UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item 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.Item Words to the Wives: The Jewish Press, Immigrant Women, and Identity Construction, 1924-1925(2009) Shapiro, Shelby Alan; Kelly, R. Gordon; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how six publications sought to construct Jewish- American identities for Eastern European Jewish immigrant women between 1895 and 1925, beginning in 1895 with the world's first Jewish women's magazine, American Jewess (1895 - 1899), followed by a women's magazine in Yiddish, Di froyen-velt (1913 -1914), and ending with an another Yiddish women's magazine, Der idisher froyen zhurnal (1922-1923). Between 1914 and 1916, three mass circulation Yiddish daily newspapers, Dos yidishes tageblatt, Forverts, and Der tog, started printing women's pages. This study ends in 1925, after Congress passed legislation restricting immigration in 1924. These publications present a variety of viewpoints and identities, that were political, religious and class-based. The three magazines, all in the same genre, held different attitudes on everything from religion to suffrage. The three daily newspapers represented fundamentally different ideologies. Forverts was socialist. Der tog was nationalist-Zionist, and Dos yidishes tageblatt, the oldest publication examined, represented a conservative, traditionally religious viewpoint and supported Zionism. This study examines religious and political ideologies, celebrating religious and civic holidays, attitudes towards women working and learning, Jewish education, women's suffrage and exercising citizenship, as well as women in the public and private spheres of both the Jewish and American worlds. The central question asked is how those involved with these publications endeavored to create particular Jewish-American identities. Not being a reader- response study, I make no assumptions as to these publications' actual influence. The press represented only one institution involved in acculturation. Issues subsumed under the central question include how producers of these publications perceived Americanization and saw Jews in America; and what changes these journals advocated regarding religious practices, gender roles, and citizenship. "Acculturation" implies negotiation in the process of identity formation, as a blending of Old and New World customs, lifestyles, mores, economic and social conditions occurred. This dissertation takes a social constructionist view of ethnicity and identity formation. Based on translations relevant pieces from all issues of the publications under review, this study points to the diversity present on the American "Jewish Street" from 1895 to 1925.Item Our Little Country: National Identities of Alsatian Jewry Between the Two World Wars(2006-05-07) Schachter, Ruth Beryl; Rozenblit, Marsha; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis looks at the Jewish community of Alsace and Lorraine between 1918 and 1940 and its attitudes towards France and Germany. The paper argues that while Jews living in Alsace and Lorraine by and large expressed political loyalty to France, they nevertheless expressed a unique cultural identity that resulted from their particular position of living in a contested borderland. The Jews of Alsace and Lorraine spoke both French and German in their daily lives, remained religiously and culturally conservative, and welcomed in refugees from Eastern Europe and Nazi Germany during the interwar period without concern about social or political repercussions. Alsatian Jews clearly manifested pro-French political tendencies, however unlike their fellow Jews in France, Jews in Alsace and Lorraine remained distanced from the ideological connotations of being French citizens. Thus, this thesis illustrates how political loyalty, and religious and cultural identities manifested themselves differently depending on specific locations.