Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)最新文献

{"title":"A Response to Melissa Raphael and Discussion Points","authors":"Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2019-130107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2019-130107","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"02 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127188075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Joy of Wisdom. An Interview with Judith R. Baskin","authors":"Judith R. Baskin, Katja Stuerzenhofecker","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2019-130103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2019-130103","url":null,"abstract":"What follows is a transcript of the interview with Judith R. Baskin that opened the Sherman Conversations 2017 on the theme ‘Gender and Jewish Studies’.1 Baskin is Philip H. Knight Professor Emerita in Humanities in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. Most of her work is in the areas of medieval studies and Rabbinic literature.2 Her contribution to gender studies in Jewish Studies spans four decades, beginning at a time when there were virtually no gender-sensitive resources to draw on. It is this general aspect of living through and contributing to the paradigm shift brought about by the emergence of gender studies that is the focus of this interview. The appreciation of Baskin’s output itself is left to those who can do it justice. The interview highlights significant milestones in the journey of Baskin’s scholarship including her awakening to the twin facts that there is a huge gap in the historiography of the Jewish past, and a limited construction of what it means to be a Jew. We explore factors that have facilitated and hindered Baskin’s career, and the ways in which she herself has built networks of support. The title of this interview refers to simchat hokhmah, the ritual created by Savina Teubal in the 1980s to celebrate a woman’s transition from adult to elder as a vital member of the community with many gifts to share. Judith Baskin had moved on to being emerita only three months previous to the interview. It seems more than fitting that during the interview we watched a video of Debbie Friedman singing for the first time “L’chi Lach” at Teubal’s own simchat hokhmah.3 That is to say, Baskin’s publications and interventions in academic institutions continue to be a blessing for Jewish Studies.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"175 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117082668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Idoloclasm: The First Task of Second Wave Liberal Jewish Feminism","authors":"Melissa R Raphael","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120112","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120112","url":null,"abstract":"This article suggests that Second Wave liberal Jewish feminism combined secular feminist criticism of the ideological roots of social injustice with traditional criticism of idolatry. Together, these closely related discourses allowed Jewish feminists to argue, with Christian feminists of the time, that the monosexual God who demands that idols be broken is himself an idol: a primary ideational and linguistic projection whose masculine character obstructs the political and existential becoming of women. Liberal Jewish feminists such as Judith Plaskow, in dispute with early Orthodox Jewish feminism, therefore insisted that Jewish feminism must begin with a counter-idolatrous reform of the theological concepts that underpin the relationship between God, self, and world, not with making permissible alterations to halakhah. However, while liberal Jewish feminists reclaimed some of the female aspects of the Jewish God (notably the Shekhinah), the point of reforming a tradition is to be faithful to it. They did not join their more radical Jewish sisters in a more or less pagan break with ethical monotheism, not least because the latter's criticism of idolatry funded their own prophetic drive to the liberation of both women and God from captivity to their patriarchal idea.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"129 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126932054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Doubting Abraham doubting God – The Call of Abraham in the Or ha-Sekhel","authors":"Benjamin Williams","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120106","url":null,"abstract":": Abraham ben Asher’s Or ha-Sekhel , an exposition of Genesis Rabba, was published in Venice in 1567. The author frequently interprets midrashim by listing and then harmonising series of “doubts” or “questions” ( sefekot or she ʾ elot ) that arise in the text. The present study analyses this mode of exegesis by examining Abraham ben Asher’s interpretation of the exposition of the Call of Abraham at Genesis Rabba 39:1. The midrash likens the biblical account (Genesis 12:1) to a wayfarer who, on seeing a burning building, asked whether anyone was in charge and was subsequently confronted by the owner. Thus Abraham asked whether anyone was in charge of the world and then received his divine mandate. Abraham ben Asher begins his interpretation with a startling observation: the midrash seems to imply that Abraham questioned the existence of God. In the harmonising interpretation that follows, Abraham ben Asher reassures the reader that the patriarch considered the nature of divine providence rather than God’s existence. Nevertheless, as this paper argues, he deliberately led his audience to entertain the notion that Abraham once lacked a proper understanding of monotheism. Thi s serves a rhetorical purpose, capturing the reader’s interest in how the expositor will solve the problem he raised. By assailing readers with questions and then providing solutions, Abraham ben Asher also creates the impression that any uncertainties that may arise in the study of midrash will inevitably have satisfactory resolutions because the sages’ words can always be expounded so as to reveal harmonious and coherent interpretations.","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122520938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Secular Theology as a Challenge for Jewish Atheists","authors":"Avner Dinur","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120114","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses the term “secular theology” to criticize Jewish-religious approaches on the one hand and atheism on the other hand. It shows that the assumption of many that atheism stands at the centre of secular thought is baseless. The first part, largely assuming an Israeli context, claims that this assumption is problematic from a sociological and historical perspective. The second part follows Jewish philosophers who use theological ideas at the centre of their thought, and at the same time do not fit into the realm of Jewish religious writing of the 20th century. The distinction between the ontological and the ethical “role” of God in the theology of Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Levinas and Martin Buber, is used to create new borderlines between the secular and the religious – “soft” borders that do not exclude God from secular world-views. This paper is a critique of a common secular approach that is based, I argue, on a misunderstanding of religion in general and Jewish religion in particular. This approach, which I call “naïve atheism,” claims that atheism is the main pillar of secular world-views, and that through modern science we can see how ridiculous religious doctrines are, understand that God does not exist, and thus recognize that we should struggle to push religion into a dark corner of society. A deeper understanding of Jewish religion and culture, I argue, will enable us to find a place for the belief in God within Jewish secular world-views, and hence will promote a “secular theology.” This line of thinking is based on the one hand on a strong critique of central religious beliefs, but on the other hand, aspires to promote a better society on the basis of theological ideas that are inseparable from Jewish thought throughout the generations. The discussion, and a few of the definitions I will use for terms like “Jewish-secular identity” (Zehut Yehudit Chilonit תינוליח תידוהי תוהז), or “Traditional Jews” (Mesorati’im – םייתרוסמ), is in general an Israeli one, and it builds upon the unique definitions of secularism and religiousness found in Israel,1 but the thinkers I draw from, Hans Jonas, Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber and others, are not necessarily Israeli, and the conclusions, I hope, can be relevant for other readers – Jews in the diaspora, secular nonJews, and others. My suggestion is to read the Jewish philosophy of these thinkers under the umbrella term “secular-theology,” and to use this concept as an analytical category by * Lecturer of Jewish Studies at Sapir College and Seminar-Hakibbutzim. Email: avnerdinur@gmail.com A previous version of this paper appeared in Hebrew in Akdamot 30 (2015): 65-76. 1 Many studies on this uniqueness can be found, including the studies in the following three collections: Yossi Yonah and Yehuda Goodman, eds., Maelstrom of Identities: A Critical look at religion and Secularity in Israel [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Van Leer & Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2004); Gideon Kats, Shlalom Ratzabi and Yaacov Yadgar, e","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121811825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Scepticism of Scepticism: On Mendelssohn’s Philosophy of Common Sense","authors":"J. Fogel","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120108","url":null,"abstract":"In a seemingly contradictory manner, Moses Mendelssohn steadfastly argued for classical metaphysical postulates such as God, providence and immortality on the one hand, and held a sceptical approach towards metaphysics on the other. This tension is resolved through the appraisal of Mendelssohn’s position as sceptical of what he took to be exceedingly speculative thinking in general, and the overly abstruse arguments sceptical philosophers have used to attack commonsensical truths, which he depicted as simple and self-evident, in particular. At first sight, Mendelssohn’s scepticism of scepticism and its turn towards a philosophy that emphasizes not only the trustworthiness but also the truthfulness of commonsensical thinking, seems to radically subvert scepticism. Yet, Pyrrho’s philosophy, widely perceived to be the foundation of the sceptical tradition in Western philosophy, also very much relied on common sense, a reliance which suggests it might have tacitly adhered to the epistemological principles Mendelssohn explicitly advocates. Rather than subverting scepticism, Mendelssohn’s scepticism of scepticism therefore reflects a characteristically moderate and nuanced approach, one offering a profound reappraisal of what scepticism is in thought, and what it ought to be in life. A striking common characteristic of philosophers advocating common sense in their philosophies is that their common sense is of a rather uncommon kind. After all, those who these philosophers themselves would have considered to be common people, do not necessarily begin to think commonsensically about the world after having reflected on the possibility of rather more metaphysically exotic or otherwise esoterically laden perspectives. The “common” common sense is thought of as being of a more primary kind, something akin perhaps to a healthy reflex of the mind which leads it, when facing reality, to apodictically accept the obvious. While Berkeley, for example, famously claimed to “side in all things with the mob,”1 and emphasized the importance of “the high-road of plain common sense,”2 such healthy minded reflexes seem not to have acted on the Bishop of Cloyne when he embarked on the kind of speculation which would eventually lead him to his immaterialism. Both the path and its goal, after all, are commonly untrodden. So even if Berkeley is telling us that philosophy’s role is to lead us back to common sense, it does not make the enterprise itself commonsensical. Nor indeed, does it make the conclusion his philosophy and others present as commonsensical, genuinely so in any meaningful sense of the word. Philosophers’ conception of what is commonsensical could, and seems indeed to reliably have been, rather different than what would be reflected by, * PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the Department of Jewish Philosophy, Tel Aviv University. Email: jeremy fogel@gmail.com 1 George Berkeley, “Commonplace Book,” in The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne, 4. vols. (O","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"60 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131480078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Monotheism to Scepticism and Back Again","authors":"K. Seeskin","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2016-120103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2016-120103","url":null,"abstract":"Although it is customary to view monotheism and scepticism as opposite, I want to argue that they are closely related – so closely that if you understand monotheism correctly, you will see that a certain form of scepticism is an inevitable consequence. The key to this connection is to recognize that monotheism is more than a claim about number of God; it is also a claim about the uniqueness or incomparability of God. The latter raises a central question: How do you characterize something that is incomparable to everything else? Looking at Maimonides and Aquinas, I argue that to a great extent, you cannot characterize it. Thus Maimonides concluded that silence is the best praise we can offer to God. While Aquinas tried to avoid such a radical conclusion, even he admitted that the words we use to signify God leave the thing signified incomprehensible. Let us now take the next step. If God is the source of all existence, and God is incomprehensible, then scepticism about existence is unavoidable. In the words of Emmanuel Levinas: “The infinite affects thought by devastating it.” It should be clear to anyone who has read the Hebrew Bible in a critical way that monotheism did not emerge all at once and that in many cases it is doubtful whether its major characters would be considered monotheists in our sense of the term.1 Ancient traditions, both rabbinic and philosophic, held that Abraham was the first person to reject idolatry and embrace monotheism.2 The truth is, however, that the Bible has very little to say about Abraham’s theology except that he trusted in God and was accounted righteous as a result (Genesis 15:6). But as anyone can see, to trust in God is not to say that God is the only deity. For all we know, Abraham thought there were other gods who, though not as reliable as his, are still forces to be reckoned with. Much the same could be said of Moses. While the Second Commandment tells us that there should be no other gods before YHWH, it is unclear whether this means that the other gods are not as important as YHWH or that they are nothing but figments of the human imagination. By the same token, the fact that one cannot make or serve an image of God leaves open the question of whether it is impossible to represent an immaterial God in plastic form or whether it is possible but conflicts with how God wants to be worshipped. Recently the biblical scholar Benjamin Sommer wrote that the evidence that the God of the Hebrew Bible has a body is overwhelming.3 In fact, according to Sommer: “God has many bodies located in sundry places in the world that God created.” If God does have a body, then there is no reason why a person could not represent God in plastic form if God were to allow it. Even a casual reader of the Bible knows that it does not hesitate to * Klutznick Professor of Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University. Email: k-seeskin@northwestern.edu 1 For further treatment of some of the issues discussed in this essay, see Kennet","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130244237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Textualism and Scepticism: Post-modern Philosophy and the Theology of Text","authors":"Federico Dal Bo","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120110","url":null,"abstract":"This paper addresses the religious notion of “textualism” – the formalistic assumption that a text is meaningful only when it is understood in itself and solely from itself. In the present paper, I will implicitly refer to this legal notion of “textualism” but I will be more generic with respect to the interpretation of the text and more specific with respect of the nature of the text itself. On the one hand, I will refer to “textualism” as to the hermeneutical assumption that the meaning of a text is inherently autonomous and does not require extra-textual sources; on the other hand, I will specifically refer here to religious texts and assume that they shall not be understood outside from their inherent cultural perimeter. This paper addresses the religious notion of “textualism” – the formalistic assumption that a text is meaningful only when it is understood in itself and solely from itself. More specifically, the notion of “textualism” has been introduced in contemporary jurisprudence in order to justify interpretations of legal texts under the presupposition that their ordinary meaning – eventually provided both by their rhetoric and their legal vocabulary – should govern their exhaustive interpretation. This assumption obviously has a clear consequence: non-textual sources would necessarily escape the intention of the legislator and therefore shall be excluded from ordinary hermeneutical means by which to interpret the legal texts themselves.1 In the present paper, I will implicitly refer to this legal notion of “textualism” but I will be more generic with respect to the interpretation of the text and more specific with respect of the nature of the text itself. On the one hand, I will refer to “textualism” as to the hermeneutical assumption that the meaning of a text is inherently autonomous and does not require extra-textual sources; on the other hand, I will specifically refer here to religious texts and assume that they shall not be understood outside from their inherent cultural perimeter. In the present paper I will refrain from treating the notion of “textualism” within Scripture itself, since this would rather require a specific treatment of a number of unavoidable very complex issues, such as: the definition of Biblical canon and the distinction between Jewish, Catholic, Christian-Orthodox, and Protestant Biblical canon; 2 the difference and battle for supremacy between different Biblical languages * Post-doctoral fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry. Email: fdalbo@gmail.com 1 On a critical appreciation of the notion of “textualism” as a doctrine about statutory interpretation applied especially to the Anglo-Saxon Common Law, see: Andrei Marmor, Law in the Age of Pluralism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 197-214. For a philosophical definition of “textualism,” see: Richard Rorty, “NineteenthCentury Idealism and Twentieth-Century Textualism,” The Monist 64.2 (1981): 155-174, published also in Richard Rort","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"45 36","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120867214","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Attenuation of God in Modern Jewish Thought","authors":"N. Solomon","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120111","url":null,"abstract":"Critical Bible scholarship reveals much diversity in ancient Israelite notions of God, but whatever the theology, the Bible rarely leaves room for doubt that God is alive, alert, vigorous and righteous; even Job, despite his sense of injustice, does not doubt that ultimately God is just, and is in control of events. Modern times have seen a change of attitude, not simply on account of the apparent injustice in the world, but more fundamentally because the successes of science have made God redundant as an explanation for natural phenomena. Twentieth-century Jewish thinkers such as Mordecai M. Kaplan have sought to replace God by social constructs, while those who retain traditional God-talk range from Heschel, whose “anthropopathic God” shares human emotion, to Eliezer Berkovits (“the hidden God”), and from J. D. Soloveitchik (the God of halakha) to Richard Rubenstein (the non-interventionist God) and David Blumenthal (God as abusing parent). In this paper I shall review some of the main theories, while enquiring whether their proponents have anything in common with ancient and mediaeval believers, or whether they have subverted the older God-language, in some cases attenuating the concept of God to the point of atheism. The Bible and its Aftermath Broadly speaking – the dividing lines are not sharp – talk about God has moved (“shifted”) through three phases, or models (“paradigms”):  In the ancient world the Israelite claim that there was One, supreme God, was essentially a denial; it meant that human affairs were not controlled by several powerful, conflicting superhuman agencies.  Medieval Jews, Christians and Muslims all agreed that there was only one supreme Power; discussion was dominated by the practical question of how to relate to this One Being, and the theoretical question of how to accommodate his undoubted existence within some rational scheme.  Contemporary thinkers, by contrast, are concerned neither with demonstrating the superiority of the One God, nor with proving his existence, but by attempts to make sense of the “God-concept”; discourse revolves around the question of what, if anything, do people mean when they use the word “god.” Critical Bible scholarship reveals much diversity in ancient Israelite notions of God. Sometimes, for instance Psalm 82, the Bible portrays God as the greatest and most just of the gods; elsewhere, he is the only God. The theology varies, but the Bible rarely leaves room for doubt that God is alive, alert, in control of events, righteous and caring. Even Job, despite his sense of injustice, does not doubt that ultimately God is both all-powerful and just, if inscrutable; Kohelet is perhaps more sceptical. * Fellow in Modern Jewish Thought at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (retired). Email: norman.solomon@orinst.ox.ac.uk MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015) 98 Jews in Late Antiquity, like Greeks reading Hesiod and Homer, were worried by the attribution to God (or","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126630995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Why the Geese Shrieked”: Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Work Between Mysticism and Scepticism","authors":"Khayke Beruriah Wiegand","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2016-120115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2016-120115","url":null,"abstract":"In a chapter of his memoirs, the acclaimed Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer grants his readers some insight into the life of his father’s rabbinic household in Warsaw – a household full of contrasts and tensions between his parents’ conflicting personalities, between Hasidic and Mitnagdic tendencies and between mysticism and scepticism. Both his father’s mysticism and his mother’s scepticism were formative influences on Bashevis, and his writing constantly vacillates between these two world-views. Bashevis is well-known for his short stories about demons, dybbuks and other supernatural phenomena, but it is interesting to note that at times his demons clearly seem to be external manifestations of internal, psychological states of being, whereas at other times no rational explanation for an apparent supernatural phenomenon can be found. Bashevis’s narrators and protagonists constantly question God and express their scepticism about traditional Jewish beliefs, while, on the other hand, they are deeply influenced by Jewish mystical ideas. The conflict between rationalism and mysticism, between modern philosophy and Jewish religious beliefs, especially Kabbalistic ideas, never gets resolved in Bashevis’s works, but this continuous tension is exactly what makes Bashevis such a great writer! In the second chapter of his memoirs בוטש ןיד-תיב סנטאַט ןײַמ (In My Father’s Court), entitled “ןגירשעג ןבאָה זדנעג יד סאָװראַפ” (“Why the Geese Shrieked”), the acclaimed Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904 – 1991) grants his readers some significant insight into the life of his father’s rabbinic household on Krokhmalne-gas (ulica Krochmalna) in Warsaw, a household full of contrasts and tensions between his parents’ conflicting personalities, between Hasidic and Mitnagdic tendencies and between mysticism and scepticism.1 Bashevis’s father, Rabbi Pinkhes-Mendl Zinger, was descended from an illustrious line of rabbis, scholars and Kabbalists. He was a believer in Hasidism and a follower of the Radzymin Rebe.2 Yitskhok’s mother, Basheve Zinger, née Zilberman, was the youngest daughter of the highly-respected rabbi of Biłgoraj, who was the undisputed authority of his town, an outstanding scholar and a Mitnaged, an opponent of Hasidism. Basheve herself was a rationalist and an intellectual and was sceptical by nature. She was also much more scholarly than other women of a similar background and position in society.3 The  Khayke Beruriah Wiegand is the Woolf Corob Lector in Yiddish at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (University of Oxford). Email: BeruriahWiegand@aol.com 1 Yitskhok Bashevis-Zinger, בוטש ןיד-תיב סנטאַט ןײַמ [In My Father’s Court] (Tel Aviv: Y.L. Perets, 1979), 15-19. This is a reprint of the first edition (New York: Kval, 1956), but without the author’s introduction. For an English translation, see Isaac Bashevis Singer, In My Father’s Court, trans. Channah Kleinerman-Goldstein, Elaine Gottlieb and Joseph Singer (London: Penguin,","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133301452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}