SENIOR THESIS

2009 ABSTRACTS

Hannah K. Grimm, Department of Molecular Biology
Social Security Within Biblical Law
The plight of the poor and their support is one of the keystones of any civilized society.  Though for the most part security in the face of economic trouble was achieved primarily through close-knit family ties, the Biblical laws surrounding land redemption, debt slavery, debt forgiveness, gleaning, and levirate marriage serve to provide a safety net for individuals who have fallen out of their acceptable social roles and find themselves in the compromised position of slave, beggar, orphan, or widow.

The emphasis of these laws lies primarily in shifting individuals from roles that are on the margins of society into more socially acceptable roles.

 Jae H. Han, Department of Religion
“And his name is Ephraim, My true Messiah”: Christian Elements in the Pesikta Rabbati Piska 36
Long known for its strong Christian overtones, piska 36’s bold portrayal of the suffering Messiah naturally lends itself to comparisons with the suffering and passion of the Christian Messiah. In my thesis, I attempt to show that this piska is in fact incorporating Christian conceptions of Jesus the Messiah into a Jewish midrashic framework. This new counter-image of the Christian Messiah, named Ephraim, most parallels Jesus not only on the strong emphasis on physical suffering as atonement, but its assertion that there is only one Messiah. This stands apart from the two-Messiah model of Messiah ben Ephraim and Messiah ben David found in most late-antique apocalyptic literature. However, this seemingly casual omitting of the “ben” belies a host of other theological consequences which further connects Ephraim with Jesus. Of these, the most interesting is the eschatological claim that there is only one Messiah who had already suffered but it is the same Messiah who will redeem Israel in his second coming, a conception most strongly resonant with the parousia of Jesus Christ.  

I approached this thesis by analyzing both its textual composition and historical period, in order to discover both method and motive. Like many other Jewish texts, this piska uses separate sources to form its structure and its theological intent. By separating the piska into its constituent sources, it is revealed that the redactor was highly aware of the Christian elements that he was placing in the piska. As for the historical approach, I provide both a political overview of Palestine and also common leitmotifs found in this period’s apocalyptic literature. Although the exact societal mechanisms that prompted this piska cannot be traced, by showing both how massive wars in Palestine affected the religious landscape and discussing the recurring theme of conversion in literature, I attempt to show this period as one of extreme religious uncertainty.

At the broader level, I argue that this piska is an example of theological dissent amongst the rabbinic ranks. Although the rabbinic tradition had firmly established itself by the time this piska was penned, there were still challenges to their authoritative interpretations of scripture. Ironically, the “deviating” message of this piska was eventually incorporated and anthologized into the Pesikta Rabbati corpus, thus domesticating and concealing the piska’s original message within the corpus itself.

Joshua L. Rodman, Department of History
Haym Salomon: The Memorialization and Subsequent Utilization of the History of Salomon's Financial Involvement in the American Revolution
My senior thesis explores the life and later memory of the Revolutionary financier, Haym Salomon.  While many have come to know him as the "patriot Jewish financier of the American Revolution," Salomon's primary source documents from the time do not exist.  Something such as a diary has not been found.  However, Salomon is discussed in other Revolutionary figures' papers such as James Madison and the Superintendent of Finance from the time, Robert Morris.  While it is clear from newspaper advertisements from the Philadelphia area during the Revolutionary period, the area in which Salomon lived for most of his life in America after immigrating from Poland, that Salomon was a broker to the Office of Finance at the time, the amount of money that he may have donated or that passed through his accounts is not able to be determined with any historical accuracy.  However, it is clear that he had financial relationships with the Continental Congress, foreign ministers of finance, and major Revolutionary figures from the time such as Madison.  While the question of how much of his personal wealth Salomon may have donated to the Revolution during one of the most trying times in American history is of great importance, my senior thesis does not focus on this issue as it is almost impossible to determine with the evidence that has been discovered.  Instead, my thesis explores two later episodes in history in which the memory of Salomon's Revolutionary involvement is used - one episode in the mid-19th century and the other in the first half of the 20th century.

Chapter 1 gives the reader a historical outline of Salomon's life which is recounted from his departure from his native Poland during the Polish Partition in 1772, to his arrival in New York City shortly after, to his life in Philadelphia, and subsequently his death in Philadelphia.  Many of his Revolutionary activities are discussed in this chapter whether it was aiding the Sons of Liberty in New York or acting as broker to the Office of Finance in Philadelphia.  Chapter 2 discusses the first episode later in history in which Salomon's memory was utilized.  Beginning in the mid-1800s, Haym Salomon's son initiated a Congressional Appeals process in which he petitioned for compensation for his father's revolutionary activities.  Upon Salomon's death, his wife received only notes of debt owed to Salomon - it became clear that Salomon's personal wealth had been depleted.  My thesis argues that Salomons sons' Congressional appeals process, which lasted several decades and that inspired a mass of Congressional documentation despite the fact that he was never granted the compensation, allowed for the New York Jewish community beginning in 1900 to use the Salomon memory to fight anti-Semitism and to gain acceptance as true Americans.  This second episode in which the Salomon memory was used was covered heavily by the New York Times.  Amidst rising anti-Semitism following the mass immigration of European Jews in the late 1800s, the New York Jewish community used Salomon as a Revolutionary figure to show that they were just as American as anyone else.  Statues were built depicting Salomon, books were published about him, plays and movies were written about him, and other types of dedications were made.  Essentially, my senior thesis attempts to explore three "peepholes" in the life and history of Haym Salomon.  The first being his actual life and activities, the second being his son's Congressional appeals, and the third being the utilization of the Haym Salomon story by the New York Jewish community to fight anti-Semitism.  My thesis argues that the second episode of the Salomon story, his son's Congressional appeals, created a bridge between Salomon's actual life and the New York Jewish community which allowed them to use Salomon's memory and accomplishments to their advantage.  Without the mass of primary evidence from the Congressional appeals in the mid-1800s, the New York Jewish community would not have had the ammunition it needed.  While there is much more work to be done in ascertaining how much of his own money Salomon may have donated to the Revolution, this thesis explores the later memory of the figure in two distinct episodes and how this memory was tied to Salomon's actual life.

2008:
Robert M. Bernstein, "Shades of Gray:  Religion, Aging, and Adaptation in Retirement Communities on the American Sunbelt"
Shira Billet, "Rupture and Re-creation:  The Shared Journey of Jewish Thought and Anglo-American Legal Theory in the Twentieth Century"
Jonathan Michael Fluger, "Legislators of the Word:  Anti-Anthropomorphism as Political Theology in al-Jahiz and Saadia Gaon"
Zachary R. Hughes, "COUNTERSUIT: Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process"
Jennifer M. Logan, "Holier than Thou: Preferential Policies for Haredim in Israel"
Jonathan Yehuda, "Ben-Gurion and the British:  Pragmatism in the Last Ten Years of the Mandate"

2007:
Joshua Goldsmith, "The (Re-) Birth of a Language:  The Role of Language Contact in the History and Development of Israeli Hebrew"
Joshua Packman, "Abraham the Prophet: An Analysis of the Character of Abraham in the Hebrew Bible, the Pauline Letters, and Genesis Rabbah"
Jonah Perlin, "Trials Before Man, Justice Before God:  The Role of Religious Ethics in the Prosecution and Punishment of War Criminals"
Jonathan Pomeranz, "Do You Wish to Know the One Who Spoke and the World Came into Being?  Looking for the Author in Philonic and Rabbinic Exegesis"
Chad E. Priest, "God Bless America:  Fundamentalist Christian Zionism in the Nation’s Service"
Lauren A. Racusin, " Reading Between the Lines: Abstraction, Narrative, and the Architecture of Memory"
Jason Turetsky, "INTEGRATION - The Way Forward for the Arab Citizens of Israel "
Diana S. Weiner, "Answering the Call of G-d: An Analysis of How Biblical Figures Respond to G-d's Commands" 

2006:
Deborah M. Arotsky, "A SOVIET HOLOCAUST NOVEL: Analysis of Time, Space, and Circumstances In Anatoly Rybakov's Heavy Sand"
Caroline M. Block, "Confessions of an Abstraction-Monger: Authorial Presence and Jewish Persona in Durkheim's Science de Sociologie"
Sarit J. Kattan Gribetz, "'And God Spoke to Moses and Aaron:' Rabbinic Authority and Identity in the Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael"
Eric B. Herschthal, "Jubans: How Jews Became Cubans, 1914-1959"
Ali Shames-Dawson, "Permutations of the Prophetic Paradigm: From Moses to Martin Luther King, Jr. "
Dylan H. Tatz, "The Place of Israel in American Jewish Identity as Reflected in Recent Philanthropy" 

2005:
Netti Minsker Herman, "Of Wives and Other Demons: A Comparative Analysis of The Tale of the Jerusalemite and The Tale of the White Snake"
Rena N. Lauer, "The Second Controversy of Paris: Text, Context, and Intertextuality"
Joseph Aaron Skloot, "Moses of Hamilton Terrace: The Hertz Torah Commentary in Context and Interpretation"  

2004:
Minda Lee Arrow, "Realist Kings: Pragmatic Foreign Policy in Saudi Arabia, 1948-1973"
Elizabeth Rose Bailey, "The Quest of the Commentary Intellectuals: Anti-Semitism, Racism and the Search for Identity in Postwar America 1945-1955"
Andrea Joy Campbell, "The Representation of Conflict, Competition and Consensus Between Blacks and Jews in Black New York Newspapers Between 1950 and 1979"
Beth Hannah Gordon, "Testing Tradition: The Effects of Intermarriage on American Jewish Identity"
Ellen Horrow, "Cold War in a Hot Land: The United States and the Partition of Palestine, 1946-1948"
Orly Lieberman, "Wrestling with Ambiguity: Jewish and Christian Exegetes by the River Jabbok"
Delia Virginia Ugwu-Oju, "Brothers of a Different Color: Reflections of the Black-Jewish Alliance During the Civil Rights Movement"

2003:
Ira Jay Bedzow, "Israel: A Jewish and Democratic State?"
Amos Bitzan, "The Sorrows of Young Graetz: A Jewish Historian in the Making, from Aufklärung to Wissenschaft"
Walter Johnathann McMath III, "Defining Ourselves Through Difference: Early Jewish Religious Disputation and the Reasons for, Characteristics and Significance of Religious Polemic"
Jessica Rose Munitz, "Ohev Shalom V'Rodef Shalom: A New Perspective on Peacemaking in Ancient Judaism"
Melissa Harvis Renny, "Filling in the Blanks: Storytelling in a Post Holocaust World"
David Jeremy Segal, "A Platonic Relationship, Philo's Reading of Plato's Phaedrus and Republic"
Joseph Nahum Shapiro, "Yearning for Paradise: A Study of the Impulse Towards Something Better"
Rachel Melanie Smith, "Construction of Identity in Naguib Mafouz's Palace Walk and Anton Shammas' Arabesques"
Samuel Jacob Spector, "Towards Strategic Convergence: The Alliance of the Periphery and the Reshaping of the US-Israel Relationship, 1953-1960"
Adena Tamar Spingarn, "A Clematis Understanding: Joel Elias Spingarn, Scholar and Activist"

2002:
Adina Miriam Yoffie, "Rhetoric, Rash, and Reason: The Exegesis of Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669)" in the Department of History.
Hannah Fraint, "Living By the Book: History Education and National Identity in Israel" in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Dana Levy Guyer, "Death and Sorrow, the Companions of Our Journey: Tuberculosis Among Jews and African Americans in New York City, 1880-1930" in the Department of History.
Justin Rockefeller, "Degenerate Art, Superficial Clarity, and the Politics of Aesthetics in Nazi Germany" in the Department of Politics.

2001:
Vance Serchuk, "Continuity and Crisis: The Development of the Moscow Choral Synagogue, 1869-1906" in the Department of History.
Eric Reimer, "Ashkenazi Jewish Women and the BRCA Assay: An Exploration of the Factors Influencing Awareness, Knowledge, and the Intention to Test" in the Department of Sociology.

2000:
Alexandra Ariel Garber Rothstein, "Let Us Make a Man in Our Image: The Rabbinic Portrayal of Wicked Biblical Kings as Torah Scholars" in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
Benjamin Daniel Sommers, "Blacks and Jews in Each Other's Eyes: Exploring Minority Identity in 20th-Century American Fiction" in the Department of English.
Geoffrey Aron Mitelman,"The Demise of the Temple and the Rise of the Torah: Rabbinic Views of the Temple in Lamentations Rabbah" in the Department of Religion.
Sarina Sassoon, "The Unfought War: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Jewish Refugee Crisis 1938-41" in the Department of Politics.

1999:
Owen Simon Alterman, "Mauritius Exiles? The Detentions of Jewish Refugees on the Island of Mauritius, 1940-45" in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
Margot Louise Albeck, "AntiSemitism and its Aftermath: The 'Jewish Problem' and the 'Vichy Solution'" in the Department of History.

Past thesis titles range from "Reacting to the Rabbi: How the Israeli Right Responded to Meir Kahana" in the Department of Politics, and "Jewish-Black Relations in Post-Apartheid South Africa" in the Woodrow Wilson School, to "Allegory and the Text in Rashi's Commentary on Song of Songs" in the Department of Religion, and "Bound by Enigma: the Akedah Motif from the Bible to 20th-Century Jewish Literature" in the Department of English.