In Small town Texas, Jewish people were known for having a very influential impact not only for their Jewish communities, but also for the greater society. Most small towns in Texas that had a Jewish population had at least one figure that stands out thanks to their own personal success, but also for the success in being key members of their society while helping their respective cities thrive. I read about two of these influential Jewish personalities, the first one being Sam Perl from Brownsville, and the second being Benjamin Loewenstein from Rockdale. Each of them did different things to assert themselves as very successful members of their respective cities.
Sam Perl was born in 1898 in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and arrived in Galveston with his mother in 1900. In 1926, he moved to Brownsville where he and his brother Leon would start a men’s clothing store. Little did Perl know that that clothing store would be the beginning of a great legacy he would eventually leave in Brownsville, Texas.
One of the terms that Sam Perl has been called the most, has been an interstitial Jew. This is meant as describing not only Perl, but Jews of the area as an interstitial group, since they are not Anglo’s or Mexicans, which are the two largest groups of the area, therefore falling in the middle as a minority that is caught between two worlds. That position with Perl occupied as an in-between Jew allowed him to build cultural bridges between Anglos and Mexicans.
Brownsville, a
The story of the Local Charters, specially relating to Bishop Rudiger of Speyer, demonstrates Elukin’s theory of successful integration and relations between Christians and Jews in a local scaled setting. In 1084, a population of Jews departed from Maize because of a fire they feared to be blamed for, and were welcomed by the city of Speyer in Germany. Bishop Rudiger offered the Jews kindnesses such as safety, the right to practice their religion, the right to sell meat and good, and the right to have a legal status. The Jews not only were welcomed into the city, but helped the city thrive economically due to their rights to loan money with interest, rights that Christians do not have. The Jews spoke
As Jewish immigrants settled in New York, some adopted American values. As a result, they assimilated into the mainstream of American culture. This is
Regardless of the growing frequency of Jewish migrating to the United States, the community continues to confront the many issues as part of their assimilation. Through this process of assimilating,
Sitting in a comfortable leather chair on a cloudy January day, I sat in a house and interviewed Susan Gustavson, a life long Jew that is in her mid-fifties. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University, where she got an MBA in marketing. She told me about her opinions on the Judaism.
Across countries and continents, through the rise and fall of great empires, and in multiple civilizations and religions, the Jewish people have been exiled martyrs for reasons far beyond their fault or doing. The Jewish people have come to accept this mutual exile as a part of their faith and religion. They are the people of exile until the messiah comes and the Jews will come together and live in the promised holy land. Since every Jew is an exile to the rest of society, this brings them closer together and creates a bond among the communities that keeps them strong and has kept the religion alive through most every situation. A new situation, however, is questioning the strength of the Jewish religion and its ability to remain as its defined people of exile. The Christian world has begun to push back their biased and hateful opinions on the Jews and recognize them as people. England, along with other governments, will contemplate whether the Jews could be citizens and if that would benefit them or not. It is not as much so for how the Jews have and will affect England at the time, but what
Throughout this chapter Gladwell analyzes the effect of Jewish heritage on the lives of multiple people in the early twenty-first century. By delving into the advantages and disadvantages that these people endured, Gladwell once again utilizes the appeal to pathos. The life of Joe Flom is a good example of the specific appeals that pathos plays on, such as the readers values and beliefs. By using the story of a young man who was denied a job because of his religious decent, Gladwell is able to connect to the reader’s own struggles and their opinions on the
I was up raised in a tight-knit Jewish community, in a suburban county in Florida. Having briefly visited New York City as a child, I become fascinated with the great city. I was simply amazed with the cultural vitality of New York, relative to the modest diversity in my neighborhood.
To become an effective counselor to Jewish Americans or any race or diverse population is to be aware of one’s thoughts and opinions concerning racism and racial advantage, as well increase knowledge of culture’s different from oneself (Hays & Erford, 2014). Jewish Americans are referred to those Caucasian individuals who have immigrated to the United States from another country, such as Eastern Europe (Hays and Erford, 2014). In this paper, I will identify and provide a description of the Jewish population and how they differ from myself in a variety of ways. Additionally, I will provide a reflection of my immersion into the Jewish culture via my observations and highlight what I have learned
There are many other contributors such as Erich Mendelson- a trained scientist and an architect responsible for designing many of the shops in the Schocken chain of department stores across provincial Germany, Max Alsberg- established a very successful legal practise in Berlin and earned himself a reputation as a criminal lawyer, Fritz Lang- was the most famous exponent of expressionist art in which strongly influenced German Cinema, Dr Schacht- a very good financier whom became the president of the Reichsbank(German National bank) who also gained a huge reputation for being the man who saved Germany’s economy through the introduction of the new currency and Walther Rathenau who became one of the leading industrialists in Germany. All of these people, were Jewish and there are so many more of them: well assimilated and successful Jews.
“Certainly, the world without the Jews would have been a radically different place. Humanity might have eventually stumbled upon all the Jewish insights. But we cannot be sure. All the great conceptual discoveries of the human intellect seem obvious and inescapable once they had been revealed, but it requires a special genius to formulate them for the first time. The Jews had this gift. To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the
Abortions at the time were unthinkable especially int he religious community and to most people the operation was impossible. Gisella Perl herself was unsure if she could perform the surgery due to her inability to even begin one. But her determination to save many innocent lives overpowered her uncertainty and she performed the abortions on pregnant women on the floor of their cells. With no anestheisa, no sanitary sources orproper medical utensils. Gisella Perl could definitely be pinned as a Holocaust hero due to her bravery and courage to save many innocent
To answer the question of Abraham Joshua Heschel fitting with the American Jewish Experience, you must first explain his background, his immigration to America, and how he impacted Jewish Religion in America. Abraham Joshua Heschel was born in 1907 in Poland. He was the youngest of six children. He became a rabbi, and after that began studying for his doctorate at The University of Berlin. In the late 1930’s, he was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland. There, he taught Jewish Philosophy and the Torah. A few months before the German Invasion of Poland, Heschel was taken from Poland and brought to London by a friend. During WW!!, a lot of Heschel’s was murdered by the Nazis. His mother, and three of his sisters were murdered or died
It is common to see influential Jewish in trading, politics or religious activities. But, not all of them can deliver such a great influence. It means, Israelites should be proud of having Adam Milstein as one of the most influential Jewish by the Jerusalem Post. It was stated that the founder of Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation has made a great influence in politics, social activities and economical growth, especially for Jewish in the State of Israel and worldwide.
Theodor Herzl was a Jewish activist that was born May 2nd, 1860 IN Budapest. He was a creator behind the modern view of Zionism and the idea of the reformation of the Jewish homeland of Israel. Prior to becoming an activist for the Jewish homeland, he was a writer, playwright and journalist for the Neue Freie Presses in Paris (Green, 2015). During Herzl’s time as a journalist in Paris, he was able to view the anti-Semitism as a larger problem when he saw the persecution of Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894. Captain Dreyfus, was a French army officer that happened to be Jewish. The Dreyfus affair was the catalyst for Herzl. Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted for treason and passing artillery parts to the Germans during World War I. After
I learned a lot of facts about Judaism that I had previously been ignorant to. I had no idea that we (Christians & Jews) maintained the same bible (The Old Testament) but that we interpreted certain events differently, such as Adam and Eve. “In Judaism, each and every human being is free to choose good or evil because each person stands before God in the same relationship that Adam and Eve did” (Esposito 77). I was unaware that Judaism did not believe in “original sin.” I had no knowledge of the fact that Jews did not believe that Christ was resurrected from the dead. I found it interesting how Jews have split into separate groups – Reform Jews, who believe that Judaism is a cultural inheritance and that neither the laws nor beliefs are