Exile and Diaspora in the Bible

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-38
Author(s):  
Adele Berlin
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Babylonian Exile

This essay focuses on biblical views of exile as portrayed in historiographic narrative and in prophetic and poetic literature. It considers the pre-exilic idea that exile is a punishment for unfaithfulness to God and the broader postexilic concept of the ongoing exile as a way to describe the Jewish condition in the restored Judah. Drawing on Mesopotamian documents as well as on the Bible, it constructs a picture of Jewish life in the Babylonian exile and discusses the diaspora stories of Esther and Daniel, where Jews preserved their ethnic identity and flourished. In the Bible, exile transcended the historical deportations and became an important element in postexilic Jewish identity.

Conclusion

2012 ◽  
pp. 360-370
Author(s):  
Shaul Stampfer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Desire To Change

This concluding chapter examines changes to the role of yeshiva in Jewish society as well as several developments to yeshiva history after the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, the changes and conflicts that had struck the Jewish world had affected the yeshiva too. Contemporary discussion of the yeshiva was frequently in the context of the Haskalah and noted its power to effect change. There is no clear answer as to what it was that persuaded young people to abandon traditional Jewish life, but the wholesale attribution of this to the Haskalah is not self-evident. It seems much more likely that the threat to traditional ways came from indifference to Jewish identity rather than from any desire to change that identity. Indifference is naturally hard to identify, and it was easier for conservatives to battle against a concrete enemy, equally eager to do battle, than to engage with an attitude that was so contemptuous of traditional approaches that it did not even bother to argue with them.

scholarly journals “Zwischen allen Stühlen”: Reflections on Judaism in Germany in Victor Klemperer’s Post-Holocaust Diaries

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 168
Author(s):  
Sepp
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Jewish Origin ◽  
Soviet Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Soviet Occupation Zone

This article focuses as a case study on Victor Klemperer’s diaristic representation of German-Jewish identity and culture after 1945 in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR. The contribution shows how Klemperer’s professional and social situation remained very uncomfortable even in East Germany. For the diarist, the communist code ‘antifascist/fascist’, just like the code ‘German/un-German’ before it, was tantamount to concealing Jewish origin. His post-Holocaust journals provide an immediate insider’s view of Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust from the perspective of a victim of active persecution. Against this backdrop, the contribution examines how the author’s original German nationalism gradually makes way, caught between contradictory impulses of assimilation and decreed Jewish identity, for a much more complex understanding of his own cultural identity. Klemperer’s diaries highlight a number of tensions that ultimately reflect on the disjunction between living and writing: The divide between a single and changing self lies at the heart of his diaries after 1945, which depict an astute, complex psychogram of the assimilated German-Jewish bourgeoisie that survived the Holocaust and tried to continue living in communist Germany.

Willy Loman and Postwar Jewish Insecurity

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-76
Author(s):  
Mark Hodin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
American West ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
American Jews ◽  
Land Of Israel ◽  
Death Of A Salesman

Abstract Willy Loman’s cryptic Jewish identity, recognizable but absent, has long been considered an act of ethnic betrayal, evidence of Arthur Miller’s inauthenticity as a Jewish writer. However, as scholars recently have explored the undercurrent of anxiety running beneath the surface of postwar Jewish life, Willy’s feelings of rootlessness, and his worries over American success, seem now particularly “Jewish.” Arguing that Willy Loman represents a postwar Jewish-American identity crisis, not a suppressed Jewish essence, the article analyzes the reception of Death of a Salesman (1949) in the Jewish press, from the pulpit, and within the synagogue community. Throughout, Willy’s preoccupation with acceptance and his eventual self-destruction resonate uncomfortably with the nightmare of European catastrophe that American Jews were then processing. In this context, the article claims that Biff’s attempt to counter his father’s world of selling by laboring in Texas, an action usually interpreted through myths of the American West, may have been read by Jewish Salesman audiences through a discourse of postwar Zionism they knew well: namely, the resettlement of Holocaust refugees in the land of Israel.

Creating Religious Identity: Rabbinic Interpretations of the Exodus

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Günter Stemberger
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Active Force ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
Biblical History ◽  
Mount Sinai ◽  
As If ◽  
Babylonian Exile

Abstract:According to the rabbis, only those belong to Israel who have lived through the central events of biblical history, above all the Exodus and the Babylonian Exile. This is demonstrated on the basis of three texts, the Haggadah of Pesaḥ, the Mekhilta, and the interpretation of the Exodus story in the Babylonian Talmud Sotah. Every Jew is expected to re-enact these events in their own lives: “In every generation man is bound to look upon himself as if he had come forth from Egypt.” Converts may also opt into this history and consider themselves as if they, too, had stood on Mount Sinai. Biblical history remains an active force beyond the limits of time; the consciousness of this ever present history is part of the rabbinic understanding of one’s own present and thus essential for one’s Jewish identity.

3. How did Judaism develop?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Social Value ◽  
The Bible

It is interesting that a people subjected to so much harassment, persecution, denial, and exile managed to produce a culture of great vitality. ‘How did Judaism develop?’ examines the stories of eight men and two women that illustrate some aspect of spiritual, intellectual, or social value in Jewish life. The Talmud is the heart of Judaism. After the Bible, it is the book most studied by Jews, but it is not known who put it together and edited it. Every generation has its Stamaim, the anonymous scholars and humble practitioners who actually shape and implement the inspirations of the ‘named ones’ who came before them.

The Babylonian Empire in the Bible

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hemchand Gossai
Keyword(s):  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Tower Of Babel ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Babylonian Exile

The Babylonian Empire appears in multiple manifestations in the Bible. In Revelation 17–18, Babylon is characterized as the “whore of Babylon.” In Genesis 11 the Tower of Babel episode extends the complexity and multifaceted representations of Babylon, while Daniel 3–4 recounts particular episodes of the encounter between Daniel and the Babylonian king. However, the most prominent feature of the Babylonian Empire in the Bible is that of the Babylonian exile. This article approaches the topic of the Babylonian Empire in the Bible broadly regarding themes and and explores several representative texts.

Jewish Theology and World Religions

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Know How ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Religious Other

Two of the most pervasive aspects of modern Jewish life are interaction with people of other faiths and exposure to their beliefs to a degree unknown in the past. Jewish thinking regarding other religions has not succeeded in keeping pace with the contemporary realities that regularly confront most Jews, nor has it adequately assimilated the ways in which other religions have changed their teachings about Jews and Judaism. Many Jews who grapple with Jewish tradition in the contemporary world want to know how Judaism sees today's non-Jewish other in order to affirm itself. Re-examining Jewish tradition, they seek guidance in understanding their interfaith relationships in the light of a Jewish religious mission. This book advances this conversation, exploring critical issues that Jews and Jewish thought face when relating to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. It also analyses the philosophical issues raised by pluralism, non-exclusive approaches to religious truth, and appreciating the religious other. The chapters show why formulating a Jewish theology of world religions is a priority for Jewish thinkers and educators concerned with reinvigorating Judaism's contribution to the contemporary world, and how it coheres with maintaining Jewish identity and continuity.

The Empire of Our Religion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari Rabin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Reform Judaism ◽  
American Continent ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
American Judaism ◽  
Pastoral Ideal

Amidst unfettered mobility, Jewish leaders like Isaac Mayer Wise and Isaac Leeser attempted not only an institutional overhaul of American Judaism, but also an ideological one. Jewish leaders engaged in popular geography and new forms of theological reflection, drawing on Jewish thought and the ideologies of American imperialism. They both critiqued the settings of American Jewish life, even advocating for agricultural colonies, but also developed a Jewish pastoral ideal. In this mode, they developed novel understandings of Jewish identity, Jewish institutions, and religious change. The internalized “Jewish heart” and the powerful “empire of our religion” both became widespread metaphors for explaining how and why Judaism would flourish anywhere. They were used by a broad swath of Jewish leaders, as was the concept of “progress,” although those allied with Wise’s Reform Judaism and with Leeser’s traditionalism soon developed competing understandings of how religious change should happen and of whether Judaism should be fully mobile or merely portable. In spite of these divides, they helped establish an underlying confidence that Judaism could and should prevail throughout the American continent through institutional development and individual identities.

Rashi’s Commentary

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-78
Author(s):  
Eric Lawee
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Enormous Number

The Commentary’s medieval reception unfolded in diverse centers of Jewish life and across a strikingly large number of spheres: exegetical, educational, polemical, and more. The chapter investigates the fortunes of the Commentary through the period of its early printing in the three key centers for its reception history: Ashkenaz (the Franco-German sphere), Sefarad (Spain), and southern France. The chapter concludes with an account of Rashi’s status as the paramount Torah commentator as it is brightly underscored in data from the first half century of Hebrew printing. In the four centuries prior to print, the Commentary had circulated in hundreds of copies—an enormous number for a Hebrew work in the chirographic age, the focus of the overview here. With printing, the number of editions exploded, reaching some three thousand in three decades. The record of early printings points to the Commentary’s status as a foundational text transcending time and place and embodying a collective Jewish identity.

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