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AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATION OF JEWISH STUDIES
26TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
JEWS, JUDAISM
AND HYBRIDITY
9-11 FEBRUARY 2014
THE UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE
NORTH TERRACE, CBD, ADELAIDE,
SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Convener: Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages
The University of Adelaide
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‘JEWS, JUDAISM AND HYBRIDITY’
AAJS 26TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
From its very beginning, the people of Israel have been characterized as 'a people that
dwells alone' and one that 'is not reckoned among the nations' (Numbers 23:9). Indeed,
the ancient Israelite religion was different from all other religions in that it worshipped
one God, believing him to be the source of all creation and professing that he could not
possess any physical manifestation. However, looking at the history of Israel and at its
spiritual development, one can note that, both practically and conceptually, the so-called
Hebrew people maintained close reciprocal relationships with other groups and ideas,
resulting in fascinating and multifaceted cross-fertilizations and multiple causations. The
theme of AAJS Adelaide (9-11 February 2014), Jews, Judaism and Hybridity, aims to
explore Jewish cross-fertilization, synthesis, syncretism, multiple causation, and
horizontal gene-transfer from any perspective.
Extensive study of the Jewish faith, method of scriptural interpretation, Jewish identity,
society, literature, art, philosophy and language throughout history, demonstrates that
they were all heavily influenced by diverse cultures and religions, and by no means can
they be satisfactorily explained as being the outcome of their Jewish or Hebrew classical
origins alone. Jews, Judaism and Hybridity aims to explore the intriguing Jewish
phenomenon from various angles, stressing the unique combination of sources that
enabled its endless creativity, (re)invention, and seemingly miraculous renaissance after
undergoing major crises.
While being 'hybrid' is typically perceived as an inferior quality, papers at AAJS 2014
Adelaide may debate whether or not hybridity is a universal trait that ought to be
acknowledged, embraced, championed and celebrated. As John Donne wisely wrote, 'no
man is an island'. Every cultural phenomenon is necessarily related to multifaceted human
experiences. Thousands of years ago, Judaism introduced monotheistic faith into human
society, thus changing history for years to come. Papers at this conference may propose or
reject the idea that whilst monotheism is important, it has also taken its toll, leading
philosophers and scientists to believe mistakenly that there is one cause for each
phenomenon rather than many. Papers may demonstrate or deny the hybridic nature of
the Jewish experience and indeed of the monotheistic religion itself, and open up a novel
perspective on society, religion and culture in general.
Jews, Judaism and Hybridity is taking place on 9-11 February 2014 at the University of
Adelaide, North Terrace # Pulteney St, Adelaide City Centre, Australia Australis (Latin for
South Australia), a somewhat hidden gem where the hills meet the ocean. The University
of Adelaide was established in 1874 and is the third oldest university in Australia. So far
we have only had 5.01 (sic) Nobel laureates and 107 Rhodes scholars but more are in the
pipeline.
Thanks to the wonderful AAJS Committee and president, as well as to the generous Pratt
Foundation and Sam Lipski, whose support enabled me not only to invite our
distinguished keynoter Professor Bernard Wasserstein but also to provide 10 conference
scholarships.
Yours respectfully,
Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann (Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the
University of Adelaide),
Conference Convener, AAJS 2014 Adelaide, [email protected]
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2014 AAJS PRESIDENT’S REPORT
It is with much pride and pleasure that I present this 2013 President’s Report of the
Australian Association of Jewish Studies (AAJS), now in its 26th year in 2014. It also gives
me particular pleasure to be presenting it in Adelaide, as long-term members of the AAJS
will know that this is only the second time in the association’s history that our annual
conference has been held in Adelaide.
The AAJS’s website located at: www.aajs.org.au continues to act as a fulcrum for all
information about the association, its activities and its publications. This continues to be
our most effective and successful means of disseminating information and is the best
means of advertising who we are and equally by functioning as a resource base. The AAJS
is most grateful to Suzanne Faigan, who maintains the website voluntarily, despite no
longer residing in Australia. This is a most valued service to us, and we are very fortunate
to retain Suzanne’s assistance.
Another most important means of communication for the AAJS is our regular newsletter.
Anna Rosenbaum is our newsletter editor and has worked tirelessly to this end, with the
assistance of the AAJS’s secretary, Sr Dr Marianne Dacy AM. We extend our sincere
appreciation to our newsletter team for their important and much valued contribution to
the ongoing viability and success of the AAJS.
As in the past, I would like to stress that as with any professional association, membership
remains crucial to financial viability and whilst we can remain confident that our lifeblood
will continue, we cannot become complacent. With this in mind, may I urge all members to
encourage both colleagues and students with an interest in Jewish Studies to consider
membership of the AAJS. As a demonstration of this commitment, the Benefactor
membership category is also being taken on by those individuals who seek to support our
association with an additional financial contribution. This is a testimony in itself of the
value placed on the AAJS.
The journal of the AAJS, the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies (AJJS), under the editorial
leadership of Dr Myer Samra continues to draw an excellent array of scholarship, with a
sound international reputation in all academic circles. In 2012 I was pleased to advise you
all that the AJJS was to be henceforth published by Ligare Press. This decision has led to an
even greater saving of costs, especially important for us given that the publication of the
AJJS, continues to remain the single greatest expense incurred by the AAJS each year.
Equally so, the AAJS is highly satisfied with the current business arrangement and the
production quality of the journal, together with the outsourcing of the tasks of formatting
and typesetting the journal. With this in mind the executive of the association resolved at
its 2012 AGM to explore the options, advantages and disadvantages of publishing the
journal electronically and on a print-to-demand basis. An overall majority of the executive
of the AAJS resolved to maintain the current status quo of print-only copies of the journal.
It goes without saying that the AAJS would not and could not function without the
assistance, cooperation and collegiality of its executive. All members are driven by their
passion for the field of Jewish Studies and are one of the most accommodating and
professional group of individuals I have had the privilege to work with. Our thanks go to
Dr Jan Lanicek, Vice President (NSW), Dr Miriam Munz, Vice President (Victoria) and Sr Dr
Marianne Dacy AM, Secretary, and to our two new members of the executive, Nathan
Compton, Membership Secretary and Marilynne Mill, Treasurer. It is also most appropriate
at this time to record our enormous vote of thanks to Sr Dr Marianne Dacy AM, who held
the position of Treasurer since 1995 and of both Secretary and Membership Secretary
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since 2004 until this year. Marianne has retired from two of these roles, but has kindly
agreed to continue as Secretary. We thank her for her invaluable service to the AAJS and
also thank her for playing a continuing role. Finally, I would yet again, like to pay our
continued tribute and thanks to Professor Suzanne Rutland OAM, our long-term mentor,
who continues to be a beacon of support and strength in ensuring the AAJS flourishes and
by virtue, that Jewish Studies do the same. Suzanne’s wise counsel, her tireless energy and
her willingness to assist in any endeavour are things we value most greatly. For those on
the executive and on our conference committee, we have grown very much attached to the
AAJS’s ‘Kitchen Cabinet’, so often hosted so generously by Suzanne.
As with each conference, each year, in 2014 we are both delighted and proud to be offering
a most scholarly and fascinating array of subjects from both local and international
presenters with this year’s conference theme being: “Jews, Judaism and Hybridity”. The
ensuing two days promise to be days of richness and dynamic exchange. We are also
delighted that the conference is being held at The University of Adelaide. As our members
are fully aware the annual conference of the AAJS, is our association’s major function each
calendar year.
On this note I would like to offer our vote of thanks to the 2014 conference committee
(myself, Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Professor Suzanne Rutland OAM, Dr Gitit Holzman,
Dr Avril Alba, Dr Myer Samra, Dr Jan Lanicek, Dr Miriam Munz, Lee Kersten, Neta Steigrad
and Anna Rosenbaum). We also offer a special vote of thanks and deep appreciation to the
conference convener, Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann, who kindly agreed to take on this
role and convene the conference in Adelaide. Ghil‘ad has worked tirelessly in ensuring the
effective organisation of the conference since he accepted the role and has attended to
every detail of the conference with fastidious professionalism and sensitivity. I would also
like to express the Association’s thanks to Ghil‘ad for organising for conference
participants an optional tour of beautiful Port Elliot and Adelaide Hills on 11 February. It is
also necessary to make special mention of Nathan Compton, the association’s Membership
Secretary, a former student of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at
The University of Sydney, who so graciously volunteered his services in assisting with
registrations of conference attendees and to Marilynne Mill, the association’s Treasurer
who volunteered to assist with logistics in Adelaide. Thank you so very much for your
generous gift of time to our organisation. Special thanks must also go to Neta Steigrad,
who so generously offered to assist with the designing, compilation and formatting of the
conference booklet.
I would also like to record our thanks to all of our sponsors, whose generosity must be
recognised. In particular, The University of Adelaide, the Pratt Foundation and The Fund
for Jewish Higher Education of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies.
May I wish all participants of the conference a rewarding two days of learning, networking
and exchanges. Equally so, we hope to see you again in Sydney in 2015, when the 27th
annual conference will be convened by Dr Jan Lanicek at The Shalom Institute at The
University of New South Wales from 15 – 16 February 2015. The conference theme will
be: “Neighbours: Relations between Jews and non-Jews throughout History”.
As President, I am very proud of our achievements for 2013 and am convinced that the
Australian Association of Jewish Studies’ role as the only body of its kind in Australia will
continue to contribute significantly in both the national and international arenas in all
disciplines connected to the academic research and study of the Jewish experience.
Dr Michael Abrahams-Sprod, President, Australian Association of Jewish Studies (AAJS)
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VENUES FOR LECTURES
(1) Main conference room: IRA RAYMOND ROOM, BARR SMITH LIBRARY, The
University of Adelaide, North Terrace # Pulteney St, Adelaide City Centre, South
Australia
(2) Hughes Building, Lecture Theatre 309 (near the Ira Raymond Room)
(3) Hughes Building, Lecture Theatre 322 (near Hughes 309) ONLY SUNDAY
(4) Hughes Building, Lecture Theatre 324(near Hughes 309) ONLY MONDAY
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KEYNOTE
Bernard Wasserstein
The Smile of the Cheshire Cat:
Reflections on Jewish Cultural Crossings in the 58th century
Are the Jews in Diaspora so far launched on a trajectory of demographic decline, social
disintegration, and cultural dissolution that they are in the process of vanishing, like the
Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland? That creature left no corporeal legacy, save its smile,
‘which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.’ Or are Jewish religion, society,
and civilization merely passing through the latest stage of an unending process of
evolution? Is there, in other words, an irreducible core of Judaism, Jewish culture, and
Jewishness that either endures or dies?
This issue lies at the heart of any discussion of Jewish identity. How can the concept of
hybridity help? In this address I examine the problem from the perspective of a modern
Jewish historian, considering such cases as the Jewish communities of China and India, the
Falasha of Ethiopia, the Jews of the Muslim world, and European Jewry – the ‘Vanishing
Diaspora’, as I call it.
All these Jewries have exhibited syncretic characteristics in the course of their history. I
suggest that the idea of Jewish peoplehood, serviceable for political reasons over the past
century, may be losing its cohesive force. Yet while the notion of a core tradition is
problematic, I maintain that such concepts as cultural integrity and authenticity cannot be
summarily dismissed: the Cheshire cat must retain some substance behind its grin if it is to
have any meaning.
_________________________________________________________________________
Bernard Wasserstein retired in January 2014 from the Harriet and Ulrich E. Meyer
professorship of Modern European Jewish History at the University of Chicago. Born in
London in 1948, he studied history at Oxford and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Earlier he taught at Sheffield, Glasgow, and Brandeis universities, and at the Hebrew
University. From 1996 to 2000 he was President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and
Jewish Studies. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2008 and was elected a Corresponding
Fellow of the British Academy in 2012.
Wasserstein's publications include The British in Palestine (1978), Britain and the Jews of
Europe 1939-1945 (1979), The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (1988: awarded the Golden
Dagger prize for non-fiction by the Crime Writers Association), Herbert Samuel: A Political
Biography (1992), Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews of Europe since 1945 (1996), Secret War in
Shanghai (1999), Divided Jerusalem (2001), Israel and Palestine (2003), and Barbarism and
Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time (2008). On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before
the Second World War (2012) was awarded the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for
Holocaust Research. His latest book, The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude van Tijn and the
Fate of the Dutch Jews, will be published by Harvard University Press in the spring of 2014.
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EXHIBITION
COMPASSION RATHER THAN TOLERANCE
Andrew Steiner
Artist, Historian, Holocaust Survivor
For the past 25 years I have been teaching about the Holocaust and addressed thousands
of teachers and students. I have devised, curated and self-funded a major exhibition
entitled Remember the Holocaust – Art and the Holocaust. It has been displayed in 2010,
2011 and 2012 and now in 2013 it has been transformed into a Virtual Exhibition, freely
available on the Web. The exhibition will significantly help with the compulsory teaching
of the Holocaust within the National Curriculum in 2014.
This paper will be on the genesis of the exhibition, and art and the holocaust. It will
examine themes of the “power of one”, tolerance and indifference, and will also explore the
notion that "no man is an island”.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Steiner (F.R.S.A.S.A.), an accomplished sculptor, was born in 1933 in Budapest,
where he lived through WW2, and stayed till 1948 when he migrated to Australia. He
studied Modern European History at the University of Adelaide, specializing in Nazi
Germany, Political Science & English. Subsequently, he studied art in Adelaide and London,
majoring in sculpture and stained glass windows. Both of Adelaide’s synagogues are
adorned by Andrew’s stained glass lead lights and artworks. He has participated in
numerous group exhibitions and has held solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.
He is a past President of the South Australian Royal Society of Arts.
[email protected]
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PANELS
PANEL 1: ABORIGINAL PEOPLE AND JEWS
75th Anniversary of William Cooper's Protest Against the Nazis
CONVENER: Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
PANELISTS: Uncle Boydie, Stephen Atkinson, Avraham (Abe)
Schwarz.
PANEL 2: THE ADELAIDE JEWISH COMMUNITY
CONVENER: Avril Alba
PANELISTS: Racheline Barda, Shoshana Kaminsky,
Larry Lockshin, Rachel Tanny
PANEL 3: THE ABRAHAM INSTITUTE:
FOLLOWING THE PATH OF TIKKUN OLAM
CONVENER: Katherine Goode
PANELISTS: Omar Lum, Roshanak Amrein, Geoff Boyce
PANEL 4: JEWS AND CHINA
CONVENER: Mobo Gao
PANELISTS: Felix Patrikeeff, Deborah Cao
Special delegation from Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu,
China: Ping HUANG, Jin CHENG and Rui LI
PANEL 5: JEWS AND GREEKS – film and discussion
FILM: Kisses to the Children. (Dir. Vasilis Loules)
CONVENER: Panayiotis Diamadis
PANELIST: Michael Tsianikas
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PANEL 1: ABORIGINAL PEOPLE AND JEWS
75th Anniversary of William Cooper's Protest Against the Nazis
Convener: Ghil‘ad Zuckermann
Uncle Boydie
the grandson of Aboriginal hero William Cooper
Stephen Atkinson
Barngarla man
Abraham Schwarz
The intriguing connectedness and parallels between Jewish and Indigenous peoples in
Australia are based upon common values and traditions including ethical behaviour
(particularly respect shown towards Elders), a connectedness to sacred land, the role
of spiritual figures and stories (The Dreaming vs Kabbalah/Midrash), shared histories of
cultural, language and physical persecution (some might say genocide) and overall role
and perceptions of Community to the individual – and how this is changing in current
generations.
For both peoples, perhaps Zionist pioneer Theodore Herzl provides the vision, "If you will
it, it is no dream". We each have a proud Oral History (and a shared interest in
storytelling), and a Value of Education – using comparable attempts to stem the flow of
assimilation. Life-cycle rituals, coming-of-age ceremonies, mourning practises (Shiva vs
Sorry Business) and a similar connectedness to land (i.e. not exploiting what's NOT
needed). Tikun Olam, music and even genealogy!
There are Australians, Jew and Aboriginal alike – who have commented on this
commonality, including Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, who held up the Jewish
community as a role-model for his mob, and esteemed Jewish QC, the late Ron Castan.
This presentation will explore these dynamic parallels between Jewishness and
Aboriginality.
Abraham Schwarz is a Jew who has spent the past 15 years living and working amongst
people from the Yorta Yorta tribe in Shepparton and Cummeragunja, and the Kulin Nation
around Melbourne whilst working in Aboriginal Health. Previously he had discovered the
story of William Cooper in the aftermath of Krystallnacht, and has worked ever since as the
honorary secretary to family Elder, Uncle Boydie Turner.
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PANEL 2: THE ADELAIDE JEWISH COMMUNITY
Convener: Avril Alba
Racheline Barda ~ Egyptian-Jewish Emigrés in Adelaide –
The Pioneers
A small group of young visionary Egyptian Jews arrived in Australia as early as 1947. For
the most part, they settled in Adelaide where they made a significant impact on the small
local Jewish community. Furthermore, they facilitated the chain migration of many more
Jewish families from Egypt. This paper focuses on that particular group of pioneers- why
they left Egypt, chose to migrate to Australia, and settled in Adelaide, the smallest of the
capital cities. Their history is made up of individual stories of hardship and heartbreak but
also of resilience, enterprise, and courage.
Racheline Barda was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She holds a PhD from the University
of Sydney and has published a book based on her thesis entitled Egyptian-Jewish
Emigrés in Australia. She lectures at the University of Sydney on the ancient history of
the Jews of Egypt. Racheline also specialises in Holocaust studies and is a volunteer
guide at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Shoshana Kaminsky & Larry Lockshin ~ JAZY- A Successful Model Of
Youth Involvement For A Small Jewish Community
Australia's Jewish youth groups have long been an important element in shaping Jewish
identities in its young people. In the space of five years, the Jewish Adelaide Zionist Youth
has created a successful model to involve a significant percentage of its small but quite
diverse youth.
Rabbi Shoshana Kaminsky has served as rabbi of Beit Shalom since 2006. Over the last
seven years, she has provided support to the local youth leaders as they have worked to
create a youth group to serve Adelaide's unique needs. [email protected]
Larry Lockshin is Professor of Wine Marketing, Head of the School of Marketing, and Pro
Vice Chancellor Strategic Coordination at the University of South Australia. He has been
President of Beit Shalom Synagogue and has been on the Board of Management since
1995. He is also the Vice President of the Jewish Community Council of South Australia.
Rachel Tanny ~ Jews, Judaism and Hybridity: Finding The Balance
Between Survival And Oblivion
This presentation explores the balance surviving Judaism has managed to maintain
throughout millennia of exile, and questions what it means, practically, for Jews today. In
order to ensure the future survival of Judaism, Jews today must choose a middle path of
strict adherence to traditional Torah law while simultaneously accepting as many aspects
of their host cultures as is permissible.
Rebbetzin Rachel Tanny was raised secularly and chose to follow observant Judaism in her
20s. Today, she is Rebbetzin of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation in Adelaide, South
Australia.
http://www.travelingrabbi.com
[email protected]
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PANEL 3: THE ABRAHAM INSTITUTE:
FOLLOWING THE PATH OF TIKKUN OLAM
Convener: Katherine Goode
Omar Lum, Roshanak Amrein, Geoff Boyce
The Abraham Institute promotes interfaith and intercultural dialogue and understanding
through education programs. The organisation was originally known as Project Abraham
and was founded in 2003 to create a model for peace and understanding between Muslims
and Jews, by emphasising the commonalities of both faith: a belief in one Supreme Being,
the story of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael and other religious texts, rites of passage, dietary
laws and the concept of death and the afterlife.
In 2004, the program was expanded to include representatives of the third Abrahamic
faith: Christianity. Over the next three years, Project Abraham ran educational seminars in
country and regional centres throughout Australia.
In 2011, the Project Abraham was re-branded as the Abraham Institute and the model was
expanded to include all religions. The new program is dedicated to the crucial work of
building interfaith and intercultural understanding through educational programs
designed for educators, religious leaders and the general public.
The panel discussion will feature representatives from the Abrahamic faiths, who are also
members of the Abraham Institute Reference Group. They will discuss the organisation’s
journey towards Tikkun Olam, repairing a broken world, through education and
understanding. It will include:
Katherine Goode is the Director of the Abraham Institute. She was the founder and
administrator of Project Abraham. Katherine is also an event organiser and writer. She
has published fifteen books and has written for publications such as the Australian
Women’s Weekly and the Australian. [email protected]
Dr Omar Lum, a medical practitioner. Dr Lum is Chairperson of the Islamic Foundation
Australia, Chairperson, Board of Trustees, Australian International Academy in Melbourne,
Chairperson of the School Board of Faisal College in Sydney and Vice Chairman of the
Australian Islamic Education Board in Sydney.
Dr Roshanak Amrein is the State External Affairs Coordinator for the Baha’i community
and organises its monthly interfaith event Soul Food. She also writes poetry and has
published two volumes of her work, “One Million Flights” and “Songs From a Far Island.”
Geoff Boyce is the Oasis Coordinating Chaplain at Flinders University of South Australia. In
fifteen years as Uniting Church Chaplain to Flinders University, he helped create a model of
Chaplaincy that explored the notion of collegiality among chaplains of many faith traditions
and established Oasis as a centre of hospitality and well being for all. In 2013 he was
appointed Oasis Coordinating Chaplain by the University.
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PANEL 4: JEWS AND CHINA
Convener: Mobo Gao
Felix Patrikeeff ~ The Jewish Communities, China and Australia,
1924-1969
The paper will explore the nature of the Jewish communities in some of the main centres
in China: Harbin, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing. It will examine their lives, activities
and transitions, dictated as they were by major political upheavals in the period in
question, including contributions by families such as the Kadoories and Skidleskies. With
the rise of the Chinese Communist Party, many found their way to Australia, notably to
Sydney and Melbourne.
Felix Patrikeeff teaches International Politics at the University of Adelaide, and has
taught at the Universities of Warwick, Oxford and Sydney. He has written widely on
themes involving diaspora politics and Asia, his latest book being, Railways and the RussoJapanese War: Transporting War (2007).
Deborah Cao ~ Popular Perceptions of Jews and Jewish Culture in
Contemporary China
Chinese people are fascinated by Jews and Jewish culture and common stereotypes in
China are that Jewish people are smart and are good at business. This talk will explore the
various popular perceptions of Jewish culture or the quasi-Jewish culture phenomenon in
China today.
Deborah Cao is Professor at Griffith University and writes about Chinese law, culture and
animals.
Special delegation from Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu,
China:
Ping HUANG,
Jin CHENG,
Rui LI
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PANEL 5: Jews and Greeks
Kisses to the Children - film and discussion
Convener: Panayiotis Diamadis
Panelist: Michael Tsianikas
This session comprises the viewing of the film ‘Φιλιά εις τα παιδιά’, Kisses to the Children,
followed by a discussion.
The film, directed by Vasilis Loules, presents a series of interviews with five “hidden”
Greek-Jewish child survivors who had been saved by Christian families during the German
Occupation, and living in Athens or Thessalonike at the time of filming (2007-2009), The
film reveals secret aspects of their lives and depicts pre-war Greek Jewish Community life.
It includes rare archived images of Occupied Greece, as well as amateur films by German
soldiers and illegal footage shot by Greek patriots.
Spoken mostly in Hellenic with English subtitles, and with songs in Hebrew and Ladino,
the film was produced with the financial support of the American Sephardi Foundation
and the American Friends of Jewish Museum of Greece.
The screening will conclude with a panel discussion around the complex symbiosis
between Hellenes and Jews around the Mediterranean. In keeping with the conference
theme of ‘Judaism and Hybridity’, discussion will focus on the forms Jewish identity and
religion took in societies dominated by Hellenism.
Michael Tsianikas is Professor of Modern Greek at Flinders University and the director of
the LOGOS Australian Centre for Greek Language and Culture
[email protected]
Panayiotis Diamadis is Lecturer in Genocide Studies at the University of Technology,
Sydney.
[email protected]
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ABSTRACTS
P a g e | 15
Michael ABRAHAMS-SPROD
FROM SYMBIOSIS TO RACIAL POLLUTION: THE CASES OF
RASSENSCHANDE (RACIAL DEFILEMENT) IN NAZI MAGDEBURG
A favourite target for racially motivated antisemitic agitation in Nazi Germany was the
sphere of alleged intimacy between Jews and ‘Aryans.’ Such relations were branded
‘Rassenschande’ or ‘Rassenverseuchung.’ Relations between Jewish men and non-Jewish
women were condemned as ‘the product of a devilish universal plan for the poisoning of
the races,’ and German women were warned about such temptations. Even prior to the
Nuremberg Laws this area of policy toward the Jews took on a violent form in the case of
the city of Magdeburg, in the Prussian province of Saxony. Organised terror always
preceded any new laws or ordinances and this proved equally so in the case of Magdeburg.
Trials of Jews in the city for
‘Rassenschande’ featured as early as June 1935. Owing to the co-operation of the Nazi
Party (in Gau Magdeburg-Anhalt), the judiciary and the city council, Jews from all avenues
of society in the city were publicly humiliated, degraded and in the end incarcerated for
this crime, the most notorious being that of the baptised Jew, Albert Hirschland, which
attracted national attention at the time. For the Jews of Magdeburg this crime, complete
with its associated demonisation of Jews as racial polluters, exacerbated isolation and
exclusion, whilst simultaneously adding further degradation to their already difficult daily
lives. Further to this, it created a real fear of contact with non-Jews, especially in business
relations, as unprotected by the law, they were easy targets.
Given the grotesque and sensationalistic media coverage of the alleged crimes, the impact
in the public domain for Jews was immediate and unrelenting. The creation of this new
crime also marked irrevocably the official nullification of what had been the success story
of the much-loved and proudly nurtured German-Jewish identity.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Michael Abrahams-Sprod teaches Jewish history and Israel studies in the Department of
Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at The University of Sydney. He is also President of the
AAJS. Michael has published widely on German-Jewish history and his most recent major
work – the German translation of his PhD thesis (Life under Siege: The Jews of Magdeburg
under Nazi Rule [2006]) – was launched in November 2011 under the title: „Und dann
warst du auf einmal ausgestoßen!“ Die Magdeburger Juden während der NS-Herrschaft.
[email protected]
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Dvir ABRAMOVICH
THE PAST THAT WILL NOT GO AWAY:
ISRAELI LITERATURE AND THE SHOAH
In the 1980s and 1990s, the ideological and philosophical anchors guying Israeli letters
collapsed, opening the door to a symphony of new voices that redefined the Israeli literary
landscape. Not surprisingly, as part of this revolution, Israeli authors turned to the subject
of The Holocaust, asking whether the pen can tackle the ultimate savagery in a time and
place where words, morals and life had been stripped of their normative meanings. In the
process, taboos were shattered and boundaries crossed. This generational shift marked
the beginning of ‘Second-Generation Holocaust writing’, led by authors who were not part
of the ‘Concentrationary Universe’, but for whom the Shoah formed a core part of their
essence.
At the heart of this paper is a wide-angle examination of second-generation narratives,
exploring how Israeli authors are re-imagining and rewriting Holocaust memories. The
presentation will look at how these stories not only uncover and describe the deep residue
of damage that fills the lives of the inheritors of the Holocaust generation, but also how
they depict the social and psychological pain suffered by those descendants who have
become the torch bearers of Shoah memories. Moreover, the paper will examine the
authors’ operating motifs and literary stratagems in portraying the anguished memories
resonating perpetually through the fractured soul of the Israeli and the Jewish nation.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dvir Abramovich is Director of the Program for Jewish Culture and Society at The
University of Melbourne and a Senior Lecturer in Hebrew and Jewish studies. He is the
editor and author of three books. His latest is Hebrew Classics: A Journey Through Israel’s
Timeless Fiction and Poetry. (2012). He is a former president of the AAJS and was editor of
the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies for eight years.
[email protected]
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Avril ALBA
THE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM:
A SYNCRETIC ‘SACRED SPACE’?
Holocaust memorial museums continue to proliferate across the globe. To date, scholars
have explored their historical importance, their role in creating ‘Holocaust memory’ and
their concomitant political efficacy. Despite this scholarly attention, the commemorative
missions of these institutions (their ‘memorial’ function) have not been systematically
examined, particularly in relation to pre-existing commemorative or ritual practices.
The absence of such studies is striking considering that while the commemorative
missions of these institutions often find their starting points in the sacred symbols, rituals,
archetypes and narratives of the Jewish tradition, they are expressed in ostensibly
‘secular’ museum spaces that seek to engage a largely non-Jewish public. As such, these
institutions provide an outstanding locus through which to examine contemporary crossfertilization between the Jewish and broader communities.
This paper seeks to explore this nexus through an examination of the commemorative
mission of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). Through a
consideration of archival sources, complemented by oral interviews with individuals
formative in the development and building of the USHMM, alongside a close reading of the
space itself, I argue that the USHMM’s founders imbued this ‘secular’ institution with
‘sacred’ import through the co-option and development of classical Jewish sacred symbols,
rituals, archetypes and narratives. In so doing, the USHMM generates a metahistorical,
redemptive and ‘timeless’ vision of the Holocaust as a ‘negative epiphany’: an ‘inverse
Sinai’ that speaks both to and beyond the Jewish world, transforming the ‘original’ sacred
paradigms and contemporary Holocaust memory in its wake.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Avril Alba is the Roth Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation in the
Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney. From 20022011 she was the Education Director at the Sydney Jewish Museum where she also served
as the Project Director/Curator for the refurbishment of the Sydney Jewish Museum’s
permanent exhibition Culture and Continuity in 2008-09. She is currently working on a
book-length monograph exploring the largely unexamined topic of museums as sacred
spaces.
[email protected]
P a g e | 18
Matthew ANSTEY
“IN THE BEGINNING WAS HYBRIDITY”:
THE GENESIS OF HYBRIDITY IN GENESIS
The sociologist Jan Nederveen Pieterse argues that “the importance of hybridity is that it
problematises boundaries”. In this paper I shall argue that the (frequently iconoclastic)
“problematisation of boundaries” is at the heart of the theological vision of Genesis. This is
done through a close rhetorical-narrative reading of three stories, those of Hagar and
Sarah (Gen 16), Abraham and Isaac (Gen 22), and Jacob and The Stranger (Gen 32). These
three stories problematise respectively the foundational boundaries of Israel/Gentile,
Faith/Doubt, and God/Humankind. It is proposed that the masterly literary construction
of these narratives, both textually and inter-textually, confirms the audaciousness of their
religious iconoclasm.
But like the angel’s question to Hagar – “Where have you come from and where are you
going?” – whence comes this theological hybridity and whither does it lead? That is, what
historical and social contexts could generate, nurture, and indeed canonise such stories,
and importantly, what sort of communities of faith do such stories themselves in turn
generate and nurture? And more generally, why are these texts and communities of faith
unimaginable without such hybridity?
These questions I will approach from my own experience of lifelong participation in (the
hybrid!) religion of Christianity, which, like Judaism, continues to read and wrestle with
the Bible and its hybrid offspring.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Reverend Matthew Anstey is an Anglican priest and Principal of St Barnabas’ Theological
College, Adelaide, which is affiliated with the School of Theology of Charles Sturt
University. Prior to this, he was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow (20062009) working in the area of Biblical Hebrew linguistics. His research interests also include
Old Testament and Christian theology, and he is a professional member of the Biblical
Lexicography Unit of the Society of Biblical Literature, the National Association of
Professors of Hebrew (USA), and the Australian Girard Seminar.
[email protected]
P a g e | 19
Dan AVNON
ON THE HYBRIDIC NATURE OF ISRAELI POLITICAL CONCEPTS
Israeli Hebrew includes political concepts necessary for the founding of a modern (nation)
state and the establishment of its particular form of regime, parliamentary democracy.
These concepts are, on the one hand, translations of institutions and practices originating
in European states and on the other hand, modern Israeli versions of words embedded in
the Hebrew Bible.
This paper will analyze Israel's political system in terms of a hybridic system whose basic
concepts connote, at times opposing, experiences and meanings. For example, I'll address
the implications of the fact that the biblical word chosen to connote the European
"citizen", ezrach, signifies in biblical nomenclature a category of difference rather than a
category of shared membership. Or, to cite another example, the implications of the fact
that in biblical texts the word chosen for the European idea of "constitution" connotes
God's eternal law, an association that is in conflict with the idea of a man made "chookah"
(the Israeli Hebrew word chosen to connote "constitution").
The discussion will include reference to the significance of the use of same biblical words
in different Jewish and parliamentary democratic rituals.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dan Avnon, a graduate of UC Berkeley, and associate Professor in the Department of
Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is currently the Grafstein Visiting
Professor in Jewish Studies at The Center for Jewish Studies, University of Toronto and Sir
Zelman Cowen Universities Fund Academic Exchange Fellow at the Institute for Democracy
& Human Rights (IDHR), University of Sydney. He has published in a wide range of genres
– from scholarly books to a script for a 13-segment TV series called In Search of the Lost
Tribes.
[email protected]
P a g e | 20
Shahar BURLA
DAVID HUME’S “SYMPATHETIC IMAGINATION”
AND THE DIASPORIC JEWISH IMAGINATION
The political imagination of the Diaspora is distinct from other forms of community
imagination through its link with transnational communities. In other words, individuals
may maintain a relationship with relatives who live in other countries, but they will not
comprise a diaspora without imagination that transforms them into a community. Trauma
appears to be a central element in defining the identity of the diaspora. Two
characteristics enable trauma to become a central element in the group definition: first,
the historical circumstances of the development of the “classical” diaspora (Jewish,
Armenian, Irish, African) and, second, the ability to frame the trauma as transnational;
meaning, it is as significant to the different diaspora communities as it is to the
motherland.
According to David Hume the “sympathetic imagination” is the remarkable ability of the
imagination to allow us to experience another's opinions and sensations, and to adjust our
expectations to theirs: “the minds of men are mirrors to one another, not only because
they reflect each other’s emotions, but also because those rays of passions, sentiments and
opinions may be often reverberated, and may decay away by insensible degrees”. In that
sense, the imagination is the force that ties together the divergent experiences of a person.
Understanding Hume’s epistemological and political function of sympathy can help us
understand the mechanisms that create the transnational unifying and coalescing sense
that create a Diaspora, especially through the traumatic experience.
In the paper I will present the principles of the sympathetic imagination and will explore
the ways that this concept can be helpful to our understanding of the Jewish Diaspora.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Shahar Burla holds a Master's degree in political science from the Hebrew University and
a PhD from Bar-Ilan University. His book Political Imagination in the Diaspora was
published in 2013. He currently lives in Sydney and is a researcher at the University of
NSW and other academic institutions.
[email protected]
P a g e | 21
Tsippy LEVINE BYRON
HYBRIDITY IN JEWISH IDENTITY IN NATALIA GINZBURG'S WRITINGS
Natalia Ginsburg (1916-1991) is regarded as the Italian writer who was responsible for
bringing a major development to Italian modern literature: the transformation from the
conscripted and artificial literature of the Fascist regime to neo-realistic literature
following the Second World War. In this paper I propose a new and different observation
of her writing: a writing that deals intensively with the Jewish sediments of her identity
and her intertwining dilemma. Her parents were secular and socialist. Her father was
Jewish and her mother Catholic. Natalia grew up with no knowledge and no practical
experience in the rituals of the religions of either parent. Through her writing she tries to
discover the different aspects of her Jewish identity, to deal with her complex and
contradictory attitudes towards her identity.
By using traditional and post-modern Jewish methods, Ginsburg’s writings illustrate how
literature can be a means of healing historical trauma both at the personal and the
communal levels. Her literature deals with problems of identity and simultaneously
transforms the major theological - national questions into personal existential questions.
In order to create legitimacy to another, different way of reading Ginsburg’s writing, I
introduce theories from different disciplines: historical, philosophical - theological,
sociological and literary, as an introduction to close reading.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Tsippy Levine Byron has been ordained as a Rabbi, and completed her Ph.D. in
Comparative Literature. She has published 5 books of poetry, and has been awarded
several prestigious prizes for literature in Israel. She has taught at universities in India,
Italy and Israel.
[email protected]
P a g e | 22
Michael R. COHEN
FROM ‘JUDAISM IN AMERICA’ TO ‘AMERICAN JUDAISM’: CULTURAL
HYBRIDITY AND THE RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF TRADITIONAL
JEWISH PRACTICE
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many observers feared for the very
survival of Judaism in America. Young people were turning away in droves—many lured
away from their faith by the religious freedom that America offered. In order to bring the
next generation back into the fold, leaders from across the American Jewish spectrum
developed competing strategies that blended elements of American culture with
traditional Judaism. What emerged was a hybridic, multifaceted Judaism that was
distinctly American.
How and why did this occur? While a small minority of American Jewish leaders hoped “to
reproduce on American soil, a type of Jewish religious life lived in the Russian ‘pale’…”
they were excoriated by voices from across the American Jewish spectrum. Modern
Orthodoxy, for example, advocated for Americanization wherever it did not violate Jewish
law—increased decorum within the synagogue, for example. The emergent Conservative
movement maintained that Jewish law had always adapted to its surroundings and should
continue to do so. Reform argued that when Jewish law conflicted with American norms
and mores, it was law that must yield.
What was distinctly American about the forms of Judaism that emerged? All of these
approaches to Judaism were premised upon hybridity within the American milieu, and this
paper will analyze the ways in which American Judaism was shaped by its environment.
Though it will cover the full American Jewish spectrum, it will focus primarily on
Conservative Judaism, and more broadly ask how and why American Judaism developed
differently from elsewhere in the diaspora.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Michael Cohen is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, and holds a
Mellon Professorship. He earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University, and authored The
Birth of Conservative Judaism: Solomon Schechter's Disciples and The Creation of an
American Religious Movement (Columbia University Press). He currently researches Jewish
economic networks.
[email protected]
P a g e | 23
Marianne DACY
JEWS AMONGST POLYTHEISTS AND HELLENISTS
The identification of the Gentile as the “Other” has a long pedigree in Jewish history. One of
the characteristics singled out in the “other” was the worship of multiple gods. The
cultural phenomenon that we call Hellenism had a lasting impact on Judaism and the
Jewish people. Hellenism was a synthesis of Greek (Hellenic) culture with the native
cultures of the Near East. It was a dynamic phenomenon, with the ever-evolving
Hellenistic ("Greek-like") culture continually becoming the raw material for new syntheses
with other native cultures not yet under its sway.
Following the exile and return from Babylon, the Hellenistic period constituted an era of
intensified intercultural and multicultural contacts, when Greeks migrated to Syria and the
land of Israel, and when Jews in the Diaspora spread all over the Hellenic Mediterranean.
The relationship between Jew and Greek became much more complex and intertwined.
Hellenistic philosophical tenets were absorbed into Jewish writings from Qohelet to Philo
of Alexandria.
Greek papyri were discovered in the Dead Sea caves among the documents in Hebrew and
Aramaic, and Greek letters from leaders of the Bar Kokhba rebellion. In addition, the
Talmudic corpus, according to Louis Feldman contains as many as 2,500–3,000 Greek
words, especially in the homiletic Midrashim. Greek and Latin writers in their turn were
observers of the “otherness “of Jewish customs.
The paper will examine briefly Judaism’s adaptation to Hellenism and some comments
made about Jews by the polytheists among whom they lived.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Sr Marianne Dacy studied Second Temple Judaism at the Hebrew University, established
the Archive of Australian Judaica at Sydney University and published her Ph. D.: “The
Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism “. Currently she is honorary secretary of the
Australian Council of Christians and Jews and the AAJS.
[email protected]
P a g e | 24
Panayiotis DIAMADIS
CLASHING OR COMPLEMENTARY? JUDAISM AND HELLENISM IN
THREE MODERN STATES (HELLAS, CYPRUS AND ISRAEL)
At a time when political extremists focus on clashes of civilisations, it is worthwhile
exploring hybridity as a complementary feature. This presentation aims to illustrate the
relationship of Hellenes and Jews in three modern states since 1948. The Jewish
communities of the Hellenic Republic were shattered by the Shoah and have never
recovered. The communities on Cyprus in fact swelled during the Shoah – as a British
Crown Colony, Cyprus served as a holding centre for European Jews seeking to reach
British Palestine.
With the creation of the State of Israel, most Jews in Hellas and Cyprus made aliyah, adding
their uniqueness to the diversity of Jewish/Israeli culture and identity. Israel’s rebirth also
added a new dimension, a Hellenic community within a Jewish state, concentrated around
Jerusalem’s Katamon district.
This paper explores a number of questions. What aspects of Hellenism were retained by
the Romaniots and Sephardim from Hellas and Cyprus in Israel? What interaction has there
been between them and the existing Hellenic population? How much Judaism has survived
in the Orthodox Christian societies of Hellas and Cyprus? Above all, with each group
securing ‘national homelands’ by 1960 – the last being Cyprus – how did the social,
cultural, political landscape in each society impact the hybrid nature of ‘Jewishness’ in
Hellas, Cyprus and Israel?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Panayiotis Diamadis is Lecturer in Genocide Studies at the University of Technology,
Sydney. In 2010, he participated in Yad Vashem’s Gandel Program, returning as a guest
lecturer in 2012. His research publications include ‘The Myth of Refuge: Jews under
Turkish Rule’ (Genocide Perspectives III, 2006) and ‘Australian Responses to Genocide’
(Genocide Prevention Now Issue 11, Fall 2012).
[email protected]
P a g e | 25
Jennifer DOWLING
FROM LA BELLE MAGUELONNE TO SHEYNE MAGELEYNE
In the Middle Ages, a young knight, Pierre of Provence, risked life and liberty to court
Maguelonne, a princess of Naples. Their story, La belle Maguelonne, printed for the first
time in 1452, quickly became as popular as other chivalric romances, such as
Paris et Vienne. Veit Warbeck translated the tale into German in 1527, and following its
publication as a chapbook after Warbeck’s death, it found new audiences and new genres,
and was translated into Polish and Russian (Petr Zlatye Kljutčii korolevna Magilena).
Between 1698 and 1714, four mayse-bikhlekh recalling the heroics of Pierre (now
renamed Zigimund) and his bride Mageleyne appeared in the satchels of Yiddish book
peddlers. Three of these are very similar — long, rhymed prose narratives. The fourth,
while still concerned about the romance of Zigmund and Mageleyne, is shorter, has
removed most of the chivalric details as well as most of the remaining Christian
references, and has been reworked into long couplets.
Like the Jewish people, the legend of La belle Maguelonne traversed geographical,
linguistic and literary boundaries, fusing new cultural elements on to the original. This
paper will look at the tale’s journey from the oldest prose version to the Yiddish
chapbooks. It will examine the hybridization that occurred as it travelled across Europe
and back again, fusing cultural concepts and narrative structures to create a hybrid Jewish
tale.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Jennifer Dowling, D.Phil. (Oxon.), is Educational Designer, Arts eLearning, Faculty of Arts
and Social Sciences, School of Economics, School of Social and Political Sciences, at the
University of Sydney.
[email protected]
P a g e | 26
Bill EDWARDS
ISRAEL ON WALKABOUT:
ANANGU INSIGHTS INTO OLD TESTAMENT CONCEPTS
During the 1950s, I trained for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church at the University of
Melbourne and Ormond Theological Hall. My studies included a major in Hebrew language
for my Bachelor of Arts and Old Testament exegesis as part of my theological studies. This
training was followed by twenty years’ of service as a missionary in the Anangu
Pitjantjatjara / Yankunytjatjara region of the north-west of South Australia.
As I travelled through their country and camped out with Anangu people I gained fresh
insights into some of the experiences and concepts of the Jewish people as we gathered
water from rocks, walked over burning sands and felt the coolness of desert winds.
Although there were significant differences between the hunter/gatherer lifestyle of the
Anangu and the Jewish people who herded and harvested, the two groups shared similar
experiences as they went ‘walkabout’ in deserts. Anangu concepts of spirit, wind, fire, holy
and word bore close similarities with those of the Old Testament. Isaiah’s references to
‘beautiful feet’ and ‘having eyes but not seeing’ gained new meaning as Anangu opened my
mind to their significance.
In this paper I will draw on this experience to explore some of the similarities between
Jewish and Anangu concepts and understandings.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Bill Edwards, AM (2009), Ph.D. (Flinders, 2008), was ordained as a Minister of the
Presbyterian Church in 1958 and worked as a missionary in South Australia for over 20
years. He has lectured in Aboriginal Studies at a number of tertiary institutions. In
retirement he remains an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the University, and interprets in
Pitjantjatjara in hospitals and courts. He has authored two books on Aboriginal Societies.
[email protected]
P a g e | 27
Andrew FIRESTONE
WARSAW POET YISROEL SHTERN (1894 - ?1942):
A CABALIST – AND MODERNIST POET
Since 2005 I have been gathering the poetry of Yisroel Shtern from pre-War Yiddish
newspapers and journals, and this year the first publication of his collected poems is
planned. It will be the first Yiddish book, apart from the childrens' primers of Sholem
Aleichem School, to appear in Australia since "Pnina and Other Short Stories" by Moshe
Ajzenbud in 2006.
While most Yiddish writers of 1920s’ Warsaw were proudly secular, and claimed I. L.
Peretz as their inspiration, Yisroel Shtern was the best known of the few disciples of
Peretz's eloquent opponent Hillel Tsaytlin, editor of the Yiddish newspaper Moment.
Shtern lived in illness and great poverty, living solely from the income from his
publications. He often drank tea at the secular Yiddish Writers' and Journalists' Union, but
remained kosher and shomer Shabbes, and regularly attended a Bratslaver shtibl and took
part in Misnagdic Talmud study. As a teenager he had attended two Yeshivahs of the Musar
movement, in Slobodke and Lomzhe.
In Vienna during the First World War Shtern was introduced to modern literature. In the
twenties and thirties his poems and his essays on literature appeared frequently, at first in
Moment and then in Zionist and Bundist Yiddish newspapers and other publications.
I will read several of Shtern's poems in Yiddish, with English translations available.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr Andrew Firestone is a psychiatrist and an Adjunct Research Associate at ACJC Monash.
He is the editor of www.YiddishPoetry.org, where translations of Yiddish poems into
English, French, Hebrew and Polish can be found. An active member of the "Kadimah"
Yiddish Library in Melbourne, he has been translating Yiddish poetry into English for many
years.
[email protected]
P a g e | 28
Leah GARRETT
JEWISH AMERICAN WORLD WAR II NOVELS
Although Jews were only 3.5 percent of the American population in the 1950s, in their war
literature they created the template through which Americans saw World War II. For
instance, nearly all of the bestselling American war novels between 1948 and 1961 were
by and about Jewish soldiers: The Naked and the Dead, That Winter, An Act of Love, The
Young Lions, The Caine Mutiny, Battle Cry, Catch-22.
In Jewish authored works, members of this statistically marginal population therefore
became the principle figures through which the story of World War II was told. Yet the
central role of Jews in fictionalizing War World II for a postwar readership has gone
unnoticed in literary and historical studies. Either the Jewishness of the writers is
uncommented on, or, the Jewishness of the text is negated. This factor is central, because
as I will discuss, Jewish authors wrote about the war in very unique ways, and since their
novels were bestsellers, they had a direct impact upon how postwar Americans
understood the war effort.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Leah Garrett is the Loti Smorgon Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at
Monash University. She has published numerous essays and three books on modern
Jewish literature and culture.
P a g e | 29
Gideon GREIF
GERMAN JEWS 1933-1939 – THE COMPELLED FAREWELL FROM THE
COMMON CULTURAL HERITAGE AND “SYMBIOSIS”
For more than 200 years German Jews generously contributed their talents, cultural skills
and human values and merits to German society in many fields of life, receiving in reward
precious values and cultural wealth and intellectual riches from the surrounding society.
The process of fertilization was mutual, although not bilateral.
German Jews considered themselves to be genuine Germans and took all possible steps to
be accepted and regarded in German society as “real Germans”. The mutual enrichment
created unique cultural and spiritual embroidery within German Jews, eager to become
full German citizens belonging to the “Mosaic religion”.
The mutual relations between Germans and Jews got the title “German-Jewish Symbiosis”,
a situation in which both parties are tied in a rather unnatural contact, without feeling the
distorted reality. The special relationship came to an end on January 30, 1933. From full
citizens they became Untermenschen, losing in a moment all their civil and juridical rights.
The intensive efforts of 200 years vanished in a stroke.
For German Jews, then numbering about 525,000, the new situation from 1933 onwards
was an earthquake, a loss of all the precious values they had believed in, a total disaster.
Even the 12,000 Jewish soldiers and officers, who fell in the World War I for their
homeland Germany -could not save them.
The lecture describes the background, nature and character of that famous German-Jewish
“Symbiosis”, then analyzes the methods German Jews used after 1933 to overcome the
crisis of identity, and the various tools they introduced to survive culturally and
spiritually. It is the sad history of an illusion about a possible mutual cultural fertilization
between two people, and its final noisy, painful shattering.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Gideon Greif, an Israeli historian, educator and pedagogue, is currently Visiting Professor
for Jewish and Israeli History at the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the
University of Texas in Austin. He also is Chief Historian and Researcher at the "Shem Olam"
Institute for Education, Documentation and Research on Faith and the Holocaust, Israel,
and at the Foundation for Holocaust Education Projects in Miami, Florida. Dr Greif has been
working at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem and Givatayim, Israel for more
than 30 years.
[email protected]
P a g e | 30
Mary GRIFFITHS
‘DIVERSITY DESTROYED: A CITY REMEMBERS 1933-1938’:
MEMORIALISING PRACTICES AND THE RENEWAL OF DEMOCRATIC
IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY BERLIN.
In contrast with Vienna’s comparative silence on its National Socialist past, in 2013 Berlin
mounted a distributed, city-based, themed memorialisation of the period in its history
when democracy was temporarily extinguished. 2013 is a significant anniversary in
German and German-Jewish history: it marks 80 years since Hitler’s violent rise to power
in 1933, and the relentless crushing of the liberal cosmopolitan culture of the Weimar
Republic, and ‘red’ Berlin.
With over 120 supporting partners and forty projects across the city, the theme of
‘Diversity Destroyed’ is being played out in regular archival repositories such as the
Deutsches Historische Museum, but also on the streets, in the U Bahnhof Alexanderplatz,
in the Neue Synagoge, the Schules Museum and in local government exhibitions in a
suburb peopled by immigrants.
Using a cultural studies and mediated politics framework, this illustrated paper maps the
persuasive power, and the potential for contested meanings, generated by examples
chosen from this comprehensive, inclusive intensification of collective memorialising: the
documents, recordings, photographs, stories and the design of urban spaces in Berlin’s
productive and risky imaginative return to Weimar, and National Socialist history.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Mary Griffiths is Associate Professor in the Discipline of Media at the University of
Adelaide. Her research interests include democratic governance, civic culture, public art,
mediated politics, theories of openness and collaboration, visual and literary narratives,
and participatory media. She is on the Editorial Board of EJEG: The Journal of Electronic
Government and is Associate Editor with The International Journal of Media and Cultural
Politics. In 2012 she edited a special issue on China for Communications, Politics and
Culture.
[email protected]
P a g e | 31
Zehavit GROSS & Suzanne D. RUTLAND
STATE INTEGRATED SCHOOLS AS A MAJOR CHALLENGE
FOR JEWISH EDUCATION IN NEW ZEALAND: A CASE STUDY
Jewish Diaspora Education in the twenty-first century is facing a number of challenges.
One challenge relates to the ongoing issue of integrating into the host-society’s majority
culture whilst maintaining the Jewish minority culture, creating a hybridity. The
governments of some multi-cultural societies seek to foster this hybridity, not only with
Judaism, but also with all religious traditions through state-integrated schools.
Will Kymlicka (1989) was the first philosopher to place on the agenda the rights of
minority groups in a liberal society. He argued that the classic liberal perception, which
engages with equal citizenship, perpetuates various kinds of inequality between groups.
His contention was that multicultural states have a duty to maintain the diverse cultural
structures that exist in most liberal democracies. Thus, these states need to enable
minority cultures to foster their individual heritage, ensuring that they are not subsumed
by the majority culture, and providing the possibility of “autonomous choice”. To achieve
this aim, he recommended that this “in turn may require special linguistic, educational and
even political rights for minority cultures” (903).
This paper examines the state-integrated Jewish school in Auckland, recognized in 2011,
which seeks to foster the special Jewish character of the school within the broader New
Zealand culture. It is based on a qualitative research project undertaken between
December 2011 and February 2012 when we carried out extensive in-depth interviews
with students, teachers, the principal, parents and other key stakeholders. Our main
finding was that, apart from the financial issue of solving the problem of high private
school fees, this approach creates a meaningful educational experience, which successfully
fosters hybridity and multiculturalism. Thus, the state-integrated school system actually
demonstrates the hybridic and multifaceted nature of the Jewish experience.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Zehavit Gross is the head of the Graduate Program of Management and Development in
Informal Education Systems in the School of Education, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her
main area of specialisation is Socialisation Processes among adolescents. She is currently
involved in four international research projects all over the world.
[email protected]
Suzanne D. Rutland, OAM, is Coordinator of the Jewish Civilisation, Thought and Culture
Program, Department of Hebrew, Biblical & Jewish Studies, University of Sydney. Her main
area of specialisation is Australian Jewry.
[email protected]
P a g e | 32
Anna HIRSH
RUIN / MONUMENT: SPACES BETWEEN TRUTH AND DEATH
The enduring significance of the Jewish metamyth of the Golem may be explored and
understood as both Ruin and Monument.
As a catalyst for its engine, the Golem has the word EMeT inscribed into its forehead, the
letters Aleph, Mem, Tav, meaning ‘Truth.’ When the Aleph is erased or removed from the
Golem, urgency for its repatriation arises in order to restore ‘Truth,’ and reverse the
resultant MeT, ‘Death.’ The Golem in Ruins echoes this desire for anastylosis via
reinstatement of the Aleph.
From the Ruins of the de-animated Golem emerges the Monument. The Ruin
commemorates the event of disintegration and is composed of the resultant fragmented
remains, of partial histories left in the wake of the Golem’s departure. The Ruin is
embedded with potential for an anastylotic restoration, a reconfiguration by piecing
together of these fragments to create the collective Monument within landscapes imbued
with cultural memories. This hybrid Monument - embodied as a form of Golem represents a testament to its ruptured history, and is embellished with the experiences of
its more recent past and traditions.
Ruins and Monuments are explored through Jewish spaces in Europe, including tombs and
de-sanctified synagogues, and through Jewish museums and monuments that are
transformed spaces or purpose-built public memorials. The Ruin and the Monument will
be presented through examples of Golem-themed film and literature as a form of collective
history that also contributes to the public memorialisation of the Golem and its cultural
past.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Anna Hirsh completed her Ph.D. in 2013 at the University of Melbourne, entitled ‘Imprints
of the Golem.’ Her thesis presented the iconic humanoid via structuralist, anthropomorphic
architectural allegories, and, through explorations of cinematic, architectural, literary, and
other visual media, demonstrated the enduring significance of the Golem as an embodied
cultural archive and monument.
[email protected]
P a g e | 33
Esther JILOVSKY
MEMORY, POSTMEMORY AND IDENTITY
IN GERMAN-JEWISH HOLOCAUST MEMOIRS
The vast literature about "the second generation" (the children of Holocaust survivors)
documents the shared experience of many of this generation. In recent years, literature
about "the third generation" (the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors) has gradually
emerged, showing that this generation also shares a generational narrative. The
corresponding scholarship about the descendants of Nazi perpetrators and bystanders
further shows that the effects of the Holocaust have been transmitted to further
generations, whether they are descended from victims, perpetrators or simply grew up in
Germany. For those Germans who are descendants of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust
therefore, questions of Jewish and German identity revolve around memory and postmemory (Hirsch) of the Holocaust.
This paper explores hybrid German-Jewish identity by analysing two narratives of the
Holocaust, Lektionen des Verborgenen (2001) by Helena Janeczek and Eine exklusive Liebe
(2009) by Johanna Adorján. It considers the intersection of German and Jewish Holocaust
memory, loosely categorised as ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’ narratives, in memoirs where the
narrator may be considered part of both categories by descent.
Deploying a generational approach – and thus broadening a nascent area of Holocaust
Studies literary criticism pioneered by Caroline Schaumann – the paper explores the
intersection of German and Jewish Holocaust narratives in the second and third
generations. It argues that these texts suggest that, for the second generation, this identity
is irreconcilable, but for the third generation, greater distance from the Holocaust means
that it is possible to incorporate both identities.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Esther Jilovsky is currently Research Fellow in the German Studies program at the
University of Melbourne. Her research concerns narratives of memory and trauma across
generations, with a particular focus on the Holocaust and the Stasi. Her book Remembering
the Holocaust: Generations, Witnessing and Place will be published by Bloomsbury
Academic in 2014.
[email protected]
P a g e | 34
Leah KAMINSKY
THE FISH COUNCIL
In 1933, a Yiddish Polish poet, Melekh Ravitch travelled to Australia and subsequently
undertook an arduous and outlandish trip across the outback, with an Italian postal truck
driver and a young aboriginal boy for a guide, in an attempt to find a homeland for German
Jewish refugees. He could see the writing on the wall for European Jewry, even back then.
The Fish Council is a creative nonfiction narrative I am writing, which weaves translations
of the journals of Ravitch’s trip, with the subsequent story of his son Yosl Bergner, who
arrived in Melbourne in 1937 at the age of seventeen, and went on to become a famous
painter, befriending the likes of Albert Tucker, Sydney Nolan and Noel Counahan. My
father, who arrived from Poland in 1939, befriended Yosl when they joined the 6th
Australian Employment Corps - a strange collection of Jews, Greeks and Italian soldiers
who were labelled ‘friendly aliens’. I first met Yosl at his studio in Tel Aviv when I was
fifteen, and he has been a close friend ever since.
The project will interweave historical research, with photographs, translated diary entries,
interviews with Bergner and other soldiers from the 6th AEC, and a personal memoir of
my father, who worked as a tailor in Carlton and later in Melbourne’s Flinders Lane, but
maintained a lifelong friendship with Bergner.
My paper addresses the questions - "What brought an Italian driver and a young
aboriginal boy, back in 1933, to accompany a foreign poet, on a journey whose aim they
did not fully comprehend? and "how did they connect with no common language?"
_________________________________________________________________________________
Leah Kaminsky, a physician and writer, is Poetry & Fiction Editor for the Medical Journal
of Australia, and Online Editor at Hunger Mountain. She is the author of several books,
including an award-winning poetry collection, Stitching Things Together. She has been the
recipient of many grants and fellowships, and her work is published or forthcoming in over
20 publications, nationally and internationally. In addition to her medical degree, she holds
an MFA in Creative Writing, a BA in Literature and a Diploma of Professional Writing..
[email protected] http://www.leahkaminsky.com
P a g e | 35
Michael KEREN
THE BLURRING OF THE JEWISH-PALESTINIAN DIVIDE
IN SAYED KASHUA’S SECOND PERSON SINGULAR
Sayed Kashua is a Sunni Moslem Palestinian Israeli novelist and columnist whose
important contributions to contemporary Hebrew literature have raised confusion among
Jewish literary scholars who have failed to recognize Kashua's identity as a Palestinian in a
Jewish state as authentic, seeing it rather as a form of paralysis. Some have located him
and his literary characters in a "social, cultural, and spatial in-betweenness." Others have
written that "writing in Hebrew clearly positions Kashua at a post-colonial juncture." Only
recently has it been realized that Kashua's literary works are more nuanced than the
socio-historical discourse which insists on a fixed divide between Jewish and Palestinian
identity in Israel.
In this paper, I discuss some of these nuances, showing Kashua's assertion of his identity
as a Palestinian Israeli who is not just a citizen and member of a national minority but part
and parcel of the Jewish state and its national-cultural ethos. Focusing on Kashua's 2010
novel Second Person Singular, on identity change between two young Israelis – a
Palestinian and a Jew – I highlight the interdependence of the national cultures the two
represent, as well as the tragic consequences of the failure of many to realize it.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Michael Keren is a Professor and Canada Research Chair in Communication, Culture and
Civil Society at the University of Calgary, Canada, specializing in politics and literature. He
is the author of many books and other publications on Israeli Culture and Politics.
[email protected]
P a g e | 36
Lee KERSTEN
SIR AUBREY LEWIS, AN ADELAIDE BOY’S CAREER
Aubrey Lewis (1900 -1975) was born in Adelaide, S.A. to Jewish parents who had recent
British and Prussian forebears. He went to the Christian Brothers ‘ College in the city,
studied Medicine, worked after graduation researching Aboriginal people in South
Australia, trained with a Rockefeller scholarship as a psychiatrist in the USA, Britain and
Germany and taught and practised psychiatry at the Maudsley in London. He was part of
various networks : Jewish religious and cultural ones, British and US psychiatric ones.
It is claimed that he made psychiatry in Britain a respectable part of academic study and
that he was very influential in the field and practice of psychiatry there and influenced the
development of psychiatry in the US and in Australia. He was a member of various
minority groups: the Jewish minority in South Australia and in Britain, the academic and
medical minority of psychiatrists in the time when the discipline was being defined and
invented. He was part of the Australian diaspora in Britain of the inter-war, wartime, and
postwar periods.
This paper addresses a number of questions: Were his career, research and practice
particularly influenced by his Jewish background? What place does he have in the history
of S.A. medicine? Why is the memory of him and his work so slight in South Australia?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Lee Kersten is a Visiting Research Fellow in German Studies at the University of Adelaide.
His areas of expertise are German literature in 20th century; German-Jewish history
(literature and film); media history (Australian, British and German); South Australian
German history. At present his research is centred on people who have studied and taught
at the University of Adelaide: Rudolf Bronner, Douglas Mawson, Henry Brose, Martin
Glaessner, Ernst Eitel.
[email protected]
P a g e | 37
Seth KUNIN
CRYPTO-JEWS:
STRUCTURAL MEDIATION OR CHRISTIAN-JEWISH HYBRIDITY
The Crypto-Jews of New Mexico present a fascinating case study for the cross-fertilization
of Judaism and Christianity. The Crypto-Jews are (or claim to be) descendants of Jews who
were forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain between 1390 and 1492. Since then, the
descendants of these conversos perforce developed a unique and fascinating form of
religious practice, including transformed aspects of Jewish practice as well as aspects of
Catholicism and subsequent layers of American Protestant traditions.
While the complex traditions developed by Crypto-Jews can be seen as an example of
hybridity, and indeed they include elements of both traditions, there are significant
aspects of transformation that raise a potential theoretical challenge to the notion of
hybridity. The transformations are found on a number of interrelated levels. The elements
brought together in practice, both Jewish and Christian, are transformed in both content
and interpretation; the use and, emphasis and understanding of different Crypto-Jewish
agents is significant in this regard. Equally importantly, the underlying structure of the
practices is different from both the Jewish and Christian structures from which the
practices emerged. In this sense, Crypto-Judaism might better be thought, at least
structurally, to be a separate and independent religious tradition rather than a hybrid of
its many progenitors.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Seth Kunin is an anthropologist, and Vice-Principal for Internationalization at the
University of Aberdeen. He has focused on the application of structuralist theory and
methodology to Jewish texts and culture. His initial publications all focused on structural
analysis of Biblical and Rabbinic texts and culture. More recently he has engaged in
fieldwork among the Crypto-Jews in New Mexico, with a monograph being published on
that community in 2008.
[email protected]
P a g e | 38
Dashiel LAWRENCE
NO MESSIAH FOR SITKA:
JEWISH TERRITORIALISM IN ALASKA
Michael Chabon’s 2007 book The Yiddish Policemen's Union is an eccentric tale of murder
and intrigue, with the unlikely setting of a fictional Jewish settlement in Sitka, Alaska. The
story begins as the citizens of Sitka prepare to revert back to Alaskan control after 60years of self-determination. Their hybrid Alaskan-Jewish identity is under threat and their
place in the world is again unsettled. The Yiddish Policemen's Union owes much to the real
life attempt of Isaac Steinberg (founder of the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial
Colonization) to develop a Jewish settlement in Alaska between 1946 and 1947.
Drawing on Steinberg’s and the Freeland League’s archives - including correspondence
with the US State Department, this paper will compare and contrast Chabon’s Sitka with
Steinberg’s vision. It will shed light on the kind of Jewish home proposed and consider
what ultimately became of this most audacious plan. Finally, it will consider the idea of
hybridity in the context of Steinberg’s Jewish territorialism. Did he envisage distinctively
Jewish homelands or were these to be places that fused Jewishness with local languages
and cultures?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dashiel Lawrence is a Ph.D. candidate from The Program in Jewish Culture and Society at
the University of Melbourne. The Freeland League's proposed Kimberley Scheme was the
subject of his Honours thesis.
[email protected]
P a g e | 39
Ari LOBEL
THE SHAPING OF MAIMONIDES’ VIEW OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE
Maimonides, in his “Guide for the Perplexed” (Vol. III Ch22-23) interprets the Book of Job as
primarily a presentation of various views of Divine Providence, each character in the story
representing a different view. Maimonides connects each of these perspectives to specific
philosophical schools of thought, ranging from the Moslem Asharite school (10th C CE), which
believed that all events are a direct result of Divine Will, to the Greek philosopher Epicurus
(4th C BCE), who taught that no event is a result of Divine Will.
One of the many puzzling aspects of Maimonides’ treatment of the Book of Job is his claim that
Eliphaz, one of Job’s three friends, follows the view of “our Torah.” This is puzzling because
Maimonides then implies that the man called Elihu is the one who presents the true view on
Divine Providence. Furthermore, God Himself rebukes Eliphaz, the one supposedly presenting
the Biblical view, with the words: “you did not speak properly about Me as My servant Job did
(42:7).”
Maimonides seems to adopt a similar approach in an earlier chapter of the Guide (Vol III.
Ch17), where he claims that one of the five theories of Divine Providence he discusses there is
the “the view of our Torah.” He then states: “I will show you first the view explicitly expressed
in our prophetical books…and lastly, I will explain my own belief…” This paper will explore what
Maimonides means by his “own belief,” as opposed to the Biblical view, and to what extent, if
any, he was influenced by views on Divine Providence coming from outside the framework of
Biblical and Rabbinic literature.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Dr Ari Lobel is lecturer at the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish studies of
Sydney University. He has studied and taught in both Israel and the USA. Before moving to
Sydney four years ago, he worked as a writer, editor and translator for the ArtScroll
annotated translation of the Talmud and Mishnah, as well as serving as editorial director
for an encyclopaedia of Biblical Law.
[email protected]
P a g e | 40
Jessica LOYER
JEWISH SABBATH COOKING IN AUSTRALIA:
ONE POT, MANY MEANINGS
Hamin, cholent, adafina, shalet: by any name, Sabbath stew is one of the most ancient and
pervasive Jewish dishes. It owes it near universal preparation to its special status as a
liturgical food, yet its significance extends beyond the religious sphere. Sabbath stew is
best understood as a foodway that has evolved throughout history into infinite variations
through forces of culinary change, yet has retained recognizable characteristics such as a
richness acquired through slow cooking and nutritional totality.
As a religious requirement that is also a nutritional meal and centerpiece of social life, it
has acquired symbolic significance with regards to Jewish identity. It has traveled with the
Jews to the New World as a result of the dispersals of the late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-centuries, where it has continued to be reshaped by migration and assimilation.
This paper explores the evolution and present state of the Shabbat stew foodway in
Australia through the examination of community and commercial cookbook recipes
combined with questionnaires and interviews of members of the Adelaide Jewish
community. This data indicates that in Australia, the dish has retained its core
characteristics, but there is evidence of change in the method of preparation, motivations
for cooking it, and the nature of its significance.
Shabbat stew has taken on different meanings in articulating concepts of Jewish identity
and values in this contemporary secular society. As the dish itself represents the hybridity
of Australian-Jewish foodways, so too does it reflect the hybrid identities of those who
prepare and consume it.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Jessica Loyer is a PhD Candidate in Food Studies at the University of Adelaide, where she
researches superfoods, the globalisation of agricultural commodities, and changing
conceptions of food and health. She holds an MA in Gastronomy, with a research focus on
Australian-Jewish Sabbath foodways. She also cooks a mean matzo ball soup.
[email protected]
P a g e | 41
Andrew MARKUS & Margaret TAFT
JUDAISM AND HYBRIDITY:
THE POST-WAR MELBOURNE COMMUNITY
The post-war Jewish community of Melbourne underwent rapid growth, more than
doubling in size, with large numbers of Holocaust survivors arriving in the late 1940s and
1950s. The new arrivals faced many challenges in establishing themselves and finding
their place both within the wider Australian society and within the heterogeneous Jewish
community, not least in building a relationship with the ‘Anglo’ Jewish establishment.
This paper will consider how the different segments of the Jewish community viewed their
place in Australian society, the extent to which there was acceptance of change and
adaptation to Australian ways and the extent to which there were attempts at isolation.
The paper will also discuss divergent views of the relationship with Israel, the attempts to
influence Australian government policy, the debate over the establishment of Jewish day
schools, and the outlook of the secular and religious leadership.
The last part of the paper will reflect on the extent of change through consideration of the
character of the third generation, the grand-children of the post-war immigrants.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Markus is the Pratt Foundation Research Professor of Jewish Civilisation at
Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. He is the lead researcher on
the Australian Jewish population and Yiddish Melbourne research projects and heads the
Scanlon Foundation social research program, which in 2013 conducted its sixth national
survey.
[email protected]
Margaret Taft is a Research Fellow in the ACJC working on the Yiddish Melbourne project.
She is the author of From Victim to Survivor: The Emergence and Development of the
Holocaust Witness 1941-1949 (Valentine Mitchell 2013).
P a g e | 42
Lauren E. MEATH
'FEMINISM, BELIEF AND THE YOATZOT HALACHA MOVEMENT:
CHANGING ISRAEL’S MODERN ORTHODOX COMMUNITIES
FROM WITHIN'
From the mid-1990s, historians have focused on the emergence of feminism within
Modern Orthodox Jewish religious communities in Israel. Orthodox feminism, far from
being an oxymoron, is a reality—a movement that has changed Israel’s Modern Orthodox
community. Higher learning of the Talmud among Jewish women has exploded, so much
so that those unfamiliar to Modern Orthodoxy would be surprised that these texts had
been closed to women for two thousand years. Female Halakhic Niddah and Mikveh
consultants, Yoatzot Halacha, trained at prestigious religious schools such as Nishmat,
have taken their place as leaders and advisors within their communities—a hybridity of
Judaism and feminism that is altering Modern Orthodox practice in Israel.
Yet the feminist dedicated to the framework of the Halacha and her Modern Orthodox
community faces a commitment to seemingly contrary belief systems. She exists within a
paradigm of being appropriately subversive, wishing to change her community from
within, whist retaining its overall framework. This paper examines the hybridity and
cross-fertilisation of Modern Orthodox practice and feminist thought through the work
and development of the Yoatzot Halacha movement in Israel today.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Lauren E Meath is a current Ph.D. student within the school of History at the University of
Melbourne. Her current research focuses on women’s movements within Modern
Orthodoxy in Israel today.
[email protected]
P a g e | 43
Chris MORTENSEN
MAIMONIDES AS NOMINALIST
The problem of universals, how many things can have a single aspect (a universal) in
common was hotly debated by Plato and Aristotle, and continues to exercise
metaphysicans even today. Nominalism, popular in the medieval period among scholars
such as Moses Maimonides and Peter Abelard, is one answer to this problem. Briefly put,
nominalism denies the reality of universals, holding instead that they are constructs or
illusions.
This paper will outline Maimonides’ view and how he applied it. The paper will then
proceed to ask the philosophical question: who is right, nominalists or platonists? It will
be argued that nominalism cannot succeed.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Chris Mortensen is ARC Professorial Fellow, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Adelaide, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities. He has a PhD
in Philosophy, a DSc in Mathematics and received the Australian Centenary Medal in 2003.
He is the author of over 140 publications, including Inconsistent Mathematics (1995) and
Inconsistent Geometry (2010). His research interests are logic, metaphysics, philosophy of
mathematics, philosophy of science, Buddhist philosophy, and ancient philosophy.
[email protected]
P a g e | 44
Colin B. PICKER
THE ISRAELI LEGAL SYSTEM AND ITS LEGAL CULTURE:
RELATED HYBRIDITY
This paper will explore the relationship between the hybrid Israeli Legal System and its
legal cultures. It is well understood that the Israeli legal system is a “mixed legal system” –
not only through its use of religious law in certain fields but also more directly as a
historical consequence of the different legal traditions imported into Israel before and
after statehood. Those influences include the Ottoman system and its use of the Swiss
Code, English common law during the Mandate, the powerful influence of the influx of Civil
Law trained legal scholars fleeing Europe from the 1930s onwards, and finally the close
ties with the US since the 1970s. All of these have made the Israeli hybrid system one of
the most interesting for scholars to study.
However, what has been relatively unexplored about that hybridity has been the role of
the different imported and home grown legal cultures within the Israeli legal system. This
paper will argue that Israel’s different and competing historical, religious, political,
economic, linguistic and cultural influences and their resultant legal cultures within Israel
has at times reinforced and at times undermined the formal form of hybridity of the Israeli
legal system. Thus, for example, the influx of Russian immigrants since the 1990s will have
injected aspects of Soviet legal instrumentalism. The role of such legal cultural influences
on the hybridity of the Israeli legal system will form the heart of the paper.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Colin Picker is Associate Professor & Associate Dean (International) in the Faculty of Law
at the University of New South Wales. His research is in the area of comparative law,
specifically in the areas of legal culture and Mixed Jurisdictions (such as Israel). Among
other places, he has taught and visited at the law faculties at Bar Ilan, the Hebrew
University and the IDC (Herzliya).
[email protected]
P a g e | 45
Ran PORAT
THE WANDERING JEW ARRIVES AT AUSTRALIA: THE RESURRECTION
OF AN ANCIENT MYTH BY AUSRAELIS (ISRAELIS IN AUSTRALIA)
One aspect of Jewish exilic destiny is the mythical character of 'the wandering Jew', which
determines that constant movement and migration are embedded in Jewish existence over
generations. The Zionist movement saw the resurrection of Jewish peoplehood in Israel as
the rejection of Diaspora ('negation of exile') and within this context adopted the antiSemitic legend of ‘the wandering Jew’ as indicative of the the Diaspora Jew. The distinction
between Jews immigrating to Israel –Olim ("ascenders"), and Israelis emigrating out of
Israel - Yordim ("descenders"), can be redefined in that context: Olim are no longer
wanderers; Yordim negatively surrender their souls to become 'wandering Jews' again.
The paper examines evidence recently gathered among Israeli emigrants in Australia (as
part of the doctorate “Ausraelis – the Diasporic identity of Israelis in Australia”). This
evidence suggests that the ‘wandering Jew’ myth still exists as a contextual element of
Israeli emigrants’ identity. Specifically, a group within recent emigrants to Australia (the
'desperate') introduces a counter-narrative to the Zionist interpretation of ‘the wandering
Jew’, depicting their emigration as an escape from a deterministic fate of never-ending
troubled life in Israel.
From this perspective, the ‘wandering Jew’ did not find relief as a result of Jewish national
resurrection. This view readily adopts that component of Jewish diasporic narrative of
escaping to other territories to ensure continuity. However, this time it is a result of choice
from the place where Jewish continuity was supposed to be assured and rebuilt.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Ran Porat is a journalist, international publicist, Adjunct Research Associate at the ACJC
and teaches Middle Eastern history and Israel studies at Monash University. His BA is in
Middle Eastern Studies, his MA is in US Studies, and his PhD examines the phenomenon of
"Ausraelis - the Diasporic identity of Israelis in Australia". He is the editor of
Ausraelim.com.au - the homepage of Israelis in Australia and the founder of AIA
(Association of Israelis in Australia).
[email protected]
P a g e | 46
Caryn ROGERS
ISAIAH:
ONE BOOK, MULTIPLE VOICES
Judaistic hybridity is evidenced in the book of Isaiah in two ways – by its redaction and by
the changing voice which speaks to the Jewish communities, in situ or in the diaspora,
living under the weight of three historical empires: Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian.
While some evangelical scholars remain devoted to the idea of the book of Isaiah in the
Hebrew Bible being written by one author - the historical Isaiah ben Amoz , it has been
widely accepted since the end of the 19th century that it contains the writings of at least
three authors. The multiplicity of authorship is evidenced historically, through the two and
a half century span in which the book is set, and textually, through the presence of at least
three different, though redacted, voices with distinct foci. These three voices within the
Book of Isaiah - Proto Isaiah, chapters 1-39 (8th century BCE), Deutero Isaiah 40-55 (6th
century BCE) and Trito Isaiah 56-66 (6th century BCE) - are distinct, but not completely
separate.
The rhetorical structures in Isaiah demonstrate the hybrid effect of other cultures on
Judaism. While Isaiah has been heavily examined in various biblical criticisms (ie
historical, redaction, form etc.), I will take a trans-disciplinary approach that is focused
solely on persuasion within the text. This paper will highlight the rhetorical structures of
persuasion as the voices transition and differ in their foci through the empires and
investigate the effect of these structures on biblical interpretation.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Caryn Rogers is a PhD student at the University of Adelaide who fell in love with Biblical
Hebrew and the many imperfections of the text of the Tanakh in her undergraduate
studies. A professional communicator, she seeks to reengage and reinterpret ancient texts
within a changing world.
[email protected]
P a g e | 47
Michael RUAN Xiang
A GENERAL OBSERVATION AND ANALYSIS REPORT ON
ISRAEL’S PARTICIPATION IN THE SHANGHAI 2010 WORLD EXPO
The 2010 China World Expo in Shanghai means something very special to both China and
Israel. To China, it was the first time for China to hold the World Expo; it was also the first
time in the Expo history for a developing country to hold the Expo. From May 1st to
October 31st, 2010, there were over 73,000,000 visitors and participants at the Shanghai
World Expo. These numbers not only broke Expo records but also provided tremendous
contributions for the revitalization and development of the Expo.
To Israel, it was a breakthrough as well. In the past, Israel rarely participated in the World
Expo. Before the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, Israel participated only 4 times out of 22
Expos. In Shanghai, Israel’s pavilion was among the top 20-30 pavilions (out of over 200)
in numbers of visitors.
This report asserts that the success of Israel’s participation in Shanghai 2010 World Expo
is considered to be a very important public relations’ achievement in the international
setting. Through inspection of the entire process, it left a complete documented history,
analysis and summarization of Israel’s accomplishment. It also offers valuable decisionmaking advice regarding all aspects of Israel’s possible future Expo participation. At the
same time, the success of Israel’s participation in the World Expo using its self-built
pavilion is also a reflection of the success of China’s organizational ability over major
world events. The results of this project from a unique research perspective of the
Shanghai 2010 World Expo ios highly significant.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Michael RUAN Xiang studied Hebrew language, literature and culture, receiving a B.A.
from the Department of Hebrew at Peking University in 2007. Since 2007 he has served as
researcher and lecturer at the Department of Hebrew at Shanghai International Studies
University (China). He is also a graduate student at the Department of Linguistics at The
University of Adelaide.
[email protected] / [email protected]
P a g e | 48
Myer SAMRA
FROM BUALLAWN ISRAEL
TO BENEI MENASHE
In the early 1950s, Challianthanga (also known as Pu Chala), Head Deacon in the United
Pentecostal church in the village of Buallawn in the north east Indian state of Mizoram had
a experienced a revelation that his people, the Mizos, were descendants of the ancient
Israelites and in the face of the impending war of Armageddon, God wanted them to return
to Israel and to practise their ancient religion.
Pu Chala established a small colony of followers in Buallawn, who sought to follow what
they understood of Israelite practices from the Old Testament, such as the Sabbath,
festivals, and dietary restrictions, while maintaining their faith in Jesus.
Around the mid-1970s, people in Churachandpur in the state of Manipur, also believing
themselves to be descendants of the ancient Israelites, embraced Judaism. They also came
to observe the Sabbath, festivals and the dietary laws, and sought the guidance of an Israeli
rabbi, Eliyahu Avichail, on what they should be doing – gradually transforming their
observances into Orthodox Judaism. Over 7,000 people from Manipur, Mizoram and
neighbouring states, generally known as the Benei Menashe, are now living as Jews though
not formally recognised as such.
In 2005, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel accepted the Benei Menashe’s claims of descent
from the ancient Israelites and called for their reintegration into the Jewish people,
through conversion to remove any safeq (doubt) as to their status, and their migration to
Israel. Today, over 2,000 Benei Menashe live in Israel and others are preparing to make
the journey.
In this paper I hope to explore the relationship between Pu Chala’s group and the Benei
Menashe. To what extent was the experience of Buallawn relevant to the developments in
Churachandpur over 20 years later, and how did this transformation, if that is what it was,
occur? Mizo nationalism, as we shall see, provides a clue to the answer.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Myer Samra is an anthropologist and a lawyer with specialist accreditation in Children’s
Law. While working in the NSW Department of Family and Community Services, he
maintains his academic interests through research and writing on Sephardi Jews in
Australia and the Benei Menashe, and as Editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies.
[email protected]
P a g e | 49
Tessa SATHERLEY
JEWS IN ISRAEL:
HYBRIDITY OR HAVDALAH?
From certain contemporary Kabbalists to the neo-Kahanists, there have been religious and
political leaders in Israel who deny the hybridity of Judaism, and who call to protect
Judaism and Jews from the threat of hybridity. The spiritual (and even physical) substance
of Am Yisrael, some argue, is distinct from that of all other nations. Such denial of the
hybrid character of Judaism and Jews has at times been accompanied by calls for the
secular legal infrastructure of the Israeli state to enforce differential treatment and
physical separation of Jews and non-Jews. The most extreme of these voices call for the
expulsion of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, lest their presence indeed hybridize – and so
“corrupt” – Israeli Jews.
This paper investigates assertions of Jews’ essential non-hybridity by members of Israel’s
religious right, and political calls to separate Am Yisrael from the Gentile nations through
legal reform. It probes connections between such political demands for inter-communal
separation in Israel and religious conceptions of Am Yisrael as innately different – and
superior – to non-Jews.
Insights and limits of this approach are explored through the following cases:
(1) doctrines promulgated by the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva (whose association with racist
violence has prompted extraordinary interventions by the Shin Bet and the
Education Ministry), especially the Kabbalistic and messianic arguments of Rabbi
Yitzhak Ginsburg for a physical and spiritual “havdalah” (separation) between
Jews and non-Jews in Israel;
(2) the Kahanist movement; and
(3) the political platform of Otzma Le-Yisrael.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Tessa Satherley is reading for a PhD in Jewish Culture and Society (University of
Melbourne). Her research focuses on contemporary religious and political thought in
Israel’s settler movement. She is a former Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to Israel and
holds undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Physics from the University of
Melbourne.
[email protected]
P a g e | 50
Vicky SCHINKEL
THE CROSS-POLLINATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL NOTIONS OF
INTERPRETATION IN THE LATE 13th CENTURY
In Spain in the late 13th century, Arab, Jewish and Christian scholars and philosophers
‘cross-pollinated’ notions of interpretation of Torah, the Christian Bible, and the Koran.
The blending of Aristotelian and Jewish philosophy led to the development of different
kinds of interpretative frameworks, driven by an urge to find ways to find and describe
‘deeper’ levels of meaning. PaRDeS is a map of meaning that articulates Jewish philosophy
and reflects the Jewish history of interpretation.
The Jewish method of PaRDeS, first formalised in the late 13th century, is a means of study
of studying the Torah according to four levels of meaning (shown below).
Hebrew
English Translation
Kind of Meaning
Peshat
plain
simple, literal
Remez
hint
Derash
search
significant/moral
Sod
secret
secret, mystical
allegorical
In this paper, PaRDeS is juxtaposed against the three levels developed by Christian
scholars, and the four equivalent levels developed by Islamic scholars, and I describe the
various ways in which scholars from the three major traditions (Jewish, Islamic and
Christian) interacted in their respective formulations of hermeneutical methods of
extracting different levels of meaning from their religious texts.
Why was this period such a fertile and expansive period of the exchange of ideas between
scholars of these three religions? This paper responds to this question using specific
examples. The various influences exerted by different scholars and philosophers is
explored, and an explanation is provided as to why this hybrid of ideas produced such
remarkable ideas.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Vicky Schinkel completed a Masters by Research in Creative Writing at the University of
Queensland following a background as a breakfast and movie show radio announcer, and
economic statistician. The development of PaRDeS as a means of critical analysis is the
foundation of her PhD thesis. She developed an innovative and original form of film
interpretation according to the four levels of PaRDeS. Currently working as a creative
consultant in Melbourne, Vicky is finalising a book based on her thesis, as well as a short
volume of poetry.
[email protected]
P a g e | 51
Martin SPIGELMAN
SYNCRETIC SPEECH –
YIDDISH AS SPOKEN BY HASIDIM TODAY
The people “that dwells alone” are “the people of the book”, to whom words – written and
spoken – are of paramount importance. The Talmud (Menachot 29a) teaches that the
world was created with the letter /h/, a mere exhalation of breath. This demonstrates the
power of speech: a simple utterance sufficed for creation of the entire universe.
From the sociolinguistic perspective, language is an identity marker: tell me how you
speak and I’ll tell you who you are. Speakers deploy minute nuances of language to
negotiate their identities. Their phonology, lexical choices, syntax and semantic features
are closely tied to their ethnicity and the social networks to which they belong.
The phenomenon of syncretism is ubiquitous in the speech of Jews, who are very
frequently bilingual or diglossic. When their first language comes into contact with
another, their language choices and speech acts invariably involve a syncretic process of
some nature, whether made consciously or not. This has resulted in the evolution of
several Jewish languages, one example of which is Yiddish.
My discussion will focus on Yiddish and English in contact. Specifically, I will look at how
first-language Yiddish speakers maintain their heritage language and how it is changing
under the influence of the language of the majority. This will be illustrated by the findings
of my recent research project, in which I looked at the means Hasidim in New York employ
to balance their insular lifestyle in closed communities with the secular world around
them, which frequently results in syncretic language practices.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Martin [Mordechai] Spigelman is a doctoral candidate in linguistics at Monash
University. His recent master’s thesis dealt with Yiddish language maintenance and shift
among Hasidim in New York. He is currently in the planning stages of expanding this
project as part of his doctoral research.
[email protected]
P a g e | 52
John STREHLOW
GERMAN JEWISH INFLUENCE
ON AUSTRALIAN ANTHROPOLOGY
This paper presents information on the Jewish contribution to and involvement in
Anthropological Studies in Germany prior to 1933 and later, with particular reference to
Hermannsburg and the publication of Carl Strehlow’s Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme
(The Aranda and Loritja Tribes).
The paper will cover the following topics: the role of Franz Boas in arousing interest in
Native Americans in Germany – his contacts with Felix von Luschan at the Berlin
Völkermuseum (now Dahlem) – the support by the Frankfurt Jewish community for the
Senckenberg Museum and subsequently, involvement in the Frankfurt Anthropological
Society – general interest by German Jewish museum directors, in particular Lucian
Schermann in Munich, who purchased large quantities of artefacts from Oskar Liebler,
Carl’s assistant at Hermannsburg – Boas’ role in assisting Fritz Graebner from the Cologne
Museum after he was interned in Australia in 1914 – Schermann’s forced departure for
New York after 1933 and support from Boas – Boas’ further contact with the Cologne
Museum, in particular Julius Lips, who resigned in protest and was subsequently assisted
by Boas when he made it to the US – the role of the Frankfurt Museum and post-WW2
developments.
_________________________________________________________________________________
John Strehlow graduated with a BA Honours in History in 1969. He has a strong interest in
contemporary aboriginal development and has written for newspapers and magazines
including the Strehlow Research Centre’s Occasional Papers, and has advised a number of
authors as well as directors of institutions holding material relating to Australian
aborigines. In August 2000 he contributed to the documentary Mr Strehlow’s Films
directed by Hart Cohen, based around the work of his father TGH Strehlow.
[email protected]
P a g e | 53
Megan TURTON
DEUTERONOMY 24:1-4:
A STUDY IN ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN AND JEWISH DIVORCE LAW
The interpretation of the law code concerning divorce in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 has been
the subject of debate since ancient times. The law states that if a man divorces his wife
because he finds in her 'ervat davar (literally, 'nakedness of a matter'), he cannot return to
her if she has remarried and been divorced or widowed in the interim. Deuteronomy 24:
1-4, and the cryptic phrase of 'ervat davar, were invoked by the houses of Shammai and
Hillel in their famous debate in the first century B.C.E. about when a man might divorce his
wife. The Shammaites argued that divorce was only allowed for sexual indecency, while
the school of Hillel allowed divorce for indecency in anything. Since this time, the meaning
of 'ervat davar and the rationale behind Deuteronomy 24:1-4 has been debated.
Raymond Westbrook (1986) changed the landscape of secondary scholarship by drawing
heavily upon ancient Near Eastern divorce law. He argues that the law in Deuteronomy
was primarily concerned with the distribution of property settlements; the law prohibits a
former husband from financially benefitting from a second marriage. Westbrook's
argument relies upon the assumption that 'ervat davar was analogous to the marital
offences found in the Code of Hammurabi 141-143. However, as will be argued, 'ervat
davar refers to the purity laws found in Leviticus. Despite this new interpretation, which is
reliant upon the Levitical laws, this study will argue for the possibility of 'hybridity' in
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 with ancient Near Eastern divorce law.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Megan Turton completed a Bachelor of Laws/Arts at La Trobe University in 2009 and in
2013 completed Honours in Religion and Theology at Monash University. A recipient of
the Monash University 'Honours Merit Scholarship', Megan's academic interests include
Biblical Law and its relationship to that of the ancient Near East.
[email protected]
P a g e | 54
Helen WEBBERLEY
YOSL BERGNER VS TUCKER, VASSILIEFF, PERCEVAL, COUNIHAN,
NOLAN AND BOYD. WHO INFLUENCED WHOM?
In selling Tocumwal Camp c1943, the auction house Deutscher and Hackett wrote about
Yosl Bergner as follows:
Of Viennese Jewish parents, Bergner grew up in Poland. With the rise of Nazism
and anti-Semitism in Europe, he joined his family in Australia. Living in the
Parkville-Carlton area and working in factories, his painting was strongly social
realist, subjects being the poverty-stricken street life of inner Melbourne and
Aboriginal Australians.
Bergner had joined Albert Tucker, Danila Vassilieff, John Perceval and the others in the
newly formed Contemporary Art Society in July 1938, specifically to give voice to his art, a
voice that would never be accepted by the establishment. A vital influence within
contemporary art circles, in 1941 Bergner exhibited with Noel Counihan and Arthur Boyd
at the University of Melbourne. He was interested in the poor people and in the people on
the fringe of the world he knew. Undeterred by the hard work in the army at Tocumwal,
Bergner painted every day, especially his unique series on Aboriginal people. The masterly
Tocumwal Camp dated from this time, linking it to the plight of the dispossessed and
oppressed, of Aborigines, European Jews under Nazism and refugees.
The question for this conference is not whether Bergner’s paintings taught his Australian
contemporaries about displacement, discrimination, humiliation and human triumph.
They clearly did. But to what extent did the other expressionists influence Bergner’s
painting style, choice of subjects, exhibition options, patronage, living arrangements and
politics?
_________________________________________________________________________________
Helen Webberley lectures in history and art history at a Melbourne TAFE college,
Limmud Oz and the Jewish Museum. Her favourite historical eras are Victorian, Edwardian
and World War One, and her favourite countries are Britain and its Empire, Europe, Israel
and its neighbours. She writes an art, architecture and history blog called “Art and
Architecture, mainly” that focuses on the same eras.
[email protected]
P a g e | 55
Jonathan WORTHEN
TRUTH-TRIAL:
YAHWEH’S PROMISE OF PROTECTION AND THE PERSIAN ORDEAL
Scholars consider Isaiah 42:3 to be part of the larger body of “salvation” oracles.
Prophecies of this kind assure YHWH’s people that He will protect and restore Israel’s
glory, particularly in their time of despair. However, because Isaiah 42:3 speaks of YHWH
protecting the righteous as they pass through water and fire, the imagery employed in this
passage is ambiguous compared to images used in other forms of this oracle.
The traditional scholarly position on this passage is that the water relates solely to other
biblical references, such as Moses parting the Reed Sea (Exodus 14-15), or when Israel
traversed the Jordan to enter Canaan (Joshua 3-4). However, scholars are less than clear
when assessing the relevance of the fire.
As a refinement of these views I propose that Isaiah 42:3 is employing the imagery of an
ancient Indo-Iranian/Persian justice and religious practice, the truth-seeking “ordeal”, to
communicate YHWH’s promise of protection. Under this custom, a person’s honesty could
be discovered only if they survived a dangerous test that involved their immersion in
water, or exposure to fire.
These ordeals played a significant role in ancient Persian tradition, and aspects of ordeal
ritual seemingly influenced Zoroastrian eschatological belief. I posit that Deutero-Isaiah,
and perhaps other Persian or post-Persian era biblical books, also used ordeal imagery to
communicate YHWH’s message of protection, fusing it with the biblical “salvation” oracle.
In essence, I argue that this ancient Persian tradition assisted in developing Israel’s
understanding of YHWH - their protector and redeemer.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Jon Worthen completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Religion and Theology at Monash
University in 2013. A recipient of the Monash University, Faculty of Arts Honours Merit
Scholarship, and a Golden Key International Honour Society member, Jon’s academic
interests include the Judahite experience in the Neo-Assyro-Babylonian, and Persian
periods.
[email protected]
P a g e | 56
Phoebe XU Jia
LEGENDS OF THE KAIFENG JEWISH COMMUNITY IN CHINA:
HISTORY, ADAPTABILITY AND HYBRIDITY
Jews and Judaism in China have had a long history. Jewish settlers are documented in
China as early as the 7th or 8th century CE. They are relatively isolated communities
developed through the Tang and Song Dynasties (7th to 12th centuries CE) all the way
through the Qing Dynasty (19th century), among which, most notably, are the Kaifeng
Jews.
As in most Jewish Diaspora communities, the practice of the Jewish religion in Kaifeng
took on some aspects similar to the practices of the native Chinese. The Jews of Kaifeng
thus are said to have fundamentally altered their religion. The current paper argues that
quite the opposite is true, as the Jewish religion maintained its integrity and unique
monotheist aspects for centuries. It would be more accurate to say that the Jews in China
naturally focused on the values within their own religion that were compatible with the
native Confucian way of life.
Judaism is in many practical ways, a very flexible religion, as Judaism has adapted to its
surroundings while keeping its core theological tenets, moral values, and religious identity
intact. This adaptability and further hybridity allowed Judaism to survive outside of Israel
and gave Jews the ability to flourish in almost any culture they were transplanted to.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Phoebe XU Jia, a lecturer in English Language at Shanghai International Studies
University, earned her Ph.D. in linguistics at SISU in 2010. She is currently a visiting
postdoctoral fellow on Endangered Languages and Linguistics in the School of Humanities
at the University of Adelaide. Her research areas include sociolinguistics, Revival
Linguistics, and Language Teaching Methodology.
[email protected]; [email protected]
P a g e | 57
Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, Yitzhak Pilpel, Brian Towers
REVIVALOMICS:
TARBUTOMICS (ISRAELI CULTUROMICS) AS A TOOL
TO EXPLORE HYBRIDITY AND HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER
IN THE HEBREW REVIVAL, 1500-2009
Tarbutomics (2013) is our term for Culturomics (2010) relating to Israel and to Israeli
(Revived Hebrew). Culturomics is an emerging form of computational lexicology that
explores cultural trends and human behaviour through the scientific, quantitative
analysis of digitized texts. The term tarbutomics derives from tarbút (Israeli for ‘culture’)
and the -omic revolution in the biosciences. Thus, whilst genomics (1986) involves genesequencing (cf. DNA and RNA), tarbutomics involves culture-sequencing.
Our paper applies culturomics, for the first time, to evaluate linguistic, cultural and scoical
trends throughout a language reclamation movement: the Hebrew revival. To see how
Hebrew lexis (vocabulary) has changed from 1500 until 2009 (sometimes beginning even
from the Hebrew Bible), we thoroughly analyse data from the Google Books. We
downloaded the database, a short version of which is accessible through the 'Ngram
Viewer'. We use equivalent developments in English and other languages as a control to
compare various indicators of change.
This paper attempts to fathom the differences between the organic evolution occurring in a
living mother tongue and what Zuckermann calls the hybridic revolution characterizing the
reclamation of a no-longer-natively-spoken tongue. The paper thus contributes to
Revivalistics, a new trans-disciplinary field of enquiry currently being established at
Adelaide. Revivalistics studies comparatively and systematically the universal constraints
and global mechanisms on the one hand, and particularistic peculiarities and cultural
relativist idiosyncrasies on the other, apparent in linguistic revival attempts across various
sociological backgrounds, all over the globe. Revivalistics involves far more than Revival
Linguistics. It studies language reclamation, revitalization and renewal from various
angles such as law, mental health, genomics and evolution (as above), sociology,
anthropology, politics, education, colonization, missionary studies, music, dance, theatre,
and architecture.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, D.Phil. (Oxon.), Ph.D. (Cantab.) (titular), is Chair of
Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide. He is Visiting
Professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science and at Shanghai International Studies
University. He is the author of Israeli – A Beautiful Language, and is currently reclaiming,
along with the Barngarla people, the no-longer spoken Barngarla Aboriginal tongue of Eyre
Peninsula, South Australia. www.zuckermann.org
[email protected]
Professor Yitzhak Pilpel holds the Ben May Professorial Chair at the Department of
Molecular Genetics of the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is a Michael Bruno Memorial
Award Winner for 2012.
Brian Towers holds an M.A. from the University of Oxford, and is a research assistant at
the Weizmann Institute of Science in the genomics-linguistics cooperation project of
Professor Zuckermann and Professor Pilpel.