Peer-reviewed article in Religions by PhD student Freya Dasgupta

Freya Dasgupta, a fourth-year PhD student in the School of Theology, Philosophy, and Music, has recently published a peer-reviewed article in the journal Religions. The article explores the symbol of the cross in modernist Yiddish imagination and is a part of a special issue on 'Representations and Interpretations of the Passion and Death of Christ: Global Perspectives'. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/passion_death_Christ

The article is open-access and can be read here: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/13/9/804/htm



Here is the abstract:



The European Enlightenment witnessed a Jewish reclamation of Jesus. It led modernist Yiddish intellectuals to experiment with Christian motifs as they tried to contend with what it meant to be Jewish in the modern world. This article proposes to examine, with special focus on poetry, how the crucified Jesus not only became a space of hybridity for Yiddish literary artists to formulate modern Jewish identity and culture but also the medium through which to articulate Jewish suffering in a language that resonated with the oppressors. By doing so, the article seeks to understand the relevance that such literary depictions of Jesus by Jewish authors and poets can have for the Christian understanding of its own identity and its relationship with Judaism.