Jewish History

The Holocaust Studies Program of Western Galilee College, Yad Vashem and the Ghetto Fighters House announce a third international interdisciplinary conference and workshop on The Future of Holocaust Testimonies to be held on 25-27 March 2014 in Akko.

During the past decade, historians and social scientists have begun extensively to research the issue of philanthropy and charities in general, and that of Jewish philanthropy in particular. This paper reviews some of the main characteristics of philanthropic activity of the Jewish elite in post-emancipation Europe (1791–1878) and especially in Britain. Elite philanthropy was not the only form of philanthropy in the Jewish community. Middle-class philanthropy was another form, and traditional charitable activities constituted a third form. This paper focuses solely on elite philanthropy in England between c.1850–c.1880. Moses Montefiore and Lionel de Rotshchild were two of the most influential leaders of the Anglo-Jewish philanthropic elite. The paper deals mostly with the activities of these leaders of the Jewish community in mid-nineteenth-century Britain.

This article investigates the phenomenon of Agunot from the second half of the nineteenth century until the beginning of world warI. Since then, and especially during the first two decades of the twentieth century, this became one of the most discussed issues on the social and cultural Jewish agenda. Although referred to sporadically in nineteenth century Jewish social history research, this issue has not been extensively investigated. This article offers an introduction to this topic. We will show that during the period under discussion there were in fact two different phenomenon of Agunot - an East European version of Agunah (1851 to 1900) and a North American version (1901-1914).
            The purpose of the article is to formulate certain conclusions based on research on all the known cases of Agunot between 1851 and 1900 and compare it to all known cases between 1901 and 1914. This will allow us to provide insights on the effect of the phenomenon of Agunot on: The status of nineteenth century Eastern European Jewish women; the changing role of rabbis in Eastern European communities; the complex relationship between absconding husbands and immigration and the way the various phenomenon of Agunot projects the difference between Jewish communities living under dictatorships and democracies.

The conference will focus on British Colonial policy in the Middle East starting with the Balfour Declaration (November 2nd, 1917) until the UN decision to end the British Mandate on Palestine (November 29th, 1947). The conference will take place in the Western Galilee College in Akko, Israel Wednesday 29 and Thursday 30 of November 2017, celebrating a century of the Balfour Declaration and seven decades of the UN decision