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Passing and Covering: New Approaches to Assimilation in Jewish Studies

Mon, December 18, 1:15 to 2:45pm, Marriott Marquis Washington, DC, Catholic University Room

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

This panel draws attention to the term “covering” as part of our critical vocabulary for understanding Jewish assimilation in a range of historical and cultural contexts. Whereas a number of historians and other Jewish Studies scholars have studied examples of passing or concealing Jewish identity, less extreme instances of covering or downplaying Jewishness remain largely underexplored. The three presentations add a new dimension to the study of Jewish assimilation, conversion, passing, and revealing Jewishness in Germany and the United States in the early and mid-twentieth century.

All three panelists draw on the important work of legal scholar Kenji Yoshino, whose 2006 book, COVERING: THE HIDDEN ASSAULT ON OUR CIVIL RIGHTS, argues that the pressure to downplay or cover a minority identity can constitute a hidden threat to one’s civil rights or well-being. Yoshino focuses on the categories of race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability. This panel explores the significance of covering for Jewish Studies, suggesting that Jewish responses to assimilation pressures have much to teach us about Jewish identity. The tensions between becoming an accepted part of mainstream culture and remaining true to Jewishness are central to all three presentations. Deborah Hertz, who has examined nineteenth-century Jewish assimilation in Germany through the lens of Yoshino’s work, here turns to German feminist leaders of the early twentieth century. Her paper explores how Alice Salomon and Lida Gustava Heymann related to their Jewish identities in response to antisemitism within the German women’s movement. By looking to acts of passing by other minorities (specifically African Americans and LGBT communities), Kerry Wallach investigates impulses for Jewish invisibility and visibility in Weimar Germany. In her paper, Wallach suggests that covering provided adequate protection for German Jews who did not want to pass, but rather wished to be recognizable as Jews in certain situations. Moving the panel beyond Europe, Kirsten Fermaglich turns to Yoshino in her research on name changing in the United States in the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on name change petitions from New York courts, Fermaglich challenges the notion that Jews who changed their names sought to pass or abandon Jewishness.

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