Beth A. Berkowitz
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195179194
- eISBN:
- 9780199784509
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195179196.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines the history of scholarship on the ancient Jewish death penalty, focusing in particular on the last century of scholarship in the United States and Israel. It includes within its ...
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This chapter examines the history of scholarship on the ancient Jewish death penalty, focusing in particular on the last century of scholarship in the United States and Israel. It includes within its survey a variety of approaches and disciplines: jurisprudence, responsa, New Testament historiography, religious denominational writing, Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionist reformism. It give this scholarship “thick description,” contextualizing it within the social forces that shaped it. It also offers some concluding reflections on what aspects of the scholarship might be most productive for further study.Less
This chapter examines the history of scholarship on the ancient Jewish death penalty, focusing in particular on the last century of scholarship in the United States and Israel. It includes within its survey a variety of approaches and disciplines: jurisprudence, responsa, New Testament historiography, religious denominational writing, Jewish intellectual history, philosophy, Zionist reformism. It give this scholarship “thick description,” contextualizing it within the social forces that shaped it. It also offers some concluding reflections on what aspects of the scholarship might be most productive for further study.
Yaacob Dweck
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691145082
- eISBN:
- 9781400840007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691145082.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter traces the circulation of Ari Nohem in manuscript, from its composition through its first appearance in print. The different stages in the reception of Ari Nohem in manuscript offer an ...
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This chapter traces the circulation of Ari Nohem in manuscript, from its composition through its first appearance in print. The different stages in the reception of Ari Nohem in manuscript offer an alternative history of Kabbalah in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that has largely been told through the histories of Sabbatianism and Hasidism. The manuscript transmission of Ari Nohem was typical rather than aberrant for texts written by early modern Jewish intellectuals on a variety of subjects: polemical writings on Christianity, esoteric kabbalistic treatises, and epistolary campaigns against the mystical messiah Sabbatai Zevi and his followers. The evidence of these manuscripts, combined with repeated citation of and allusion to Ari Nohem in letters, diaries, treatises, responsa, and compendia composed between 1639 and 1840, indicate that Jews and Christians continued to read Modena's text in nearly every generation between the death of the author and the printing of his book.Less
This chapter traces the circulation of Ari Nohem in manuscript, from its composition through its first appearance in print. The different stages in the reception of Ari Nohem in manuscript offer an alternative history of Kabbalah in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, one that has largely been told through the histories of Sabbatianism and Hasidism. The manuscript transmission of Ari Nohem was typical rather than aberrant for texts written by early modern Jewish intellectuals on a variety of subjects: polemical writings on Christianity, esoteric kabbalistic treatises, and epistolary campaigns against the mystical messiah Sabbatai Zevi and his followers. The evidence of these manuscripts, combined with repeated citation of and allusion to Ari Nohem in letters, diaries, treatises, responsa, and compendia composed between 1639 and 1840, indicate that Jews and Christians continued to read Modena's text in nearly every generation between the death of the author and the printing of his book.
Alan F. Segal
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198269854
- eISBN:
- 9780191600517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198269854.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
The paper sketches the history of expressions of resurrection in biblical thought. Particularly important for the development of the notion of resurrection are Jewish millennialist movements like ...
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The paper sketches the history of expressions of resurrection in biblical thought. Particularly important for the development of the notion of resurrection are Jewish millennialist movements like that which produced Daniel 12, subjected to martyrdom, which in turn serves as a focal point for the discussion of God's mercy and justice. As opposed to the young men in millenarian movements who lose their lives as martyrs in the expectation of bodily restoration at the end of time, Hellenized Jewish intellectuals embraced the Platonic notion of the immortality of the soul in order to express continuity of consciousness after death—a very intellectual hope. The martyrdom context is crucial for understanding the expectation of Jesus’ resurrection among his followers. Although both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity affirm resurrection strongly, they eventually both subsume cocnepts of immortality of the soul, each in its own way and in stark contradiction to each other.Less
The paper sketches the history of expressions of resurrection in biblical thought. Particularly important for the development of the notion of resurrection are Jewish millennialist movements like that which produced Daniel 12, subjected to martyrdom, which in turn serves as a focal point for the discussion of God's mercy and justice. As opposed to the young men in millenarian movements who lose their lives as martyrs in the expectation of bodily restoration at the end of time, Hellenized Jewish intellectuals embraced the Platonic notion of the immortality of the soul in order to express continuity of consciousness after death—a very intellectual hope. The martyrdom context is crucial for understanding the expectation of Jesus’ resurrection among his followers. Although both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity affirm resurrection strongly, they eventually both subsume cocnepts of immortality of the soul, each in its own way and in stark contradiction to each other.
Martin Land
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282005
- eISBN:
- 9780823284795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282005.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter begins by tracing the assertions that link the predominance of Jews in critical discourses to Jewish marginality to a 1919 essay by Thorstein Veblen. Veblen does not argue that ...
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This chapter begins by tracing the assertions that link the predominance of Jews in critical discourses to Jewish marginality to a 1919 essay by Thorstein Veblen. Veblen does not argue that creativity and innovation thrive on the margins but, rather, that marginal groups like the Jews are better able than their European contemporaries to hold to a position of detachment and alienation from tradition and received wisdom, transforming their marginality into a critical perspective from which they are able to question, as it were, both themselves and the European social and economic systems. Recent critics of Veblen have pointed at his blindness toward the cultural and economic characteristics of Jewish communal life. In their critique, however, they take the disproportionate success of American Jews as their prime measure, supplanting Veblen's intellectual value with monetary value. From this perspective, Jews are no longer marginal but, on the contrary, central to the ever-expanding social order of capital.Less
This chapter begins by tracing the assertions that link the predominance of Jews in critical discourses to Jewish marginality to a 1919 essay by Thorstein Veblen. Veblen does not argue that creativity and innovation thrive on the margins but, rather, that marginal groups like the Jews are better able than their European contemporaries to hold to a position of detachment and alienation from tradition and received wisdom, transforming their marginality into a critical perspective from which they are able to question, as it were, both themselves and the European social and economic systems. Recent critics of Veblen have pointed at his blindness toward the cultural and economic characteristics of Jewish communal life. In their critique, however, they take the disproportionate success of American Jews as their prime measure, supplanting Veblen's intellectual value with monetary value. From this perspective, Jews are no longer marginal but, on the contrary, central to the ever-expanding social order of capital.
Steven M. Lowenstein
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195171648
- eISBN:
- 9780199871346
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195171648.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History
This chapter shows that virtually every German Jew born in the second and third quarters of the 19th century received an elementary German education and could read and write German. Advanced Talmudic ...
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This chapter shows that virtually every German Jew born in the second and third quarters of the 19th century received an elementary German education and could read and write German. Advanced Talmudic education now took place only at rabbinical seminaries and a few Posen study houses. Jews were already overrepresented among students in secondary schools and in the universities, even if the majority of Jews still did not have such an advanced education. The days in which the German Jews could be seen as a mainly illiterate backward group unable to communicate in German were over. A new stereotype — f the overeducated Jewish intellectual — would replace the old stereotype of the uneducated Jew in Imperial Germany.Less
This chapter shows that virtually every German Jew born in the second and third quarters of the 19th century received an elementary German education and could read and write German. Advanced Talmudic education now took place only at rabbinical seminaries and a few Posen study houses. Jews were already overrepresented among students in secondary schools and in the universities, even if the majority of Jews still did not have such an advanced education. The days in which the German Jews could be seen as a mainly illiterate backward group unable to communicate in German were over. A new stereotype — f the overeducated Jewish intellectual — would replace the old stereotype of the uneducated Jew in Imperial Germany.
Seyla Benhabib
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691167251
- eISBN:
- 9780691184234
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691167251.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This book explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century—in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter ...
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This book explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century—in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Hirschman, and Judith Shklar, as well as Hans Kelsen, Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss. Informed by their Jewish identity and experiences of being outsiders, these thinkers produced one of the most brilliant and effervescent intellectual movements of modernity. The book's starting point is that these thinkers faced migration, statelessness, and exile because of their Jewish origins, even if they did not take positions on specifically Jewish issues personally. The sense of belonging and not belonging, of being “eternally half-other,” led them to confront essential questions: What does it mean for the individual to be an equal citizen and to wish to retain one's ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, or perhaps even to rid oneself of these differences altogether in modernity? The book isolates four themes in their works: dilemmas of belonging and difference; exile, political voice, and loyalty; legality and legitimacy; and pluralism and the problem of judgment. Surveying the work of influential intellectuals, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration recovers the valuable plurality of their Jewish voices and develops their universal insights in the face of the crises of this new century.Less
This book explores the intertwined lives, careers, and writings of a group of prominent Jewish intellectuals during the mid-twentieth century—in particular, Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin, Albert Hirschman, and Judith Shklar, as well as Hans Kelsen, Emmanuel Levinas, Gershom Scholem, and Leo Strauss. Informed by their Jewish identity and experiences of being outsiders, these thinkers produced one of the most brilliant and effervescent intellectual movements of modernity. The book's starting point is that these thinkers faced migration, statelessness, and exile because of their Jewish origins, even if they did not take positions on specifically Jewish issues personally. The sense of belonging and not belonging, of being “eternally half-other,” led them to confront essential questions: What does it mean for the individual to be an equal citizen and to wish to retain one's ethnic, cultural, and religious differences, or perhaps even to rid oneself of these differences altogether in modernity? The book isolates four themes in their works: dilemmas of belonging and difference; exile, political voice, and loyalty; legality and legitimacy; and pluralism and the problem of judgment. Surveying the work of influential intellectuals, Exile, Statelessness, and Migration recovers the valuable plurality of their Jewish voices and develops their universal insights in the face of the crises of this new century.
Seyla Benhabib
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691167251
- eISBN:
- 9780691184234
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691167251.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This introductory chapter outlines the entanglement of Jewish intellectuals and others as they confronted exile, migration, and, in some cases, statelessness. These intellectuals include Hannah ...
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This introductory chapter outlines the entanglement of Jewish intellectuals and others as they confronted exile, migration, and, in some cases, statelessness. These intellectuals include Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Albert Hirschmann, Varian Fry, Judith Shklar, Carl J. Friedrich, and Isaiah Berlin. They faced these challenges because of their Jewish origins, regardless of whether they themselves identified as Jewish, whether they were believers, or whether they were practicing Jews or not. Meanwhile, the chapter considers that for German Jews, the experience of belonging and not belonging, of being rendered migrants and internal exiles in their own country, began in the mid-nineteenth century, with the granting of certain civil rights to Jews residing in German territories. Lastly, the chapter presents a brief layout of the succeeding chapters' content.Less
This introductory chapter outlines the entanglement of Jewish intellectuals and others as they confronted exile, migration, and, in some cases, statelessness. These intellectuals include Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Albert Hirschmann, Varian Fry, Judith Shklar, Carl J. Friedrich, and Isaiah Berlin. They faced these challenges because of their Jewish origins, regardless of whether they themselves identified as Jewish, whether they were believers, or whether they were practicing Jews or not. Meanwhile, the chapter considers that for German Jews, the experience of belonging and not belonging, of being rendered migrants and internal exiles in their own country, began in the mid-nineteenth century, with the granting of certain civil rights to Jews residing in German territories. Lastly, the chapter presents a brief layout of the succeeding chapters' content.
Hillel J. Kieval
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520214101
- eISBN:
- 9780520921160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520214101.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter describes the predicament of secular Jewish intellectuals—graduates for the most part of German-Jewish Normalschulen—who in the 1830s and 1840s imagined themselves to be participating in ...
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This chapter describes the predicament of secular Jewish intellectuals—graduates for the most part of German-Jewish Normalschulen—who in the 1830s and 1840s imagined themselves to be participating in what they presumed to be a shared project in the construction of a “Bohemian” identity, which united German speakers and Czech speakers, Jews and Gentiles. It explains that their confrontation with anti-Jewish popular unrest in the 1840s, as well as with the unwillingness of a segment of the new Czech intelligentsia to entertain an alliance with Jews, led the bulk of upwardly mobile Bohemian Jews to “narrow” their vision of community by tying their fortunes to German liberalism—in effect crystalizing what had been a by-product of absolutist reform into both a political commitment and a cultural identity that would last well into the 1860s and beyond.Less
This chapter describes the predicament of secular Jewish intellectuals—graduates for the most part of German-Jewish Normalschulen—who in the 1830s and 1840s imagined themselves to be participating in what they presumed to be a shared project in the construction of a “Bohemian” identity, which united German speakers and Czech speakers, Jews and Gentiles. It explains that their confrontation with anti-Jewish popular unrest in the 1840s, as well as with the unwillingness of a segment of the new Czech intelligentsia to entertain an alliance with Jews, led the bulk of upwardly mobile Bohemian Jews to “narrow” their vision of community by tying their fortunes to German liberalism—in effect crystalizing what had been a by-product of absolutist reform into both a political commitment and a cultural identity that would last well into the 1860s and beyond.
Shai Ginsburg, Martin Land, and Jonathan Boyarin (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282005
- eISBN:
- 9780823284795
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282005.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Theory has often been coded as “Jewish”—not merely because Jewish intellectuals have been central participants, but also, this book argues, because certain problematics of modern Jewishness enrich ...
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Theory has often been coded as “Jewish”—not merely because Jewish intellectuals have been central participants, but also, this book argues, because certain problematics of modern Jewishness enrich theoretical questions across the humanities. In the range of violence and agency that can attend the appellation “Jew,” Jewishness is revealed as a rhetorical and not just social fact, one tied to profound questions of power, subjectivity, identity, figuration, language, and relation that are also central to modern theory and modern politics. Understanding Jewishness in its fluidity, this book helps articulate theory's potential to mediate pessimistic and utopian impulses, experiences, and realities.Less
Theory has often been coded as “Jewish”—not merely because Jewish intellectuals have been central participants, but also, this book argues, because certain problematics of modern Jewishness enrich theoretical questions across the humanities. In the range of violence and agency that can attend the appellation “Jew,” Jewishness is revealed as a rhetorical and not just social fact, one tied to profound questions of power, subjectivity, identity, figuration, language, and relation that are also central to modern theory and modern politics. Understanding Jewishness in its fluidity, this book helps articulate theory's potential to mediate pessimistic and utopian impulses, experiences, and realities.
Mikhail Krutikov
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804770071
- eISBN:
- 9780804777254
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804770071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian-Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself ...
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This book is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian-Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself as a Marxist scholar and Yiddish writer. Wiener's life story offers a glimpse into the complexities and controversies of Jewish intellectual and cultural history of pre-war Europe. Wiener made a remarkable career as a Yiddish scholar and writer in the Stalinist Soviet Union, and left an unfinished novel about Jewish intellectual bohemia of Weimar Berlin. He was a brilliant intellectual, a controversial thinker, a committed communist, and a great Yiddish scholar—who personally knew Lenin and Rabbi Kook, corresponded with Martin Buber and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and argued with Gershom Scholem and Georg Lukács. Wiener's intellectual biography brings Yiddish to the forefront of the intellectual discourse of interwar Europe.Less
This book is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893–1941), an Austrian-Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself as a Marxist scholar and Yiddish writer. Wiener's life story offers a glimpse into the complexities and controversies of Jewish intellectual and cultural history of pre-war Europe. Wiener made a remarkable career as a Yiddish scholar and writer in the Stalinist Soviet Union, and left an unfinished novel about Jewish intellectual bohemia of Weimar Berlin. He was a brilliant intellectual, a controversial thinker, a committed communist, and a great Yiddish scholar—who personally knew Lenin and Rabbi Kook, corresponded with Martin Buber and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and argued with Gershom Scholem and Georg Lukács. Wiener's intellectual biography brings Yiddish to the forefront of the intellectual discourse of interwar Europe.
Hillel J. Kieval
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520214101
- eISBN:
- 9780520921160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520214101.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter examines the movement among Czech-Jewish intellectuals to effect a religious reform that was inspired, to a large extent, by Czech philosophical currents. It notes that the most ...
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This chapter examines the movement among Czech-Jewish intellectuals to effect a religious reform that was inspired, to a large extent, by Czech philosophical currents. It notes that the most remarkable aspect of the Czech-Jewish religious reforms of the 1880s may have been their superficiality. It observes that the activists within the SČAŽ and Or-Tomid seem to have been content merely to tinker with the linguistic forms of public worship and ritual. It notes that once Judaism had acquired a “Czech face”, as it were, they considered their job to have been completed. It argues on the other hand, that the superficiality of early Czech-Jewish reform was born of optimism. It observes that Czech Jews saw nothing in the content of their religious culture that would stand in the way of their swift integration into modern Czech society.Less
This chapter examines the movement among Czech-Jewish intellectuals to effect a religious reform that was inspired, to a large extent, by Czech philosophical currents. It notes that the most remarkable aspect of the Czech-Jewish religious reforms of the 1880s may have been their superficiality. It observes that the activists within the SČAŽ and Or-Tomid seem to have been content merely to tinker with the linguistic forms of public worship and ritual. It notes that once Judaism had acquired a “Czech face”, as it were, they considered their job to have been completed. It argues on the other hand, that the superficiality of early Czech-Jewish reform was born of optimism. It observes that Czech Jews saw nothing in the content of their religious culture that would stand in the way of their swift integration into modern Czech society.
Daniel B. Schwartz
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691142913
- eISBN:
- 9781400842261
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691142913.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in ...
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Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his “horrible heresies” and “monstrous deeds.” Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. This book provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. The book shows that in fashioning Spinoza into “the first modern Jew,” generations of Jewish intellectuals—German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists—have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.Less
Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his “horrible heresies” and “monstrous deeds.” Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. This book provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. The book shows that in fashioning Spinoza into “the first modern Jew,” generations of Jewish intellectuals—German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists—have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.
Sarah Hammerschlag
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282005
- eISBN:
- 9780823284795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282005.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines Jacques Derrida as a Jewish intellectual, locating in his work expressions of his identity as an intellectual and as a Jew. It applies insights from Derrida's philosophy of ...
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This chapter examines Jacques Derrida as a Jewish intellectual, locating in his work expressions of his identity as an intellectual and as a Jew. It applies insights from Derrida's philosophy of literature to his relationship with Emmanuel Levinas, probing the similarities and differences in their experience of these identities. Derrida's ambivalence toward Jewish community, in particular that aspect that imposes obligations and makes claims, was not separate from his awareness of familial overtones in his relationship with Levinas. Although Derrida discussed his Jewishness in various ways and contexts, it was through Levinas that he did and did not identify with the category of Jewish intellectual. In recounting a pair of anecdotes reported by Derrida, in which he revealed private comments made to him by Levinas, the chapter then exposes in the closeness of their relationship the operation of secrecy and betrayal, and the role of irony in constructing and subverting intimacy.Less
This chapter examines Jacques Derrida as a Jewish intellectual, locating in his work expressions of his identity as an intellectual and as a Jew. It applies insights from Derrida's philosophy of literature to his relationship with Emmanuel Levinas, probing the similarities and differences in their experience of these identities. Derrida's ambivalence toward Jewish community, in particular that aspect that imposes obligations and makes claims, was not separate from his awareness of familial overtones in his relationship with Levinas. Although Derrida discussed his Jewishness in various ways and contexts, it was through Levinas that he did and did not identify with the category of Jewish intellectual. In recounting a pair of anecdotes reported by Derrida, in which he revealed private comments made to him by Levinas, the chapter then exposes in the closeness of their relationship the operation of secrecy and betrayal, and the role of irony in constructing and subverting intimacy.
Jess Olson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804778732
- eISBN:
- 9780804785006
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804778732.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This book explores the life and thought of one of the most important but least known figures in early Zionism, Nathan Birnbaum. Now remembered mainly for his coinage of the word “Zionism,” Birnbaum ...
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This book explores the life and thought of one of the most important but least known figures in early Zionism, Nathan Birnbaum. Now remembered mainly for his coinage of the word “Zionism,” Birnbaum was a towering figure in early Jewish nationalism. Because of his unusual intellectual trajectory, however, he has been written out of Jewish history. In the middle of his life, in the depth of World War I, Birnbaum left his venerable position as a secular Jewish nationalist for religious Orthodoxy, an unheard of decision in his time. To the dismay of his former colleagues, he adopted a life of strict religiosity and was embraced as a leader in the young, growing world of Orthodox political activism in the interwar period, one of the most successful and powerful movements in interwar central and eastern Europe. This book brings to light documents from one of the most complete archives of Jewish nationalism, the Nathan and Solomon Birnbaum Family Archives, including materials previously unknown in the study of Zionism, Yiddish-based Jewish nationalism, and the history of Orthodoxy. This book is an important meditation on the complexities of Jewish political and intellectual life in the most tumultuous period of European Jewish history, especially of the interplay of national, political, and religious identity in the life of one of its most fascinating figures.Less
This book explores the life and thought of one of the most important but least known figures in early Zionism, Nathan Birnbaum. Now remembered mainly for his coinage of the word “Zionism,” Birnbaum was a towering figure in early Jewish nationalism. Because of his unusual intellectual trajectory, however, he has been written out of Jewish history. In the middle of his life, in the depth of World War I, Birnbaum left his venerable position as a secular Jewish nationalist for religious Orthodoxy, an unheard of decision in his time. To the dismay of his former colleagues, he adopted a life of strict religiosity and was embraced as a leader in the young, growing world of Orthodox political activism in the interwar period, one of the most successful and powerful movements in interwar central and eastern Europe. This book brings to light documents from one of the most complete archives of Jewish nationalism, the Nathan and Solomon Birnbaum Family Archives, including materials previously unknown in the study of Zionism, Yiddish-based Jewish nationalism, and the history of Orthodoxy. This book is an important meditation on the complexities of Jewish political and intellectual life in the most tumultuous period of European Jewish history, especially of the interplay of national, political, and religious identity in the life of one of its most fascinating figures.
Steven Aschheim
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520220560
- eISBN:
- 9780520923669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520220560.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This introductory chapter examines the closely interrelated ways in which Hannah Arendt herself engaged and imagined Jerusalem — actually and metaphorically — in order to understand the history and ...
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This introductory chapter examines the closely interrelated ways in which Hannah Arendt herself engaged and imagined Jerusalem — actually and metaphorically — in order to understand the history and nature of Arendt's reception in Jerusalem to date. This is done by placing Arendt within the relevant historical context. Like the figures she vividly brought to life — Rahel Varnhagen, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Hermann Broch, and many others — Hannah Arendt, her achievements and biases, her creativity and inner conflicts, must be seen as part of the quite extraordinary history of post-emancipation German–Jewish intellectuals and their wider engagement with the imperatives of German culture and its later great breakdown.Less
This introductory chapter examines the closely interrelated ways in which Hannah Arendt herself engaged and imagined Jerusalem — actually and metaphorically — in order to understand the history and nature of Arendt's reception in Jerusalem to date. This is done by placing Arendt within the relevant historical context. Like the figures she vividly brought to life — Rahel Varnhagen, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Hermann Broch, and many others — Hannah Arendt, her achievements and biases, her creativity and inner conflicts, must be seen as part of the quite extraordinary history of post-emancipation German–Jewish intellectuals and their wider engagement with the imperatives of German culture and its later great breakdown.
Svetlana Boym
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823282005
- eISBN:
- 9780823284795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823282005.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines the Russian literary critic Victor Shklovsky and poet Osip Mandelshtam to discuss the relationship between theory and Jews, exploring their autobiographical narratives to ...
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This chapter examines the Russian literary critic Victor Shklovsky and poet Osip Mandelshtam to discuss the relationship between theory and Jews, exploring their autobiographical narratives to articulate what can be called the off-modern turn. That turn is a zigzag movement that defies the demands of systematic thinking and that does not follow any of the popular “isms” of Jewish intellectual engagement of the day: idealism, Marxism, nationalism, or messianism. Indeed, both Shklovsky and Mandelshtam look for artistic, political, and existential practices that defy theoretical conceptions along with their hierarchies and logics, for modes of art and thinking that undercut prescribed rules. Such practices bear the promise of freedom, of seeing the world anew, of a new beginning.Less
This chapter examines the Russian literary critic Victor Shklovsky and poet Osip Mandelshtam to discuss the relationship between theory and Jews, exploring their autobiographical narratives to articulate what can be called the off-modern turn. That turn is a zigzag movement that defies the demands of systematic thinking and that does not follow any of the popular “isms” of Jewish intellectual engagement of the day: idealism, Marxism, nationalism, or messianism. Indeed, both Shklovsky and Mandelshtam look for artistic, political, and existential practices that defy theoretical conceptions along with their hierarchies and logics, for modes of art and thinking that undercut prescribed rules. Such practices bear the promise of freedom, of seeing the world anew, of a new beginning.
Eliyahu Stern
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300179309
- eISBN:
- 9780300183221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300179309.003.0006
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Jewish Studies
This chapter explores the establishment of the modern yeshiva by Elijah ben Solomon's followers. Over the nineteenth century, the yeshiva replaced the legal institution of the kehilah as the locus of ...
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This chapter explores the establishment of the modern yeshiva by Elijah ben Solomon's followers. Over the nineteenth century, the yeshiva replaced the legal institution of the kehilah as the locus of centralized authority for non-Hasidic rabbinic Jewry. This change was encouraged by Elijah's commentary, Biur, to the Shulchan Arukh, the sixteenth century Jewish legal code. This commentary proved to be Elijah's magnum opus, and it contributed to the shift of eastern European Jewish intellectual life away from a code-based culture that reflected the governing institution of the kehilah toward a modern religious one revolving around the paradigm of persuasive education adopted by the Volozhin yeshiva.Less
This chapter explores the establishment of the modern yeshiva by Elijah ben Solomon's followers. Over the nineteenth century, the yeshiva replaced the legal institution of the kehilah as the locus of centralized authority for non-Hasidic rabbinic Jewry. This change was encouraged by Elijah's commentary, Biur, to the Shulchan Arukh, the sixteenth century Jewish legal code. This commentary proved to be Elijah's magnum opus, and it contributed to the shift of eastern European Jewish intellectual life away from a code-based culture that reflected the governing institution of the kehilah toward a modern religious one revolving around the paradigm of persuasive education adopted by the Volozhin yeshiva.
Scott Spector
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520219090
- eISBN:
- 9780520929777
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520219090.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which ...
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This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.Less
This book maps the “territories” carved out by German-Jewish intellectuals living in Prague at the dawn of the twentieth century. It explores the social, cultural, and ideological contexts in which Franz Kafka and his contemporaries flourished, revealing previously unseen relationships between politics and culture. The readings of an array of German writers feature the work of Kafka and the so-called “Prague circle,” and encompass journalism, political theory, Zionism, and translation, as well as literary program and practice. With the collapse of German-liberal cultural and political power in the late-nineteenth-century Habsburg Empire, Prague's bourgeois Jews found themselves squeezed between a growing Czech national movement on the one hand and a racial rather than cultural conception of Germanness on the other. Displaced from the central social and cultural position they had come to occupy, the members of the “postliberal” Kafka generation were dazzlingly productive and original, far out of proportion to their numbers. Seeking a relationship between ideological crisis and cultural innovation, the author observes the emergence of new forms of territoriality. He identifies three fundamental areas of cultural inventiveness: Expressionism, a revolt against all limits and boundaries; a spiritual form of Zionism incorporating a novel approach to Jewish identity; and a sort of cultural no-man's-land in which translation and mediation took the place of “territory.” The investigation of these areas shows that the intensely particular, idiosyncratic experience of German-speaking Jews in Prague allows access to much broader and more general conditions of modernity.
Samuel Lebens, Dani Rabinowitz, and Aaron Segal
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198811374
- eISBN:
- 9780191848407
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198811374.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter attempts to characterize analytic philosophy as an intellectual tradition, and sketches the potential it has to spark a new age in Jewish philosophy. The chapter also outlines the ...
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This chapter attempts to characterize analytic philosophy as an intellectual tradition, and sketches the potential it has to spark a new age in Jewish philosophy. The chapter also outlines the structure and content of the rest of the volume.Less
This chapter attempts to characterize analytic philosophy as an intellectual tradition, and sketches the potential it has to spark a new age in Jewish philosophy. The chapter also outlines the structure and content of the rest of the volume.
Nathan Ausubel
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780814757437
- eISBN:
- 9780814763469
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814757437.003.0040
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter exhorts Jewish intellectuals—particularly the left-wing, English-speaking ones—to take a more thorough interest in their culture and heritage, especially in the wake of the atrocities of ...
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This chapter exhorts Jewish intellectuals—particularly the left-wing, English-speaking ones—to take a more thorough interest in their culture and heritage, especially in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. It notes how many intellectuals have resorted to anti-Semitism—or at least prescribed to a sterilized version of Jewish and Yiddish culture—during the postwar era. Thus, it is the urgent duty of all thoughtful Jewish men and women to examine their attitudes toward their Jewishness and Jewish culture. The liberal and communist Jew is, in an important sense, a leader in their community and helps form public opinion which can be channeled into constructive, progressive action.Less
This chapter exhorts Jewish intellectuals—particularly the left-wing, English-speaking ones—to take a more thorough interest in their culture and heritage, especially in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. It notes how many intellectuals have resorted to anti-Semitism—or at least prescribed to a sterilized version of Jewish and Yiddish culture—during the postwar era. Thus, it is the urgent duty of all thoughtful Jewish men and women to examine their attitudes toward their Jewishness and Jewish culture. The liberal and communist Jew is, in an important sense, a leader in their community and helps form public opinion which can be channeled into constructive, progressive action.
