Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

6 results

  • 5 - A New Home in America

  • Ori Yehudai, Ohio State University
  • Book:
    Leaving Zion
    Published online:
    24 April 2020
    Print publication:
    14 May 2020, pp 181-217

  • Summary

    In the mid-1950s, the United States became the largest destination for Israeli emigration. While Israeli emigrants heading to the United States did not experience the troubles faced by remigrants in Europe, the movement to the United States was not free of frictions and hardships. Migrants faced obstacles emanating from American immigration policies and from the negative attitude of Jewish aid organizations towards emigration from Israel. This attitude in turn led to debates among American Jews regarding the proper attitude towards Jewish migrants moving from Israel to the United States. Emigration from Israel subsequently became a polarizing issue in the American Jewish community. As the chapter shows, it played a similar role, with varying degrees of intensity, in other Jewish communities in the Americas such as those of Brazil and Canada.

    Despite these difficulties, however, tens of thousands of emigrants from Israel were able to settle in America – and as their testimonies reveal, many succeeded in building new lives there. They thus repudiated the concept of the rejection of exile and offered a tangible alternative to the idea that Jewish existence outside Israel was pointless or untenable.

  • 10 - Jewish Perspectives on Poverty

  • Edited by William A. Galston, Brookings Institution, Washington DC, Peter H. Hoffenberg, University of Hawaii, Manoa
  • Book:
    Poverty and Morality
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    20 September 2010, pp 204-219

  • Summary

    The political changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries brought an end to the political authority of halakhic law. In a society shaped by Judaic traditions, groups more liable to be poor include immigrants and aliens, women, and paradoxically those committed to the supreme religious ideal of a life of study. In the Jewish tradition, alleviating poverty is by no means merely a matter for supererogation; the duty to help the poor is called tzedakah. Providing for the basic needs of the poor was seen also as a communal responsibility, and Jewish communities did so through two complementary mechanisms: a daily operation of food collection and distribution, and a tzedakah fund that made weekly disbursements to all poor residents. The common form of competition for welfare resources was between the local poor, asserting an entitlement to the care and resources of their own community, and itinerant claimants.

  • 19 - The Diaspora, C. 235–638

    • By Leonard Rutgers, Department of Late Antique Studies, Utrecht University, Scott Bradbury, Department of Classical Languages and Literatures, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts
  • Edited by Steven T. Katz, Boston University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Judaism
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    22 June 2006, pp 492-518

  • Summary

    In late antiquity, Jewish communities were a common occurrence throughout Italy. Smaller centers and villages in the remoter parts of the Italian countryside became home to well-organized Jewish communities or to groups of Jewish families. The Jewish community of ancient Rome was among the oldest Jewish communities in Italy. A number of medieval legends traced the arrival of Jews in Spain to deep antiquity. The biblical Tarshish was often identified as Tartessus, and it was accepted that Jewish traders had traveled to Spain already under the Phoenicians and Carthaginians. Political loyalty was a recurring theme in the Visigothic period, partly because of the threat of internal rebellion and partly because of the stunning successes of Arab armies abroad. The theme of Jewish political treachery became critical under King Egica. Egica applied unprecedented economic pressures on the Jews in his realm.

  • 2 - The Diaspora from 66 to c. 235 ce

    • By Allen Kerkeslager, Department of Theology, Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, Claudia Setzer, Department of Religion, Manhattan College, New York, Paul Trebilco, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin, David Goodblatt, Department of History, University of California, San Diego
  • Edited by Steven T. Katz, Boston University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Judaism
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    22 June 2006, pp 53-92

  • Summary

    This chapter describes cultural differences and Roman administrative boundaries that distinguished the Jewish communities of Egypt from those in Cyrenaica. Recent works on Diaspora Judaism have said little about western North Africa. The physical remains for the period 66-235 CE are meager compared to the richness of evidence from Egypt and Cyrenaica. The earliest extant synagogue, at Hammam-Lif, dates from the late fourth or early fifth century. Evidence for Jewish communities in Asia Minor begins in the third century BCE and continues through the sixth century CE and beyond. Sources preserved by Josephus attest to the role of individual Babylonian Jews in local politics before 70. For the years 70-235, the issue of Jewish self-government in Babylonia is reduced to the question of whether one can find evidence of the exilarchate in this era. Relatively ample evidence is available on the Babylonian Exilarch from the amoraic through Islamic eras.

  • 17 - Asia Minor and Achaea

  • from Part IV - Regional Varieties of Christianity in the First Three Centuries
  • Edited by Margaret M. Mitchell, University of Chicago, Frances M. Young, University of Birmingham
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    19 January 2006, pp 314-329

  • Summary

    Asia Minor and Achaea were nurseries for Christianity, as the New Testament shows. Asia Minor is important for understanding the development and diversification of the Christians religion. Civic rivalry and civil unrest played their parts in the 'webs of power' which bound the rulers and the ruled. Cities might be melting-pots of Greeks and Anatolians, Romans and Jews. Well-established Jewish communities might be strongly ambivalent in response to Hellenistic culture, or actively finding means to accommodate to it. Asia Minor was long established as home to cults of Zeus, the Phrygian Men, mother goddesses, divinised heroes, and monotheism as well. Early Christian traditions about Ephesus and Athens show the interface between Christians, Jews, pagans, city politics and magic. Christians appreciative of the heritage of Judaism remained influential in the churches. Chiliasm and Christian prophetism had particular associations with Asia Minor, though either might be found elsewhere.

  • 21 - Christianization and religious conflict

  • from PART V - Religion
  • Edited by Averil Cameron, University of Oxford, Peter Garnsey, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Ancient History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    11 December 1997, pp 632-664

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses the process by which the hints of the infinitely diverse religious climate that prevailed in much of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries have remained what they are for any modern reader - tantalizing fragments of a complex religious world, glimpsed through the chinks in a body of evidence which claims to tell a very different story. One tends to forget how much of the conflict between Constantine and Theodosius II, was considered by late Roman Christians to have been fought out in heaven rather than on earth. The late antique period is characterized by the successful imposition of a rabbinic interpretation of Judaism among the Jewish communities in Palestine, Mesopotamia and elsewhere, and by the formalization and propagation of Zoroastrianism throughout the Sasanian empire. Both are remarkable events of which we know singularly little, compared with the process that we call the 'Christianization of the Roman empire'.