Table Of ContentTHE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
CONTEMPORARY JEWISH CULTURES
The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Jewish Cultures explores the diversity of Jewish cultures
andwaysofinvestigatingthem,presentingthedifferentmethodologies,arguments,andchallenges
within the discipline.
Divided into themed sections, this book considers in turn:
(cid:1) How the individual terms “Jewish” and “culture” are defined, looking at perspectives from
Anthropology, Music, Literary Studies, Sociology, Religious Studies, History, Art History,
andFilm,Television,andNewMediaStudies.
(cid:1) HowJewishculturesaretheorized,lookingatkeythemesregardingpower,textuality,religion/
secularity, memory, bodies, space and place, and networks.
(cid:1) Case studies in contemporary Jewish cultures.
With essays by leading scholars in Jewish culture, this handbook offers a clear overview of the
field and offers exciting new directions for the future.
Laurence Roth is Professor of English and Jewish Studies at Susquehanna University, USA.
Nadia Valman is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London, UK.
This page intentionally left blank
THE ROUTLEDGE
HANDBOOK OF
CONTEMPORARY JEWISH
CULTURES
Edited by
Laurence Roth and Nadia Valman
Firstpublished2015
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andpublishedbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2015LaurenceRothandNadiaValmanforselectionandeditorialmatter;individual
contributionsthecontributors.
TherightofLaurenceRothandNadiaValmantobeidentifiedastheauthoroftheeditorial
material,andoftheauthorsfortheirindividualchapters,hasbeenassertedinaccordancewith
sections77and78oftheCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedorutilizedinanyform
orbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,nowknownorhereafterinvented,including
photocopyingandrecording,orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,without
permissioninwritingfromthepublishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregisteredtrademarks,and
areusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
TheRoutledgeHandbooktoContemporaryJewishCultures/[editedby]NadiaValman,
LaurenceRoth.
pagescm
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Jewishliterature--21stcentury--Historyandcriticism.2.Jews--Intellectuallife--21stcentury.
3.Jews--Civilization--21stcentury.I.Valman,Nadia,editor.II.Roth,Laurence,1960-editor.
PN842.R682014
305.892’4--dc23
2013040193
ISBN:978-0-415-47378-1(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-49747-0(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
CONTENTS
List of contributors viii
Acknowledgments xii
Introduction 1
Laurence Roth and Nadia Valman
PARTI
Defining terms: disciplinary perspectives 15
1 Anthropology 17
Misha Klein
2 Music 35
Judah M. Cohen
3 Literary studies 47
Marc Caplan
4 Sociology 60
Ben Gidley
5 Religious studies 71
Andrea Lieber
6 History 83
Klaus Hödl
v
Contents
7 Art history 95
Samantha Baskind and Larry Silver
8 Film, television, and new media studies 108
Nathan Abrams
PARTII
Theorizing contemporary Jewish cultures 121
9 Power 123
Michael Rothberg
10 Textuality 139
Devorah Baum
11 Religion/secularity 151
Naomi Seidman
12 Memory 162
Nils Roemer
13 Bodies 172
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
14 Space and place 183
Barbara E. Mann
15 Networks 195
Laurence Roth
PARTIII
Case studies in contemporary Jewish cultures 211
16 “Jewface” and “Jewfaçade” in Poland, Spain, and Birobidzhan 213
S. I. Salamensky
17 Television blackface: Jews, race and comedy in the UK and
Australia 224
Jon Stratton
18 Mizrahi/Arab/Israeli/queer: the cultural politics of Dana International 236
Ted Swedenburg
vi
Contents
19 Turkish Jewish journalism and its audiences 246
Marcy Brink-Danan
20 The idea of Yiddish: re-globalizing North American Jewish culture 259
Amelia Glaser
21 Yiddish and multilingual urban space in Montreal 272
Sherry Simon
22 Pop, piety and modernity: the changing spaces of Orthodox culture 286
Abigail Wood
23 Seeing and being in contemporary Orthodox Jewish dress 297
Jonathan S. Marion
24 Life drawing: autobiography, comics, Jewish women 308
Sarah Lightman
25 Playing with history: Jewish subjectivity in contemporary lens-based art 320
Rachel Garfield
26 Scoreboard: sports and American Jewish identities 340
David J. Leonard
27 Theorizing “Jewish genetics”: DNA, culture and historical narrative 353
Yulia Egorova
28 Jewish spirituality and late capitalism 365
Ayala Fader
Index 382
vii
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
NathanAbramsisaProfessorofFilmStudiesatBangorUniversityofWales.HeisEditor-in-Chief
ofJewishFilm&NewMedia:AnInternationalJournalandauthorofTheNewJewinFilm:Exploring
Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema (2012).
Samantha BaskindisProfessorofArtHistoryatClevelandState University.Sheistheauthor
or editor of several books, most recently Jewish Artists and the Bible in Twentieth-Century America
(2014)and JewishArt:A Modern History (2011, co-authoredwith Larry Silver). The JewishGraphic
Novel: Critical Approaches, co-edited with Ranen Omer-Sherman, was published in 2008. She
served aseditor forUSart for the26-volume revisededitionofthe Encyclopaedia Judaica (2006).
Devorah Baum is a Lecturer in English Literature and Critical Theory at the University of
Southampton.SheisalsoaffiliatedtoSouthamptonUniversity’sParkesInstituteforthestudyof
Jewish/Non-Jewish Relations. Her research interests include the religious and the secular, the
rhetoricalfunctionsofknowledge,psychoanalysis,Jewishliteratureandphilosophy,hermeneutics,
critical theory (especially Jacques Derrida), and post-war American literature.
Marcy Brink-Danan is a cultural anthropologist and author of Jewish Life in 21st Century
Turkey: The Other Side of Tolerance (2011). Her work has appeared in American Anthropologist,
Anthropological Quarterly, Language and Communication, Political and Legal Anthropology Review,
Religion Compass, and Visual Anthropology Review. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Sociology
and Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Marc Caplan is a native of Louisiana and a graduate of Yale University. In 2003 he received
hisPh.D.incomparativeliteraturefromNewYorkUniversity.Sincethenhehasheldpositions
at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins
University.HisbookcomparingYiddishliteraturewithAfricanliteratureinEnglishandFrench,
How Strange the Change: Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms, was
published by Stanford University Press in 2011.
JudahM.CohenistheLouandSybilMervisProfessorofJewishCultureandAssociateProfessor
of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. He has authored Through the Sands of
viii
List ofcontributors
Time: A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, USVI (2004), The Making of a Reform
Jewish Cantor: Musical Authority, Cultural Investment (2009), and Sounding Jewish Culture: The
Music of Central Synagogue (2011). He has also co-edited, with Gregory Barz, The Culture of
AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts (2011).
Yulia Egorova is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University. Her research
interests include Judaizing movements and the socio-cultural significance of genetic research.
SheistheauthorofJewsandIndia:PerceptionsandImage(2006),aco-author(withTudorParfitt)
ofGenetics, Mass Media and Identity(2006), anda co-author (with ShahidPerwez)of The Jews of
Andhra Pradesh: Contesting Caste and Religion in South India (2013).
Ayala Fader is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University. She is the author
oftheaward-winningethnography,MitzvahGirls:BringingUptheNextGenerationofHasidicJews
in Brooklyn (2009). Currently, she is researching and writing her next book, Moral Panic in
Brooklyn: Heretics, Skeptics and the Internet.
RachelGarfieldisanartistwhoteachesattheUniversityofReading.Shehasexhibitedinthe
UK, US, India, Italy, and Canary Islands. Recent published work includes “A Particular Inco-
herence:SomeFilmsofVivienneDick,”inTreasaO’Brien,MaeveConnolly,RachelGarfield,
BeverleyZalcock,andVivienneDick,eds.,BetweenTruthandFiction: TheFilmsofVivienne Dick
(2009),and“QuestioningPerceptionsofJewishIdentityintheworkofAryStillman,”inJames
Wechsler, ed., Ary Stillman: From Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism (2008).
Ben Gidley is a Senior Researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at Oxford
University. He has researched both the sociology and history of Anglo-Jewry, as well as anti-
Semitism and Islamophobia. He is the co-author, with Keith Kahn-Harris, of Turbulent Times:
The British Jewish Community Today (2010).
AmeliaGlaserisanAssociateProfessorofRussianandComparativeLiteratureatthe University
ofCalifornia—SanDiego.HerworkliesattheintersectionofSlavicandJewishliteraryhistory.
SheistheauthorofJewsandUkrainians:FromtheShtetlFairtothePetersburgBookshop(2012),and
the translator of Proletpen: America’s Rebel Yiddish Poets (2005).
Klaus Hödl is a historian at the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz, Austria.
He has published widely on Central and Eastern European Jews, the Jewish body, and Jewish
identity.HehastaughtatvariousuniversitiesinEuropeandattheHebrewUniversityofJerusalem.
His most recent book is Kultur und Gedächtnis (2012).
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor of Performance Studies and Affiliat-
ed Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Her books include
(with Mayer Kirshenblatt) They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in
Poland before the Holocaust (2007) and The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (2008). She cur-
rently leads the exhibition development team for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in
Warsaw.
Misha Klein is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, where she
is also affiliated with Judaic Studies, International and Area Studies, and Women’s and Gender
Studies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Brazil, her book, Kosher Feijoada and Other
ix
