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1999 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Abstract: In the 1860s, Jewish health reformers began to produce popular medical advice works written in Hebrew or Yiddish, for the benefit of East European Jewry. An examination of this literature reveals the interweaving of a general Haskalah , Jewish Enlightenment, agenda with specific health concerns. The authors of these works saw Haskalah as a cure for the larger spiritual and political malaise of the Jewish people. Promoting a scientifically based approach to health care, they believed attention to public health to be a vital element in the reform and improvement of the East European Jewish populace. Placing these popular medical advice works in the context of changes occurring on various ideological fronts within the Jewish community, this paper analyzes this body of literature to expose the dimensions of its larger, reforming agenda and the tactics of persuasion employed by its authors in their efforts to win "converts" to their vision of a healthy, hygienic, enlightened Jewish population.
1999 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Abstract: The article addresses the question of a German-Jewish "symbiosis" in the context of three bodies of text that are geared towards German-Jewish woman readers. Raphael Breuer's Diary of a Jewish Woman Student (1907) and Else Croner's The Modern Jewess (1913), as well as the women's journal Die jüdische Frau (1925-1927), aimed to define and regulate Jewish femininity in ways what would safeguard the continuity of the Jewish tradition and the Jewish people within a highly assimilatory German society. The shift from a proudly assertive stance on Jewish femininity to an apologetic response to a prevalent antisemitic discourse, marked by World War I, vividly illustrates the limitations of gender-specific national discourses that attempt to write "difference" onto women's bodies.
1999 Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Abstract: This article narrates the manner in which a group of faculty from disparate disciplines at a small, liberal arts college experimented with a "cluster model" by which they extended learning about the Holocaust to a wide student audience through linked courses. Outcomes included the extension of interest in Holocaust-related matters to students beyond the core group, a much heavier than expected emotional and work impact on all the participants, the transmission of information between courses, and enhanced learning for the students and faculty.
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