Search Results (4)

Immigration, particularly forced immigration, has a profound impact on every aspect of immigrants’ lives. One such aspect is their religious convictions and practices. Nowadays, Migration Studies is a major academic field that produces many books and articles each year. This article examines the impact of forced immigration on the daily practices and internal relationships between leaders and followers of a specific religious group—Hassidism, in one particular period—the early second half of the 20th century. It does so by examining how two Hassidic leaders, the Satmar Rebbe in America and the Viznitzer Rebbe in Israel, established their communities after the Holocaust. This is one of only a few academic studies that explore post-Holocaust Hassidism, with a specific focus on the effects of forced immigration on its development. Throughout Jewish history, large-scale immigration and the inevitable need to adapt to new political, religious, and cultural circumstances had a profound influence on the way Jews conducted their religious affairs. This article explores how the uprooting of Hassidism from Eastern Europe after the Holocaust and its transplantation in countries that were new to them prompted Hassidic leaders who wanted to reestablish their communities to adopt a new set of leadership priorities. The result was that despite bearing the same title, Hassidic communities that were established after the Holocaust were very different from those that operated in Europe previously. Full article

It is known that the Real Extended Bialas–Bzdak (ReBB) model describes the proton–proton (pp) and proton–antiproton (pp¯) differential cross-section data in a statistically non-excludible way, i.e., with a confidence level greater than or equal to 0.1% in the center of mass energy range 546 GeV ≤s≤8 TeV and in the squared four-momentum transfer range 0.37 GeV² ≤ −t ≤ 1.2 GeV². Considering, instead of Gaussian, a more general Lévy α-stable shape for the parton distributions of the constituent quark and diquark inside the proton and for the relative separation between them, a generalized description of data is obtained, where the ReBB model corresponds to the α=2 special case. Extending the model to α<2, we conjecture that the validity of the model can be extended to a wider kinematic range, in particular, to lower values of the four-momentum transfer −t. We present the formal Lévy α-stable generalization of the Bialas–Bzdak model and show that a simplified version of this model can be successfully fitted, with α<2, to the non-exponential, low −t differential cross-section data of elastic proton–proton scattering at s=8 TeV. Full article

Much has been written about the theological, cultural, and social foundations of the Zionist movement and its historical development. While scholars have discussed the immigration of the first Hasidim to the Land of Israel in the late eighteenth century, little attention has been paid to the Hasidic leaders who were active in Mandatory Palestine between the two World Wars, some of whom had a positive attitude toward Zionism. My article addresses this scholarly gap and focuses on one figure: the Rebbe painter (Admor ha-Tsayar) Avraham Yaakov Shapira (1886–1962) of the Drohobych dynasty. In this first academic study examining his sermon book Netivot Shalom, I will show how he coherently used the Hasidic homiletic style, as well as textual and oral traditions, to reinforce a commitment to the settlement of Zion and cultivate a positive attitude toward the Jewish people, including the secular settlers. Following in his father’s footsteps, he fervently taught that the way to the hearts of secular settlers was not through rebuke, but through peace, shared mission, and unity. He viewed the activists’ approach to settling Zion as an act of divine action revealing the “new Torah”, and saw their success as a miracle manifested through nature. Full article

In 1994 the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, died leaving no successor. His group split into two groups: messianists who maintained that the Rebbe had not died and was Moshiach, the Jewish Messiah, and the non messianists who agreed that the Rebbe had died. This paper focuses upon a prominent Chabad practice; the role of storytelling. I propose the question, “Whose interests do these stories serve?” Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Lubavitch, I present a number of narratives pertaining to the Rebbe’s miraculous feats. Following his death, stories surrounding the Lubavitcher Rebbe not only bolster his “charisma” but lead to a sense of his continuing presence. These stories are produced predominantly by the messianic faction of Lubavitch and following his death are published regularly on messianic websites. Full article