Jewish legal regulation documents from Lucena in the 11th century

The aim of these pages is to offer a view on the Jewish regulation of Lucena (Cordoba) in the 11th century. Through the legal texts originating from this place, which were conserved in the Cairo Genizah and later guarded at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, it is possible to observe the legal procedure of this group in relation to two essential issues: its consideration of dhimmis, due to its belonging to the ’ahl al-Kitāb or ‘people of the Book’ category, and the internal regulation of the community according to the problems emerged in it. In this article, therefore, the more frequent legal matters derived from the litigations conserved from this city until these dates will be studied.

The Collusion of Feminist and Postmodernist Impulses in E.L. Doctorow’s "Ragtime"

Many critics of Doctorow have classified him as a postmodernist writer, acknowledging that a wide number of thematic and stylistic features of his early fiction emanate from the postmodern context in which he took his first steps as a writer. Yet, these novels have an eminently social and ethical scope that may be best perceived in their intellectual engagement and support of feminist concerns. This is certainly the case of Doctorow’s fourth and most successful novel, Ragtime. The purpose of this paper will be two-fold. I will explore Ragtime’s indebtedness to postmodern aesthetics and themes, but also its feminist elements. Thus, on the one hand, I will focus on issues of uncertainty, indeterminacy of meaning, plurality and decentering of subjectivity; on the other hand, I will examine the novel’s attitude towards gender oppression, violence and objectification, its denunciation of hegemonic gender configurations and its voicing of certain feminist demands. This analysis will lead to an examination of the problematic collusion of the mostly white, male, patriarchal aesthetics of postmodernism and feminist politics in the novel. I will attempt to establish how these two traditionally conflicting modes coexist and interact in Ragtime.

"You Don't Have to be Filmish": The Toronto Jewish Film Festival

The Toronto Jewish Film Festival is a one-week celebration of Judaism and Cinema that occurs in downtown Toronto, at the Bloor Cinema, early every May. The folkloristic literature on festival notes that these kinds of events are ways that communities and groups celebrate themselves, and although film festivals are frequently excluded from consideration of traditional festivity, I shall demonstrate that such an omission is unfortunate, since like traditional festivity, film festivals, in particular ethnic film festivals, explore the same issues of liminality for the celebrating culture.

Norbert Ricken / Nicole Balzer (Hrsg.): Judith Butler: Pädagogische Lektüren, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2012 [Rezension]

Rezension von: Norbert Ricken / Nicole Balzer (Hrsg.): Judith Butler: Pädagogische Lektüren, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2012 (400 S.; ISBN 978-3531166131; 39,95 EUR)

How Long the Night : A Novel ; followed by an essay ‘The Ghosts of Muranów: Confronting Poland’s Jewish Past’

My novel, 'How Long the Night,' and my essay, ‘The Ghosts of Muranów: Confronting Poland’s Jewish Past,’ focus on the relationship between urban space, memory and identity. Before the Second World War Muranów was one of the largest Jewish districts in Europe. In August 1939 Poland’s capital was home to 380,000 Jews, which accounted for about 30 percent of the city’s total population. During the war the district was the central part of the Warsaw Ghetto located near the Umschlagplatz, the place from which Jews were transported to concentration camps. After the failed uprising in 1943 the Nazis burnt the entire quarter to the ground. There was nothing left, except for heaps of rubble. The debris was to be the foundation on which the new socialist realist residential district would stand. The new Muranów, erected on the ashes of the former ghetto, is a space of absence, emptiness and repressed guilt. There are no physical traces of the Jewish presence in the area, except for commemorative plaques, monuments or obelisks. Former tenement houses, shops, synagogues are gone; street names and their layout are different as well. Nevertheless, the former Jewish district is present in images, dreams (or nightmares), in fantasies, memories and stories. My novel and my essay explore the connection between place, history, memory and trauma. The space of Muranów becomes a symbolic trigger for investigation and re-examination of the forgotten or suppressed past. What is more, the novel examines the way a foreign language serves as a tool through which painful and repressed stories can be (re)told.

Civil & criminal procedure of Jewish courts /

Excerpt: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Students' annual. v. 1, 1914.

Karl-Ernst Ackermann / Oliver Musenberg / Judith Riegert (Hrsg.): Geistigbehindertenpädagogik!? Disziplin – Profession – Inklusion. Oberhausen: Athena 2013 (443 S.) [Rezension]

Rezension von: Karl-Ernst Ackermann / Oliver Musenberg / Judith Riegert (Hrsg.): Geistigbehindertenpädagogik!? Disziplin – Profession – Inklusion. Oberhausen: Athena 2013 (443 S.; ISBN 978-3-89896-477-7)

Periodismo literario y conflicto social en México en las crónicas de Charles Bowden y Judith Torrea

La presente comunicación analiza las relaciones entre periodismo literario y conflicto social a partir de la visión que sobre la violencia, el narcotráfico, los asesinatos, el crimen, las desapariciones etc., tienen las crónicas de Charles Bowden y Judtih Torrea. Bowden es un periodista norteamericano, recientemente fallecido, que ha vivido en primera persona el problema de la violencia a un lado y a otro de la frontera entre México y Estados Unidos. Por su parte, Judith Torrea, es una periodista española, Premio Ortega y Gasset 2010 de periodismo en Internet, afincada en Juárez y cuya obra se ha centrado en las desapariciones de mujeres en Juárez. La perspectiva de ambos profesionales, de procedencia y generación distinta, nos permite abordar el fenómeno del conflicto social mexicano no sólo desde el ángulo del análisis pormenorizado del problema, sino de la visión personal y en muchos casos subjetiva del periodista que se enfrenta in situ, y de manera personal a estas situaciones de conflicto. Nos centraremos para este doble análisis, de un lado La ciudad del crimen: Ciudad Juárez y los nuevos campos de exterminio de la economía global del periodista norteamericano Charles Bowden y Juárez en la sombra: Crónica de una ciudad que se resiste a morir de la periodista española Judith Torrea. Creemos poder contribuir de esta manera al estudio del periodismo literario a través de la crónica como género a partir de las adaptaciones que esta sufre en función del contexto del que trata. Centramos el caso en el estudio de Ciudad Juárez dada la importancia de este caso y su repercusión social y el eco internacional que tiene a lo que se añade el carácter fronterizo del problema y por tanto un fenómeno que posee una singularidad específica. This communication analyses the relationship between literary journalism and social conflict, from the point of view Charles Bowden and Judtih Torrea chronicles have about violence, drug trafficking, murders, crime, disappearances, etc. Bowden is an American journalist, recently deceased, who has experienced on the first hand the problem of violence on the border between Mexico and the United States. Meanwhile, Torrea is a Spanish journalist, awarded in 2010 with the Journalism on the Internet Ortega y Gasset Prize, settled in Juarez conflict and whose work is focused on the disappearances of women in Juarez. The perspectives of both professionals, who are from different origin and generation, allow us to deal with the situation of Mexican social conflict, from the angle of detailed analysis of the problem, and from the journalist’s personal view, often subjective, who had to cope with this reality. For this double analysis, we will focus, firstly, on Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields by the American journalist Charles Bowden and, secondly, on City of Juarez: Under the Shadow of Drug Trafficking by the Spanish journalist Judith Torrea. Accordingly, we contribute to the study of literary journalism through the chronicle as genre with the adaptation it suffers depending on the context. Ciudad Juarez is the center of this investigation due to the importance of this case and its social impact and international repercussions. Besides, the border problem contributes to give a specific singularity to this.

Gretel and Edith: Jewish woman and exile in Alves Redol and in Joaquim Paço d’Arcos

Abstract: This paper examines the narrative construction of Jewish women in the short novel “O Mundo Perdido”, by Joaquim Paço d’Arcos, and in the short story “Nasci com Passaporte de Turista”, by Alves Redol.  Both narratives portray the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s and its effects.  Historical, biographical and literary information is taken into consideration to the analysis.

The Expanded Human Kallikrein (KLK) gene family : genomic organisation, tissue specific expression and potential functions

The tissue kallikreins are serine proteases encoded by highly conserved multigene families. The rodent kallikrein (KLK) families are particularly large, consisting of 13 26 genes clustered in one chromosomal locus. It has been recently recognised that the human KLK gene family is of a similar size (15 genes) with the identification of another 12 related genes (KLK4-KLK15) within and adjacent to the original human KLK locus (KLK1-3) on chromosome 19q13.4. The structural organisation and size of these new genes is similar to that of other KLK genes except for additional exons encoding 5 or 3 untranslated regions. Moreover, many of these genes have multiple mRNA transcripts, a trait not observed with rodent genes. Unlike all other kallikreins, the KLK4-KLK15 encoded proteases are less related (25–44%) and do not contain a conventional kallikrein loop. Clusters of genes exhibit high prostatic (KLK2-4, KLK15) or pancreatic (KLK6-13) expression, suggesting evolutionary conservation of elements conferring tissue specificity. These genes are also expressed, to varying degrees, in a wider range of tissues suggesting a functional involvement of these newer human kallikrein proteases in a diverse range of physiological processes.