{"title":"The Hasidic Story: A Call for Narrative Religiosity","authors":"Tsippi Kauffman","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341253","url":null,"abstract":"The paper examines the dominance of narrative in Hasidic religious life through the discourse of narrative ethics and its implications for theology, specifically feminist theology, and for religion in general. I claim that the centrality of storytelling in Hasidism reflects and constructs an essential attitude toward religious life. This attitude directs one to narrative and contextual thinking, which both focus on the specific person, circumstances, and emotions, as opposed to law, norms, and abstract determination. This centrality of storytelling is connected to a deep Hasidic awareness of the restrictive nature of normative religious life, a finite facet of the infinite paths to God.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74515691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Aesthetics, Jewish Philosophy, and Post-Holocaust Theology","authors":"Benjamin E. Sax","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341252","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75214148","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poverty and Halakhic Agency: Gleanings from the Literature of Rabbinic Palestine","authors":"T. Novick","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341250","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe dynamic of charity works to figure the poor as outsider, both to the circle of donors, and, more fundamentally, to the sphere of agency. The current article examines ways in which the halakhic system, as constructed in rabbinic Palestine of the classical period, mitigates this dynamic, both by highlighting aspects of agency at work in the very act of receiving and consuming charity, and, at greater length, by collecting and analyzing cases in which the halakhic system enables the poor, through charity and other means, not only to survive, but to act as halakhic agents themselves.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77914469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Levinas and the Holocaust: A Reconstruction","authors":"Bob Plant","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341251","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341251","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractEmmanuel Levinas remains one of the most influential and challenging writers in twentieth-century European philosophy. But while critics often accuse him of obscurantism, even sympathetic readers are not always enamored with Levinas’s highly emotive vocabulary. Although there are standard ways of reading Levinas’s work—usually through his phenomenological and/or Judaic heritage—in this paper I offer a different route of access. Drawing primarily on Primo Levi’s testimonial Holocaust writings, I argue that reading Levinas as a “post-Holocaust” thinker both clarifies key features of his work, and eases at least some of the frustration commonly experienced by readers.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86717156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"2 Enoch and the Trajectories of Jewish Cosmology: From Mesopotamian Astronomy to Greco-Egyptian Philosophy in Roman Egypt","authors":"A. Reed","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341249","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractInasmuch as new Coptic evidence for 2 Enoch lends confirmation to the priority of the shorter recension and adds plausibility to the theory of its Egyptian provenance, this discovery invites us to shift from the compilation of parallel motifs towards more integrative approaches to contextualizing this enigmatic apocalypse. This essay is an experiment in situating 2 Enoch within the intellectual culture of early Roman Egypt. It explores the possibility that the short recension reflects the translation of the Mesopotamian astronomy and Jewish cosmology of earlier Aramaic Enoch writings into Greek language and idiom in interaction with philosophical and “scientific” concerns with the cosmos current in early Roman Egypt.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2014-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81343449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Matvei Kagan: Judaism and the European Cultural Crisis","authors":"R. Katsman","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341243","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This work is an attempt to systematically read the “crisis articles” of Matvei Kagan (1889–1937), a Russian philosopher of Jewish origin who was a student and follower of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer, and a close friend of Mikhail Bakhtin during his early, constitutive participation in the Nevel Circle (1918–1920). The articles are discussed in the context of Kagan’s main realm, the philosophy of history; however, they present Kagan as a philosopher of culture and religion. In these works, Kagan defines the origins of the European cultural crisis of the 1910s and 1920s in the terms of Jewish monotheism, and finds the source for its solution in the core model of Jewish community.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86062923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yitshak and God’s Separation Anxiety","authors":"Yair Lorberbaum","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341244","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341244","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractThe biblical Yitshak is a rather pale character. What colors his personality is his name and the story of his birth, which are inseparably intertwined with one another. My focus in this essay shall be upon the meaning of the name Yitshak and the circumstances under which it was given. I shall make two central claims. First, that the name Yitshak bears a negative connotation. This is indicated both by the meaning of the name in the biblical lexicon, and by the three contexts in Genesis in which the name is explained. Why should the son for whom the chosen father yearned, and through whom God’s promise and plans were to be realized, be given an insulting name? The answer to this question—which is my second claim—is rooted in the unique interpersonal relationship between God and Abraham. This answer is a key for understanding the saga of Abraham as whole, including the story of the Akedah.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86535719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Arabic Background of the Kuzari","authors":"Ehud Krinis","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341241","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The question of the nature and extent of Judah Halevi’s engagement with diverse aspects of Arabic culture in the Kuzari is a broad and multifaceted one. In this article, I will use a large number and variety of examples in order to demonstrate Judah Halevi’s remarkably fruitful contacts with Arabic culture. This culture constituted a motivating and inspiring challenge for him, and his relationship with it was a critical and creative one. The Kuzari’s author ingeniously extracted concepts and worldviews belonging to various streams of Arabic culture from their original context and incorporated them into his own unique concepts and lines of thought.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77165644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Language of the Border: On Scholem’s Theory of Lament","authors":"I. Ferber","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341246","url":null,"abstract":"AbstractIn a diary entry from 1916 entitled “Uber Klage und Klagelied” (On lament and dirge), originally written as a prologue to his translation of a collection of biblical lamentations, Gershom Scholem proposes a geographical metaphor to describe what he calls “all language.” The metaphor depicts two lands separated by a border: one land signifies the language of revelation, the other the language of silence; the border between them stands for what Scholem denotes as the language of lament (Klage). This article offers a close reading of this enigmatic text in an attempt to interpret Scholem’s early linguistic theory of lament and its relation to revelation and silence. In order to illuminate Scholem’s insights, I turn to Benjamin’s early fragment on lament (1916) and to his correspondence with Scholem on the relationship of lament to Jewish thought (1918), as well as to Werner Hamacher’s remarks on the linguistic form of lament. I argue that both Scholem and Benjamin portray lament as “a language of the border,” emphasizing its singular capacity to mark the boundaries of language and its expressive limits, while pointing to the possibility of lament to manifest a purely linguistic expression, devoid of any propositional, communicative, or subjective content. In his ambitious attempts to formulate a “metaphysics of language,” Scholem demonstrates the productivity of the intersection between the theological and philosophical, the linguistic and the metaphysical, in early twentieth-century continental philosophy.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77460456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Décision humaine et animale dans la pensée de Rabbi Isaac Israeli","authors":"S. Sadik","doi":"10.1163/1477285X-12341245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1477285X-12341245","url":null,"abstract":"ResumeLe but de cet article est d’analyser la theorie du libre arbitre de Rabbi Isaac Israeli (9eme-10eme siecle, Kairouan). Dans la premiere partie est exposee la difference entre la psychologie animale et la psychologie humaine. Selon Israeli, l’homme peut agir dans une situation specifique de plusieurs manieres differentes en raison de sa capacite de discernement et plus precisement de la cogitation et de la consideration. Ses capacites lui permettent d’acquerir des sciences theoretiques et d’etre capable de differencier le bien du mal. Les animaux, ne possedant pas ses capacites, sont donc determines a agir d’une seule et meme maniere dans chaque situation particuliere.Dans la seconde partie, nous voyons que la liberte humaine est une consequence de la situation intermediaire de l’homme entre les purs intellects et les animaux. L’homme se sert de sa cogitation et de sa consideration pour atteindre une connaissance plus elevee. Tant qu’il se sert de ces deux capacites, sa connaissance n’est pas parfaite et il est encore hesitant. Apres avoir reussi a s’unir a l’intellect universel, l’homme ne se servira plus de sa cogitation ni de sa consideration, n’hesitera plus, et agira dans chaque situation de la meilleurs maniere possible.","PeriodicalId":42022,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF JEWISH THOUGHT & PHILOSOPHY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2013-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84506235","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}