scholarly journals A University in Zion: Max Weber and Gershom Scholem on Jewish Eschatology and Academic Labor

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Yael Almog
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
Jewish Ethics ◽  
National Tradition ◽  
Academic Labor ◽  
Academic Conduct ◽  
Building Project

In his “Science as Vocation,” Weber equates rational academic conduct with Jewish ethics. For Weber, the Jewish tradition, which separates moral conduct from messianism, is emblematic of scientists’ strenuous distinction of empiricism from metaphysics. The emergence of a Zionist university in Jerusalem, an institute that was positioned as a part of a Jewish nation-building project, complicated this parallel. This article examines Gershom Scholem's activist approach to Jewish studies as a fundamental revision of the Weberian model of scholarship with the significant role that this model destines to the Jewish tradition. Scholem's vision of scholarship at the Zionist university constitutes Jewish eschatology as a pillar of a scholastic national tradition. Scholem's portrayal of Jewish messianism as an insular tradition overturns Weber's portrayal of Jewish ethics as a lesson for Western academia. Reading Scholem with Weber shows that the enterprise of founding a university in Jerusalem ran counter to European liberal conceptions of Judaism. Moreover, reading them together shows Scholem's notion of academic labor to reinstitute a separatist theological ethos as a formative model for scholarship.

scholarly journals Jewish Diaspora and the Stakes of Nationalism: Margarete Susman’s Theodicy

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Yael Almog
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
The Core ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Jewish Ethics ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Building Project

This article unpacks Margarete Susman’s political and theological arguments at the core of her reading of the Book of Job. As I show through a reading of her oeuvre, Susman rejects political projects that she takes to be based on eschatology such as political Zionism. However, Susman should not be viewed merely as a critic of Zionism. I argue that an analysis tuned to the historical circumstances of her writing should recognize her stance on the nation-building project in Palestine as ambivalent rather than antagonistic. Susman’s conception of the Jewish spirit as rooted in self-sacrifice allows her to appreciate the national aspirations at the core of the Zionist project while rejecting Zionism’s exclusion of other Jewish national projects. I contend that Susman’s understanding of Jewish messianism as immanent rather than teleological informs her ambivalence toward Zionism as well as her original vision of Jewish political action. I argue in closing that Susman’s theodicy offers a novel vision for Jewish ethics that is not limited to the historical moment of its formulation. Susman’s theodicy also resonates within contemporary debates on Jewish diaspora in providing a non-centralized vision of Jewish national projects.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Rose ◽  
State Language

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

scholarly journals El otro lado de la modernidad boliviana. "Vuelve Sebastiana" y la reconfiguración de las coordenadas espacio temporales para pensar la Nación

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 46-66
Author(s):  
Jaime Omar Salinas Zabalaga
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the film Vuelve Sebastiana (1953) by Jorge Ruiz, focusing on its ideological and aesthetic aspects. The analysis establishes connections between the idea of “nation” in the context of cultural transformation prompted by the economic and social policies of the National Revolution of 1952 and the way the Chipaya community is represented. The central argument is that "Vuelve Sebastiana" can be read not only in relation to the new national identity but as an expression of a new national imaginary regarding the indigenous communities of the Altiplano. The author proposes that "Vuelve Sebastiana" represents the nation through the temporal and spatial cartographies of a modern nation-building project, making visible some of its tensions and contradictions and allowing us to explore the imaginary that has redefined the relationship between the State and the indigenous communities of the Altiplano throughout the  second half of the 20th century.

scholarly journals Recent (Re)Visions of Canlit: Partial Stock-Taking

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (s2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rzepa
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Current State ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Magazine Articles ◽  
Globalising World

Abstract This article approaches recent discussions on the state of contemporary CanLit as a body of literary texts, an academic field, and an institution. The discussion is informed primarily by a number of recent or relatively recent publications, such as Trans.CanLit. Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (Kamboureli & Miki 2007), Refuse. CanLit in Ruins (McGregor, Rak & Wunker 2018), Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada (McWatt, Maharaj & Brand 2018), and the discussions and/or controversies some of those generated – expressed through newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly essays, but also through tweets, etc. The texts have been written as a response to the current state and – in some cases – scandals of CanLit. Many constitute attempts at starting or contributing to a discussion aimed at not only taking stock of, but also reinterpreting and re-defining the field and the institution in view of the challenges of the globalising world. Perhaps more importantly, they address also the challenges resulting from the rift between CanLit as implicated in the (post)colonial nation-building project and rigid institutional structures, perpetuating the silencings, erasures, and hierarchies resulting from such entanglements, and actual literary texts produced by an increasingly diversified group of writers working with a widening range of topics and genres, and creating often intimate, autobiographically inspired art with a sense of responsibility to marginalised communities. The article concludes with the example of Indigenous writing and the position some young Indigenous writers take in the current discussions.

scholarly journals The monumental landscape from below: public statues, popular interaction and nationalism in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (04) ◽  
pp. 722-746
Author(s):  
ANNE PETTERSON
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Methodological Challenge ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Building Project

ABSTRACT:Public monuments are considered an important tool in the nineteenth-century nation-building project. Yet while the intended (nationalist) message of the monumental landscape is often clear, the popular perception of the statues and memorials has been little problematized. This contribution analyses the popular interaction with public monuments in late nineteenth-century Amsterdam and questions whether ordinary people understood the nationalist meaning. With the help of visual sources – engravings, lithographs and the novel medium of photography – we become aware of the multilayered meanings and usages of the monuments in daily urban life, thus tackling the methodological challenge of studying the monumental landscape from below.

Enlightenment Values, Jewish Ethics: The Haskalah’s Transformation of the Traditional Musar Genre

2001 ◽  
pp. 48-63
Author(s):  
Harris Bor
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Educational Methods ◽  
Moral Improvement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Jewish Ethics ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

This chapter examines Haskalah ethical literature and Jewish ethical writing (musar), and highlights how the Haskalah movement was poised between Jewish tradition and European culture. It shows that moral improvement was a fundamental concern of the Haskalah. Since moral education was meant to serve as a link between the aims of the Enlightenment and Jewish tradition, ethical literature was an index to the balance between the modern and the traditional. The chapter then illustrates the importance of comparative study. By comparing the texts and motifs of the Enlightenment on issues such as the immortality of the soul and civic education with the ethical ideas of such maskilim as Isaac Satanow, Naphtali Herz Wessely, Menahem Mendel Lefin, and Judah Leib Ben Ze'ev, it reveals the extent to which the Haskalah drew upon the educational methods of German reformist educators like Johann Heinrich Campe and Johann Bernhard Basedow.

Taiwan's Self-Conscious Nation-Building Project

Asian Survey ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
International Trends ◽  
Urgent Task ◽  
Rising China ◽  
Building Project

Some Taiwanese nationalists express, with alarm, the view that their country is about to be absorbed into a rising China, yet they are paradoxically optimistic that broader international trends will make it possible to secure de jure independence as early as the end of the decade. Their first and most urgent task, in the process of thoroughly de-Sinifying the culture, is to imagine a new Taiwanese nation——a radical project that, in the aftermath of President Chen Shui-bian's reelection, is certain to roil cross-strait relations in the coming months and years.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document