Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Seder (Passover)“

Emerging methods in the study of rabbinic literature now enable greater precision in dating the individual components of the Passover seder and haggadah. These approaches, both textual and socio-historical, have led to a near consensus among scholars that the Passover seder as described in rabbinic literature did not yet exist during the Second Temple period. Hence, cautious scholars no longer seek to find direct parallels between the last supper as described in the Gospels and the rabbinic seder. Rather, scholarly attention has focused on varying attempts of Jewish parties, notably rabbis and Christians, to provide religious meaning and sanctity to the Passover celebration after the death of Jesus and the destruction of the Temple. Three main forces stimulated the rabbis to develop innovative seder ritual and to generate new, relevant exegeses to the biblical Passover texts: (1) the twin calamities of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the Bar-Kokhba revolt; (2) competition with emerging Christian groups; (3) assimilation of Greco-Roman customs and manners. These forces were, of course, significant contributors to the rise of a much larger array of rabbinic institutions, ideas and texts. Thus surveying scholarship on the seder reviews scholarship on the emergence of rabbinic Judaism.

Although Jesus' Last Supper probably took place on the night before Passover (as in John) rather than on the first night of Passover itself (as in the Synoptics), it contained elements strongly marked by the Jewish institution of the Passover seder (fixed order of service) and haggadah (ritual retelling of the exodus events). These elements were not, as some scholars of Judaism have recently argued, post-70 CE developments. Rather, evidence fromJubilees, Philo, and the NT itself indicates that seder and haggadah already existed in some form in the pre-70 period.

Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays. It starts with dinner - Seder. Family gathered on this day drink red wine as a symbol of freedom and happiness. They eat matzo - flat bread to remember that Hebrews left Egypt grabbing unready bread leaven. The central place of the table is taken by the Seder plate with zeroa – shank bone, beitzah – roasted, hard – boiled egg, karpas – a vegetable, maror – bitter herbs, chazeret – bitter vegetable, charoset – sweet dessert. Most of described traditional dishes are visible in Seder scene of films Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) and Café Society (2016) by Woody Allen. In both films the extended families are gathered together. Their members’ personalities reflect symbols of Seder dishes.

One true measure of whether ideas are “foundational” is whether they will resonate with future generations. Judaism, one of the world’s oldest religions, offers an annual ritual—the Passover Seder—that exemplifies success in passing down foundational ideas. That ritual, among other things, posits that to tell an enduring story, it must be told in ways that inspire many different kinds of people—with widely disparate motivations, perspectives, and abilities—to engage with, relate to, and understand the story. This Essay asserts that Carrie Menkel-Meadow’s dispute resolution scholarship is very much a successful “telling” with many characteristics remarkably similar to the Passover Seder. And that in turn explains why Menkel-Meadow’s work has been so important to the first generation of dispute resolution scholars and practitioners, and why it will endure as foundational for generations to come.

The new Dutch Passover Haggadah (2011) is broad in a double sense: its Hebrew text and Dutch translations include variations that suit the different forms of variegated Dutch Judaism. In a literal sense, it is designed in a ‘landscape’ format and includes many visual features that make it an easy and attractive tool. Besides introducing this new Haggadah, this article offers an introduction to the Passover seder and its Biblical and rabbinic sources. It includes a detailed discussion of the midrash of Deuteronomy 26:5‐8 that is central in the Haggadah, and its relation to the early Christian interpretation of the Pesach traditions.

This commentary describes a virtual seder (the ceremonial Passover meal) as it is reformatted by Covid-19. Dwelling on a shift in the closing lines of the socially-distanced digital dinner from “next year in Jerusalem” to “next year, together,” the essay explores the politics of place in articulations of hope and the role of ritual in potentially rewriting them.

This paper discusses a unique miniature in a fifteenth-century Ashkenazi Passover Haggadah. The image represents a young woman holding an open book at a spread Seder table at the opening words of the Maggid, the narrative part of the Haggadah. The image of the woman is reminiscent of Christian representations of female patrons, saints, and the Virgin Mary herself. Having demonstrated this similarity, this article attempts to explain it by exploring to what degree the concept of the ‘ideal woman’ was shared in Jewish and Christian cultures. Since the lady in the Haggadah is clearly interacting with a book, the article also surveys textual evidence of female education in medieval Ashkenaz and women’s participation in religious rituals, to examine to what degree portraying the lady this way could reflect the reality of fifteenth-century Ashkenaz. The findings suggest that the authorship of the Haggadah may have deliberately drawn a visual parallel between the lady in the Haggadah and the Virgin Mary in order to challenge the latter’s unique position in Christianity and counterweight her ever-growing cult.

Fromental Halévy’s grand opera La Juive premiered in 1835 and was notable for its inclusion of Jewish characters. Halévy was not only an operatic composer, but a French Jew in Paris during a time when the Reform Judaism movement was developing, often leading to a more assimilated form of Judaism than traditional movements. This paper aims to analyse the portrayal of Jews in La Juive, through an examination of the differences between the Jew Eléazar and his daughter Rachel, a musical analysis of the Passover seder scene, and a grounding in the cultural zeitgeist of the Jewish communities of France in the nineteenth century. Through this analysis, Halévy’s musical portrayals of Eléazar and Rachel demonstrate the practice of assimilating into gentile society in order to avoid antisemitism.

Gershom Scholem points out that within Judaism the concept of redemption does not merely consist of an abstract feeling but entails a belief in a concrete physical redemption, publicly visible in this world and taking place on the stage of history and within the community. However, it projects the realization of this hope to the future, therefore making Jewish life provisional, incomplete, and unfulfilled—a “life lived in deferment.” The history of the Passover seder illustrates how both aspects of this outlook became expressed in a specific time and place. But it also indicates that the hope was not always projected into the future, for we find people who both believed in a physical redemption and at the same time tried to internalize redemption in their own lives.

In the article the authors deal with the verification, attribution and introduction into scientific circulation of a number of Hebrew inscriptions on Early Modern ceramic vessels. This issue has not been raised in the Ukrainian archaeological publications yet. Such isolated inscriptions were previously wrongly interpreted as potters’ marks. More than a dozen of vessels with inscriptions in Hebrew are known today. In particular, they were found during the excavations of three cities — Bila Tserkva, Kyiv, Ostroh. These are fragments of three plates, two small and one large mugs, which come from the cellar of the first half of the 17th century in Ostroh, two plates and a mug from the building of the late 17th — early 18th centuries in Bila Tserkva, as well as a pot from the building of the 17th century in Kyiv. Two groups of inscriptions can be distinguished. The first one is Passover inscriptions on vessels that were obviously intended for the Passover Seder (a symbolic set of products for a holiday supper) or for daily usage during the holiday. Using an additional set of vessels to the holiday is explained by kashrut norms and specific prohibitions of kvass use. The mug with an inscription “kimkha de Piskha” (“flour for Pesach”) belongs to the second group. It was associated exclusively with religious needs and was intended for the collection of donations (tzadaka) on Passover. Tzadaka as a religious obligation to perform charity laid at the basis of the Jewish community existence. It led to the proliferation of different types of money boxes for collecting donations. In general, the topic requires detailed investigations with the involvement of additional archaeological materials, interpretation and introduction of hitherto unpublished materials into scientific circulation.

The conventional view on the origin of the gradual was stated succinctly by Peter Wagner: ‘The Responsorial solo in the mass is of apostolic origin…in imitation of the Jewish liturgy a solo from the psalmist was inserted between the readings.’ The precise form this view has taken more recently in the works of both musical and liturgical historians can be summarised as follows. The early Mass or Eucharist consisted of two major parts. The essential part, the Eucharist proper, had its origins in the Last Supper, a Jewish ceremonial meal, possibly the Passover Seder. This was preceded by a ‘service of the Word’, made up of four elements: scripture reading, discourse on the reading, congregational prayer and psalms sung in response to the readings. This pre-eucharistic service was plainly and simply an adoption en bloc of the ancient synagogue service.

This essay explores a remarkable manuscript, the so-called Hileq and Bileq Haggadah (Paris, BnF Ms. Hébreu 1333), illuminated in southern Germany in the fifteenth century. Our focus, in particular, is on the image that accompanies the Shefokh ḥamatkha prayer, an invocation of God’s vengeance upon nonbelievers. Here, we posit the role of the Shefokh ḥamatkha folio within the context of the Hileq and Bileq Haggadah, suggesting that its prominent position and extravagant visual program involve the reader–viewer in a performative scenario that inflects the meaning of the other images in the book as well as the enactment of the Seder ritual itself. The messianic import of the folio is underscored by its enactive language, both visual and oral, and predicated on the emotional communities that coalesced around the Passover ritual in the later Middle Ages.

Then UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at a Passover Seder organised by the radical leftist group, Jewdas, in April 2018, led to a brief but vitriolic controversy involving Anglo-Jewish umbrella organisations concerning who qualifies to speak as a Jew. This article uses this controversy to engage with Judith Butler’s attempt to address this question, suggesting that in decentring Zionist claims to Jewish subjectivity she fails to take account of how different Jewish subjectivities are formed, and thus ends up proposing a ‘good Jew/bad Jew’ binary that dissolves Jewishness into universal humanism. Drawing on the work of the German-Jewish mystical anarchist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), the article proposes a different way of understanding subjectivity that retains ontological inherency as a plausible precondition for ethical solidarity. As such, the article’s argument has implications not merely for a reworked understanding of Jewish subjectivity but for the politics of subject formation more broadly.

AbstractCareful examination of two miniatures in the fourteenth-century Golden Haggadah (British Library, Add. MS 27210) reveals polemical content which seems at odds with the tolerant atmosphere in which the Aragonese Jews associated with the manuscript are thought to have lived. Specifically, the Haggadah includes a rarely illustrated scene—the Spoiling of the Egyptians (fol. 13)—which draws its polemical flavor from a visual context in which spoils are shown as church plate, and Egyptians, one folio later, are shown as contemporary Spanish knights. Although the earlier scene's configuration depends on the Midrash, in contrast to this source and even to the biblical description of events, the illumination shows the Israelites plundering an unattended treasury. The miniature's divergence from text and its combative iconography point to historical and theological developments which are the subject of this paper. The meaning of its polemical interpolations will be considered in view of the Haggadah's special role in the Passover Seder—a ritual which conflates past and present so that participants feel as if they themselves experienced the Exodus and are awaiting a final redemption.

Abstract I recently attended a conference at which a speaker from Romania posed this question: How do we transmit the memory of atrocities, victimhood dictatorship, to people who have already heard that story, only with different characters? In this article I take remembering in Northern Ireland as a story with different characters. A shared narrative to transmit the memory of what happened over thirty years of Northern Irelands Troubles remains to be told by and for the whole society. The purpose of a shared narrative is to contribute to a number of mechanisms that direct society to a future in which what happened in the past will never happen again. By a shared narrative I mean one that reflects the different characters and experiences, from different local experiences to different individual and community experiences. An agreed narrative is not possible at this time and perhaps that should never be the ambition for it would obscure the many characters within the one narrative. The kind of narrative that is shared may be defined as a ‘composite’ narrative that tells about individuals within the broader context of what was happening across Northern Ireland. It is important that remembering is understood to be narrative and not event, composite and not obscuring the characters involved. I will reflect on visits to Yad Vashem and the Kigali Memorial Centre as place where narrative was evoked about how to remember well for a better future where there has been conflict. I will share some of that challenges to remembering together in Northern Ireland and I will look to the Passover Seder and Lord's Supper for wisdom. I will conclude with some challenges to remembering as a contributor to peacemaking but without betrayal.

I wish to draw your attention to the latest horrific act of Palestinian terrorism which occurred several hours ago, as Jews in Israel and throughout the world sat down to the festive Seder meal to celebrate Passover, the festival of freedom.

The Annotated Passover Haggadah presented here is unique, both in substance and appeal. The story is well-known and often repeated, having been translated, elaborated, neutered, abbreviated, truncated, and all but exfoliated over the many centuries. Nevertheless, the current volume makes an important contribution since, while preserving both the traditional Hebrew text along with an equally traditional English translation, it provides important analytical, philosophical, and theological perspectives on the seminal event of Jewish consciousness and self-awareness. This Haggadah is intended, notwithstanding its scholarly rigor, for practical use in family and congregational settings for those who wish, during this all-important night, to delve ever deeply into the Passover narrative, to go beyond the mere repetition of an annual ritual into a more richly rewarding and profound experience. Its overall theme is a celebration, not only of the deliverance from Egypt but of the widely disparate ways in which the Passover is observed by sundry traditions worldwide. Going beyond the “normative” observance of the Passover Seder, this Haggadah breaks new ground in referencing the increasing interest among Christians and Messianic Jews in observing the Exodus from Egypt. It underscores, via a small cadre of the world’s most renowned Jewish scholars, the sanctified memory of this mighty deliverance, which remains forever emblazoned in the Jewish soul.

Prologue It's not what I am but what I do. Or is it? The relationship between doing and being is the theme of these three explorations of cultural "identity". The first is a search for the ways in which the Jewish preoccupation with eating, talking, and talking-about-eating, works to create, embody, enact, and/or produce Jewishness. Felicity provides an example of the formation of identities through one specific practice: "eating". Tracey questions the use of identity in a particular site: law. She replaces the notion of identity with something ostensibly different which is based on a collection of practices. The concept of a collection of practices is picked up by Reece as a way of doing something other than (the usual understanding of) "identity politics" with sexual subjectivities. If a conclusion can be taken away from these three related pieces, it would be that one can't help but fall into cultural or collective subject positions, regardless of the problematic of essentialised identities, but that these are derived from common (ordinary, everyday) cultural practices. It is the doing that gives rise to the being. These remain crucial sites of investigation. The Jew: Felicity It's nauseating really, the clamour to claim an identity: ethnicity is particularly fashionable. But then I can say that, because I'm ethnic, even if "impossibly" (as Jon Stratton puts it). Suddenly everyone is searching the attic; ethnicities which were once millstones have now become markers. I'm not so sure how much otherness I can claim, though. After all, where I grew up, in Bondi, being Jewish was de rigeur and consequently mundane. Removing myself made me different. It was only after leaving Bondi that I experienced anti-semitism. Living without Jews I have become very Jewish, if fraudulently. Certainly, I'm seen to be ethnic, and academia embraces means 'authentic'. But I have known "real" Jews, so I know myself to be "not them", and this still doesn't displace my suspicion of the concept of authenticity because, after all, I don't say "there is an authentic", I say "I'm not it". I eat ham on Saturday. My parents were not Holocaust survivors. I'm not married, let alone to a Jew. Even so, I have a mezzuzah on my door. It lives comfortably with my pantheism. My child is Jewish. I cook matzo balls that are fluffy everytime. Of course, we could say, it's "globalisation" and that "postmodern" blurring of boundaries that's behind it all. As we intermarry, eat each other's food and become more alike, we desperately search for ways of inscribing difference. Jewish food may not be as sexy as Thai, but it too has been appropriated. Just think of the bagel. Jewish food, the ways of eating it and the talk which goes on about it, and while eating it, are what have made me feel Jewish. I use Jewish food and foodways to introduce my child to the notion of being Jewish in an even more secular world than the one I inhabited as a child. I once asked my mother why she cut the claws off chicken wings before cooking them. -- Because we're Jewish, that's what we do. I have never forgotten; I always cut the claws off, even if I'm only making stock. I never even asked why again, and I don't think she could have told me anyway. Jewish foodways serve to make Jews conscious of their difference when performing the most mundane of everyday acts. We're talking about creating certain kinds of (perhaps "docile") bodies here, bodies whose every act reinscribes their cultural identity. Eating ham makes me feel Jewish because I shouldn't do it. When I do, I am not just anybody eating a ham sandwich; I am Jew eating ham -- it is an abomination and I know this even if I don't believe it. So what does it mean to be Jewish and how does it show? Are there any necessary and sufficient parameters of Jewishness (and I mean this in a cultural rather than a strictly religious sense)? Because there's "being Jewish" and there's "being recognised as being Jewish". I recently ran into a woman, an academic I'd met several times before, only this time I was wearing my Magen David. -- Oh! she said, you are Jewish, I thought so... . I am too, but it's not the sort of thing you ask somebody. We both laughed, then I said: -- Yes, but our mothers would! Jews recognise each other as such, when gentiles might not, and this is probably true of many groups linked by cultural practices. How does this happen, how do you learn to become Jewish? My answer is that it's all about food, and the ultimate expression of the importance of food to Jews is the Seder, an occasion when story and food combine in such a way that the meal tells a story, the story of Exodus. And just to give it a little extra cachet, that meal has also become a defining moment for Christianity. I employ the Seder as my vehicle for the exploration of Jewishness; as a metaphor for Jewish foodways. Passover is a lot like Christmas, because even the most secular of Jews will pay lip-service, even if it's just the purchase of a box of matzo. My mission appears to find out how it is that this preoccupation with eating, talking and talking-about-eating works to create Jewishness. The Lawyer: Tracey My colleagues speak here of "identities". Such a sexy tag. But describing myself as "a lawyer" doesn't exactly feel too sexy. It feels a little fraudulent as well, since I do law but I don't practice law in the conventional sense. I don't own a briefcase; playing dress-ups is donning my Spice Girls boots. If I were to wear a wig, it wouldn't be grey. And the closest I get to St Georges Terrace (aka "Law Suit Drive") is the Perth Myers store. So what is the marker of authenticity for these other identity groups, vis-à-vis my own? How is that I "do" law (probably as well as Reece does lesbian and Felicity does Jewish) and yet I'm not counted as lawyer? The difference might be the degree to which "identity" touches upon one's soul, one's sense of being. And while "doing law" might connect me to a fraternity of other people who do law in a variety of ways, it's not what I am when I wake up on a non-work morning. It's what I do, but it isn't what I am. Law may have a culture, but it isn't a culture. This isn't to say that studying law and taking on the professional mantle of law doesn't affect me outside of work. Clearly, to engage with any discipline, even on a purely "academic" level, I must establish that I can engage with it discursively. I'd have to consult with my learned friends on this one, but I submit that the flow between this particular work life and home life is not transparent to those who knew me BL (before law) and AL (after law). But it only touches my identity on the fringes. It's not centrally a part of my being. There might be radars that are alerted from Jew to Jew, or from lesbian to lesbian without a word being spoken. But take a lawyer out of the space of work and I doubt that you'd recognise her as one. No law-person-to-law-person "wink" or tilt of the head; no "I know what you do, so do I" sort of look. And yet clearly there are ways in which those doing law, whether through practising, studying or teaching, do form alliances and adopt markers of community, apart from the driving of quite posh cars (perhaps there's even a signature car for successful law people, a community of which I'm patently not a part). There are cultural associations. However, these aren't necessarily attached simply to law as a broad category. Instead, I think the attachments exist in the ways in which one engages with the law; they're loose groupings formed on the basis of what it is one wishes to achieve with and through that institution. This might be what permits a parallel between my "community" -- or whatever it is one wishes to call their social organisation -- and the communities (aka "identities") of my co-writers. That is, while my identity might not be constructed with a view to law-ing, I will at times come into play with others who read law, becoming part of a community of people who read law in a particular (for example, legalistic) fashion. At other times, I might do law in other ways with other people; for example with feminist lawyers, thereby becoming part of a different community. It's about the practices upon which we hang these relationships. It's what is done and for what purpose. Isn't this what one does when coming together with others under a single "identity", or when they form alliances within that identity grouping? In short, I might not have a sexy identity but, no doubt, I have something that looks like identity in the formation of communities of practices. I might not walk proud, but at different times, for different reasons, I belong -- and at other times, I don't. The Dyke: Reece Who are we and how does that relate to politics? Having spent a futile decade or more trying to get the answer right, many of us gave up and argued that the question was wrong. Insisting that it's 'our' party (organisation, collective, music festival, nightclub, Mardi Gras, Pride parade...) didn't help because the next round of questions always returned -- or at least threatened to -- to questions like: "Who do we mean when we say 'ours'?" "Who don't we mean?" "Who makes the guest list, and who gets to spend the evening in the 'bin' (repository of undesirables)?" Besides, "Who decides anyway?" Not having recourse to a "proper" answer -- the sort of answer one could give a quick press and pop on for any occasion -- one strategy has been to depend on a sort of tactical vagueness when drawing up the guest list. "Not straight" will do. But, given that straight is taken as "heteronormative" (the "two point two kids, one spouse, good suburb, lights on, no fantasy, pervert free" model in which sex/gender/sexuality are not only true, but line up, utterly), such a move makes for a potentially exhaustive list. So "queer" becomes the statistical norm. And who, except the Rev Fred and the WA Liberal government front bench, would elect to be seen dead in a yesterday category like "heteronormative"? A related, and much stronger version of this, is to argue that identity, as in identity politics, is neither possible nor desirable. The problem, it seems, is not the content of GLBTQ or whatever identity categories, but our understanding of identity per se. In some wild and woeful accounts, however, a lack of absolute identity slides into an absolute lack of identity (no essential identity, therefore, essentially, no identity), making any claim to an "us" necessarily futile. Post "identity politics" becomes "post-identity" politics. And even if identity were possible, the story goes, it is a regulatory regime. As such, it creates a "bin", an anathema to an anti-oppressive politic. If sexuality is fluid, mobile, partial, not reducible to the homo/heterodivide etc., then the most useful project would be to destabilise the regulatory regimes by which the logic of identity (and the bin) is held in place. These moves, simultaneously, mobilise an all-inclusive category (queer), retain specificities (G,L,B,T,Q) and undo the whole edifice (queer as critique of all "identity"). Another move is, of course, to avoid the mistake of slipping between "no absolute truth" and "absolutely no truth" and, instead, to ask how we go about making up what we do, including who we are, (à la Sedgwick, Halberstram, etc.), what purpose it serves, and for whom. My question then is how "same-sex" has been used, by what "communities of sign users", in the formation of which subject positions, and with what effects. Sometimes the "community of sign users" is the same as "queer community" ("queer community" may be an oxymoron in some quarters, but there are no signs of its immanent withdrawal from "community" circulation, regardless of contamination or logical impossibility). In other instances, the "community of sign users" is not so readily identified in terms of our existing identity markers (maybe we need Eve's nonce taxonomies?), like "pro- and anti-gay law reformists" for instance. And sometimes the subjectivities in question are marked "queerly" (G,L,B,T,Q, for example(s)). Others are not necessarily marked as "sexual" at all, yet are brought into being by and for their relation to queer (in the extended sense). The "Average West Australian", for instance, bears a very specific relation to "same-sex" when used by Peter Foss (W.A. Attorney-General) to argue for continuing legalised discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Critiques of "identity politics" rightly focus on the nonsense that what we do, unproblematically, is who or what we are. Nevertheless, some sense of 'who or what', some sense of identity, remains crucial to the ways in which we (and they) negotiate the world, even if that identity, like the "Average West Australian", is not necessarily understood as such. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield & Reece Plunkett. "Three Cultures from the "Inside": or, A Jew, a Lawyer and a Dyke Go into This Bar..." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.php>. Chicago style: Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield & Reece Plunkett, "Three Cultures from the "Inside": or, A Jew, a Lawyer and a Dyke Go into This Bar...," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Felicity Newman, Tracey Summerfield & Reece Plunkett. (2000) Three cultures from the "inside": or, a jew, a lawyer and a dyke go into this bar... M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/country.php> ([your date of access]).

In the HBO series The Sopranos, Tony and his friends use “prosthetic memories” to anchor their ethnic and criminal identities. Prosthetic memories were theorised by Alison Landsberg in her book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. She argues that prosthetic memories are memories acquired through the mass media and do not come from a person’s lived experience in any sense (Landsberg 20). In this article, I will outline how The Sopranos television show and its characters interact with prosthetic memories. Extending Christopher Kocela’s work on The Sopranos and white ethnicities, I will show how characters use prosthetic memories to define their ethnicity while the show itself knowingly plays with this to provide comedic and critical commentary about the influence of gangster stereotypes. According to Landsberg, prosthetic memories are powerful memories of historical events or narratives that an individual was not present for. They are typically formed at the "interface between a personal and historical narrative about the past at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or museum" (2). It is at such a moment that a person can suture themselves into a larger history. Consequently, these memories do not just enhance an individual’s apprehension of a historical event. Rather, they create a deeply felt personal memory of a past event through which they did not live (Landsberg 4). Prosthetic memories are largely made available through the technologies of mass culture such as film, television and experiential places like museums. Their accessibility helps to differentiate them from other cultural strategies for passing on memories to future generations. Other strategies have typically been rooted in the cultural or racial status of an individual (Landsberg 22). In addition, Landsberg asserts that the successfulness of mnemotechnic rituals like the Jewish Passover Seder is dependent on ethnicity (26). Similarly, Walter Benn Michaels concludes that these rituals can only be effective if the individual has “some prior assumption of identity between you and them and this assumption is often racial” (680). Contrastingly, the perpetuation of prosthetic memories through mass media makes them widely accessible across racial lines. According to Landsberg, they are not “naturally- ethnically, racially or biologically- one’s intended inheritance” (26). Prosthetic memories introduce the possibility that memories can be acquired by anyone. The technologies of mass culture make these memories portable and as such, challenges the assumption that memory is “in anyway essential or organically grounded or the private property of a specific ethnic or racial group” (27). In The Sopranos, most characters are third or fourth generation Italian immigrants. Much like for many ‘real’ Italian migrants, time has severed familial connections to their homeland (see Landsberg 49-55). Landsberg suggests that immigrants initially became Americanised in order to escape persecution and being labelled as “other” (51). This meant that ethnically exclusive mnemotechnic rituals were not preserved for subsequent generations of immigrants. In order to sustain an ethnic identity, immigrants (and the characters in The Sopranos) have been forced to turn to more accessible tools like prosthetic memories. Christopher Kocela’s analysis of Italian-Americanness in The Sopranos, argues that characters maintain an Italian American ethnicity while still racially identifying as white. According to Colin Webster “white ethnicity” can be best exemplified through the long tradition of European immigration to America (295). With the influx of immigrants, there was a codification of the idea that “some whites are ‘whiter’ than others” (Webster 297). European working-class immigrants struggled to be afforded the same white “privileges” and membership to the white race. Instead, they were defined as being members of “other” white ethnicities. Roediger argued that such a denial of whiteness pushed European immigrants to insist on their own whiteness by defining themselves against other ethnic minorities like African Americans (8). Between 1890 and 1945, eventual assimilation saw white ethnicities become “fully white” (Roediger 8). Webster argues that: “In this sense, whiteness is nearly always salvageable in a way that black, Mexican, Asian, and Native American ethnicity is not (sic)” (Webster 297). In a similar vein, Kocela suggests that the assimilated characters in The Sopranos benefit from their white racial status while still maintaining an Italian ethnicity. This celebration of ethnic difference by Tony and his friends can serve as a smokescreen for the silent maintenance of whiteness (Kocela 14). Kocela suggests that the show critiques these types of responses that characters have to their ethnicity, stating that "we do not learn from The Sopranos the language of ethnic sons deprived of their Italian godfathers, but the language of racial misrecognition spoken by sons whose lost white fathers were never really their own" (16).Kocela’s article provides a useful discussion about the relationship that characters in The Sopranos have with their ethnicity. This article extends this discussion by showing how prosthetic memories and characters’ understanding of mass media are a crucial element in how such ethnic identities are formed. This will lead to a discussion about how The Sopranos comments on and treats these adopted stereotypes. “What do poor Italian-immigrants have to do with you?”: How Characters Interact with Prosthetic MemoriesCharacters in The Sopranos heavily rely upon stereotypes from gangster films to perform their version of Italian Americanness. A reliance on prosthetic memories from such films leads to the manifestation of violence being intertwined with the characters’ ethnic identities. Brian Faucette has discussed the inherent link between violence and gangster films from the 1930s-60s. He claims that “it was violence that enabled the upward mobility of these figures” (76). It is almost impossible to separate violence from the gangster films referenced in The Sopranos. As such, violence becomes part of the ritualistic ways prosthetic memories are created. This is evident in the pilot episode of The Sopranos when Christopher performs his first hit (kill). In the scene, he shoots rival gang member, Emil, in the back of the head at Satriales Pork Store. Before the hit, the pair are standing close together in front of a pinboard collage of “classic” Italian movie gangsters. As they both walk away in opposite directions the camera pulls out diagonally to follow Christopher. Throughout the duration of the shot, the collage is always placed behind Christopher. Finally, when the pan stops, Christopher is positioned in the foreground, with the collage behind him to the right. The placement of the collage gives it a front row seat to the ensuing murder while serving as a kind of script for it. It is not enough for Christopher to simply kill Emil, rather it is important that it is done in the presence of his idols in order to ensure his enhanced identification with them. Moreover, for Christopher, being an Italian American gangster and violence are inseparable. He must perform acts of extreme violence in order to suture himself into a larger, stereotypical narrative, that equates Italian-Americanness with the mafia. Through Landsberg’s theory, it is possible to see the intertwined relationship between performances of Italian-Americanness and violence. To enact their version of Italian-Americanism, characters follow the script of masculine-violence inherent to gangster films. As well as tools to perform Italian American identities, prosthetic memories can be used by characters to deny their whiteness. Kocela argues that Tony can deny or affirm his whiteness, depending on the situation. According to Kocela, Tony’s economic success is intrinsically linked to his racial status as a white man (16). However, this is not a view shared by characters in the show. In the episode From Where to Eternity Dr. Melfi asks Tony how he justifies his criminal lifestyle: Tony: When America opened the floodgates and let all us Italians in, what do you think they were doing it for? ... The Carnegies and the Rockefellers, they needed worker bees and there we were. But some of us didn't want to swarm around their hive and lose who we were. We wanted to stay Italian and preserve the things that meant something to us: honor, and family, and loyalty. ... Now we weren't educated like the Americans, but we had the balls to take what we wanted. And those other fucks, the J.P. Morgans, they were crooks and killers too, but that was the business, right? The American way.Dr. Melfi: That might all be true. But what do poor Italian immigrants have to do with you and what happens every morning when you step out of bed?Kocela describes Tony’s response as a “textbook recitation of the two-family myth of Italian-American identity in which criminal activities are justified in a need to resist assimilation” (28). It is evident that for Tony, being Italian American is defined by being ethnically different. To admit that whiteness contributes to his economic success would undermine the justification he gives for his criminal lifestyle and his self-perceived status as an Italian American. Despite this, Melfi’s statement rings true. The experience of “poor Italian immigrants” does not affect Tony’s daily lifestyle. Characters in The Sopranos do not face the same oppression and discrimination as first-generation migrants (Kocela 28). After decades of assimilation, Tony and his friends turn to the narratives of discrimination and ethnic difference present in gangster films. This is exemplified through Tony’s identification with Vito Corleone from The Godfather. Vito exemplifies Tony’s notion of Italian Americanism. He was a poor immigrant that turned to criminality to protect the Italian-American community and their way of life. Vito is also connected to Italy in a way that Tony admires. When Paulie asks Tony what his favourite scene from The Godfather is he responds with: Don Ciccio’s Villa, when Vito goes back to Sicily, the crickets, the great old house. Maybe it’s because I’m going over there, ya know? Gangster films and representations of Italian-Americanness often deliberately differentiate Italian families from “regular” white people (D’Acierno 566). According to D’Acierno, gangster narratives often involve two types of Italian families, one that has been left powerless by its assimilation to American culture and another that has resisted this through organised crime (D’Acierno 567). Tony and his friends tap into these narratives in their attempt to create prosthetic memories that differentiate their ethnicity and ultimately draw attention away from the whiteness which silently benefits them.The “inauthenticity” of these prosthetic memories is probably most pronounced in the episode Commendatori when Tony, Christopher and Paulie visit Italy. The trip shatters the expectations that the characters had of their homeland and sheds light on some of their delusions about what it means to be Italian. Paulie expects to love Italy and be greeted with open arms by the locals. Unfortunately, he dislikes it all because it is too foreign for him. At the banquet, Paulie finds the authentic Italian octopus uneatable and instead orders “spaghetti and gravy.” He is also unable to use the bathrooms because he is so used to American toilets. When at a local café he tries to initiate conversation with some local men using broken Italian. Even though they hear him, the group ignores him. Despite all this Paulie, pretends that it was a great trip:Big Pussy: So how was it?Paulie: Fabulous, I felt right at home… I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t been … especially any Italian. The prosthetic memories that defined these characters’ perceptions of Italy are based on the American media’s portrayal of Italy. Commendatori thus exposes the differences between what is “authentically Italian” and the prosthetic memories about Italy generated by American gangster films. By the end of the episode it has become clear that these “inauthentic” prosthetic memories have forged an entirely different, hybrid ethnic identity.“Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes”: How The Sopranos Treats Prosthetic MemoriesIntertextuality is an important way through which the audience can understand how The Sopranos treats prosthetic memories. The prosthetic memories generated by characters in The Sopranos are heavily based on stereotypes of Italian Americans. Papaleo states that the Italian stereotype is “composed of overreactions: after bowing, smiling and being funny, the Italian loses control” (93). Mafia films are crucial in defining the identity of Tony and his friends, and David Pattie suggests that they are a “symbolic framework within which Tony, Paulie, Christopher and Silvio attempt to find meaning and justification for their lives” (137). In a similar way, the audience is invited to use these same films as a frame for watching The Sopranos itself. Mafia stereotypes are one of the dominant ways that depict Italian Americans on screen. According to Larke-Walsh, this has perpetuated the belief that crime and Italian-Americanness are synonymous with each other (226). The show is obsessively referential and relies on the viewer’s knowledge of these films for much of its effect. Pattie describes how such use of intertextuality can be explained: "[there are] two ways of looking at self-referential programs: one in which readings of other media texts can be contained first of all within the film or program in which they occur; and a more covert type of referential work, which relies almost exclusively on the audience’s detailed, constantly-updated cultural intelligence" (137). The Sopranos operates on both levels as references that are simultaneously textual and meta-textual. This is evident through the way the show treats The Godfather films. They are by far the most frequently mentioned ones (Golden 95). According to Chris Messenger, the central link between the two is the acknowledgement that “America itself has been totally colonised by The Godfather” (Messenger 95). The Godfather is an urtext that frames how audiences are invited to view the show. As such, The Sopranos invites the viewer to use the Godfather as a lens to uncover extra layers of meaning. For example, The Sopranos uses the misguided ways in which its characters have taken on stereotypes from The Godfather as a source of humour. The series plays on the fact that characters will allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour. In the pilot episode, Christopher calls “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero to help him dispose of a body. Christopher informs Pussy that it’s his plan to leave the body at a garbage stop to be discovered by the rival Czechoslovakians. Christopher hoped this would emulate the “Luca Brasi situation” from The Godfather and intimidate the Czechoslovakians. When he explains this to Pussy, they have the following exchange. Pussy: The Kolar uncle is gonna find a kid dead on one of his bins and get on our fuckin’ business… no way!Christopher: Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes.Pussy: Luca Brasi… Luca! There are differences Christopher… okay… from the Luca Brasi situation and this. Look, the Kolar’s know a kid is dead, it hardens their position... plus now the cops are lookin’ for a fuckin’ murderer!To members of the audience who are familiar with The Godfather, it immediately becomes clear that Christopher is comically misguided. In the Godfather, Luca Brasi was murdered because he was caught trying to infiltrate a powerful rival organisation. Fish wrapped in his bullet-proof vest were then sent back to the Corleones in order to notify them that their plan had been foiled (“Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”). The “Luca Brasi situation” was a calculated and strategic move whereas Christopher’s situation amounts to a seemingly random, unauthorised killing. This sequence in The Sopranos uses this comparison for comedic effect and plays on the stereotype that all Italian Americans are mafioso and that all mafia behaviour is interchangeable. The symbolic language of the “Luca Brasi” scene is contrasted with explicit shots of a slumped, lifeless body. These shots are a source of macabre humour. The audience is invited to laugh at the contrast between the subtle, thoughtful nature of the Luca Brasi situation and the brash violence of Christopher’s own predicament. Through this comedic situation, The Sopranos critiques Christopher’s aspiration to be a godfather-esque gangster by showing his incompetence. Christopher’s misreading of the situation is further emphasised by his mistakenly referring to Luca Brasi as “Louis”. After Pussy says: “There are differences… from the Luca Brasi situation and this”, the dialogue pauses and the scene cuts to an immediate close up of Emil’s body falling to the side. This illustrates that part of the joke is that characters are willing to allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour, no matter how inappropriate. Therefore, Christopher is willing to refer to a scene from the Godfather that fails to account for the context of a situation without even consulting the knowledge of Big Pussy. This leads to a larger critique of the ways in which films like The Godfather are presented as a script for all Italian Americans to follow. Nevertheless, The Sopranos still has a role in perpetuating these same stereotypes. Tomasulo has argued that "despite its use of postclassical generic, narrative aesthetic devices, and its creation by an Italian American, The Sopranos relies heavily on demeaning tropes of ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender" (206). This results in a perpetuation of negative stereotypes about working class Italian Americans that affirm old Hollywood clichés. While The Sopranos has tried to transcend this through complex characterisation, irony and universalisation, Tomasulo asserts that most audiences “take The Sopranos as straight - that is a raw unvarnished anthropology of Americans of Italian descent” (206). The origin of characters’ anti-social personalities seems to stem directly from their ethnicity and their being Italian appears to constitute an explanation for their behaviour. In his article Kocela discusses the complicated relationship that characters have with their white ethnicity. Through an application of Landsberg’s theory it is possible to understand how these ethnicities are initially formed and how they continue to circulate. In response to assimilation, characters in The Sopranos have turned to mass media to generate prosthetic memories of their ethnic heritage. These memories generally originate in classic gangster films. They are used by characters in The Sopranos to deny their whiteness and justify their criminality. The Sopranos itself comments on the complex ways that characters interpret gangster film stereotypes for both comedic and critical commentary. In the epilogue of her book, Landsberg asks: “How can we be sure the politics inspired by prosthetic memories are progressive and ethical?” Prosthetic memories generated by gangster texts are almost inherently problematic. Scholars have criticised the hyper-aggressive masculinity and regressive gender roles that are rampant throughout the genre (Larke-Walsh 226). For Tony and his friends, these problematic gender politics have helped justify their criminal lifestyle and valorised violence as part of ethnic performance. Similarly, these stereotypes are not always circulated critically and are at times perpetuated for audience enjoyment. AcknowledgmentI would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Michelle Phillipov for providing constructive feedback on earlier drafts. References“Commendatori.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. Tim Van Patten. HBO, 2000. DVD.Coppola, Francis, and Mario Puzo. The Godfather. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Home Video, 1972.“D-Girl.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Todd A. Kessler. Dir. Allen Coulter. HBO, 2000. DVD.D'Acierno, Pellegrino. “Cinema Paradiso.” The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts. New York: Garland, 1999. 563-690.Faucette, Brian. "Interrogations of Masculinity: Violence and the Retro-Gangster Cycle of the 60s." 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