The Bible and the avant-garde: the search for a classical tradition in the Israeli theatre

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
FREDDIE ROKEM
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
The State ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
State Of Israel

The Israeli theatre has frequently employed the Hebrew Bible as a source for theatrical performances. Analysing three such performances, this article shows that the Bible, with its charged ideological implications for the establishment of the state of Israel, has perhaps somewhat unexpectedly inspired avant-garde productions that have frequently criticized the accepted ideological and aesthetic norms. The first of the three performances analysed is Hanoch Levin's play based on the book of Job called ‘The Torments of Job’ (Yisorei Iov), which Levin directed at the Cameri theatre in 1981. The second is the play ‘Jehu’ by Gilead Evron, directed by Hanan Snir at the Habima National Theatre in 1992, and the third is the ‘Bible Project’ directed by Rina Yerushalmi, which consists of two independent, but interrelated productions: ‘And He Said And He Was Walking’ (Va Yomer Va Yelech), which premiered in 1996, and ‘And They Bowed. And He Feared’ (Va Yishtachu. Va Yerra) which premiered in 1998.

Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, op. 68/iv, finale (Adagio; Allegro non troppo, ma con brio)

2021 ◽  
pp. 233-266
Author(s):  
James Hepokoski
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
The State ◽  
Sonata Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
Close Analysis

This final chapter subdivides into three broad sections. The first makes the case for a nuanced applicability of Sonata Theory to romantic form, where deviations from the classical norms are frequent and often highly striking, sometimes to the point where the concept of “sonata” itself can seem strained. Even under these conditions, though, Sonata Theory’s analytical apparatus, forged in the centered norms of an earlier era, continues to serve heuristically productive ends: What is new, transgressive, or experimental in these later works has its impact maximized when read against the backdrop of the classical tradition deployed as a persistent, serviceable interpretive code, even though several of those once-vigorous norms, merely stale if perpetuated as reflex, academic conventions, were no longer binding in current practice. The second section provides an extended historical backdrop to the state of the Austro-Germanic symphony, c. 1840–75, and the importance of Brahms’s work in revitalizing that tradition. The third section is a close analysis of the finale of Brahms’s First Symphony that reads the movement, an expanded Type 1 sonata encased in a broad introduction and coda, as a commentary on the difficulties involved with its own coming-into-being. The work is thus self-reflective—or rather, its staged musical struggles and themes (filled with suggestive historical allusions and topical traditions) run parallel with Brahms’s own anxieties with regard to bringing this work into being, embedding within it, for instance, a “dedication emblem” to Clara Schumann: the famous alphorn theme of the introduction.

The Western Wall

2020 ◽  
pp. 91-124
Author(s):  
Yuval Jobani ◽  
Nahshon Perez
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Orthodox Judaism ◽  
Policy Tools ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Preference Model ◽  
The Third ◽  
State Preference ◽  
State Relations ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Western Wall

Chapter 4 examines the state preference model of religion–state relations at contested sacred sites. Section A explores the case of the Women of the Wall as a case in which the state of Israel adopts the preference model—favoring ultra-Orthodox Judaism—in managing the contestation over prayer arrangements at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Section B explores the general religion-majoritarian approach which serves as the framework for the model of state preference at contested sites. Section C presents the specific techniques and policy tools, as well as the advantages and main weaknesses, of the third model of governing contested sacred sites examined in the current study: the model of “preference.” The last section (D) presents several arguments for the undesirability of state support for religion from the perspective of religious interests, emphasizing the applicability of this undesirability to the category of contested sacred sites.

Biblical Questioning

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human History ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Independent Investigation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Narratives

Questions posed by God and biblical characters in the Hebrew Bible are often philosophically empowering moments. They transpire from the very inception of human history, according to the Bible’s own reconstructed version of it. Rather than divinely imposed law, biblical questioning is a vital tool initiating the decisive biblical way toward truth through independent investigation. Questions then recur throughout various biblical narratives, revealing the Bible’s philosophical dimension. As such, they may indicate the Bible’s conception of the essential expression of humanity, or where the Bible locates the beginning of serious thought, and how it suggests proceeding in the search for truth and the highest good. This chapter explores specific episodes where questions are posed, beginning with the Garden of Eden and ending with the book of Job.

Jewish Theology Unbound

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Philosophical Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Of Israel

This book challenges the widespread caricature of Judaism as a religion of law as opposed to theology. Broad swaths of rabbinic literature involve not just law but what could be best described as philosophical theology as well. Judaism has never been a dogmatic religion, insisting on a monolithic theology rooted in a uniform metaphysics that would exclude all others. The book engages in close readings of the Bible, classical rabbinic texts, Jewish philosophers, and mystics from the ancient, to the medieval, to the modern period, which communicate a profound Jewish philosophical theology on human nature, God, and the relationship between the two. It begins with an examination of questioning in the Hebrew Bible, demonstrating that what the Bible encourages is independent philosophical inquiry into how to situate oneself in the world ethically, spiritually, and teleologically. It then explores such themes as the nature of God through the various names by which God is known in the Jewish intellectual tradition, love of others and of God, death, martyrdom, freedom, angels, the philosophical quest, the Holocaust, and the State of Israel, all in light of the Hebrew Bible and the way it is filtered through the rabbinic, philosophical, and mystical traditions. For all intents and purposes the Torah no longer originates in heaven, but flows upstream, so to speak, from the earth, propelled by the interpretive genius of human beings.

Intertwined Landscape

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Mostafa Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
The State ◽  
Place Names ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Natural Landscape ◽  
The Bible ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals ◽  
National Enterprise ◽  
Emergent Culture

This article examines the ways in which Zionist intellectuals interacted with Arabo-Islamic culture in the Yishuv by looking into the cultivation of Islamicate knowledge pertinent to land and nature and its impact on the construction of the Jewish cultural landscape. I argue that in establishing a connection between Jews and the natural landscape of Palestine/ Israel, Jewish intellectuals relied on Arabo Islamic culture and its centuries of knowledge about the flora and the land itself. In their search to comprehend the flora and place names of the land of the Bible, Jewish individuals consulted Arabo-Islamic sources, finding them instrumental to their national enterprise. The culmination of these endeavors is that, in addition to Jewish and Western sources, Islamicate culture was one of the wellsprings from which Jewish intellectuals drew in shaping the emergent culture in the Yishuv and the early decades of the State of Israel.

R. Isaac Halevi Herzog

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Eisen
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Major Figure ◽  
Six Day War ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Religious Zionism

R. Herzog (1888–1959) was the first Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel when the state of Israel was established in 1948. R. Herzog therefore had to deal with Israel’s first war, its War of Independence. R. Herzog’s formulates halakhic positions on war that build on those of R. Kook, adopting the latter’s position that the laws governing war are different from those governing the everyday, and that for this reason conscription is permitted. However, R. Herzog moves in original directions on some issues, adopting, for example, Nahmanides’ view that the state of Israel can wage war to conquer the land God promised to the Israelites in the Bible. The chapter concludes with an argument that R. Herzog’s views on war may have influenced those of R. Tsevi Yehudah Kook, the son of R. Abraham Isaac Kook, who was a major figure in religious Zionism after the Six Day War.

Israeli Drama and the Bible: Kings on the Stage

AJS Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenda Abramson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
The State ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Dramatic Form ◽  
State Of Israel

Drama is the most neglected genre within Hebrew cultural development. In fact, until shortly before the foundation of the State of Israel, few plays in Hebrew had been staged. Although a large number of works in dramatic form had been written, particularly in the nineteenth century, few of them were viable theatrical dramas. They fell into the categories of rhetoric and allegory, devoid of believable dramatis personae. There were some milestones along the way, such as Somi's Zahut Bedihuta de-Kiddushin (An Eloquent Marriage Farce, c. 1600), Luzzatto's Leyesharim tehilla (Praise for the Righteous, 1743), and some modern plays, but these were not sufficiently feasible for the establishment of a dramatic tradition. An important factor qualifying the late development of Hebrew drama was the language, for within the communities' diglossia throughout the ages, Hebrew was reserved for more elevated discourse than playacting. Moreover, Hebrew, the language of the sacred texts, was inadequate for the expression of everyday life. Nowhere in the diaspora was there a Hebrew-speaking audience; there was no folk life in Hebrew as there was in Yiddish. Also, the potential playwrights were faced with the problem of the divine imperative in Jewish history, which precludes anything like the theodicy that gave rise to classical tragedy. Other religious restrictions against certain forms of representation, together with the small value Jewish religious authorities traditionally placed on theatre for its own sake, were also crucial factors mitigating against the drama's development.

Living with Unanswered Questions: The Meaning of the Queries about the Book of Job in Isaac Nathan’s Ḥazut Qashah (“Grievous Vision”)

2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 193-212
Author(s):  
Ram Ben-Shalom
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Hebrew Text ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
Medieval Text ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Literary Innovation

Hazut Qashah (Grievous Vision) is one of a number of studies on the Hebrew Bible by the fifteenth-century Jewish intellectual Isaac Nathan of Arles. This peculiar Hebrew text is composed of a list of thirteen questions about the book of Job without answers. An analysis of this work on the backdrop of Christian and Jewish scholasticism along with possible Eastern precedents such as Masaʾail, demonstrates its literary innovation, which is derived not from the questions it poses, but rather, from the author’s willingness to acknowledge that the Bible had failed to provide adequate answers to them. Some of the questions were liable to provoke skepticism and raise doubts, but in contrast to the corpus of critical and heretical Jewish literature, Nathan had no interest in destroying the foundations of Judaism by attacking the biblical infrastructure. The significance and power of Hazut Qashah does not issue from any theological insights, but from its novel format. There is no similar medieval text, be it Jewish or Christian, which presents a set of theological problems without offering any corresponding explanations. As such, living with an open question—the existential solution presented in Hazut Qashah—becomes just one more facet of Nathan’s own rich intellectual project.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document