violent pogrom erupted in Kishinev (now Chisinau, Moldova), following false rumors that a Christian boy had been killed by Jews for ritual purposes. A mob of local residents, incited by anti-Semitic propaganda, attacked the Jewish population and their homes, businesses, and synagogues. 1903-6 - 64 acts of violence against Jews in towns + many more in smaller towns

Answer 133

The period of revolutionary upheaval in Russia, sparked by the 1905 Revolution, also saw a surge in pogroms against Jews. Reactionary forces, including members of the Black Hundreds (ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic groups), instigated pogroms as a means of suppressing dissent and maintaining the status quo. Pogroms occurred in cities such as Odessa, Białystok, and Zhitomir

Answer 134

relatively prosperous w/ father running successful business. o Received an atypically extensive education – educated in a government primary school and secondary school and received further instruction in Hebrew, Bible, and non-legal aspects of rabbinic thought (private tutoring).  She thus had unusual breadth of languages (Russian, Polish, German, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish).

Answer 135

- Haskalah: prominent representatives in Bilaystok inc. Menahem Mendel Dolitski (Rakovsky’s tutor) – sought radical redefinition of Jewish educational agenda to inc. ‘secular’ pursuits (Math, science, lit., history etc.) o “Jews would no longer be linguistically or culturally isolated from the peoples among whom they lived.”  Haskalah economic remake: viewed productivity as stemming from agriculture, artisanry, and industry, not commerce and that petty trade limited Jewish ability for upward mobility and acquisition of citizenship.  Haskalah and Gender: benefit from expanded education in terms of motherhood – maskilim adhered to western bourgeois domesticity (and limiting women’s access to ‘rough’ marketplace).  Subversive: est. of newspapers and schools.  Optimism: presumption of Jewish integration if cultural practices shifted

Answer 136

- WWI: Rakovsky suffered war-time disruption – forced her to close her school and flee Warsaw. o 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and civil war led to up to 100,000 Jewish deaths between 1917-21 in horrific pogroms.

Answer 137

- Palestine: Rakovsky moved to Palestine in 1920 but left a year later – permanently settled there in 1935.

Answer 138

o “The abrupt ending of her memoir suggests the rupture she felt as she considered the trajectory of her life.”

Answer 139

“Both the Jewish question and the woman’s question…would be solved only through self-determination, and not through assimilation, that is, the abandonment of Jewish self-consciousness.”

Answer 140

This view was in fact presented in such seminal texts as Puah Rakovsky’s ‘My life as a radical Jewish Woman: memoirs of a Zionist feminist in Poland’; for example R does not make a single reference to a maskilah throughout her entire memoir, yet, maskilim make a number of appearances [such as Asher Khabes, Meir Litvinov, and Wolf Frenkel]

Answer 141

different modernity from shtetl eg Esther - secular education from big city eg Rakowsky - bigger institutional changes assimilation? women? education and language? urbanisation as prompt?

Answer 142

* She is called a ‘vile Jewess’ and threatened on the last train out of Warsaw * Once reaching Vilna she is told she can only teach in German not Hebrew, which no schools want given the war so she sets up a lodging house for refugees instead using her boarding school experience

Answer 143

* She forshadows what is in store for Polish Jewry saying that this period was ‘merely a prelude’

Answer 144

abolished 1844 in Russian The Jewish kahal, also known as the kehilla, was a communal organization responsible for governing Jewish communities in Eastern Europe from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The kahal served as a self-governing body that administered religious, social, and economic affairs within the Jewish community. Its functions included: : The kahal oversaw religious services, maintained synagogues, and appointed rabbis, cantors, and religious teachers. It organized support networks and welfare programs to help those in need. The kahal promoted education and literacy among community members by establishing schools, yeshivas, and educational institutions. It supported the study of Torah, Talmud, and other religious texts.

crisis gender and modernity Flashcards

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