This dissertation investigates the life of Judean deportees in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The results from the study of Judeans are placed in the wider context of... Show moreThis dissertation investigates the life of Judean deportees in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The results from the study of Judeans are placed in the wider context of Babylonian society and are evaluated by using a group of Neirabian deportees as a point of comparison. The sources of this study consist of 289 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform, such as promissory notes, leases, receipts, and lists. The dissertation shows that there was considerable diversity in the deportees’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society. The majority of deportees were settled in the countryside and integrated into the land-for-service system, which was aimed at increasing agricultural output and providing the state with labour, soldiers, and tax income. In addition, foreign professionals were employed in cities, and the worlds of commerce and royal administration were open to some deportees. A relatively small number of deportees were donated to Babylonian temples. The Babylonian practice of settling deportees in ethnically homogenous rural communities supported the survival of their culture and traditions in the countryside. Adoption of Babylonian names and culture was faster among those Judeans who lived in cities and were in regular contact with the native population. Show less
In this study I explore literary structures of identity-formation in the works of assimilated/acculturated Jewish writers: Kafka__s novella __The Metamorphosis__ (__Die Verwandlung__, 1912) and... Show moreIn this study I explore literary structures of identity-formation in the works of assimilated/acculturated Jewish writers: Kafka__s novella __The Metamorphosis__ (__Die Verwandlung__, 1912) and David Vogel__s Hebrew novel Married Life. 1929) These authors wrote their works when the failure of Jewish assimilation began to dawn on assimilated/acculturated European Jewry, and an upsurge of hatred of Jews made it, as someone put it: __as impossible to be, as not to be a Jew (by assimilation/ acculturation)__ What I aim to show is that during that deadlock of Jewish identity, new structures of identity began to emerge in the literary works of Jews. Works demonstrating the power not to represent the world of located subjects but to imagine, create and vary affects, that were not already given: not already tied down to communication and signification in the social order. That is what Deleuze and Guattari call minor literature, namely literature that does not add a work to the great tradition but disrupts and dislocates that tradition. Minor literature represents nothing but the power to be different. All great literature, according to Deleuze and Guattari, is minor in this sense: it is the vehicle for the creation rather than the expression of identity Show less
Traditional histories of Early Modern trade and trade networks have ignored a potent truth -- that trade, and the networks constructed for the pursuit of this trade, were far more fluid and far... Show moreTraditional histories of Early Modern trade and trade networks have ignored a potent truth -- that trade, and the networks constructed for the pursuit of this trade, were far more fluid and far more open to merchants of varying backgrounds than has heretofore been admitted. It is this idea that undergirds this work. This study shows that economic links between networks comprised of a multiplicity of ethnicities, backgrounds, and/or religions were mutually beneficial and often long-lasting by delving deeply into the networks employed by three Sephardic merchants in Amsterdam between 1595 and 1640 – Manoel Rodrigues Vega, Manoel Carvalho, and Bento Osorio. Show less
