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

{"title":"BREAKING TABOOS IN ISRAELI HOLOCAUST LITERATURE","authors":"D. Abramovich","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2014-100105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2014-100105","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the phenomenon of second-generation Israeli Holocaust literature, also known as ‘bearing witness’ fiction, that appeared with great resonance on the Hebrew literary scene in the 1980s. It argues that this new band of writers overcame the dual moral obstacles of describing a reality that they did not directly experience and making art of a subject that defies human comprehension. The article focuses on one particularly important novel, Agadat Ha-agamim Ha-atzuvim1 (The Legend of the Sad Lakes) by Itamar Levy, which tested the limits of representation of the Holocaust and provoked intense debate about its graphic and violent scenes of Jews tortured by the Nazis as well as about its postmodern techniques in portraying the Holocaust experience. The article maintains that despite the fact that Agadat Ha-agamim Ha-atzuvim broke taboos in Israeli Holocaust literature with its disturbing, and perhaps sensational sequences, that at heart Levy’s narrative presents a profound confrontation with the anguished past that affords young readers the necessary gateway to engage with the Holocaust on an individual, rather than a public level. The article makes the case that novels such as Agadat Ha-agamim Ha-atzuvim represent deeply veined journeys into the heart of the Nazi beast, by Israeli writers who are propelled by a wish to unshackle the Shoah from the fetters of the collective and reclaim it as a personal experience. Despite the critical and testimonial surfeit available about the Shoah, and the relentless sword thrusting by historians, a sensitive and intelligent novel of the Holocaust can offer a band of golden rays for those numbed by the nature of historical documentation. No doubt, novels and short stories can grant an open space for independent and meaningful thought about the Holocaust in a way that history books cannot. This inevitably raises the question of how does one write after Auschwitz?, how do those who mercifully were spared the catastrophe imaginatively fill in the blanks?, and how do they translate the trauma that has been transmitted with empathy and affinity? Indeed, an often discussed aspect of the act of writing after Auschwitz is the way in which it tests the limits of representation. Second generation Holocaust stories encompass multivalent forms. They often depict the life crises of the children of survivors, who delve into their consciousness to recover their personal identity, yet sometimes adopt fantasy, blurring the boundaries dividing truth and fiction. This brings up the question of the authenticity and the legitimacy of such writing, especially when it engages in flights of fantasy – usually associated with postmodernism – that may deform and twist the burning horror. Thus, an obvious question is: why are second generation prose writers shifting to the fantastic over the mimetic? Hanna Yaoz takes up this point: * Director of the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, School of Historical & Philosophic","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122337448","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":"ABRAHAM ISAAC KOOK’S ACCOUNT OF ‘CREATIVE EVOLUTION’: A RESPONSE TO MODERNITY FOR THE SAKE OF ZION","authors":"D. Langton","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2014-100102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2014-100102","url":null,"abstract":"The Chief Rabbi of Israel and religious Zionist Abraham I. Kook is well known for having written about evolution. His mystical interpretation of the theory is often presented as a synthetic or complementary model that effectively offered a defence of Judaism in the context of the religion-science debate. But this is not the only context in which one might consider his views on the topic. From a political perspective, one might note his interest in the influence of Darwinism in the thought of secular Jews. And if one gives due weight to his appreciation of secular Zionists’ work in building up the Land and combines this with his earlier, often overlooked writings on evolution in which the mystical dimension is missing, then it is possible to suggest that his engagement with evolutionary theory reflected as much a political concern to build bridges between religious and nonreligious Zionists as it expressed a theological defence of traditional Judaism against the challenges of modern science. Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) was the first Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel, a position he held during the pre-State Mandate period 1919-1935, and the most influential leader of religious Zionism at that time. Strictly speaking, Kook was not primarily interested in biological evolutionary theory and certainly not Darwinian natural selection despite the fact that he is probably the Jewish religious authority best known for having engaged positively with evolution. Rather than the directionless, chance-driven theory of natural selection, Kook’s interest in evolutionary theory was actually as a philosophical theory of progress. According to most commentators on Kook, including Shai Cherry, the chief authority on the matter,1 he approached the subject through the prism of a mystical conception of ascent in an attempt to maintain the integrity of Jewish tradition in the face of the challenges of modernity. He sought to reassure anxious co-religionists that evolutionary theory posed no threat to Judaism but rather conformed to existing kabbalistic teachings about cosmic evolution and a progressive world. To achieve this end, Kook attempted to present mystical and scientific understandings of evolution as complementary to each other. What has been left out of this account, however, is the role of Zionism. In what follows it will be argued that there were actually two stages to Kook’s * Professor of the History of Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Manchester. Email: daniel.langton@manchester.ac.uk My thanks to Marc Shapiro for drawing my attention to Kook’s early sources, and for his estimates of the dates of several of Kook’s other works, and to Noam Livne for his assistance with Kook’s Hebrew and for his helpful comments throughout. 1 Shai Cherry, ‘Three Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory’, Aleph 3 (2003). This is derived from his wider survey of Jewish engagement with evolution: Michael Shai Cherry, ‘Creation, Evolution and Je","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126380556","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 SIMPLE JEW’: THE ‘PRICE TAG’ PHENOMENON, VIGILANTISM, AND RABBI YITZCHAK GINSBURGH’S POLITICAL KABBALAH","authors":"T. Satherley","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2014-100106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2014-100106","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the Kabbalistic theosophy of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, and allegations of links between his yeshiva and violent political activism and vigilantism. Ginsburgh is head of the yeshiva Od Yosef Chai (Joseph Still Lives) in Samaria/the northern West Bank. His students and colleagues have been accused by the authorities of violence and vandalism against Arabs in the context of ‘price tag’ actions and vigilante attacks, while publications by Ginsburgh and his yeshiva colleagues such as Barukh HaGever (Barukh the Man/Blessed is the Man) and Torat HaMelekh (The King’s Torah) have been accused of inciting racist violence. This paper sketches the yeshiva’s history in the public spotlight and describes the esoteric, Kabbalistic framework behind Ginsburgh’s politics, focusing on his political readings of Zoharic Kabbalah and teachings about the mystical value of spontaneous revenge attacks by ‘the simple Jew’, who acts upon his feelings of righteous indignation without prior reflection. The conclusion explores and attempts to delimit the explanatory power of such mystical teachings in light of the sociological characteristics of the Hilltop Youth most often implicated as price tag ‘operatives’ and existing scholarly models of vigilantism. It also points to aspects of the mystical teachings with potential for special potency in this context. Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh (1944-) is a Chabad rabbi and head of the Od Yosef Chai (Joseph Still Lives) yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, near the major Palestinian population centre of Nablus (biblical Shechem). The yeshiva occupies an unusual discursive space – neither mainstream religious Zionist (though some of its teaching staff were educated in this tradition) nor formally affiliated with the Hasidic movement, despite Ginsburgh’s own affiliation with Chabad and despite his teachings being steeped in its Kabbalistic inheritance. Od Yosef Chai is no stranger to negative publicity: its rabbis have drawn flak from all quarters for allegedly inciting racist and/or vigilante violence. The police and Shin Bet claim yeshiva students have directly participated in such violence and have imposed both administrative detentions and travel bans, backed by unpublished confidential intelligence. This paper presents an analysis of the political Kabbalah of the yeshiva’s president and spiritual father (Ginsburgh) and explores the nature of its connections to a brand of settler activism led by Hilltop Youth that has polarized the Israeli public: the so-called ‘price tag’ acts. It commences by situating price tagging in the context of extant studies of settler vigilantism. It then presents a historical overview of public controversies around the yeshiva and the claimed links with price tagging specifically and vigilante violence * PhD Candidate in Jewish Society and Culture, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia. Email: tessa.satherley@unimelb.edu.au I wish to thank Dr Dvir","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123695424","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":"DOWN WITH BRITAIN, AWAY WITH ZIONISM: THE ‘CANAANITES’ AND ‘LOHAMEY HERUT ISRAEL’ BETWEEN TWO ADVERSARIES","authors":"Roman Vater","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2014-100104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2014-100104","url":null,"abstract":"The imposition of the British Mandate over Palestine in 1922 put the Zionist leadership between a rock and a hard place, between its declared allegiance to the idea of Jewish sovereignty and the necessity of cooperation with a foreign ruler. Eventually, both Labour and Revisionist Zionism accommodated themselves to the new situation and chose a strategic partnership with the British Empire. However, dissident opinions within the Revisionist movement were voiced by a group known as the Maximalist Revisionists from the early 1930s. This article analyzes the intellectual and political development of two Maximalist Revisionists – Yonatan Ratosh and Israel Eldad – tracing their gradual shift to anti-Zionist positions. Some questions raised include: when does opposition to Zionist politics transform into opposition to Zionist ideology, and what are the implications of such a transition for the Israeli political scene after 1948?","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121375623","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":"ZIONISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM IN THE CATHOLIC GUILD OF ISRAEL: BEDE JARRETT, ARTHUR DAY AND HANS HERZL","authors":"S. Mayers","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2014-100103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2014-100103","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines Zionism and Anti-Zionism in the discourse of key members of the Catholic Guild of Israel, an English Catholic movement for the conversion of the Jews. The central theme in the discourse of the Guild was Jewish ‘power’. It was argued that the Jews had great vitality, zeal and energy, which made them dangerous outside of the Church, but an asset if they could be brought into it. This idea was disseminated by Bede Jarrett and Arthur Day, the two most senior and prolific members of the Guild. Their notions of Jewish power influenced their views about Jews and Zionism. They both saw Jewish power and Zionism as a threat and opportunity, but Jarrett placed the emphasis on threat, whilst Day placed the emphasis on opportunity. One prominent member of the Guild who did not gravitate to their views was Hans Herzl, a convert to Catholicism and the son of the Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl. On the surface Hans adopted the anti-Zionism of Jarrett. Unlike Jarrett, however, Hans believed in Jewish nationalism, although he interpreted it as a spiritual rather than political movement. His ideal Jewish nation was a ‘Christian theocracy of Jewish faith’ with the Pope as sovereign and protector. During the early decades of the twentieth-century, Jews were often stereotyped and mythologized in English Catholic newspapers, books, sermons and pastoral letters, as usurers, cowards, bolsheviks, conspirators, Christ-Killers and Antichrists.1 From 1917 onwards, following the Balfour Declaration, these myths and stereotypes combined with criticisms of Zionism to form a new composite construction: ‘the Zionist Menace’. This construction drew upon contemporary stereotypes, suggesting that ‘the Jew’ was exploiting his political power, commercial expertise and dominance in finance, in order to wrest control of Jerusalem from Christians and Muslims. There was an explicitly religious dimension to these representations. Why, it was asked, was the scene of the Passion being handed over to the hereditary enemies of Christianity, and how could Zionism be supported when the Jews had desired the sacrifice of Christ?2 However, whilst these stereotypes and myths were characteristic of the broader English Catholic discourse, there were exceptions. One organisation that did not quite correlate with the broader English Catholic discourse was the Catholic Guild of Israel. * Independent scholar. Currently investigating antisemitism in English Catholic newspapers during the nineteenth-century, supported by a research grant from the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism. http://simonmayers.com/ 1 These myths and stereotypes were examined in Simon Mayers, ‘From “the Pharisee” to “the Zionist Menace”: Myths, Stereotypes and Constructions of the Jew in English Catholic Discourse (1896-1929)’ (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2012). See also Simon Mayers, ‘From the Christ-Killer to the Luciferian: The Mythologized Jew and Freemason in Late Ninete","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115690056","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":"AN ARAMAIC DISPUTE BETWEEN THE MONTHS BY SAHLAN BEN AVRAHAM","authors":"Michael Rand","doi":"10.31826/MJJ-2013-090105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/MJJ-2013-090105","url":null,"abstract":"The article offers an overview of the corpus of poetic disputes between the months composed in Aramaic, together with a critical edition of one such poem, by Sahlan ben Avraham (Fustat, 11th century). The critical edition is accompanied by translations of the poem into Hebrew and English. Part of the text given in the critical edition is based on a copy found in a Genizah document copied in the 13th century by Yedutun Ha-Levi, now known as . The history of publication of this document is reviewed, and a description of its remaining fragments (including a INTRODUCTION: ARAMAIC DISPUTES BETWEEN THE MONTHS The corpus of Late Antique Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poetry1 may be conveniently divided into three categories on the basis of the Sitz im Leben of the poems: 1) poems that are connected in one way or another to the liturgical reading of the Aramaic Targum (i.e., socalled Targum poetry), 2) poems that are intended for para-liturgical occasions, in particular wedding poems and dirges, and 3) poems that are intended for incorporation into the liturgy proper.2 Cutting across this three-way distinction on the basis of locus (i.e., appearing in all three categories) is a literary type whose position within the corpus is quite prominent: the dialogue poem. In turn, a special sub-category of this type is the dispute poem. Dialogue poems in general and dispute poems in particular are of great interest to those who wish to trace the origins and development of Jewish Aramaic poetry on account of the fact that they are well attested in the roughly contemporaneous Christian Syriac poetic culture. Taken together with additional parallels between the two traditions, this shared feature points in the * Lecturer in Hebrew and Aramaic, University of Cambridge. Email: qalir@yahoo.com 1 This corpus has been conveniently collected in M. Sokoloff and J. Yahalom, ( Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999). Several of its aspects are the subject of an extensive and penetrating analysis by M. Kister, \" \", Tarbiz. 76 (2006/07), 105–84. 2 present state of our knowledge of the corpus, the third category is essentially restricted to qinot, i.e., poetic dirges composed for the liturgy of the Ninth of Av. For an analysis of this group of poems, see M. Rand, “Observations on the Relationship between JPA poetry and the Hebrew Piyyut Tradition – The Case of the Kinot,” in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into Its History and Interactions, eds. A. Gerhards and C. Leonhard (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 127–44. There is no reason to suppose that a relationship of dependence exists between the Aramaic and Hebrew qinot – i.e., that the former are somehow an imitation of the latter, or vice versa. It is quite likely that at some point in Late Antiquity, Aramaic and Hebrew qinot were simply composed alongside one another, with the Hebrew qinot eventually winning out by being incorporated permanently into the liturgy (with the result that the genre ","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122805054","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":"EMERGENT LIBERAL JUDAISM AND LILY MONTAGU’S PROTO-FEMINIST PROJECT: EXPLORING THE PRECURSIVE AND CONCEPTUAL LINKS WITH SECOND AND THIRD-WAVE JEWISH FEMINIST THEOLOGIES","authors":"Luke Devine","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2013-090102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2013-090102","url":null,"abstract":"Lily Montagu was the founder of Liberal Judaism in England. Because of Montagu’s groundbreaking proto-feminist efforts women in Liberal Judaism can become rabbis, be called up to read the Torah, they are equal in divorce law, they can study the sacred texts, they can form a minyan, and can assume communal and religious positions of authority over men. Montagu was an author, theologian, and social worker; she was the driving force behind the development of Liberal Judaism. However, this biographical overview does not match up with the extant historiography that has instead preferred to focus on the male leaders of the Liberal movement to the extent that Montagu’s intellectual and theological contribution has been marginalized and even completely ignored. In this paper we will siècle Anglo-Jewry that would otherwise be forgotten; even more, we will see in Montagu’s essays, monographs, and novels some of the English foundations of contemporary Jewish feminist theology. In the process, the biography and memory of Lily Montagu will be restored to its rightful place. Lily Montagu was the founder of Anglo-Liberal Judaism, but the extant scholarship has not been forthcoming in acknowledging the extent of her role in the expansion of the movement. In fact, Montagu’s part in the formation and development of Liberal Judaism into an established denomination, and her contribution to the intellectual, spiritual, and theological underpinnings of the movement, have been marginalized, downplayed, and even ignored, with analyses of her involvement even bordering on the derogatory. However, the historiographical picture does not marry up with the primary sources, including Montagu’s innumerable speeches, lectures, prayers, and services to the Liberal congregation, and her countless monographs, novels, sermons, essays, letters, liturgies, and papers for Liberal Jewish Monthly, the Jewish Quarterly Review, and as part of the Papers for Jewish People series. Instead Anglo-Jewish historiography, with few exceptions, has preferred to focus on Claude years. Importantly, Montagu not only challenged contemporaneous Jewish stereotypes tradition along proto-feminist lines to develop religious praxis, liturgical, and theological discursive that is more resonant of Second-Wave Jewish feminism than it is of earlytwentieth-century, First-Wave feminist discourse.1 This is important as the Montagu corpus * Lecturer at University of Worcester. Email: l.devine@worc.ac.uk 1 By First-Wave feminism I refer to the period of activism between 1792 and 1918 (other scholars will differ) that resulted in women gaining the franchise in 1918 in England. Alternatively, the locus of Second-Wave Jewish 2 MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES reveals an Anglo-Jewish forerunner to the Second and Third-Waves of feminist activism. In this paper we will explore the links between the stages. Indeed, by examining the feminist elements of Montagu’s own understanding of Liberal theology, particular","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133646645","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 NAME NEW TESTAMENT ?”","authors":"B. Jackson","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2013-090104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2013-090104","url":null,"abstract":"Both theology and philology suggest that the title of the Christian scriptures should have been “The New Covenant” rather than “The New Testament”. Why then did the Church Fathers from at least Tertullian in the 2nd century adopt novum testamentum? Was it simply a confusion of the LXX (covenant) and koine (a will) meanings of diathe–ke– (diaqh/kh and the methodological issues it raises (section 1) and then turn to two very different theological approaches to the question (section 2): I reject the attempt of Behm to impose (a version of ) the koine meaning (in his view, as a unilateral disposition) on the LXX (and subsequent literature, and even extending back to berit in the Hebrew Bible) as both theologically and legally inappropriate. Far preferable is the more recent account of Schenker, who sees the use of diatithe–mi and diathe–ke– in reference to meta ten teleuten transactions as having been chosen as appropriate to the terms of God’s covenant regarding the land and its use, and rightly shows the range of succession institutions to which this terminology could be applied. Both Behm and Schenker need to take positions on the forms of succession in vogue at the relevant periods (LXX and NT) in the Hellenistic and Jewish worlds. In section 3, I summarise the current state of knowledge and debate in legal historical studies, stressing the danger of assuming the features of modern “wills”, and noting the close relationship to political alliance (cf. covenant) in the “will” of the 2nd cent. BCE Ptolemy Neoteros of Cyrene. More generally, I argue that there is a connection between covenant and inheritance in the Hebrew Bible, including (but not restricted to) “spiritual inheritance” (section 4); that this was sharpened in the “Testament” genre of 2nd commonwealth (pseudepigraphical) literature, developing a model found already in the Hebrew Bible (section 5); that two New Testament texts explicitly associate covenant and (by analogy) testamentum (even more than the Jewish and Hellenistic forms of will) may well have proved theologically appealing to Tertullian, resulting in his adoption of the terminology of testamentum vetus and novum (section 7). In particular, the Roman testamentum took effect in its entirety only on death and automatically revoked any earlier will. 1. FROM BERIT ( ), TO DIATHE–KE– (diaqh&kh), TO TESTAMENTUM explanation, which has long been known. The term for “covenant” in the Hebrew Bible is * I am greatly indebted to Dr. Jennifer Dines (Cambridge), Dr. Gerald Downing (Manchester), Profssa. Daniela Piattelli (Rome) and Prof John ( Jack) W. Welch (Brigham Young) for comments and substantial bibliographical assistance in the preparation of this paper. Comments by Philip Alexander, Adrian Curtis and Walter Houston on an oral presentation at the Ehrhardt Seminar of the University of Manchester, have also proved of great assistance. ** Professor of Law and Jewish Studies, Liverpool Hope University. Email: jacksob@hope.ac.uk 1 So L","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115898027","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":"LATINO-ROMANIOTES: THE CONTINUITY OF JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN THE WESTERN DIASPORA, 400–700 CE","authors":"Aron C. Sterk","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2013-090103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2013-090103","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"242 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122095802","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 GRACIOUS AMBIGUITY OF GRACE AGUILAR (1816–47): ANGLO-JEWISH THEOLOGIAN, NOVELIST, POET, AND PIONEER OF INTERFAITH RELATIONS","authors":"D. Langton","doi":"10.31826/mjj-2013-080102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31826/mjj-2013-080102","url":null,"abstract":"Grace Aguilar was an early nineteenth-century Anglo-Jewish writer who concerned herself with the reform of Jewish religion and its relationship to Christianity in her theological works, novels, and poetry. She was interested in challenging the ways in which Jews and Christians represented each other in their teachings, tried to present both perspectives on the vexed question of Christian mission to the Jews, and sought to demonstrate that the theological barriers constructed between the two faiths were often less immoveable than tradition would have it. As a female Jewish theologian writing well before her time, she offered a remarkably innovative conception of female spirituality that allowed her to cross and re-cross the boundaries between the Jewish and Christian religious cultures she inhabited. Any student of the history of Jewish-Christian relations is interested in Jewish views of Christianity. These views include ‘relational theologies’, that is, focused attempts by Jews to create a theological space for Christianity or to highlight the special relationship between Judaism and Christianity. As anyone familiar with the history of Jewish-Christian intercourse will know, such relational theologies have rarely been positive, and have tended to concentrate upon the construction and maintenance of the barriers that separate the two faith systems.1 Over the centuries Jews have traditionally regarded the Christian as the idolatrous oppressor who denies the unity of God, prays to saints, worships icons, and abrogates the Torah. The Christian is perceived to have misinterpreted the scripture and to be profoundly mistaken in claiming that the messianic age has begun. At best, Christianity has been understood as an instrument of God to help prepare the pagan world for the coming of the Jewish messiah, or to test the faith of his Chosen People. Against this backdrop, a positive, or constructive, or appreciative Jewish view of Christianity stands out starkly. In particular, positive relational * Professor of the History of Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Manchester. Email: daniel. Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) in Birmingham in 2005. 1 Some well-known studies that emphasise the antagonistic nature of Jewish and Christian conceptions of the other include: James Parkes, (London: The Soncino Press, 1934) Jules Isaac, 1st ed. (New York: Holt, 1964) Rosemary Radford Ruether, (New York: Seabury Press, 1974) Hans Joachim Schoeps, [1st ed. (New York: Holt, 1963) Edward H. Flannery, (New York: Macmillan, 1965), Franklin H. Littell, , 1st ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1975) Marc Saperstein, (London: SCM Press, 1989) Joel Carmichael, , 1st U.S. ed. (New York: Fromm International Pub. Corp., 1992) Leon Sheleff, (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004). 2 MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES are often regarded by Jewish commentators as inauthentic, or heretical, or unJewish. 2 or historians such as Joseph Klausner,3 or writers such as Scholem Asch4","PeriodicalId":305040,"journal":{"name":"Melilah: Manchester Journal of Jewish Studies (1759-1953)","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132232256","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}