The history of Italian Jews from 1861 to 1938 is often viewed as the period in which they totally assimilated into the Italian nation. This article, however, argues that rather than their assimilation it was a period of their integration into Italian society. Various approaches to this question are presented, including a review of the literature, with a view to reconsidering the relationship between Jewish culture and Italian culture, or rather non-Jewish culture. Italian Jewish history is shown not (...) to be separated from, but to be “internal” to Italian social, cultural, and political history—part of the dynamic process of change that occurred during this period not only in Italy but throughout Europe. (shrink)

Historians estimate that between 10 and 15 thousand Jews were hiding out in Warsaw before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising. One of the aid organizations, the Jewish National Committee received a larger amount of money in late July but managed to distribute only some of it. Then rest went for various forms of aid during the fighting and after the uprising fall—for those who survived. The Varsovians’ attitude towards the Jews varied. The civilian authorities tried to help (...) all who found themselves in extreme conditions, Poles and Jews. Many Jews bravely fought in many battles in the city along with their Polish compatriots and their fate is presented in the article. (shrink)

Throughout history the image of the non-Jew in Judaism has profoundly influenced the way in which Jews interact with non-Jews. It has also shaped the understanding that Jews have of their own identity, as it determines just what distinguishes them from the non-Jews around them. A crucial element in this is the concept of Noahide law, understood by the ancient rabbis and subsequent Jewish thinkers as incumbent upon all humankind, unlike the full 613 divine commandments of (...) the Torah, which are incumbent on Jews alone. The approach adopted in this now classic study is to consider the history of the idea of Noahide law, and to show how the concept is relevant to practical discussions of the halakhah pertaining to non-Jews and to relations between Jews and non-Jews. The seven chapters that make up the first part of the study examine each of the Noahide laws in turn, with a view to showing their halakhic development in the rabbinic sources, in the codes, and in the responsa literature. The discussion draws primarily on classical texts by traditional commentators as they attempt to deal with living issues from the rabbinic world as equally vital concerns in their own time. The second part deals with the theory of Noahide law, concluding with a consideration of why it is an appropriate starting point for Jewish philosophy today. (shrink)

The current study deals with the responsum of R. Shimon ben Zemah Duran, a Jewish halakhic adjudicator, on the trade in monkeys practiced by Algerian Jews in the middle ages. The basis of the discussion concerning the monkey trade is an ancient prohibition of the Mishna's sages against trading in non-kosher animals. The current study clarifies the halakhic, historical and zoological circumstances underlying the missive sent to Rashbatz. In fact, R. Shimon ben Zemah Duran permitted trading in monkeys. He (...) bases his ruling on ancient sources in rabbinical literature and states that this is not a new issue in the economic life of Algerian Jews and that his family also dealt in the monkey trade. (shrink)

The article takes a novel look at the extensive debates about the “Jewish Question” in early Imperial Germany by analysing how Jews and Protestants communicated with each other. These debates were shaped by two hitherto neglected facts: by the character of pamphlets as an anarchic media and by the bourgeois background of their Jewish and Protestant authors. The “Jewish Question” played a considerable role in the public communication of the German educated middle-class, urging mostly Jews and Protestants to (...) raise their voice. Their different motivations to do so are discussed and the overall make-up of this body of literature is delineated. The specific media structure of the debates and especially the problematic power of pamphlet literature seemed to jeopardize the established ways of bourgeois communication. Thus, the very structure of the “Jewish Question” itself appeared to epitomize the contradictory positions of Jews in the public sphere and in middle-class culture. By briefly characterizing the Jewish responses to the challenges in these debates, the article concludes that in this structure a communicative gap between bourgeois Jews and Protestants became visible. At the same time, this serves as a concrete example to refute a dominance-free, Habermasian concept of the public sphere and to highlight the importance of the ability to universalize one's position in the public communication of 19th-century Germany. (shrink)

In this paper I have not, of course, presented all the embryological data that can be collected from the Talmudic and Midrashic literature. More details can be found in Julius Preuss' classical work on biblical and talmudic medicine, now available in Fred Rosner's English translation and in a French M.D. thesis by Martine Michel.75 I also did not present any data on teratology, and did not deal with the very rich Jewish mystical lore, the Cabbala. But a few comments (...) are in order here about the material on embryology.There are very few original ideas in the Talmudic corpus on embryology, but it is obvious that the Sages were well aware of the Greek and Roman theories on embryology.The fact that the Talmud is a compilation that was built up slowly, during several centuries, explains why the information recorded in it cannot be ascribed solely to one school of thought or one clear-cut influence.When a definite problem was difficult to solve because there were many different theories about it, the Sages based their opinion on a famous experiment that seemed to offer guarantees of validity. This was the case with the controversial problem of the formation of the embryo and its sexual differentiation, where the Sages made use of an experiment allegedly initiated by Cleopatra.The Sages were ready to discuss scientific problems with non-Jewish scholars and even to accept their arguments. This was the case with the important topic of the time of the entry of the soul into the embryo. But the legal conclusions drawn from the Sages' opinion were not consistent with those declared by Churth Fathers such as Tertullian. Embryotomy, for instance, was permitted by Jewish law.Wide interest, scholarly discussions, suggestive descriptions and readiness to inquire and to obtain detailed information characterized the Talmudic discussions of embryology.In conclusion, I quote a Talmudic text that reviews the whole process of embryological development through the sequence of prayers of a faithful Jew who learns that his wife is expecting a baby.The first three days, [he should pray to the Lord] that the seed should not putrefy.From the third to the fortieth day: that the child should be a male.From the fortieth day to the third month: that there should not occur any superfetation, which could lead the first embryo to be a fetus compressus.From the third to the sixth month: that an abortion should not occur.From the sixth to the ninth month: that the birth should be without problems.76. (shrink)

People of Jewish origin arrived in the American Continent as early as 15th century and have participated in shaping the states and societies on the continent. A fact little known in Poland, Jews and their culture are inherent in Latin American reality. The paper attempts to provide an insight into Ashkenazic Diaspora in its Latin American dimension.

This study examines Proust's exploitation of classification systems as a means to subvert the notion of a fixed identity, laying bare Proust's radical challenges to the social order and its rigid systems of control. It draws on Judith Butler's theories of performativity to illustrate Proust's precocious portrayal of identity in the entirety of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu as an elusive, unattainable idea that characters pursue yet fail to establish. Soldin contends that Proust does not merely deride characters' behavior, (...) but interrogates their motivations and tendencies, exposing and undermining the social systems that govern human performance and restrict our notion of identity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust AmericaKeith P. Feldman (bio)Eric J. Sundquist. Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005. 662 pp.Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America provides a wide-ranging, rich, and nuanced cultural history of what Eric J. Sundquist terms the "black-Jewish question" (2). In doing so, the book serves as both culmination and corrective to (...) an already-expansive scholarly literature on blacks and Jews generated since the late 1960s. Much of this scholarship has operated within a U.S.-centered paradigm to chart interethnic relations, laboring as it does to unpack, complicate, theorize, and otherwise come to understand the changing texture of black-Jewish relations and, in Sundquist's wods, its "intermixture of empathy, anxiety, and Hostility' (3)." Strangers in the Land stretches this paradigm to its limit, even as the diasporic imaginaries treated therein persistently escape a U.S. national imaginary and signal other possibilities for conceptualizing this tense and tender history.In its five hundred–plus pages of text, one hundred–plus pages of endnotes, and countless detailed footnotes (that are themselves illustrative and evocative), Sundquist has assembled a voluminous archive of textual material to show how works of the imagination by blacks and Jews have been "produced in a dynamic, multilayered historical matrix" that reveals the paradoxes of American liberalism (9). From the well-known and well-trodden (novels by Bellow, Roth, Malamud, and Morrison all play key roles) to the newly discovered and underappreciated (John A. Williams's Sons of Darkness, Sons of Light; Paule Marshall's The Chosen Place, the Timeless People; Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Café; William Melvin Kelley's A Different Drummer; Jon Michael Spencer's Tribes of Benjamin; Lore Segal's Her First American), Sundquist's careful historicism reveals how works of the imagination can serve as both microscopic and telescopic lenses through which to examine the vicissitudes of what he calls black and Jewish "interdependent self-conceptions" in the United States (5).Along with addressing a thick textual archive with subtlety and patience, Sundquist's major analytical innovation is that, unlike many of his predecessors, which frequently [End Page 63] positioned their analyses within the scarred domestic terrain of post–civil rights polarization, Sundquist's voracious curiosity dwells in the archive's heterogeneous details, allowing him to linger in examples that routinely exceed the simple polarization of blacks and Jews. The complex racial geography of New York boroughs and greater Chicagoland, for instance, is overlaid by Auschwitz and Egypt and Jerusalem, Ghana and Kenya and the Caribbean. In these settings, Sundquist spends time with figures only glimpsed in passing in other works: Arab Jews, Afro-Zionists, and anti-Zionists; Jews and Black Jews; Black Panthers, Israeli Black Panthers, Holocaust survivors, Holocaust deniers, Black Power advocates, and their Jewish Power doppelgangers. In a lengthy meditation on Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Sundquist charts the novel's refractions of the problem of American racial equality in the wake of the Holocaust. Similarly, the careful readings of novels by Naylor, Williams, Spencer, and Kelley exemplify the rich results of Sundquist's method.This deeply historicist and intertextual project echoes Sundquist's 1993 epic work To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature, which strenuously and quite effectively demonstrated how African American literature is constitutive of American literature, and not merely a minor subset of it. If this earlier work revealed the continued paradox of racial slavery in American conceptions of democracy, Strangers in the Land serves as something of a sequel. The book places another massive racial project, the systematic genocide of Europe's Jews, at the heart of twentieth-century American life. "The Holocaust," writes Sundquist, "became the benchmark against which at least one other case, African American slavery and its aftermath, has been judged" (6). By placing Jewish genocide at the center of his analysis, Sundquist importantly reminds us of the conclusion reached almost simultaneously by both Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire, that the Nazi racial project had its ideological origins in nineteenth-century European imperialism, and that this legacy bears indelibly on the present... (shrink)

The first conceptual history of the development and evolution of the image of Jews and Jewish participation in modern German-speaking cosmopolitanist thought.

It is a remarkable fact that the writings of Philo, the Jew from Alexandria, were preserved because they were taken up in the Christian tradition. But the story of how this process of reception and appropriation took place has never been systematically research. In this book the author first examines how Philo's works are related to the New Testament and the earliest Chritian writing, and then how they were used by Greek and Latin church fathers up to 400 c.e., with (...) special attention to the contributions of Clement, Origen, Didymus, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Augstine. Philo in Early Christian Literature is a valuable guide to the state of scholarly research on a subject that has thus far been investigated in a rather piecemeal fashion. (shrink)

Judaism is one of the oldest surviving religious traditions in the world. The Jews, who base their history on Abraham and his son Isaac, began to be called religion with Moses. The Jews, who lived their golden age in and around Jerusalem during the David and Solomon periods, also built the Temple, which was at the center of their religious life. The Jews, who rebuilt the Temple during the Babylonian exile and subsequently Ezra's reign, lived in these (...) lands until the destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The statelessness that started after the destruction of the temple had an important place in the Jewish identity. The exile life, which continued for two thousand years, caused the Jews to go to different parts of the world and live there. In this period, which is expressed as the period of exile, Jews lived in many regions such as Africa, Anatolia, Europe and America. The arrival of the Jews in the Americas dates back to the Columbus era. Jews were present in South America and subsequently in the British colonies. Currently, most of the Jews in the world live in the USA. Among the Jews who went to the Americas, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews constitute the majority. However, in the Americas, Jews have formed different groups over time. These include groups such as Conservative, Orthodox, Reformist, and Reconstructionist. Jewish groups formed by African-Americans also have a special place among these formations. These African-American Jews in the USA, are discussed within the framework of this article. In the article, firstly, a piece of brief information about Judaism in America was given, and then the relations between Blacks and Jews were discussed. Afterward, the main features of these formations, which are of African origin and consider themselves the descendants of the Israelites, are emphasized. Finally, the Jewish groups established by Black Jews were contacted and if they had different practices and beliefs from the others, they were included. The research was carried out based on the literature review and information was given about the prominent black Jewish groups. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial CultureSpencer Hawkins (bio)Mufti, Aamir. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton UP, NJ: Princeton, 2007. xv + 325 pp.Mufti’s comparison of the Jewish question and the Indian Partition invites readers to join building projects that delineate and then endanger minorities within nations. Literature about minorities speaks a language (...) deliberately distant from the national one. Minority status has little to do with population numbers for Aamir Mufti; instead it signifies [End Page 61] tential victimization through disproportional rights, since “minority is always potentially exile” (Mufti 13). This definition of minority suits his two examples—Jews in Germany and Muslims in India—since in the twentieth century both fledgling nations adopted forms of nationalism that regarded the lives of these minorities as contaminants to the purity of the emergent national body. The prologue catalogues the brutality in India that prompted Mufti to write this book. Among the horrors listed were the destruction of Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the videotaped gang rapes of Muslim women that became a widespread form of entertainment in India. While Mufti reads violence toward minorities as correlative with the rise of nationstates, he considers similarities and differences between nation building in the West and in the subcontinent. In both cases, the new establishment of political equality for citizens came along with the desire to pare down the number of officially recognized citizens. Muslim and Jewish minorities migrated to “minority” nations in the collapsing British Empire, in present-day Pakistan and Israel, respectively, during the respective formations of India and Germany. By founding nations on formerly British-occupied territory, minorities potentially would enjoy the role of nationalist majorities. This solution strikes Mufti as spreading the nationalist contagion onto the minority.The whole book lets literature mark broad cultural attitudes and phenomena. The first chapter observes incipient Jewish nationalism in a work by a British author, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, who spent time in Germany and grew fascinated with the Jewish question while abroad. Her Britishness reinforces a pattern in Mufti’s schema: British powers facilitate the rise of nationalism among minorities in India and in Germany. Daniel Deronda comes at the tail end of a long discourse on Jews’ relation to Europe. The first of Mufti’s cases within canonical literature is the hope for tolerance and a dialogue of cultures, which G. E. Lessing allegorizes through a drama about Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt and Syria, who learns to trust the eponymous Jewish merchant in Nathan the Wise. “Muslim” stands in for “Christian” since Nathan’s alienation is allegorical for the alienation of Jews in Lutheran Germany. Heinrich Heine weighs in on the advantages to assimilation in this period with his fragmentary novel The Rabbi from Bacherach, where religiously raised Jewish children feel comforted when they hear the Tale of the Nibelungen from Father Rhein, the personification of a river that figures generally for German national myth and, in Heine’s story, as a possible source of comfort for partially assimilated minorities. If we read literature as a barometer of cultural pressures, then the appeal of assimilation for European Jews declines in the late colonial nineteenth century when George Eliot inscribed religion into the “secular” discourse of national citizenship.Since the Israeli state is outside of the range of his argument, we leave the Jewish Question with George Eliot’s philo-Semitism in Daniel Deronda, where the only hope for European Jews is to become a nation and to occupy the Palestinian territory. Mufti compares the concerns of early Zionism and Pakistani nationalism side by side in chapter 2. Pakistani issues dominate chapters 3 to 5. In chapter 2, he launches the comparison with the parallel between Hebrew’s development as a national language to identify [End Page 62] Jews secularly and culturally, not just religiously, and Urdu’s transition from a vernacular language to a national language with the secular goal of creating a Pakistani culture freed from Hindi’s erstwhile predominance. When he depicts language choice as mimetic of specific cultural trends, Mufti indicates the shape of... (shrink)

In this article, I respond to John Betz who has recently rejected claims that I have made about Erich Przywara’s anti- Semitism and his relationship to Nazi era ideology. Although I admire much of Przywara’s theology and have great sympathy for the teaching about the analogy of being, in this article I address some of the problems of Przywara’s work. I address literature from Przywara on the Jews where he talks about the essence of “the Jew” as “restless” (...) and “revolutionary,” and where he brings up the “wandering Jew” theme or claims Judaism is an “insolent disturber” of the “folkdom.” Przywara’s rejection of “Jewish messianism” and his claims about the “basic tension of the Jew” are also addressed. I analyze his conception of the essence of “the Jew” as, among other things, a “rising will of destruction” and his claim that “Christianity” ultimately becomes the “enemy” of Judaism. Beyond these things, Przywara’s desire to “overcome” Judaism with the right “weapons” is addressed. I also draw attention to his rejection of “Jewish capitalism” and his justification of “the hatred towards the Jews in world history.” In addition to this, his use of ideologically charged Nazi terminology, such as “host-peoples,” and his support of Catholic integralism in Nazi Germany are addressed. Furthermore, Przywara’s remarks on “the positive sense” of the German “movements” in the 1930s are presented. I also show that Przywara”s work was praised by a leading representative and ideologue of National Socialism. With this, I address the internal Nazi correspondences on the very influential German Catholic Jesuit journal titled Stimmen der Zeit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Jews and Gender: Responses to Otto WeiningerBéla SzabadosJews and Gender: Responses to Otto Weininger, edited by Nancy A. Harrowitz and Barbara Hyams; 341 pp. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995, $54.95 cloth, $24.95 paper.“Every artist has been influenced by others and shows traces of that influence yet his significance for us is nothing but his personality. What he inherits from others can be nothing but eggshells,” said Wittgenstein, (...) listing Weininger as a seminal influence on his work, “a seed out of which his plant grew.” Weininger’s influence fell on other leading cultural figures early this century such as Kraus, Kafka, Freud, Joyce, Lawrence, Canetti, Stein and others. This book aims to retrieve that influence and provide a broad interdisciplinary representation of new critical readings of Weininger’s legacy.The fact and extent of Weininger’s influence seems puzzling: his fame stems from his misogyny and anti-Semitism. In Sex and Character Weininger claims that: humans are bisexual, a mixture of male and female; woman is nothing but sexuality; individuals must choose between the masculine and feminine elements within themselves; sexual abstinence is a precondition of spirit and genius; there can be no justification for sex even for procreation within marriage; furthermore, “the Jew is saturated with femininity and has little sense of good and evil.” How could an author with such odd and odious views exert any influence at all?Yet Weininger was pivotal: his writing erases boundaries between discipline, genre, and nationality, revealing tensions and contradictions in Viennese and Western culture. So many ‘isms’ mark him as a patriarch of the tradition: [End Page 548] essentialism, transcendentalism, dualism, theism, and his belief in a rational self. Yet this is juxtaposed with postmodernist themes: deconstruction of sexual and gender dichotomies, rejection of essentialism concerning individuals, an emphasis on difference and the personal, the ethical primacy of practice over theory. His influence is felt in literature, philosophy, science, history, and because of Jehoshua Sobol’s play, The Soul of a Jew, in theatre.Jews and Gender divides into three parts. The first introduces readers to Weininger research and provides new bibliographic information. To begin with, the editors offer us the necessary background with a concise critical essay on the history of Weininger reception. This is followed by Jacques Le Rider revisiting Weininger scholarship subsequent to the publication of his own book, The Otto Weininger Case. The section ends with Hannelore Rodlauer’s efforts to piece together fragments from Weininger’s education. The second section, “In Context,” focuses on Weininger in the context of his contemporaries. Allan Janik starts off with his examination of the riddle of Weininger’s influence on Wittgenstein. Next, Nancy Harrowitz sketches and discusses affinities between Weininger and his nineteenth-century forerunner Lomboroso. Then Steven Beller explores the surprising question of whether Weininger was a liberal in an ethos when European liberalism exerted immense pressure on Jews to assimilate the whole set of social, religious, national, cultural values of a community. Sander Gilman in turn traces connections between Freud and Weininger on questions of race and gender. In her essay on “Characterology,” Katherine Arens situates Weininger in relation to Austrian “scientific” racism. In his contribution, John Hoberman reflects on Weininger’s critique of Jewish masculinity, locating its source in the stereotypes prevalent in those times.The third section of the volume looks at Weininger and his impact on modern literature. In “A Scientific Image of Woman,” Gisela Brude-Firnau discusses the way in which Weininger’s work can be seen as a contentious response to the women’s movement. Jeffrey Mehlman discerns Weininger in one of Apolinnaire’s major poems, “La Chanson du Malaimé,” where the anger against woman is quirkily actualized as a fury against the Jews. Gerald Stieg goes on to draw affinities between Kafka and Weininger. Then Marilyn Reizbaum, Natania Rosenfeld, and Elfriede Pöder explore in separate essays Weininger’s influence on James Joyce’s Ulysses by probing Bloom’s Jewish self-hatred, the figure of the womanly wandering Jew, and Molly as pure sexuality, respectively. Alberto Cavaglion proceeds to trace the appearance of Weininger’s thought in Italo Svevo’s novel The Confessions of Zeno... (shrink)

The interconnections, common interests, and other linkages between the Jewish and Islamic traditions have long been a matter of interest to academics. Today the need to understand these relationships, and to emphasize commonalities rather than conflicts, is of the greatest public interest. The present volume of studies, likely the first such collection in the scholarly literature, explores the full range of interconnections between Jews and Muslims in all fields (intellectual history, religion, philosophy, social history, etc.) and in all (...) periods, from the Middle Ages till today. The essays have been written by some twenty distinguished scholars from North America, Europe, and Israel. The volume is dedicated to our esteemed colleague Joel L. Kraemer, John Barrows Professor Emeritus in the Divinity School and on the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. In the course of his distinguished career Professor Kraemer has made major contributions to our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of the Jews in the Arabic world, Islamic and Jewish philosophy and their sources in ancient philosophy, the humanistic renaissance in Islam (on which he published two seminal monographs), and Maimonides (on which he has published many important papers and is completing a biography and a translation of Maimonides' letters, to appear in the Yale Judaica Series). (shrink)

Holocaust literature gives exhaustive attention to direct means of exterminating Jews, by using gas chambers, torture, starvation, disease, and intolerable conditions in ghettos and camps, and by the Einsatzgruppen. In some circles, the term “Holocaust” has become the ultimate description of horror or horrific events. The Nazi medical experiments and practices are an example of these. Nazi medical science played a central and crucial role in creating and implementing practices designed to achieve a “Master Race.” Doctors interfered with (...) the most intimate and previously sacrosanct aspects of life in these medical experiments – reproductive function and behavior – in addition to implementing eugenic sterilizations, euthanasia, and extermination programs. Manipulating reproductive life – as a less direct method of achieving the genocide of Jews – has been less acknowledged. The Nazis prevented those regarded as not meeting idealized Nazi racial standards – and particularly Jewish women – from having sex or bearing children through legal, social, psychological and biological means, as well as by murder. In contrast, they promoted reproductive life to achieve the antithesis of genocide – the mass promotion of life – among those deemed sufficiently “Aryan.” Implementing measures to prevent birth is a core feature of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. As with many other aspects of the Holocaust, science and scientists were inveigled into providing legitimacy for Nazi actions. The medical profession was no exception and was integrally involved in the manipulation of birth to implement the Holocaust. (shrink)

The year 1492 is only the last in a series of “ends” that inform the representation of medieval Spain in modern Jewish historical and literary discourses. These ends simultaneously mirror the traumas of history and shed light on the discursive process by which hermetic boundaries are set between periods, communities, and texts. This book addresses the representation of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as the end of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain). Here, the end works to locate and separate Muslim from Christian (...) Spain, Jews from Arabs, philosophy from Kabbalah, Kabbalah from literature, and texts from contexts. The book offers a reading of texts that emerge from its Andalusi, Jewish, and Arabic cultural sphere: Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed; the major text of Kabbalah, the Zohar; and the Arabic rhymed prose narrative of Ibn al-Astarkuwi. The author argues that these texts are written in a language that disrupts the possibility of locating it in a pre-existing cultural situation, a recognizable literary tradition, or a particular genre. At stake are issues – texts and contexts – that have gained particular urgency in the writings of such recent thinkers as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Avital Ronell. The book reads the place and taking place of language, interrogating the notion of disappearing contexts and the view that language is derivative of its true place, the context that, having ended, is mourned as silent and lost. (shrink)

"This work deals wth three main topics: a. Maimonidean studies, b. aspects of medieval rabbinic literature, and c. intellectual history of the Jews in southern France (Provence) during the Middle Ages."--Back cover.

Based on their fates, it is possible to categorise the Jewish population of Slovakia from 1938 to 1945 into four groups. The most extensive group were the prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps and labour camps in Slovakia. They were followed by “legal Jews”, hidden Jews, “Aryan” Jews, who used false “Aryan” documents in the mainstream society, and last but not least, fighters in partisan units or allied armies. This study analyzes the way of survival of the (...) “Aryan Jews” following the materials gained by oral history and information from professional literature and memoirs. I focused on preparation, way of obtaining false documents, life in the mainstream society, and hidden emotions when confronted with captured Jews. Although physically “nothing had happened” to most of them, the Aryan Jews were exposed to constant stress; psychological impacts of “the life in disguise” accompanied them a long time after liberation. (shrink)

In The Burning Bush, Glazov conducts a profoundly original inquiry into Vladimir Solovyov's attitude toward Judaism. Solovyov (1853-1900) was one of the most remarkable figures of the 19th century: He was the most important Russian speculative thinker of that century, publishing major works on theoretical philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and ethics; he also produced sensitive literary criticism and incisive essays on current political, social, and ecclesiastical questions. The eminent theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar designated Solovyov as the greatest artist (...) of conceptual order and organization--after Thomas Aquinas--in the entire history of thought, a thinker who borrows from all systems after purging them of their negations. Solovyov was also the first major Russian thinker to enter into ecumenical dialogue with Jewish scholars and theologians, and Glazov's main concern is (1) to translate as completely as possible all of Solovyov's writings on Judaism and to annotate these texts by identifying persons, places, and citations, especially in the Biblical and rabbinic literature; and (2) to synthesize the information gleaned from these writings with key recollections of Solovyov's attitudes toward Jews and Judaism by his immediate family, friends, and early biographers. Glazov collects, translates, and comments on all the relevant primary texts: writings, letters, pamphlets, protests, political documents, and prayers which relate to Solovyov's work on Jewish matters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:François H. Lapointe PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE: A BIBLIOGRAPHIC SURVEY ThL· survey is limited to articles written in English that have appeared in journals published between 1 January 1974 and 31 December 1976. Abbott, Don. "Marxist Influences on the Rhetorical Theory of Kenneth Burke." Philosophy and Rhetoric 7 (1974): 217-33. Abel, Lionel. "Jacques Derrida: His 'Difference' With Metaphysics." Salmagundi no. 25 (1974): 3-21. Adamowski, T. H. "Character and Consciousness: (...) D. H. Lawrence, Wilhelm Reich, and Jean-Paul Sartre." University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 31 1-34. Adams, D. J. "Style and Social Ideas in Jacques le fataliste." Studies in Voltaire & the Eighteenth Century 124 (1974): 231-48. Adams, Hazard. "Contemporary Ideas of Literature: Terrible Beauty or Rough Beast?" Contemporary Literature 17 (1976): 349-77. Adorno, Theodor W. "Lyric Poetry and Society." Telos no. 20 (1974): 56-71. Ages, Arnold. "Bonald and the Jews." Revue de l'Université d'Ottawa 44 (1974): 32-43. Allen, Diogenes. "The Experience of Existence: Jean-Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch." International Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1974): 181-87. Allen, Marcus. "Character Development in the Oreste of Voltaire and Les Mouches of Jean-Paul Sartre." CLA Journal 18 (1974): 1-21. Alter, Jean. "A (Terrorist) System of the Novel." Diacritics 6 (1976): 10-15. Altieri, Charles. "Wittgenstein on Consciousness and Language: A Challenge to Derridean Literary Theory." MLN 91 (1976): 1397-1423. Altieri,Charles. "Wordsworth's 'Preface' as Literary Theory." Criticism 18 (1976): 122-146. [On Wordworth and Wittgenstein.] Ames, Van Meter. "Art for Art's Sake Again?" Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1975): 303-307. Appleman, Philip. "The Dread Factor: Eliot, Tennyson, and the Shaping of Science." Columbia Forum, N. S. 3 (1974): 32-38. Armstrong, Paul B. " E. M. Forster's Howard's End: The Existential Crisis of the Liberal Imagination." Mosaic 8 (1974): 183-99. Arnold, A. James. "La Condition humaine as Nietzschean Tragedy." Mélanges Malraux Miscellany 6 (1974): 15-24. 366 François H. Lapointe367 Aronson, Ronald. "L'Idiot de la famille: The Ultimate Sartre?" Telos no. 20 (1974): 90-107. Arthos, John. "Du Bartas, Petrarch and the Poetry of Deism." Rice University Studies 60 (1974): 1-17. Artz, Johannes. "Newman as Philosopher." International Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1976): 263-88. Ausmus, Harry J. "Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Language." The Midwest Quarterly 18 (1977): 169-86. Ayala, Francisco. "Ortega y Gasset, Literary Critic." Critical Inquiry 1 (1974): 395-414. Bakalar, H. Nicholas. "The Cartesian Legacy to the Eighteenth-century Grammarians." MLN 91 (1976): 698-721. Barnes, Hazel. "Apotheosis and Deification in Plato, Nietzsche and Huxley." Philosophy and Literature 1 (1976): 3-24. Baron, Dennis E. "Role Structure and the Language of Literature." Journal of Literary Semantics 4 (1975): 43-52. Barooskian, Vahan D. "The Aesthetics of the Russian Revolutionary Theatre 1917-1921." British Journal of Aesthetics 15 (1975): 99-117. Bart, B. F. "Hypercreativity in Stendhal and Balzac." Nineteenth Century French Studies 3 (1974-75): 18-39. Barthes, Roland. "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative." New Literary History 6 (1975): 237-72. Bashford, Bruce. "The Rhetorical Method in Literary Criticism." Philosophy and Rhetoric 9 (1976): 133-46. Bass, Alan. "Time and the Witch: Femininity, Metapsychology and the Temporality of the Unconscious." MLN 91 (1976): 871-912. Bassett, Sharon. "Towards a Critique of Romanticism: Wordsworth, Pater and the 'Anima Mundi'." Criticism 17 (1975): 262-75. Batchelor, R. "Literature, Society and the Concept of Revolt." European Studies Review 5 (1975): 395-427. Battin, M. Pabst. "Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy in the Poetics, Part 1." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 33 (1974): 155-70, and Part II in Ibid. 33 (1975): 293-302. Bauer, George. "Sartre and the 'Sugars' of History." L'Esprit Créateur 15 (1975): 377-86. Baumgarten, Murray. "The Historical Novel: Some Postulates." Clio 4 (1975): 173-82. Beauchamp, Gorman. "Gulliver's Return to the Cave: Plato's Republic and Book IV of Gulliver's Travels." The Michigan Academician 7 (1974): 201-10. Bennett, Jonathan. "The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn." Philosophy 48 (1974): 123-34. Benzon, William. "Cognitive Networks and Literary Semantics." MLN 91 (1976): 952-82. Bergonzi, Bernard. "A Grid of Codes: Views of Structuralism." Encounter 45 (1975): 52-58. Berry, Wanda Warren. "The... (shrink)

In order to explore whether and how Jewish teachings influence the attitudes of strictly-orthodox Jews to clinical trials, 10 strictly-orthodox Jews were purposively selected and interviewed, using a semi-structured schedule. Relevant literature was searched for similar studies and for publications covering relevant Jewish teachings. Thematic analysis was used to analyse transcribed interviews and explore relationships between attitudes and Jewish teachings identified in the review. Participants’ attitudes were influenced in a variety of ways: by Jewish teachings on the (...) over-riding importance of preserving life—the need to avoid risks affecting life and health, while taking risks to preserve life—and the religious obligation to help others, as well as by previous experience. Attitudes mirrored those in the general population, enabling many participants to reach conclusions that did not differ materially from those of the general population or research ethics committees. (shrink)

In order to explore whether and how Jewish teachings influence the attitudes of strictly-orthodox Jews to clinical trials, 10 strictly-orthodox Jews were purposively selected and interviewed, using a semi-structured schedule. Relevant literature was searched for similar studies and for publications covering relevant Jewish teachings. Thematic analysis was used to analyse transcribed interviews and explore relationships between attitudes and Jewish teachings identified in the review. Participants’ attitudes were influenced in a variety of ways: by Jewish teachings on the (...) over-riding importance of preserving life—the need to avoid risks affecting life and health, while taking risks to preserve life—and the religious obligation to help others, as well as by previous experience. Attitudes mirrored those in the general population, enabling many participants to reach conclusions that did not differ materially from those of the general population or research ethics committees. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction 9 -- Postmodernism and the End of 'Humanism'? 19 -- Postmodern Ambiguities: -- Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire 34 -- In Postmodern Disorder: -- The Confused and Confusing World of The Hand that Signed the Paper 40 -- Ethics, the Literary Imagination, and the 'Other': The Hand that Ought, or was Imagined, to have Signed the Paper 47 -- Jew and Anti-Jew in Australian Fiction 58 -- Helen Garner's The First Stone: Ethical Confusions (...) and Contretemps 72 -- Antisemitism and Literature: Robert Manne's The Culture of Forgetting and Anthony Julius' T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form 83 -- Abraham Biderman, Daniel Goldhagen,and Telling It as It Was 96 -- Literary Studies as Ethics or Anarchy? 110 -- An Imbrication of Heteroglossic Discourses? Or Plain Speaking? 118 -- The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, tra-la: Postcolonialism and Other Messiahs 127 -- Postcolonialism and the Exotic 135 -- Perpetually Moralists: Truth, Ethics and The Empire Writes Back 146 -- Towards a New Ethics 159 -- Conclusion 167 -- Index -- 176. (shrink)

In the missionary activities that Halle theologians developed in the first half of the 18th century Grotius’ De veritate plays an interesting role that deserves exploration. To that purpose, the history and nature of the publication of missionary tracts in Halle will be surveyed, the role therein of Johann Heinrich Callenberg and his Institutum Judaicum at Muhammedicum described and the distribution and reception of the texts among the Muslims and Jews that were the target of the Halle missions all (...) over the world summarized and analysed. It is suggested that Grotius’ De veritate, which was an atypical piece of apology in the Halle pietist setting, stands out among the other literature for its efficacy in the missionary process, due to its non-dogmatic character. (shrink)

This may be the first truly competent, single author, book-length study of the thought of Leo Strauss. The entire book shows that Strauss's Jewish writings were not merely peripheral to his thought as a whole, determined by purely personal experience, but were rather "a central pillar of his entire thought". Particularly valuable is the careful way Green takes us through, not only Spinoza's Critique of Religion, but also those untranslated early works of Strauss, from 1924 to 1928, where some of (...) his major positions can be seen to be in formation. Each work is explicated in its own terms without bringing in the qualifications Strauss's later thought would entail, so that a very clear picture of what he found especially convincing at each stage emerges. This is the first published speculation on the stages of Strauss's thought that I, for one, have been able to take seriously. The book is very fully referenced and annotated: much of the now extensive scholarly literature on Strauss is reviewed in the notes, for example, judicious comments on those who overexaggerate the influence of Nietzsche on Strauss. (shrink)

In A Centaur in Auschwitz, Massimo Giuliani sheds new light on Primo Levi's rational, demythologizing approach to suffering and survival. Whether working in narrative or poetic form, Levi grappled with the ambiguities and complexities of innocence and guilt, triumph and loss. This unique book, with its concise overview of Levi's expression and development as a writer, reveals Primo Levi for what he was: scientist, intellectual, Jew, and dedicated seeker of the roots of human dignity.

In The Hasidic Moses, Aryeh Wineman invites readers to join him on a journey through various eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hasidic texts that interpret the life of Moses. Such texts read their own accent on spirituality and innerness along with their conceptions of community and spiritual leadership into the biblical account of Moses. Wineman reveals the ways in which historical Hasidic voices interpreted both the Exodus from Egypt and the scene of Revelation at Sinai as statements concerning what occurs constantly in (...) our lives at all times. In addition, Wineman shows how Hasidic readers embraced the idea that Moses had to die in order that his soul might return to the world in the righteous and holy ones of every generation, and that the presence of Moses actually transcends time and is present in spiritual understanding as it unfolds at any moment in any period. ""Aryeh Wineman has written a clear and accessible book that serves as a delightful entry into the world of Hasidic thought. Using the template of Hasidic interpretations of the life of Moses, he takes the reader carefully through a broad range of Hasidic works, highlighting the Hasidic resistance to the plain meaning of scripture, opting instead for their penchant for devotional and spiritually deepening readings... The impulse toward spiritualizing both deepens the original text of the Torah and transcends it, stimulating the reader to read the Torah as an edifying document, rather than primarily a historical, legal, or even national work."" --Joel Hecker, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College ""Aryeh Wineman's The Hasidic Moses is a triumph on every level... The figure of Moses is brought alive in the words of the classic Hasidic masters and is made available for a new generation of spiritual seekers hungry to find meaning in biblical models and mystical texts. The Bible tells us that no one knows where Moses is buried--but we can say that he lives robustly in Aryeh Wineman's sparking new book!"" --Nehemia Polen, Hebrew College, Newton Centre, Massachusetts ""Aryeh Wineman writes authoritatively as the scholar he is, but addresses himself--like the rabbi he also is--not to other scholars, but to readers and seekers who would like to understand. In this way he lives the humility of the teacher Moses and leads us through his writing into the depths of the Hasidic homily and parable... For those of us who don't have direct access to the hasidic texts he translates, his gentle and careful presentation of The Hasidic Moses is a gift from soul to soul."" --Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus and Burnt Books Aryeh Wineman has written many studies in the area of Hebrew literature and Jewish mysticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.2 (2002) 397-404 [Access article in PDF] The Sexist Sublime in Sade and Lyotard Caroline Weber In this case the masculine returns to haunt the place of the feminine like a ghost...., bloody and inhuman, in order to manifest and to root unforgettably in us the idea of a perpetual conflict and a spasm in which life is constantly being cut short. Antonin Artaud, The (...) Theater and Its Double"VIOLENCE," JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD ASSERTS in a recent article on Kantian aesthetics, "is necessary to the sublime." 1 More precisely, the sublime, held to transport an individual beyond his or her "ordinary" register of aesthetic responses, may do violence to a person's faculty of imagination, by shattering the accepted limits of sensory experience. Lyotard explains: In the sublime, the imagination must be subjected to violence, because it is by way of its suffering, the mediation of its violation, that the joy of seeing—or almost seeing—the law can be obtained.... This "joy" [here Lyotard cites The Critique of Judgment] "is only possible by the mediation of pain." 2Indeed, students of Kant's work have long been familiar with the exclusion of sentiment, pathos, and personal interest that he posits as a requirement for exalted status in the aesthetic and the moral sphere. For Kant, the law is precisely about the painful suppression of pleasure-seeking impulses for the sake of a disinterested, higher good. To achieve the transcendental perfection of the law, typically understood to be the domain of God alone, one must, godlike, overcome the [End Page 397] limitations of human nature and human feeling. And this effort—of which the Passion is just one vivid example—can be extraordinarily painful. In this context, Lyotard's formulation of the problem may not strike us as particularly startling. In contending that the Kantian experience of the sublime requires the mediation of pain, the French poststructuralist appears simply to be reminding us that the law, whether aesthetic or moral in nature, always demands some sort of discomfort, some kind of sacrifice.We might be more inclined to accept this last statement if Lyotard's own work hadn't already taught us to think otherwise. For as he demonstrates admirably in The Differend, his 1983 meditation on testimony and the Holocaust, there is always a winner and a loser under the law; its attendant pains are always selectively applied. From a discursive point of view, this asymmetrical relationship manifests itself in a differend, a situation where two parties find themselves in dispute, and "the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties, while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom." 3 According to Lyotard, the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis exemplifies this pattern. In a strict juridical sense, any attempted protests by concentration camp prisoners had no meaning, and no right to mean anything, in Third Reich Germany: In the differend, something "asks" to be put into phrases, and suffers from the wrong (tort) of not being able to be put into phrases right away. This is when the human beings who thought they could use language as an instrument of communication learn through the feeling of pain... to recognize that what remains to be phrased exceeds what they can presently phrase.... 4Here Lyotard reveals that an encounter with the law, mediated by pain, inevitably creates injustices and wronged parties. In this paper, I will draw on this insight from The Differend to point up the ethical deficiencies or torts inherent in his own ruminations on the Kantian sublime—and in those of another philosopher whose thinking closely resembles Lyotard's on the subject, the notorious Marquis de Sade. To limit the scope of my inquiry, I shall focus in this brief essay on the differend to which each thinker's writings subject the figure of the mother.For Lyotard and Sade alike, the mother represents first and foremost the capacity to reproduce. With this capacity... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-BeingDaniel H. FrankHava Tirosh-Samuelson. Happiness in Premodern Judaism: Virtue, Knowledge, and Well-Being. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 596. Cloth, $50.00.Franz Rosenzweig tried hard to convince the neoKantian Hermann Cohen of the merits of Zionism and the normalization it would bring to Jews and Jewish life. His attempt met with this response from Cohen: "Oho! So the (...) gang now wants to be happy, does it?" For those ignorant of the history of Jewish philosophy, one might imagine that Jewish philosophers, no less than their non-philosophical kinsmen, were so weighed down by the burdens of history and persecution that happiness could play no role in their theorizing. But happiness plays a key role in the history of Jewish moral and political philosophy, especially in the premodern period. Even Spinoza, the last of the medievals and the first of the moderns, the great critic of the rabbinic tradition and of Maimonides in particular, is concerned in his Ethics with identifying those activities that together constitute human well-being and the good life. Only lately, since the Enlightenment and Kant, has non-eudaimonism been a live option for Jewish thinkers. Only with the rise of (modern) Orthodoxy, and its predilection for construing goodness as rectitude and rule-following, has eudaimonism fallen out of favor. But with Tirosh-Samuelson's weighty volume on happiness in premodern Judaism, there can be no excuse in the future to imagine that all Jews are, or must be, closet Kantians, strict deontologists. To think otherwise seems to come close to taking on the classical (anti-Semitic) dichotomy of legalistic Judaism vs. spiritual Christianity. In it own way, Happiness in Premodern Judaism is a critique of such a one-sided, monochromatic view of Judaism, whether from the Christian or even from the Jewish side.Tirosh-Samuelson writes explicitly as an intellectual historian, rather than as a philosopher. She understands herself and her project as one that presents just the facts, without evaluating them. While one may cavil at a lost opportunity, in the present case this would be churlish, given the enormous erudition on display. After an introductory chapter outlining the foundational moral theories of Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic philosophers, the text presents the (Greek-inspired) areteic wisdom literature of the Second Temple period, the teleological theocentrism of the rabbis, the Greco-Arabic Islamicate culture that nurtured Jewish philosophers from Saadia in the tenth century to Maimonides in the twelfth, the rabbinic and kabbalistic critiques of the philosophical ideal of happiness commencing [End Page 338] with the translation (into Hebrew) of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and finally, very important and the focus of much recent scholarly work, the transformation of Jewish eudaimonism through direct contact with Christian Scholasticism and later with the humanist Renaissance. All in all, a millennium and a half of Jewish intellectual history is presented in a sober and scholarly way.Not surprisingly Maimonides plays a pivotal role in the story that Tirosh-Samuelson relates. A Janus-like figure, he represents the culmination and height of accommodation with Greek and Greco-Arabic philosophical culture. However, with the gradual worsening of the socio-economic condition of European Jewry in the thirteenth century, his accommodationism seemed traitorous, and as a result generations of thinkers, mystics and philosophers alike, strove to critically distance themselves from Maimonidean Aristotelianism. Tirosh-Samuelson is admirably clear in pointing out that such anti-Maimonidean tendencies are ill-characterized as anti-philosophical. Hasdai Crescas in the late-fourteenth and early-fifteenth centuries launched a massive critique of Maimonides' physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy, but did so in as rigorous a manner as any philosopher would. The picture that enfolds over the course of the text is one of vigorous dialectic between partisans of 'alien' (Greek) wisdom and those who viewed such wisdom with considerable suspicion. Such a dialectic parallels, not surprisingly, developments in Christian philosophy.The trajectory of the story of premodern Jewish musings on happiness is from the centrality of reason and intellect, and the contemplative activity that is reason's preeminent actuality, to the primacy... (shrink)

I argue that Judaism and Jewish culture have paradigmatically and throughout history operated with a fundamental dichotomy between nature (“what is”) and ethics (i.e., God and man-“what ought to be”). Pagan ontologism, on the other hand, and the Christian synthesis of biblical transcendentalism and Greek incamationism result in human and historical submission to what are acclaimed as “natural forces.” Although in the history of Jewish culture such a heretical, quasi-pantheistic tendency asserted itself, first in mediaeval kabbalism and then in modem (...) Zionism, from a traditional Jewish standpoint nature remains subject to humanly enacted ends. Evidence for this general thesis can be found in biblical, Talmudic, medieval philosophic, and mystical literature, in modem religious, poetic, and Zionist literature, and in the history of general philosophy. (shrink)

The emergence and persistence of the jews other.

The prevailing historiographies of Jewish life in England suggest that religious representations of the Jews in the early modern period were confined to the margins and fringes of society by the desacralization of English life. Such representations are mostly neglected in the scholarly literature for the latter half of the long eighteenth century, and English Methodist texts in particular have received little attention. This article addresses these lacunae by examining the discourse of Adam Clarke, an erudite Bible scholar, (...) theologian, preacher and author and a prominent, respected, Methodist scholar. Significantly, the more overt demonological representations were either absent from Clarke‘s discourse, or only appeared on a few occasions, and were vague as to who or what was signified. However, Clarke portrayed biblical Jews as perfidious, cruel, murderous, an accursed seed, of an accursed breed and radically and totally evil. He also commented on contemporary Jews, maintaining that they were foolish, proud, uncharitable, intolerant and blasphemous. He argued that in their eternal, wretched, dispersed condition, the Jews demonstrated the veracity of biblical prophecy, and served an essential purpose as living monuments to the truth of Christianity. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition and study of a unique and important Muslim polemic against Christians and Jews. The Book of Disputation was written in Arabic by a Mudejar (subject Muslim living under Christian rule in late medieval Iberia) and offers new insight into the cultural and intellectual life of this Muslim minority. The text advances arguments drawn from natural philosophy-largely from Aristotle and Averroes-along with more traditional revealed sources such as the Qur'an and the Bible. Mudejar communities (...) suffered a diminution of religious and political intelligentsia over time. This text, however, highlights the author's particular conception of the world as the creation of God in his defense of Islam, demonstrates the vitality of intellectual life among Muslims in medieval Christian Iberia, and documents the continued cultivation of natural philosophy within these Muslim communities. (shrink)

The postmodern critique of the Enlightenment is much concerned with what it regards as the unwillingness of progressive thinkers of the eighteenth century to accept the legitimacy of national or cultural groups that differed significantly from norms in Western Europe. My aim is to examine how eighteenth-century thinkers, including Hume, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Condorcet, and the Abbé Grégoire, perceived prototypical “others” such as Blacks and Jews, by looking at the sources—from contemporary medical science to travel literature, proto-anthropology, history, biblical (...) scholarship and reformist projects—on which these views were based. Perceptions of Blacks cannot easily be separated from the issue of slavery, nor that of the Jews from biblical history and theology. I argue that those who wanted to exclude these groups from mainstream society generally based their arguments on a one-dimensional, self-referential empirical methodology, while those who argued for their eventual inclusion usually posite.. (shrink)

This article presents and analyzes two examples of peace education practices in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Zochrot is an organization dedicated to raising public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel. The School for Peace is a Jewish-Arab organization that conducts encounter activities with the goal of encouraging participants to become active in relation to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Both practices are grounded in critical pedagogy and postcolonial literature, and their aim is to change existing power structures. (...) Current political realities, however, which include oppression, occupation, and injustice, exacerbate the challenge of this goal. We identify three challenges that demand attention if these practices are to realize their transformative potential: essentialism, responsibility of the victim, and singular utopia. Finally, we highlight the importance of hybrid identity as an educational approach that is a promising path for realizing the transformative potential of critical PE. (shrink)

The Hebrew phrase tikkun olam means repairing, mending or healing the world. Today, the phrase tikkun olam, particularly in liberal Jewish American circles, has become a slogan for a diverse range of topics such as activism, political participation, call and pursuit of social justice, charities, environmental issues and healthy nutrition. Moreover, the presidents of the United States who attend Jewish religious days and Jewish ceremonies state the tikkun olam in its Hebrew origin, pointing out its origin embedded in the Judaism (...) and a religious rule and/or an obligation that is important in Jewish tradition and thought. Nevertheless, when we look at the context of religious literature in which the phrase is used, it is seen that, although it is difficult to make a clear definition, it does not reflect modern/widespread uses and their meanings. Furthermore, tikkun olam is an ignored and even rejected concept by the Rabbinic Judaism which claims to represent the tradition and its current representative Orthodox Judaism. This fact is also seen in the usage and prevalence of the term in the U.S. and Israel. Thus, in this article, especially with reference to the norms of Mishnah, the religious-juristicial contexts and possible meanings of the phrase of tikkun olam, the notion of tikkun olam in Jewish liturgy and its implied meaning and the Kabbalistic understanding of tikkun will be presented, the development, changing and conversion of the phrase in modern age and its contemporary usage areas and reinterpretations will be demonstrated.Summary: Recently and especially in the U.S., the Hebrew phrase tikkun olam are used as a slogan in a widespread manner such as for activism, political participation, social justice, all kinds of charities, environmental issues, counter terrorism and healthy nutrition. Such a common usage of the phrase is largely the result of its literal meaning and ambiguity. Hence, this article aims to explore the place of the concept of tikkun olam in Jewish religious literature and its variations and semantic changes. Tikkun olam, literally means the repairing, mending or healing the world. However, regarding its religious context, it is difficult to determine what it means accurately. In time, some has used the tikkun olam as a legislative justification for changing specific laws, some has attributed to it an eschatological meaning which indicates to the mesianic age, and some has dicussed it in the context of mystical sense. The first usage of the phrase of tikkun olam in the Jewish religious literature was simply in the form of “because of tikkun olam” in Gittin epistle, a tractate of Mishnah and Talmud. Here, the phrase was used as a reason of a judgment concerning to the subjects of marriage, divorcement, slavery, captivity etc. In the context of these subjects tikkun olam indicates to the similar meanings like “repairing, organizing, healing, changing the world; regulating and improving the society, maintaining the social order, and prioritizing the common good. In fact, the concept of tikkun olam as the reason of the judgements in these matters is likely related to a juridical reason that intends to ensure the personal and public welfare such as clarifying the marital status of woman, to prevent the capture and seizure from Jewish society, and to deal with economy and identification of juridical status of the slaves.The other reference to tikkun olam appears in the second part of the aleinu prayer. However, the notion of tikkun olam in the aleinu prayer refers to a situation that happens in God’s Kingdom if Torah and halakhah are followed carefully. Hence, the aleinu prayer’s tikkun olam points out eschatological expectation which desires a messianic age, but not the socio-political and ecological concerns of the world as in the current fields and meanings.The modern idea of tikkun olam is also associated with the Jewish mystical movement, Kabbalah. Nonetheless, the concept of tikkun in Kabbalah is not a concept related to the socio-political circumstances of the world where we live in, but it is related to the restoring of the divine world. In order to restoring the divine world, human should fulfill the commands by studying Torah and have a spiritual and moral rehabilitation process by engaging in ascetic practices.The use of the phrase of tikkun olam gradually progress in the socio-political life of the U.S. The first use of the expression of tikkun olam in the U.S. was in the 1950’s by Shlomo Bardin, the founder of the Brandeis Camp Institute in California. Bardin asserted that the Aleinu prayer was the most important expression of Jewish values, particularly the expression “le-taken olam be-malchut shaddai” that is typically translated as “when the world shall be perfected under the reign of the God.” Bardin suggested that these words referred to the obligation of Jews to work for a more perfect world. The concept of tikkun olam entered contemporary usage by the way of its being preferred as a name to those such as social justice and charity programmes which was launched by the Reformist and Conservative groups in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1970s, United Synagogue Youth which is the national youth foundation of the conservative movement adopted the expression of tikkun olam and changed the title of its social action programs from “Building Spiritual Bridges” to “Tikkun Olam.” Nowadays, United Synagogue Youth proceeds all of its social activities and tzedakah programs through the tikkun olam project.By the end of 1970’s, New Jewish Agenda, an organization devoted itself to the religious and social values, acknowledged the slogan of “Tikkun Olam” as the spirit of its ideology. In 1986, Michael Lerner entitled a left-oriented liberal publication with the concept of Tikkun by claiming that this concept represented the origin of Judaism, and he take an important role on making the concept have a prevalence.Pittsburgh Platform organized in 1999 by the Reformist Jewish Movement emphasized that people must perform the most significant moral principles in the relationships with all non-Jewish people and all other creatures. This platform also stated that making the world a better place with the help of God would quicken the upcoming the messianic age. The tikkun understanding of the Reformist movement evolved to more universal realm by embracing the non-Jewish people, as well. Over the last two decades, successive presidents of the U.S. who attended in the ceremonies of Jewish religious days and Jewish assemblages have contributed to the prevalence and usefulness of tikkun olam by mentioning the phrase of tikkun olam in Hebrew, expressing that this is an essential principle of Judaism and addressing that this has a central role in Jewish tradition and thought. On the other hand, this concept does not have an important or a central place in Rabbinic Judaism and even in Orthodox Jewish communities which are the current representatives of Rabbinic Judaism. Moreover, Reformist, Conservative, and Reconstructionist American Jews who are considered on the liberal side of the politics has put the concept on the current use and the world’s agenda. Thus, the phrase of the tikkun olam is more popular in non-Judaic milieux in the U.S. than the Jews in Israel. In Israel where the Orthodox doctrine is dominated and shaped the people, tikkun olam is regarded as a western value and is ignored. (shrink)

This book offers a unique perspective on Zionism. The author, a geneticist by training, focuses on science, rather than history. He looks at the claims that Jews constitute a people with common biological roots. An argument that helps provide justification for the aspirations of this political movement dedicated to the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. His study explores two issues. The first considers the assertion that there is a biology of the Jews. The second deals (...) with attempts to integrate this idea into a consistent history. Both issues unfolded against the background of a romantic national culture of Western Europe in the 19th century: Jews, primarily from Eastern Europe, began to believe these notions and soon they took the lead in the re-formulation of Jewish and Zionist existence. The author does not intend to present a comprehensive picture of the biological literature of the origins of a people and the blood relations between them. He also recognizes that the subject is emotionally-loaded. The book does, however, present a profound mediation on three overlapping questions: What is special or unique to the Jews? Who were the genuine Jews? And how can one identify Jews? This volume is a revised and edited English version of Tzionut Vehabiologia shel Hayehudim, published in 2006. (shrink)