Jewish Studies

The process of meiosis is an essential topic that secondary and postsecondary students struggle with. The important meiosis-related concepts of homology, ploidy, and segregation can be described using the DNA Triangle framework, which connects them to the multidimensional nature of DNA (chromosomal, molecular, and informational levels). We have previously established that undergraduate biology students typically fail to describe and/or link appropriate levels to their explanations of meiosis. We hypothesize that students' understanding mirrors the resources they are given – in other words, textbook figures often lack many of the important connections that experts include when talking about meiosis. Prior work showed that text in meiosis chapters typically fails to include many concepts that experts consider important, so we examined how textbook figures present meiosis concepts. We found that almost all textbook representations include the chromosomal level of DNA, but few inclu...

This paper discusses the impact of COVID-19 on LGBTQ+ Jewish language in Seattle, Washington, focusing on the challenges and opportunities the pandemic and subsequent virtualisation produced for queer Jewish speech communities and Religious Heritage Language users. The study identified and coded prominent COVID-19-related themes in thirty-four semi-structured interviews conducted in autumn 2020 with LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ members of the Seattle Jewish community. Many queer participants, as well as cis-heterosexuals desiring to ally themselves with the LGBTQ+ community, engaged with expanded opportunities for queer Jewish community and Religious Heritage Language learning through digitised gatherings and social media, although adoption of new behaviours like including one's pronouns in one's name on video calls was mixed. Participants also incorporated extant modes of religious and cultural meaning-making, historical knowledges, and inherited trauma in interpreting the pandemic and concurrent sociological and environmental challenges of 2020. Nineteen participants described a perceived negative correlation between age and queer language use, sometimes linking this to negative correlations between age and technological literacy. Both queer and cis-heterosexual participants expressed optimism about increased intergenerational interaction effected by learning-fromhome and virtual learning. While much remains unknown, these findings suggest potential integration of creative and resilient queer Jewish adaptations to COVID-19 life and discourse into post-pandemic communities.

This is a history of how the Corfiote Jews created a regional commercial and cultural network in the Adriatic during the nineteenth century. The protagonists are merchants, publishers and rabbis who lived in Corfu and had created intimate ties with Corfiote and non-Corfiote Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Christian Orthodox peoples in Padua, Scutari, and Trieste. Through continued interactions in the nineteenth century Adriatic, circulating discourses, commodities and peoples created a distinct Jewish space, which was regional. The analysis of diverse networks shows that the nineteenth century Adriatic in many ways was a post-Venetian space. Polycentric connections that most often are associated with the early modern period also hold true for the nineteenth century and regional mobility remained key in the upholding of the diverse networks Corfiote Jews forged. Chapter one focuses on Jewish Publishing networks centered around Corfu, Padua, and Trieste between 1860-1880. The chapter argues that Corfiote Jewish newspapers did not support unification with Greece until very late. After unification, Corfiote publishers created a publishing network that centered around the Collegio Rabbinico in Padua and Corfiote Jewish merchant enclaves in Austrian Trieste and Alexandria, Egypt. Even after unification with Greece in 1864, Corfiote Jewish publishing forged not only national but also regional identities by cultivating a transnational Corfiote reading public. The second chapter moves to commodities and looks at the ways in which the soap trade was executed. Using private merchant correspondences between the soap merchant family Coen of Corfu and various merchants in Scutari, Albania, I examine the legal and extra-legal means that were used to settle trade disputes and the ways in which those merchants navigated shifting imperial borders. The chapter argues that the Jews of Corfu drew on different legal and extra-legal mechanisms to pursue their trade relationships, challenging our understanding of how legal institutions functioned in the nineteenth-century Mediterranean. Secondly, they creatively used different ports to circumnavigate shifting trade regulations. Chapter three looks at the Etrog trade network, which was reactivated on a yearly basis. The Etrog was both a sacred fruit and a profitable commodity as it passed from Ottoman Christian growers to Italian Jewish merchants, Habsburg rabbis and finally Ashkenazi consumers on its way from its place of production in mainland Ottoman Greece to its places of consumption in Northern and Central Europe during the long nineteenth century. Crossing different empires, I link the Mediterranean to its hinterland and show the diverse interests different actors had in its trade and examine how conflict in these trade relationships was arbitrated in court. Chapter four explores how Corfiote merchants abroad used philanthropy to maintain ties to Corfu. These ties collapsed in the wake of the Blood Libel of 1891 when thousands left the island to resettle in Manchester, Paris and Alexandria, a shift that strained the resources of the already existing Corfiote diaspora communities. The chapter argues that there was nothing " Jewish " about the merchant Philanthropy, but that it was part of a broader merchant diaspora philanthropic setting.