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Staging The [Disabled] Jew: The Thematic Use of Doctors, Disability, and Disease in Yiddish Plays on Modernization, 1790-1929

Sefel, John Michael
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618433569764629

Abstract Details

2021, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Theatre.
The relatively short but richly dynamic history of Yiddish-language dramatic literature is intrinsically tied to efforts by European Jewish intellectuals and artists to explore Jewish identity and its changes under the influence of modernization. As Tsarist pogroms under Nicholas II and other political and economic pressures led to massive waves of Jewish immigration to the United States, these modernizing forces became increasingly strong as Ashkenazi Jews created a new life in New York. Throughout these changes, Yiddish-language playwrights and theatre artists repeatedly turned to physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities as metaphors for the social and legal disabilities faced by Jews in both the “old” and “new” worlds. From portraying anti-modernization Hasidic Jews as “diseased” by their superstitions in both mind and body to tragic rabbinical figures destroyed by their disabilities to Jewish heroes rising above the external pressures of their obstacles, playwrights used the challenges and social “Othering” of disability to explore, encourage, and lament the swiftly changing cultural identity of the “new Jew.”
Stratos Constantinidis, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Naomi Brenner, Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair)
Beth Kattelman, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Mandy Fox, M.F.A. (Committee Member)
Theodora Dragostnova, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
643 p.
Judaic Studies; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies
Yiddish Theatre; Jewish Disabilities; Disabilities on Stage; Haskalah

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Sefel, J. M. (2021). Staging The [Disabled] Jew: The Thematic Use of Doctors, Disability, and Disease in Yiddish Plays on Modernization, 1790-1929 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618433569764629

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Sefel, John. Staging The [Disabled] Jew: The Thematic Use of Doctors, Disability, and Disease in Yiddish Plays on Modernization, 1790-1929. 2021. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618433569764629.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Sefel, John. "Staging The [Disabled] Jew: The Thematic Use of Doctors, Disability, and Disease in Yiddish Plays on Modernization, 1790-1929." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1618433569764629

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1618433569764629
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© 2021, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.