MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-09-12DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa008
J. Schwartzmann
{"title":"A Late Nineteenth-Century Rabbinic Critique of the Status of Women in Judaism","authors":"J. Schwartzmann","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa008","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article aims to show that long before the famous debate over women’s suffrage (1918–25), women’s alienation from significant parts of Judaism was a fact that was obvious to those in the Orthodox community who were ready to admit it. To prove this, I discuss the late nineteenth-century essay Netiv Moshe: Maamar Mehkari ’al Mishpat haNashim baEmunah (A Scholarly Enquiry into the Case of Women in Religious Faith). This essay, written in Hungary by Mózes Salamon, the rabbi of a small provincial community, analyzes the gender problem in Judaism and reveals that the basic arguments of Jewish religious feminism had been expressed even before feminism as a movement came to terms with its objectives. This is the first scholarly analysis of this little known essay.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"1 1","pages":"259 - 284"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89822813","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-09-12DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa013
Alan T. Levenson
{"title":"From Translation to Transmission: A Chapter in the Odyssey of Maurice Samuel","authors":"Alan T. Levenson","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa013","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:A reassessment of Maurice Samuel (1895–1972), author, translator, polemicist, and Zionist is long overdue. One of the most productive and durable of the group dubbed by historian Carole Kessner as The “Other” New York Jewish Intellectuals, Samuel may be characterized as a public intellectual who was content with making his marks in primarily Jewish contexts and without the anxieties of alienation characteristic of his more celebrated contemporaries. This essay addresses the role he played in conveying works from German, French, Hebrew, and Yiddish to an American audience. Four particular tensions receive attention: (1) the interplay between author and translator; (2) the relationship of a multilingual translator to the various source languages; (3) the inadequacy of the term translation for describing Samuel’s agenda; and (4) the reception of his pivotal works on the Yiddish authors Sholom Asch, Sholom Aleichem, and Y.L. Peretz. Samuel’s contributions invite reconsideration of our assumptions about the means and ends of cultural transmission in a modern context. I argue that Samuel’s works merit a better reputation, and that he has earned a place as one of twentieth-century American Jewry’s cultural heroes.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"25 1","pages":"285 - 311"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82757525","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa011
Zvi Y. D. Ron
{"title":"Stripes, Hats, and Fashion","authors":"Zvi Y. D. Ron","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa011","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article examines the relationship between fashion and Jewish clothing. Certain clothing elements that are today considered signifiers of Jewish people, even among non-Jews, did not begin as specifically Jewish clothing. They started as the fashion of the general society but were retained by the Jewish community even after the fashions changed in the general world. In this article, we trace the process by which three such elements became associated specifically with Jews and Jewish ritual practice: the striped tallit, Hasidic dress, and black hats. Black hats are the most recent example of this process, and in this case have also developed legal significance in some Orthodox circles. This results in a fashion element being prevented from ever going out of style by virtue of being considered a halachic requirement.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"81 1","pages":"312 - 326"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80226952","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-05-01DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa001
Iddo Haklai
{"title":"Four Paradigms of Legal Change: American Conservative Halachic Rulings on Women's Roles in Synagogue Practice","authors":"Iddo Haklai","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Conservative Judaism in North America has undergone significant changes over the last seventy years regarding the issue of women's roles within the synagogue. A review of different halachic responsa addressing women's participation in three central functions of public prayer—receiving aliyot to the Torah, leading public prayer, and being counted in the prayer quorum, the minyan—reveals four different paradigms of legal change within the Conservative Movement and allows us to recognize certain trends throughout time.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"1 1","pages":"169 - 194"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81957599","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-05-01DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa002
M. Keren-Kratz
{"title":"Inclusion Versus Exclusion in Intra-Orthodox Politics: Between Agudat Israel and Hungarian Orthodoxy","authors":"M. Keren-Kratz","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa002","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Ever since the concept of Jewish Orthodoxy emerged in the early-19th century, and especially after Jews were awarded equal civic rights in the 1860s, several religious leaders sought to establish Orthodox organizations. They, however, faced two main obstacles: first, the concept of an Orthodox organization was new to Jewish history and conservative rabbis automatically opposed anything new and condemned it as \"modern.\" Second, an Orthodox organization meant a religious jurisdiction superior to that of the local rabbis who were reluctant to give up the full authority they enjoyed. Following a long period of deterioration in the power and influence of the rabbis, local Orthodox organizations were established in Hungary, Galicia and Germany. In 1912, after the establishment of international movements by Reform rabbis, Maskilim, Jewish socialists, and finally the Zionists, leading Orthodox figures decided to establish the international Orthodox organization titled Agudat Israel. Recognizing its critical role in preserving traditional Judaism, individual rabbis and local Orthodox organizations from many countries joined Agudat Israel. The only country whose rabbis refused to join was Hungary. There, Jewish Orthodoxy enjoyed a special civil status and had its own separate communities. Seeking to maintain their distinct status, Hungarian leaders demanded that Agudat Israel declare itself an Orthodox organization and refrain from accepting Jews who belonged to non-Orthodox communities, who were lax in their religious conduct, or who supported Zionism. After deliberating the pros and cons, Agudat Israel decided to decline the \"Hungarian demand\" and, instead, to accept every Jew who wanted to join. Consequently, most Hungarian rabbis banned the organization. Nevertheless, the political and social circumstances following World War I drove some Hungarian rabbis and their communities to join Agudat Israel.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"33 1","pages":"195 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72682445","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-05-01DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa006
Stephen H. Norwood, Eunice G. Pollack
{"title":"White Devils, Satanic Jews: The Nation of Islam from Fard to Farrakhan","authors":"Stephen H. Norwood, Eunice G. Pollack","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa006","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article explores how the American white far right—including the Christian Front, Christian Mobilizers, and Gerald L. K. Smith—helped shape the Nation of Islam's (NOI) antisemitism during the 1930s and 1940s. It also examines the strong influence of Harlem's pro-Axis Black Fuehrers on the NOI during World War II. Nation of Islam and white far-right propaganda were remarkably similar. Both embraced the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, denied or minimized the Holocaust, and were virulently anti-Zionist. After elaborating on the context within which the Nation of Islam created its ideology, the article explores how the NOI, which originally identified whites, Christians and Jews as devils, adopted an almost singular emphasis on Jews as agents of Satan, the Star of David replacing the cross as the symbol of iniquity. Jews were not victims, but Blacks' major victimizers; never slaves, but dominant enslavers; not progressives, but those who impeded Blacks' advance. Instead of giving the world Hebrew Scripture, they converted it into the \"Poison Book,\" from the beginning crafting a \"dirty religion,\" which blessed the subjugation of black people, and denied God's promise to the \"Real Children of Israel.\" These \"imposter Jews\" concealed that the Hebrew Bible was a prophecy about \"the so-called Negroes of America\"—the true \"Chosen of God\"—who would be in bondage for 400 years, strangers in a strange land.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"59 1","pages":"137 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84279716","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-05-01DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjaa004
J. Stetter
{"title":"Spinoza and Judaism in the French Context: The Case of Milner's Le Sage Trompeur","authors":"J. Stetter","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjaa004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa004","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Jean-Claude Milner's Le sage trompeur (2013), a controversial recent piece of French Spinoza literature, remains regrettably understudied in the English-speaking world. Adopting Leo Strauss' esoteric reading method, Milner alleges that Spinoza dissimulates his genuine analysis of the causes of the persecution and survival of the Jewish people within a brief \"manifesto\" found at the end of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), Chapter 3. According to Milner, Spinoza holds that the Jewish people themselves are responsible for the hatred of the Jewish people, and that the engine of their longevity is the hatred they engender. Additionally, claims Milner, Spinoza covertly insinuates that the solution to this persistent state of hatred consists in the mass apostasy of the Jewish people under the leadership of a Sabbatai Zevi-like figure. This article presents the Milner–Spinoza controversy to the English-speaking public along with the larger context of French-language scholarship on Spinoza's relation to Judaism. While refuting Milner's reading of Spinoza, I simultaneously clarify relevant elements of Spinoza's discussions of Judaism in the TTP, such as Spinoza's examination of Jewish identity and the nature of divine election, Spinoza's understanding of the causes of national hatred, and Spinoza's appeals to Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Turkish political history.","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"29 1","pages":"227 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84516973","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-01-11DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjz021
I. Greenberg
{"title":"Creation and the Dignity of Life","authors":"I. Greenberg","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjz021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjz021","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"5 1","pages":"37 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88613303","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}
MODERN JUDAISMPub Date : 2020-01-07DOI: 10.1093/mj/kjz019
D. Lipstadt
{"title":"Holocaust Denial: An Antisemitic Fantasy","authors":"D. Lipstadt","doi":"10.1093/mj/kjz019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjz019","url":null,"abstract":"When I first began working on the topic of Holocaust deniers, colleagues would frequently tell me I was wasting my time. “These people are dolts. They are the equivalent of flat-earth theorists,” they would insist. “Forget about them.” In truth, I thought the same thing. In fact, when I first heard of Holocaust deniers, I laughed and dismissed them as not worthy of serious analysis. Then I looked more closely and I changed my mind. Denial flies in the face of not just reams of documents, but of basic logic. The Holocaust has the dubious distinction of being the best documented genocide in the world. For deniers to be right, who would have to be wrong?","PeriodicalId":54089,"journal":{"name":"MODERN JUDAISM","volume":"55 1","pages":"71 - 86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86096789","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}