History Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2778
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Item Because You Were Strangers: The American Jewish Campaign Against Immigration Restriction, 1895-1924(2021) Krampner, Michael Jay; Rozenblit, Marsha L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between 1895 and 1924, as the American immigration restriction movement attempted to limit immigration to the United States, an American Jewish anti-restriction campaign developed to combat immigration restriction. The American Jewish campaign against immigration restriction was a primary political concern of native-born and immigrant American Jews during the thirty years of the immigration restriction controversy. In the American Jewish anti-restriction campaign, immigrant Jewish intellectuals, Jewish congressmen and Jewish newspapers in both English and Yiddish fought against immigration restriction, often leading the anti-restrictionists in that controversy. Soon after the beginning of the twentieth century, ordinary American Jews, including Eastern European immigrants, participated in the campaign against immigration restriction by attending meetings and demonstrations, writing to their congressmen, senators and the president and voting for immigration-friendly politicians. Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe were not merely the subjects of the immigration restriction controversy, they were active participants in it. The American Jewish anti-restriction campaign included American Jews of all socio-economic classes, political ideologies and Jewish religious groups. That campaign brought American Jews together, caused Jewish immigrants to find their political voice and brought them into the American political processes. Immigrant Jewish intellectuals, Jewish newspapers and Jewish politicians challenged the foundational ideas of the immigration restriction movement in articles, books and speeches. In most prior histories of the immigration restriction controversy, restrictionists are protagonists and anti-restrictionists are marginal antagonists. In the few previous studies of Jewish anti-restrictionist activity Central European (“German”) Jews and their organizations have been active participants and the Eastern European (“Russian”) Jewish immigrants have been largely passive, without agency or a voice. In this dissertation the Eastern European Jewish immigrants are shown to have been active and vocal participants in the immigration restriction controversy and the American Jewish campaign against immigration restriction to have been much more inclusive, thorough and pervasive than has previously been described.Item “Sons of Shem:” Visions for Jewish-Arab Integration and Semitism in the Second Aliyah (1904-1914)(2021) Mark, Maytal; Hazkani, Shay; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines a cohort of Zionist intellectuals based in and around Ottoman Palestine who advocated for Jewish-Arab integration in the Second Aliyah period, or roughly 1904-1914. In studying individuals who came from diverse linguistic, ethnic, and political backgrounds side by side, this thesis argues that their shared language around Semitic identity and their advocacy around the same set of civic goals suggests a shared worldview and a common understanding of the goals of Zionism as a movement. The existence of such a cohort suggests a re-examination of the nature of the Zionist movement as well as a re-evaluation of Sephardi-Ashkenazi relations in this period. In addition, by studying the discourse around Semitic identity as it was adopted and repurposed by members of this cohort, this thesis argues that late nineteenth and early twentieth century racial categories and theories influenced Zionist thought in complex ways, providing both a sense of evidence for the supposed indigeneity of Jews to Palestine as well as a logical basis for future coexistence with Palestinian Arab Muslims.Item Anywhere but the Reich: The Jews of Nazi Vienna's Applications for Emigration Aid, 1938-1940(2021) Wachtel, Jennifer LeeAnne; Rozenblit, Marsha; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in the Anschluss in 1938, an immediate outpouring of antisemitic violence and legislation horrified the Jews of Vienna. Between 1938 and 1940, Viennese Jews applied to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community of Vienna or IKG) for financial aid to emigrate. Through a close examination of emigration questionnaires Viennese Jews submitted to the IKG, I demonstrate the harrowing effect of the Anschluss and Kristallnacht (November 1938 pogrom) on Jews from all social classes. By centering how individual families engaged with the emigration process, I argue that Viennese Jews immediately recognized the need to flee and exercised enormous creativity to escape. Desperate Viennese Jews were willing to emigrate anywhere and obtain any job outside the Reich. Viennese Jews also demonstrated resilience in the face of Nazi terror by applying for financial aid to flee the Reich even as potential havens shut their doors to Jewish refugees.Item Jewish Marriage and Divorce in America, 1830-1924(2020) Shaw Frank, Laura Rachel; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The centrality of marriage to American identity dates back to the founding of the nation. Americans saw marriages by choice and for love as microcosms of their democracy in which the people chose their leaders and were bonded to them in a relationship of mutual trust and affection. During the era of mass migration to America from 1820-1924, the institution of marriage became a locus for debates over American identity. In myriad ways, American legal and societal norms made it clear that attaining full inclusion in the American polity meant interacting with the institution of marriage in a particularly American way. As Jews immigrated én masse to America in this period, they quickly understood that incorporating American legal and cultural norms with respect to marriage into their personal and communal lives was integral to their acculturation. Individual Jews adapted to the American milieu in certain ways, marrying for love (or at least pretending to do so), often at quintessentially American white weddings. However, such Jews simultaneously retained Jewish traditions and rituals both in spousal choice and in the celebration of their weddings, sometimes weaving their proud new American identities into those traditions and rituals. For their part, Jewish communal leaders worked tirelessly both within and outside the Jewish community to ensure that Jewish marriages were also American marriages. They exhorted their flocks to marry as respectable Americans, debated and changed Jewish marriage rituals to better fit American sensibilities, fought to attain legal imprimatur for rabbis to serve as marriage officiants on behalf of the state, weighed in on national conversations about issues related to marriage and divorce, and even worked with state authorities to punish those Jews whose behavior flouted American marriage norms and laws. Through their interactions with the American institution of marriage, American Jews simultaneously declared their Americanness and reshaped the definition of American marriage. Over the course of the century of mass Jewish migration to America, American Jews redefined both Jewish and American marriage and in so doing, reshaped both American Judaism and the contours of American identity.Item 'Jew and American in the Making': Education and Childrearing in the American Jewish Community, 1945-1967(2015) Furman, Joshua J.; Rozenblit, Marsha; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines American Jewish ideas about childhood, parenting, and identity within the context of the aftermath of the Holocaust and the beginning of the Cold War, as a pervasive mood of anxiety about the future direction of American Jewry and its prospects for survival set in among communal leaders. I analyze a wide range of prescriptive literature on American Jewish parenting from psychologists, rabbis, and social workers, as well as Jewish children's magazines and educational materials from religious schools and summer camps. I argue that concerns about antisemitism, intermarriage, and the viability of Jewish life in suburbia drove the need for a philosophy of education and childrearing that prioritized positive experiences and attachments to Judaism and Jewish culture, without inhibiting the transition of Jews and Judaism into mainstream middle-class American life. Building on insights from Kurt Lewin and other Jewish psychologists, as well as Cold War-era notions about the Judeo-Christian origins of American democratic values, rabbis and educators argued that Jewish education should produce not only happy, well-adjusted Jews, but well-informed and loyal American citizens as well. As the first full-length study of American Jewish approaches to education and childrearing after World War II, this project sheds light on important and contested issues in several areas of scholarly interest. It demonstrates the central importance of Kurt Lewin's work to the formulation of the guiding motives and methods that directed Jewish education after 1940. It helps clarify what we know about the nature and extent of Holocaust education in the American Jewish community before the mid-1960s. It offers new perspectives into the process by which American Jews articulated a middle-class identity for themselves that was grounded in both customs and ideas from Jewish tradition as well as contemporary insights found in secular American culture. It also offers a case study for considering how minority groups in an open society such as the United States seek both to integrate themselves into American culture and to preserve their distinctiveness.Item Separation and Loss: Sequential Traumatization and the Loss of Family Life Experienced among the Children of the Kindertransports(2014) Stahl, Matthew Christian; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between December 1938 and September 1939, 10,000 Jewish children were evacuated from Nazi territory to the United Kingdom. Approximately ninety percent of these children were never reunited with their families. This thesis draws upon oral histories and memoirs of children from the Kindertransports in order to understand and analyze the traumas they experienced before fleeing from Nazi persecution and as a result of their separation from their parents as well as the factors that most influenced the long-term effects of this trauma.Item "An Uncertain Life in Another World": German and Austrian Jewish Refugee Life in Shanghai, 1938-1950(2014) Hyman, Elizabeth Rebecca; Rozenblit, Marsha; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between 1938 and 1941, 20,000 Eastern and Central European Jews fled to Shanghai. Through a close examination or memoirs and oral histories, I argue that the manner in which the refugees experiences the approximately twelve years (1938-1950) they spent in Shanghai was informed by their nationality, gender, and age. Further, I argue that the twelve years they spent in Shanghai eroded the refugee's behavioral, material, and emotional connections to their old lives in Germany and Austria until all they had left was language and memories.