Academic literature on the topic 'Jewish-German Dialogue Groups of Boston'

Since 1949, the Federal of Republic of Germany's titular head of state, the Federal President (Bundespräsident), has set the tone for discussion of the Nazi era and remembrance of the Holocaust. This precedent was established by the first Bundespräsident, Theodor Heuss. Through his speeches, writings, and actions after 1949, Heuss consistently worked for German-Jewish reconciliation, including open dialogue with German Jews and reparations to victims of the Holocaust. He was also the German Jewish community's strongest ally within the West German state administration. However, his work on behalf of the Jewish community was more than a matter of moral leadership. Heuss was both predisposed towards the Jewish community and assisted behind-the-scenes in his efforts. Before 1933, Heuss, an academic, journalist, and liberal politician, had strong ties to the German Jewish bourgeoisie. After 1949, he developed a close working relationship with Karl Marx, publisher of the Jewish community's principal newspaper. Marx assisted Heuss in handling the sensitive topic of Holocaust memory; and through Marx, Jewish notables and groups were able to gain unusually easy access to the West German head of state.

The point of departure in the present article is a discussion of the concept of multidirectional memory, the category proposed by Michael Rothberg in his book ANGIELSKI TYTUŁ. The article then analyzes the memoirs by Jewish-Austrian Ruth Klüger and Afro-German Hans-Jürgen Massaquoia, as examples of transnational narratives. It thus highlights the problem of the war experience of black Germans, concomitantly tracing the process of identity formation resulting from an ethnic person’s dialogue with the representatives of other marginalized and oppressed groups within the Nazi system

Abstract In this article Lionel Blue recalls his introduction to the UK Reform Jewish movement, at the time the ‘Association of Synagogues of Great Britain’. His work with the youth groups coincided with a pioneering engagement with a post-war German generation, something considered problematical at the time, and similarly the beginning of a Jewish-Christian-Muslim dialogue. The movement at the time increased its support for Israel and joined with the American Reform Jewish movement in the World Union for Progressive Judaism both of which had their influence on its development. But missing were important spiritual questions: Did God still exist for us and how; Where did we locate Him in the horror of the Holocaust? Despite criticisms of some developments of the movement, what remains important is the friendliness, care and concern of the members, its humanity and preferring people as they are to ideological templates.

Purpose – This paper aims to present findings from a research project that examined the contribution of a third partner in an encounter among three groups: Palestinian/Arab–Israelis, Jewish–Israelis and Germans. In recent decades, planned intergroup encounters have played an important role in conflict management, reconciliation and peace-building. Nearly all models use a dyadic structure, based on an encounter between two rival groups mediated by a third party. Design/methodology/approach – The study was based on a year-long academic collaboration and two encounters between social work students from Israel and Germany (15 each). The central issues addressed were personal and collective identity; personal, familial and collective memory; and multicultural social work practice that were present in the encounter with the “other”. Participants were heterogeneous in terms of gender, ethnic background and religion, inviting exploration of personal and professional meanings. Using 15 in-depth interviews with Israeli participants, we identified and analyzed the personal and interpersonal processes occurring during these encounters. Findings – Jewish and Arab participants positioned themselves vis-à-vis the German group in two main configurations (singular identities and multiple multifaceted identities), which alternated according to the contexts to which the larger group was exposed, and in congruence with the developmental stage of group work. Originality/value – The findings suggest that a “third” partner can significantly contribute to an intergroup encounter by reflecting on the relationship created between rival parties to a dyad, thereby helping them deconstruct their binary “us-versus-them” relationship.

موسوعة الفرق والجماعات والمذاهب والأحزاب والحركات الإسلامية، عبد المنعم الحفنى، القاهرة: مكتبة مدبولي، 2005م، 627 صفحة. الفَرق بين الفِرَق وبيان الفِرقة الناجية منهم، أبو منصور عبد القاهر بن طاهر بن محمد البغدادي، تحقيق: محمد فتحي النادي، القاهرة: دار السلام للطباعة والنشر والتوزيع والترجمة، 2010م، 448 صفحة. دراسة في الفِرَق والطوائف الإسلامية، أحمد عبد الله اليظي، القاهرة: الهيئة المصرية العامة للكتاب، 2009م، 390 صفحة. الآخر في الثقافة العربية من القرن السادس حتى مطلع القرن العشرين، حسين العودات، بيروت: دار الساقي للطباعة والنشر، 2010م، 320 صفحة. من تاريخ الهُرمسية والصوفية في الإسلام، بيير لوري، ترجمة: لويس صليبا، لبنان: دار ومكتبة بيبليون، ط2، 2007م، 315 صفحة. هرمس الحكيم بين الألوهية والنبوة، أحمد غسان سبانو، دمشق: دار قتيبة، 2010م، 224 صفحة. حوار الأديان وحدة المبادئ العامة والقواعد الكلية، هادي حسن حمودي، بيروت: بيت العلم للنابهين، 2010م، 335 صفحة. الإسلام والغرب إشكالية الصراع وضرورة الحوار، أحمد عرفات القاضى، القاهرة: مكتبة مدبولي، 2010م، 282 صفحة. موسوعة تاريخ العلاقات بين العالم الإسلامي والغرب، نخبة من الأكاديميين، تحقيق: سمير سليمان، طهران: المجمع العالمي للتقريب بين المذاهب الإسلامية، 2010م، 918 صفحة. Gramsci's Historicism: A Realist Interpretation, Esteve Morera, New York: Routledge, new edition, (December 2010), 238 pages. The Discovery of Historicity in German Idealism and Historism, Peter Koslowski, Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (January 14, 2010) 2nd edition, 304 pages Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World), David N. Myers, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2nd edition, (December 21, 2009), 270 pages. From Here to Diversity: Globalization and Intercultural Dialogues, Clara Sarmento, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing; New edition edition (October 2010), 405 pages. Facilitating Intergroup Dialogues: Bridging Differences, Catalyzing Change, Kelly E. Maxwell (Author), Biren (Ratnesh) Nagda (Author), Monita C. Thompson (Author), Patricia Gurin (Foreword), Sterling, VA - Stylus Publishing (November 2010), 288 pages. Who Can Stop the Wind?: Travels in the Borderland Between East and West (Monastic Interreligious Dialogue series), Notto R. Thelle, MN, USA: Liturgical Press (September 7, 2010), 112 pages. Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion, John Hick, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan (May 11, 2010), 256 pages. Multicultural Dialogue: Dilemmas, Paradoxes, Conflicts, Randi Gressgard, Berghahn Books; 1 edition (May 15, 2010), 174 pages. Ideas of Muslim Unity at the Age of Nationalism, Elmira Akhmetova, Saarbrücken, Germany: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing (July 2009), 164 pages. Essential Gnostic Scriptures, Willis Barnstone, Marvin Meyer, Boston, MA: Shambhala (December 28, 2010), 240 pages. Pathways to an Inner Islam, Patrick Laude, New York: State University of New York Press (February 4, 2010), 211 pages. للحصول على كامل المقالة مجانا يرجى النّقر على ملف ال PDF في اعلى يمين الصفحة.

The article examines how images of other nations are formed in the artistic world of a writer – a representative of another nation. Employing the imagological approach with its tools for studying the ethnic structures of the text and drawing on E. Smith’s concept of the national identity and E. Levinas’s concept of the Other, the author analysies the problem of perception of the Other on the interpersonal and intercultural levels, using the artistic heritage of the Ukrainian Rusin writer Yu. Fedkovych as a case study. The article highlights the dominants in the representation of other ethnic groups in the context of the writer’s identity, taking into consideration the cultural and historical discourses of the literature of a particular nation. Born into an interethnic family in Bukovynian Hutsulia, which was part of multicultural Austria, working and doing military service in various territories of Europe, communicating with representatives of various ethnic groups, Y. Fedkovich recorded the main stereotypes in perception of other nations’ representatives, which reveal the specificity of European interethnic relations. The main attention is drawn to the analysis of the Hutsul image of the world and the dominant images of the Other (Italian, Austrian, German, Moldavian / Romanian, Serbian, Polish, Jewish, Gypsy Imago). According to Levinas, the factors that determine the image of the Other are situations of freedom / enslavement, reinforced by the experience of war. Theoretical considerations are confirmed by examples from creative works. In this perspective, the literature represents intercultural dialogue in the European space to become a source of ethnoimagological studies.

This literary study of the Carpathian manifestation of The Springtime of Nations (1848-1849) is based of the short story “At the Hunting Campfire” from the collection “Rusini” [The Rusins] by Kajetan Abgarowicz (Abgar-Soltan), a Polish writer of Armenian descent of the late 19th - early 20th century. The imagological reflection of public sentiments of the 19th century is analysed through the lens of the discourse of the borderland as a state of culture awareness: the Polish (“ours” from the perspective of the Polish author) and “theirs” (i.e. Hutsul). The authors determine the Carpathian society before The Springtime of Nations as cultural borderlands of the Polish, Hutsul, German, Jewish, and Gypsy ethnic groups coexisted in daily life, with their fundamental values unchanged. They argue that the Hutsul community unconditionally accepted the imperative the Austrian highlanders, the model of neighborhood with the Poles, and trusting relations with the gypsies, but infernally mythologized of the Germans in the person of the local officer and his entourage. The focus is placed on the peculiarities of the Hutsul reception of news about the uprising against the Habsburgs outside the Carpathians and the development of the revolutionary events of the local “strange spring” in the contezt of the confrontation between the highlanders and the local authorities during the Carpathian stay of the Hungarian army, which rebelled against the Austrian emperor. The impact of revolutionary events on the HutsuL community is analyzed within their cultural identity awareness as of representatives of a separate ethnic group with its own history of resistance in in the context of opryshoks, an unusual, non-Polish cultural landscape, axiology, and ontology. In his “At the Hunting Campfire”, Kajetan Abgarowicz creates a literary version of the The Springtime of Nations in the Carpathians, with a new Look on the dialogue in the relationship between “our” and “their” cultural universes.

Memory acquired. The conception of the Polish experience of the Holocaust as collective trauma in the light of a revision of the concept of bystanderThe paper provides a reconstruction and proposes the deconstruction of the conception of the Polish experience of the Holocaust as collective trauma. The analytical framework is based on the revision of concepts such as Polish witness (bystander/onlooker – according to Hilberg) and indifference on the part of Polish majority society towards the persecution and murder of the Jews. The text postulates that the concept of indifference as well as that of the non-Jewish witness (bystander/onlooker) be dropped from the standard terminology used when describing the Holocaust. It proposes that the concept of the non-Jewish witness (bystander/onlooker) be replaced by the concept of participating observer – with a different understanding from that established within cultural anthropology.Thus, watching would be a form of activity, a way of having an influence on the events, of agency, and therefore participation. A significant part of my argument includes an attempt to address the question of the construction of watching during the Holocaust. From this it follows that watching constitutes the most basic form of power (droit de regard – according to Foucault and Bourdieu). Therefore, the question arises of whether or not one can describe the margins of the Holocaust within the terms of panoptic reality (le panoptisme – according to Foucault). A further question under consideration is whether one can depict the dominant majority as an unofficial authority wielding something akin to social control over the completion of the Holocaust understood as the German Nazi system of persecution and extermination of the Jews.The argument also foregrounds the actual functions of the concepts of the non-Jewish witness (bystander/onlooker) and indifference as well as the idea of the Holocaust as a trauma for the non-Jewish witness (bystander/onlooker). These functions resulted several times in the elimination of the historical concrete and its societal-cultural conditions from the field of vision. In this sense, the conception of unacquired memory (i.e. the Polish trauma of the Holocaust) would be a strategy for acquiring the memory of the Holocaust in such a way that it does not endanger the dominant narrative about the past and the identity of the majority. Furthermore, the paper proposes the deconstruction of the concept of Polish-Jewish dialogue by identifying the phenomena of false symmetry and false universalization that frequently result in defining anti-Semitism and the Holocaust within the categories of a groups conflicts. The inspiration to undertake such a critical analysis came from the paradigmatic work by Michael C. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust, published in 1997. (The Polish-language edition entitled Pamięć nieprzyswojona. Polska pamięć Zagłady [Memory unacquired. The Polish memory of the Holocaust] came out in 2000, translated by Agata Tomaszewska.) Pamięć przyswojona. Koncepcja polskiego doświadczenia zagłady Żydów jako traumy zbiorowej w świetle rewizji kategorii świadkaArtykuł przedstawia rekonstrukcję i proponuje dekonstrukcję koncepcji polskiego doświadczenia Zagłady jako traumy zbiorowej. Kontekst analityczny stanowi rewizja takich kategorii, jak: polski świadek Zagłady (bystander/onlooker – za Hilbergiem) i obojętność wobec Zagłady. Tekst postuluje wykreślenie kategorii obojętności ze słownika opisu Zagłady. Kategorię świadka (bystander/onlooker) proponuje zastąpić kategorią obserwatora uczestniczącego w rozumieniu innym niż przyjęte w antropologii kulturowej. Spojrzenie stanowiłoby tutaj formę aktywności, oddziaływania, sprawczości (agency), a więc uczestnictwa. Istotna część wywodu to próba odpowiedzi na pytanie o konstrukcję owego spojrzenia stanowiącego najbardziej podstawową formę władzy (le droit de regard – za Foucault i Bourdieu). Pojawia się pytanie, czy obrzeża Zagłady można opisać w kategoriach rzeczywistości panoptycznej (le panoptisme – za Foucault). Kolejna rozważanakwestia to, czy większość dominującą można ukazać jako nieformalną instancję sprawującą rodzaj kontroli społecznej nad kompletnością Zagłady jako niemieckiej zbrodni państwowej.W centrum namysłu znajdują się także dotychczasowe funkcje kategorii świadka (bystander/onlooker), kategorii obojętności oraz koncepcji Zagłady jako traumy nieżydowskiego świadka. Funkcje te niejednokrotnie bowiem polegały na eliminacji z pola widzenia historycznego konkretu i jego społeczno-kulturowych uwarunkowań. W tym sensie można mówić o koncepcji pamięci nieprzyswojonej (polskiej traumy Zagłady) jako strategii przyswojenia pamięci Zagłady w sposób niezagrażający dominującej opowieści o przeszłości i tożsamości grupy większościowej. Tekst proponuje ponadto dekonstrukcję kategorii dialogu polsko-żydowskiego ze wskazaniem na zjawiska fałszywej symetrii i fałszywej uniwersalizacji, których częstą konsekwencją jest definiowanie antysemityzmu i Zagłady w kategoriach konfliktu międzygrupowego. Inspiracją do podjęcia namysłu była paradygmatyczna praca Michaela C. Steinlaufa Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust z 1997 roku, której polskie wydanie – zatytułowane Pamięć nieprzyswojona. Polska pamięć Zagłady – ukazało się w roku 2001 w tłumaczeniu Agaty Tomaszewskiej.

The Jewish-Canadian and Arab-American writers and professors of literature George Ellenbogen (*1934) and Evelyn Shakir (1938–2010) were life companions. In both their memoirs, the authors tell stories of neighborhood, enriching encounters and their search for roots. George grows up in the Jewish immigrant quarter of Montreal, goes to McGill University, and later travels to the places of his ancestors, the destroyed world of the shtetl. In her Boston childhood, Evelyn is perceived as an Arab who does not entirely belong. As visiting professor in Arab countries, however, her students see her as an American. The memoirs, three related articles, and an interview with George Ellenbogen raise basic questions of belonging and otherness, cultural location and the pursuit of mutual understanding and respect. The volume also appeals to teachers who want to turn their lessons into contact zones in which different cultures and perspectives collide and enter into mutual dialogue. With contributions by George Ellenbogen; Pascal Fischer, Christoph Houswitschka; Sally Michael Hanna; John Kinsella; Margueritte Murphy; Evelyn Shakir (†); Brigitte Wallinger-Schorn