Jewish Studies

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Browsing Jewish Studies by Subject "Jewish Studies"

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    FROM SELLING RAGS TO WEARING RICHES: GERMAN JEWS' ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
    (2010) Revzin, Naomi Tischler; Rozenblit, Marsha L.; Jewish Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study investigates how mainstream German Jews in the first half of the nineteenth century moved from the edges of society into the German economic middle class, as their marginal occupations, especially petty commerce and peddling, inadvertently positioned them to be at the forefront of German industrialization. The narratives of Jewish businessmen, combined with articles in two Jewish newspapers, indicate that Jewish entrepreneurs of that period continued to focus on commerce and were well positioned to take advantage of niche opportunities that the German gentile population overlooked. The study also showed how these Jewish businessmen publicly supported artisanry and the German guild system, as they simultaneously used their master certifications to start their own businesses. It reveals how Jewish businessmen's thinking changed, as they moved from marginal to mainstream and impacted the way they conducted business, as they moved from selling rags to wearing riches.
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    Mussar and Polemics in the Historiographical Trilogy of Rabbi Ya'akov Halevi Lifshitz
    (2015) Rose, Rachael Charlsie; Cooperman, Bernard D.; Manekin, Charles H.; Jewish Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This thesis explains how Zikhron Ya’akov by Rabbi Ya’akov Halevi Lifshitz (1838 -1921) represents not simply a memoir of a deceased Rabbi, but avant-garde counter-history as well as mussar literature. Defining Zikhron Ya’akov as a counter-history involves accepting that Lifshitz himself wrote extensively, but not as a demure marginal autobiographer recounting his story in a modest memoir. Rather, it involves accepting that Lifshitz wrote as a radical historiographer, attempting to focus on his own self and effectively identifying as a creator of a controversial new system of thinking. Writing under rapidly changing historical circumstances, Lifshitz neither writes a history, nor does he identify as a historian. As a polemicist and a rhetorical writer whose work is now classed in the complex system of mussar literature, Lifshitz creates a historiography for posterity linked closely with his own legacy. The translations included in the appendix help guide the reader through material covered by the thesis.