Emotions in Modern Jewish History:

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

The history of emotions has been developed as a novel perspective in many areas of historical research since the 1980s. In Jewish history, however, it has started to gain traction only in the last decade and is still largely underdeveloped. This panel intends to address recent developments in the field and discuss how the conceptual and methodological tools of the history of emotions can facilitate new understandings of major social and cultural processes in modern Jewish history. What was the emotional impact of migration on different groups of Jews? What was the role of emotions in professional and political discourses about the transformation of Jews, as individuals and as a collective, in their lands of destination? And how did modern emotional experiences in new contexts influence traditional sensibilities? The three presentations in this session address these questions from various perspectives.

The three case studies addressed by the presentations, centering on North America and Palestine, throw light not only on the Jewish experience in particular places and times but also on the role of emotions in modern Jewish history as a whole. Yael Levi’s paper explores the emotional and cultural dynamics of East European Jewish immigration during the age of mass migration through the individual immigrant’s experience of despair, melancholy, and suicide in the urban context of fin-de-siècle United States. Shelly Zer-Zion’s looks at the 1932 production of THE THREE PENNY OPERA in Tel-Aviv to explore how the Hebrew production of this canonic play created a path that transferred the emotion of urban enchantment from Weimar Berlin to mandatory Tel Aviv. Matan Boord’s presentation centers on attempts to embed “new” – that is, non-traditional/diasporic – emotional practices in the immigrants to Mandate Palestine, through charting the patterns of intergenerational emotional relationships between immigrants and their native-born children, as depicted in literature addressing educators and parents – particularly mothers. Taken together, the three presentations demonstrate how emotional styles emerge, evolve, and disappear over the course of time.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish History in Europe, Asia, Israel, and Other Communities

Chair

• Gemma Birnbaum, American Jewish Historical Society

Individual Presentations

• “Like Salt in Water”: Despair and Melancholy among Jewish Immigrants in Urban America, 1900s–1910s - Yael E. Levi, Center Jewish Studies, Harvard

• Parents’ Guides and the Creation of “New” Domestic Emotions for Jewish Immigrants to Mandate Palestine - Matan Boord, Harvard Universiy

Respondent

• Derek Penslar, Harvard University