UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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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 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 The Family Sadness(2019) Fruchter, Temima Sarah; Fuentes, Gabrielle L; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Family Sadness is a novel-in-progress that spans four generations of women in one Eastern European Jewish family and engages the idea of a speculative queer lineage. The story zigzags geographically and temporally, moving from Poland in the 1920’s to Brooklyn in the 1950’s, to Maryland in the 1980’s, and finally to contemporary Warsaw. The characters communicate across space and time, and their stories are woven through a body of invented Jewish folklore that collages age-old Jewish folk tropes with a contemporary queer sensibility. The narration of this book is polyphonic – humans and other creatures, animate and inanimate, contemporaries and time-travelers all participate in building this universe. Shiva, the youngest in this lineage, travels to Warsaw amidst ancestral refractions. This is, in part, a story about how stories are made. About how what feels impossible is sometimes truest, and about what is visible when we start to pay attention.Item Folkloristic And Ethnic Influences In Selected Violin Repertoire: A Study Of Music Inspired By Scottish, Jewish, And Latin American Cultures(2019) Borowsky, Emmanuel; Stern, James; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines and discusses folk and ethnic elements in selected violin compositions of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, including works by living composers. In examining compositions from several centuries, the aim is to establish a lineage between the past and the present in regards to the usage of traditional folk and ethnic musical elements. Additionally, the analyses will help to identify any differences in the implementation of folk music idioms in works by composers native to the given culture, as compared with works by composers of another origin who sought to emulate these musical characteristics. The focus is on compositions inspired by Scottish fiddling; Jewish spiritual, folk and klezmer music; and Latin-American dances. To show the link between the original sources of inspiration and the presented works, I have considered such musical elements as melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, timbre, and scales, as well as extra-musical subject matter when applicable. By expanding my knowledge of the authentic music that inspired these composers, I deepened my understanding of these works and created a more compelling interpretation. It is my desire to bring to light lesser-known composers who deserve their compositions to be heard. These works were featured in three recitals at the University of Maryland College Park. The first and third recitals were performed in Smith Lecture Hall and the second in Ulrich Recital Hall. A re-recording of Paul Ben-Haim’s Sonata in G, Maurice Ravel’s Kaddish, and Faustas Latenas’ Jerusalem of Lithuania from the second recital took place on May 25, 2017. Recordings of all three recital programs can be found in the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM).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.Item Teaching The Sacred: A Phenomenological Study of Synagogue-School Teachers(2009) Nagel, Louis Alan; Hultgren, Francine; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a hermeneutic phenomenological study of synagogue-school teachers of Jewish sacred text. The phenomenological question that orients this study asks, What is the lived experience of teaching sacred text in a Conservative synagogue-school? This study takes place in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. The writings of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Max van Manen, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emmanuel Levinas, among others, orient the study philosophically and methodologically. This investigation of the challenge of making relevant to 21st century American youth an ancient tradition is grounded in sacred texts as well as the author's life experiences, and is metaphorically explored in the encounter with natural landscapes. Eight third through seventh grade synagogue-school teachers of Torah and Hebrew prayer are engaged in individual and group conversations to explore the personal meaning they make of their engagement in this service to the Jewish community. The review of recorded conversations, verbatim transcripts, essays, and notes taken during classroom observations reveal existential philosophic themes that are brought forward in the writings of Heidegger, Sartre, and Levinas. In particular, the existentials of being present, relationship, discourse, and the Other, emerge as powerful openings of the phenomenon in question. The narrative of this lived experience is the exercise of Buber's I-Thou relationship, one of profound moments of encounter with the sacredness of the text and of the student; time and timelessness; and boundaries to be respected, tested, and breached. At essence the synagogue-school teacher is seen as taking on the responsibility of perpetuating connection to a sacred community, acting in the role of both the prophet as teacher, best represented by Moses, and in maintaining connections that link to Biblical accounts of encounter with God and with divine messengers. Synagogue-school teachers are seen to demonstrate independence, genius, responsibility, and deep spirituality in a unique educational landscape. These teachers reveal the nature of the synagogue-school as an island of Jewish time, a period rich in engagement with community and sacred text, set in the synagogue environment. A challenge is for the learnings that take place in the synagogue-school to be extended to Being beyond the boundaries of that sacred space.Item Hechos de orillas: Nuevas expresiones de la identidad judeo-argentina contemporanea(2007-04-13) Ran, Amalia; Sosnowski, Saul; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The search of the Jewish immigrants for a consolidated identity, social and cultural integration, and recognition within the "official" History of Argentina is narrated through a web of personal stories and family genealogies that disclose the struggles with the collective memories in order to create a new "text": the story of the Jewish Argentineans. After more than a century of Jewish presence in Argentina, what is the importance of these stories for the current identification of these individuals? What is the significance of "being a Jew" -a descendant of immigrants, the other for many generations-, and of "being Argentinean" -a citizen with full political rights and a social actor? This dissertation focuses on novels created in Argentina, Spain, France, United States and Israel by descendants of Jewish immigrants to Argentina and by those born in that country. It examines the current shifting trends in defining the personal and collective identity of Jewish Argentineans in Argentina and its Diaspora. I assess the relevance of geographical spaces, national boundaries, languages and gender for the personal identification with the "imagined community" of the argentinidad and propose different ways to resolve the identity crisis of these individuals whose personal stories had been excluded from the canonical History documented by the state. I argue that the nostalgic return to the migrant past, the revision of symbolic national patrimonies and the redefinition of the collective identity enable new self expressions, and analyze the significance of these discourses through three different perspectives: first, I examine the impact of the distance created by the passing of time. The novels use the "Wandering Jew" as a literary resort in order to dialogue with past events and present an alternative version of it. Second, I evaluate the relevance of geographical distances and linguistic gaps in the formation of the national, cultural and personal identities, upon the nostalgic return to the past, and a sense of dislocation associated with this act. Finally, I examine the importance of biographical elements, such as gender, class and generational differences, for the Jewish and Argentinean identification at the beginning of the XXI century.Item Twentieth-Century Composers Inspired By Jewish Culture: Selections from the Solo and Collaborative Piano Repertoire(2006-05-16) Slingland, Susan Marie; Sloan, Rita; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Throughout the twentieth-century, many composers of both Jewish and non-Jewish descent found inspiration in the heritage of the Jewish people. The rise of nationalism and increased study of folk melodies and rhythms led to the exploration of the riches of Jewish music. The musicological premise of nationalism in music is that every nation has a unique history and therefore must have its own individualistic musical tradition. Due to the Diaspora, Jewish folksongs come in many different flavors but still convey the basic communal expression of their common struggle for existence, religion and culture. This is musical nationalism in the broadest possible sense. The dispersion of the Jewish people is reflected in the wide range of cultures into which they were assimilated: Slavic Eastern Europe, the Middle East (in particular, Israel), as well as the sephardic tradition of the Mediterranean regions and, of course, the melting pot of America. The composers featured in this performance dissertation project reflect that diversity. In many cases, composers drew upon the exoticism of Jewish music and re-interpreted it to pay homage to their own rich culture or to highlight the tragic history of the Jewish people in the first half of the twentieth-century. The works considered for this topic are influenced by both sacred and secular melodies. These selections all include piano, whether it be art song, chamber music or solo repertoire. The amount of music that could be included within the topic's parameters far exceeds the amount of available performance time. Therefore, the three recitals given merely represent a portion of possible works. Given Shostakovich's fascination as a non-Jew with Jewish topics, one entire recital was devoted to his works. The other selections were grouped to form one vocal recital and one purely instrumental recital. The three recitals took place on February 27, 2004, October 27, 2004, and January 6, 2006 in the Gildenhorn Recital Hall of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park, Maryland. Recordings of these recitals may be obtained in person or online from the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library of the University of Maryland, College Park.