{"title":"Ronny Someck and the Politics of Popular Poetry","authors":"Hannan Hever","doi":"10.1353/sho.2022.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2022.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Ronny Someck's poetry is unique in that it translates canonical Hebrew poetry into popular poetry. It is especially visible in the intertextual relations that Someck's poetry constructs with Yehuda Amichai's canonic poetry. Following Marx, the article analyses Someck's poetry as commodity structure as fetish. Someck brilliantly—and broadly—utilizes the figure of the stereotype; but in contrast with the accepted norm, he relies on the contradiction at the basis of the fetish to write subversive political poetry. Avoiding the binarism existing between resistance and affirmation, in his poems Someck develops a dialectic discourse that keeps rewriting the popular text as commodity existing in the circular rotation of selling and buying. This dialectic is manifested in the mode in which the fluid, hyphenated Arab-Jewish identity is represented in his poems. Through his poetry, Someck constitutes an inexhaustible space that allows the poems to develop subversiveness, which operates under the false appearance of total, coherent spaces. As part of Israeli culture, it could have been expected that this poetry would be stereotypical, adopting an Orientalist outlook. But Someck's poems develop, instead, an unstable gaze that undermines Orientalism's binarism. The lack of binarism is expressed in Someck's poems through a dual-layered structure; the two layers, one figurative and one literal, are separate and continuous and carry out complex interrelations. Within this relational frame the literal, violent layer punctures the figurative layer, and then materializes via political violence. But instead of relating to the Israeli occupation as an arena of a binary confrontation between the Israeli army and the Palestinians, it relies on its Mizrahi identity to destroy this binarism, and thus develops a flexible moral and political stance. Through writing his poetry as a \"minor literature,\" Someck can maneuver between its two linguistic options—deterritorialization on one hand and reterritorialization on the other. A very impressive example is the poem about the Israeli Arab-Druze poet Samih El Kasem, in which he highlights the poet's guitar-playing in Hebrew as a major language. The deterritorialization in Samih El Kasem's poetry is expressed in the subversive deterritorialization of Someck's poem. The linguistic deterritorialization is visible when Someck defines his poetry as a stammer and thus gives voice to the oppressed and the rebels.","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":"68 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44387013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Living Law","authors":"E. Avrutin, B. Rosenstock","doi":"10.1353/sho.2022.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2022.0041","url":null,"abstract":"Professor Bruce Rosenstock (1951–2023), passed away on the morning of January 5, 2023 after a long battle with cancer. A passionate activist for justice, equality, and pluralism, Professor Rosenstock taught at the University of California, Davis and at Stanford University before joining the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign faculty in 2002. Professor Rosenstock was the author of numerous wellreceived books on political theology and modern Jewish philosophy, including New Men: Conversos, Christian Theology, and Society in Fifteenth-Century Castile (2002), Philosophy and the Jewish Question: Mendelssohn, Rosenzweig , and Beyond (2010), and Transfinite Life: Oskar Goldberg and the Vitalist Imagination (2017). Most recently, Rosenstock was at work on a book titled “Hegel and the Holocaust,” an exploration of four thinkers who have attempted to respond to the Holocaust in the terms of Hegel’s philosophy. An inspiring teacher, Rosenstock was a longtime member of the Executive Committee in the Program in Jewish Culture and Society and served as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Religion.","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":"213 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47543365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Context and Continuity in Histories of Antisemitism","authors":"Paul Hanebrink","doi":"10.1353/sho.2022.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2022.0036","url":null,"abstract":"the","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":"182 - 187"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41937527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reinvigorating the Field: A Critical Intervention in the Study of Antisemitism","authors":"Emilie Wiedemann","doi":"10.1353/sho.2022.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2022.0038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"2 3","pages":"199 - 205"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41270200","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust by Natalia Aleksiun (review)","authors":"Helene J. Sinnreich","doi":"10.1353/sho.2022.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2022.0039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"40 1","pages":"206 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46268499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Orthodox Judaism's Concept of the Political","authors":"Itamar Ben Ami","doi":"10.1353/sho.2023.a911217","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2023.a911217","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Guided by concepts advanced in Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political , this article attempts to formulate Orthodox Judaism's concept of the political. While it is evident that different Orthodox groups hold different and sometimes opposing political views, the question remains whether Orthodoxy as such possesses a foundational conceptualization of the sphere of the political that might be also be framed as \"Orthodox.\" The article presents three possible internal Orthodox conceptualizations of \"the political,\" yet highlights each of these positions' failure to integrate Orthodox commitment to halakha within a truly political framework. The first conceptualization negates the political in a manner that subsumes this realm under the purview of halakha. The second acknowledges the political as a secular realm standing outside the boundaries of halakha. The third possesses a religious understanding of the political that is nonetheless non-halakhic. In order to present an Orthodox concept of the political, the article turns to two thinkers who offered a critique of the epistemological regime of modernity (which is responsible for the existence of the political as a distinct sphere) from an Orthodox stance: Isaac Breuer and the young Leo Strauss. Their reflection on the political as such led them to call for a politicization of Orthodoxy's very commitment to halakha. Retrieving Breuer's and Strauss's truly Orthodox concept of the political enables the formulation of a novel, hitherto underdeveloped Orthodox critique of Zionism. Whereas Zionist voices tend to comprehend the exilic stance of Orthodoxy as apolitical compared to their own attempt to politicize Jewish existence, Breuer and Strauss argue that it is precisely Zionism that fails to offer a concept of the political that is truly Jewish.","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"143 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135505417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Post-Zionism, Post-Modernism, and Globalization: A Zionist Critique of Israel as \"Start-Up Nation\" in the Writings of Eliezer Schweid","authors":"Shaul Magid","doi":"10.1353/sho.2023.a911221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sho.2023.a911221","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article explores the later work of Eliezer Schweid on the questions of Zionism, post-Zionism, globalization, and postmodernity. It argues that Schweid viewed postmodernity as emerging in the post-World War II era where communism and socialism largely collapsed, leaving free-market capitalism as the dominant force in world economies and, by extension, as the template for moral living. This produced, among other things, neoliberalism and globalization that threatened the very core of Zionism as an ideology of collective Jewish self-determination built on a democratic socialist ethos. On Schweid's reading, the neoliberal and globalist (postmodern) developments produce a serious challenge to Zionism. This includes, I argue, the idea of Israel as \"Start-Up Nation,\" which is often championed as the success of contemporary Zionism.","PeriodicalId":21809,"journal":{"name":"Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135506983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}