Description
Book SynopsisFor many centuries Jews have been renowned for the efforts they put into their children''s welfare and education. Eventually, prioritizing children became a modern Western norm, as reflected in an abundance of research in fields such as pediatric medicine, psychology, and law. In other academic fields, however, young children in particular have received less attention, perhaps because they rarely leave written documentation. The interdisciplinary symposium in this volume seeks to overcome this challenge by delving into different facets of Jewish childhood in history, literature, and film.No Small Matter visits five continents and studies Jewish children from the 19th century through the present. It includes essays on the demographic patterns of Jewish reproduction; on the evolution of bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies; on the role children played in the project of Hebrew revival; on their immigrant experiences in the United States; on novels for young Jewish readers written in Hebrew and Yiddish; and on Jewish themes in films featuring children. Several contributions focus on children who survived the Holocaust or the children of survivors in a variety of settings ranging from Europe, North Africa, and Israel to the summer bungalow colonies of the Catskill Mountains. In addition to the symposium, this volume also features essays on a transformative Yiddish poem by a Soviet Jewish author and on the cultural legacy of Lenny Bruce.
Table of ContentsSymposium No Small Matter: Features of Jewish Childhood Paula Fass, Introduction: Jewish Children in the 20th Century Uzi Rebhun, Jewish Reproduction and Children in the Modern Era Yael Reshef, The Role of Children in the Revival of Hebrew Eli Lederhendler, Children of the Great Atlantic Migration: Narratives of Young Jewish Lives Yael Darr, Divided Unity: Jewish Writing for Children in the United States and Palestine at the Onset of the Second World War Joanna Beata Michlic, Mapping the History of Child Holocaust Survivors Nava T. Barazani, Hide-and-Seek: The Tale of Three Girls in the Giado Concentration Camp in Libya (1942-1943) Amia Lieblich, The Children of Kfar Etzion: Resilience and Its Causes Hannah Levinsky-Koevary, Catskills Idyll: Children of Holocaust Survivors and the Bungalow Colony Experience, 1950s-1960s Liat Steir-Livny, Growing Up in the Shadow of the Past: Second-Generation Holocaust Survivors' Childhoods as Depicted in Israeli Documentary Films Nathan Abrams, Rites of Passage: Jewish Representations of Children and Childhood in Contemporary Cinema David Golinkin, The Transformation of the Bar Mitzvah Ceremony, 1800-2020 Essays Anna Shternshis, The Child Who Cannot Ask: The Holocaust Poetry of Moisei Teif Stephen J. Whitfield, The American Jewish Intelligentsia, the Claims of Humor-and the Case of Lenny Bruce Review Essay Deborah Dash Moore, Judaism and Jewishness in Histories of American Jewry Book Reviews (arranged by subject) Antisemitism and Holocaust Aomar Boum and Sarah Abrevaya Stein (eds.), The Holocaust and North Africa, Denis Charbit Havi Dreifuss (Ben-Sasson), Relations between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust: The Jewish Perspective, trans. Ora Cummings, Joshua D. Zimmerman Otto Dov Kulka, German Jews in the Era of the
