Judaism and communism: Hanukkah,Passover, and the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and Israel, 1919–1965

This article explores the mythological, ritualistic, and symbolic aspects of the ways in which the festivals of Hanukkah and Passover were celebrated by the Jewish Communists in Mandate Palestine and the State of Israel. It illustrates how elements of Zionist-socialist culture were adopted by Jewish Communists and integrated in their cultural activities. In a gradual process starting in the1920s and culminating in the mid-1960s, the Jewish Communists created a combination of Marxist ideology and Zionist-socialist cultural practices. However, when a group of young Sabra activists reinforced the Zionist-socialist elements, the balance was undermined, contributing to the rift within Israeli communism.     

Examinations,access, and inequity within the empire: Britain,Australia and India, 1890–1910

Recent scholarship on transnational immigration restriction have tended to frame British policies in opposition to those of white settler colonies, emphasising the frustration of British officialdom at the explicitly racist exclusions in South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. While acknowledging these, this paper interrogates the British position, by locating synergies between the deployment of examinations as a form of racial gatekeeping at the height of the empire, with reference to discourses of equity and access emanating from Britain, Australia and India. It reads British attempts to ameliorate the harsh exclusions of the White Australia policy – administered through the apparently neutral device of the Dictation Test – alongside remarkably similar constraints embedded in the exams for the Indian Civil Service that were designed to limit the numbers of Indians in the ICS. Race-based immigration restriction was consistent with – not repugnant to – imperial sensibilities, contrary to so many protestations. The prevalence of racially discriminatory immigration legislation in settler societies had the effect of projecting the worst forms of racism to the peripheries of empire, exposing the contradictions of the colonial project in India.     

Merchants,Overseas Trade,and Urban Decline: York,Beverley, and Hull c. 1380–1500

Abstract

Between 1642 and 1660, the Church of England was directed and administered by centrally-appointed government committees, who oversaw the appointment of clerics, arranged generous salaries for many ministers, and undertook ambitious policies that would have revolutionised the medieval parochial structure of the Church. Yet these committees have rarely been discussed, largely because historians remain sceptical about the nature of the Church in this period, and have too often been distracted by doctrinal matters. This essay will analyse the key activity of these committees within Lancashire, the augmentation of clerical wages, and demonstrate that there was a functioning, national, established Church in existence during this period, and that, for some of the clergy at least, this was a golden age of doctrinal tolerance and financial remuneration.     

Homemaking and Mature Age Gay Men ‘Down-Under’: Paradox,intimacy, subjectivities,spatialities, and scale

The article investigates homemaking processes of mature age gay men living in a provincial Australian town. All too often the experience of older gay men living in non-metropolitan centres has slipped the attention of scholars. The article draws on interview data collected in Townsville (Queensland, Australia) from ten men over 40 years of age who self-identified as gay. These men were asked to explain why they live in Townsville, their understanding of home, and if they understand Townsville as home. We investigate the spatialised understandings of home articulated by these gay men, focusing on two mutually constituted geographical scales: Townsville-as-home and house-as-home, including the material objects within domestic space. For older gay men to call a provincial town home is an ongoing, complex process of reconciling multiple and contradictory subjectivities across different geographical scales. How older gay men constitute Townsville-as-home provides important insights about both non-heterosexual life in provincial centres and how to conceptualise home—as a paradoxical space, contested site, and as multiscalar.