Not Quite Exile, Not Quite Home

2021 ◽  
pp. 216-229
Author(s):  
Jane S. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Social Integration ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
High Level

“Sepharad” was more than simply the Hebrew name for Iberia. Through much of Jewish history it denoted a set of Jewish cultural traits that included a high level of cultural and social integration, a sense of Jewish aristocracy and noble lineage, and unmatched creativity in Hebrew poetry, philosophy, science, mystical thought, rabbinic codification, and biblical exegesis. Spanish Jews lived under both Muslim and Christian rule, sometimes in harmony and mutual enrichment, but often under oppressive conditions of discrimination, forced conversion, and Inquisition. Their history of co-existence (convivencia) included uprootings as well as cultural flowering. The expulsion of 1492 did not spell the end of their deep bonds with Spain. Instead, Sephardim remained one of the main branches of the Jewish people.

Between Others and Brothers

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-588
Author(s):  
Michelle U. Campos
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Education System ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The West ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Identity Based

Some fifteen years ago, the Israel Museum exhibition “To the East: Orientalism in the Arts in Israel” featured a photograph by the Israeli artist Meir Gal entitled “Nine Out of Four Hundred: The West and the Rest.” At the center of the photograph was Gal, holding the nine pages that dealt with the history of Jews in the Middle East in a textbook of Jewish history used in Israel's education system. As Gal viscerally argued, “these books helped establish a consciousness that the history of the Jewish people took place in Eastern Europe and that Mizrahim have no history worthy of remembering.” More damningly, he wrote that “the advent of Zionism and the establishment of the Israeli State drove a wedge between Mizrahim and their origins, and replaced their Jewish-Arab identity with a new Israeli identity based on European ideals as well as hatred of the Arab world.”

Book Reviews

2000 ◽  
pp. 425-427
Author(s):  
Joseph Perl
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Hebrew Poetry ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Involvement ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Changing Attitudes

This chapter looks at ten book reviews. The first three reviews discuss books on the first Hebrew novel, the Kraków reformed Jewish community, and the politics of Polish Jewry. The next three reviews consider books on the role of the left-wing movements in the Jewish tradition; the Hebrew poetry in Poland between the two world wars; and the impact of the Endecja's thought on the broader political spectrum, with respect to the question of ethnic minorities. The seventh review examines Natan Gross's The History of Jewish Cinema in Poland, which talks about the Jewish involvement in Polish cinema during the 1920s and 1930s. The last three reviews explore books on Salo Wittmayer Baron, an architect of Jewish history; the changing attitudes of Polish society towards the Holocaust; and the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer, contemporary Poles' current views on Jews, and Polish Jewish survivors' perspectives on Poland and on Singer's writing.

Polish History through the Eyes of Three Jewish Popular Historians

1998 ◽  
pp. 312-318
Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski
Keyword(s):  
Large Volume ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of

This chapter provides a comparison of Howard Sachar's book The Course of Modern Jewish History, which was first published in 1958, with two other general works on Jewish history. One is a large volume entitled A History of the Jewish People, edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, which was first published in Hebrew in 1969. The other is Robert M. Seltzer's Jewish People, Jewish Thought, which is more limited in size and scope and intended for a broad audience. The chapter considers only topics relating to Polish history, not those concerned with exclusively internal Jewish problems or the history of other nations. Nor will there be any general assessment of Sachar's book. Although Ben-Sasson's and Seltzer's works cover Jewish history from ancient to modern times, the story of the Jews in Poland is a relatively recent chapter in this history: it dates only from the creation of the Polish state in the tenth century. Both authors mention the early period of Polish history only briefly, beginning their real narratives of Polish Jewry with the detailed analysis of privileges granted to Jews by Polish kings in the thirteenth century.

Introduction

2001 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Shmuel Feiner
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Life ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Modern Era

This chapter provides an overview of the Jewish Haskalah of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Jewish Haskalah is the first modern ideology in Jewish history, which appeared at the threshold of the modern era and was promulgated by the maskilim — the first Jews who were conscious of being modern, and who concluded that the modern age called for a comprehensive programme of change in both the cultural and the practical life of Jewish society. For years, historians of the Haskalah movement have almost completely ignored the attitude of the maskilim to history. However, the attraction felt by many maskilim to the biblical past of the Jewish people has not been overlooked by scholars. Nevertheless, new surveys of the history of Jewish historical writing and thought continue to minimize the contribution of the maskilim to this field, and repeat the claim that the Haskalah had but a vague sense of the importance of historical knowledge. This book explores a range of sources from the 100-year period of the Haskalah (1782–1881), which show not only that the maskilim displayed a great interest in history, but also that their attitude to the past was significant both for the Haskalah's ideology and for the development of Jewish historical consciousness.

Book Reviews

2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-218
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Massachusetts Institute Of Technology ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institute Of Technology

Peter Temin of Massachusetts Institute of Technology reviews,“The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492“ by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Explores the economic and demographic history of the Jewish people between the years 70-1492. Discusses 70 CE-1492—how many Jews there were, and where and how they lived; whether the Jews were a persecuted minority; the people of the Book, 200 BCE-200 CE; the economics of Hebrew literacy in a world of farmers; Jews in the Talmud era, 200-650—the chosen few; the move from farmers to merchants, 750-1150; educated wandering Jews, 800-1250; segregation or choice—from merchants to moneylenders, 1000-1500; the Mongol shock—whether Judaism can survive when trade and urban economies collapse; and 1492 to today—open questions. Botticini is Professor of Economics and Director and Fellow of the Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research at Bocconi University. Eckstein is Mario Henrique Simonson Chair in Labor Economics at Tel Aviv University and Professor and Dean of the School of Economics at IDC Herzliya. Bibliography; index”

scholarly journals What Can a Catholic Learn from the History of Jewish Biblical Exegesis?

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary A Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of

This article considers the claim of the 2001 Pontifical Biblical Commission Study, The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible that the Christian reader can be instructed by post-biblical Jewish reflections on the Bible. It explores Jewish understandings that the role of the biblical prophets was not only to communicate God's messages to Israel but also to represent Israel before God. The essay demonstrates the correctness of the PBC's assertion by applying this Jewish tradition about the prpohets to Christian reflection on the meaning of Jesus' death.

1492 to Today

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Term Impact ◽  
High Skill

This concluding chapter highlights some puzzles that punctuate Jewish history, from the mass expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492–97 to today. A growing number of scholars have been studying the long-term impact of institutions by illustrating that some contemporary economic patterns have been influenced by institutions that emerged centuries ago. This book contributes to this literature by showing that the transition of the Jews from farming into high-skill occupations has also been the outcome of the availability of contract-enforcement institutions shaped by the unique features of the Jewish religion. Meanwhile, social scientists have always been fascinated by the study of religion and by the influence religious values and norms may have on human behavior. Ultimately, the cultural values and social norms that Judaism fostered two millennia ago shaped the demographic and economic history of the Jewish people through today.

scholarly journals Uri Zvi Grinberg: the politics of avant-garde. The Hebrew Zionist revolution - 1924–1929

1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 24-60
Author(s):  
Judith Winther
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
New Man ◽  
Zionist Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Radical Transformation

Uri Zvi Grinberg (1894–1981) lived at the crossroads of Jewish history, at a time when the Zionist movement was ambitiously caught in a process of bringing about a radical transformation aimed to alter the landscape and map of the history of the Jewish people and the individual, creating a new people and a new man. Of all Hebrew poets in the 20th century Uri Zvi Grinberg was the most politically committed. His political passion and struggle were at the very foundation of his poetry, profoundly imbued with the sense of his mission, rejecting violently an aesthetic value, a dwelling essence, detached from ideological interest and the messiness of history. He was drawn towards radical Zionist politics: active Hebrew messianism and messianic Hebraism. He understood Zionism as a secular messianic movement, trying to turn it into a political ideology, and trying to propose not only a program for a new understanding of Jewish history but also new guiding principles for Zionist activity.

scholarly journals Calvijns uitleg van Romeinen 9-11 tegen de achtergrond van de geschiedenis van de exegese van Origenes tot de Glossa ordinaria

2018 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik de Boer
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Complete Rejection ◽  
Glossa Ordinaria ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Visible Body ◽  
Broad Understanding

The purpose of this article is to listen to John Calvin’s view on the place of Israel from his exegesis of Romans 9-11, against the backdrop of the history of Christian exegesis of this same passage. After establishing that Calvin’s view of Israel and the Jews was primarily determined by his biblical exegesis (and not so much by any noteworthy interaction with the Jews of his time), the historical voices of Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, Pelagius and Glossa Ordinaria are explored. In the last part Calvin’s exegesis of Romans 9-11 is investigated. This investigation makes clear that Calvin is not caught up in a dogmatic discussion of predestination, but that he rather focuses on Paul’s preaching with regards to Israel. There is the scandalum of Israel’s unbelief whereby the visible body of the people of Israel has been generally rejected. But this is not a complete rejection. The secret election of God means that there is still an adoption, which is completely grounded in God’s grace. Calvin has a broad understanding of ‘Israel’ which includes both Jewish and gentile Christians. But for the reformer of Geneva the Jews always remain the firstborn in God’s house. Regarding the Jewish people as a collective, Calvin does not harbour any particular expectations. Opsomming Die doel van hierdie artikel is om te luister na Johannes Calvyn se visie op die plek van Israel vanuit sy eksegese van Romeine 9-11, teen die agtergrond van die geskiedenis van die Christelike Bybeluitleg van dieselfde gedeelte. Nadat vasgestel is dat Calvyn se visie op Israel en die Jode primêr bepaal is deur sy Bybeluitleg (en nie soseer deur enige noemenswaardige omgang met die Jode van sy tyd nie), klink agtereenvolgens die stemme van Origenes, Ambrosius, Augustinus, Pelagius en die Glossa Ordinaria. In die laaste gedeelte word Calvyn se eksegese van Romeine 9-11 ondersoek. Hierdie ondersoek maak duidelik dat Calvyn nie vasgevang is in ’n dogmatiese behandeling van die uitverkiesing nie, maar dat hy eerder die aandag rig op Paulus se prediking met betrekking tot Israel. Deur die scandalum van Israel se ongeloof is daar ’n algemene verwerping van die sigbare volk. Maar dit is geen algehele verwerping nie. Die geheime uitverkiesing van God beteken dat daar steeds ’n aanneming is, wat volledig in God se genade gegrond is. Calvyn het ’n breë verstaan van ‘Israel’ – dit sluit sowel Joodse Christene as Christene uit die heidendom in. Vir die Geneefse hervormer bly die Jode egter altyd die eersgeborenes in God se huis. Wat betref die Joodse volk as kollektief, koester Calvyn geen besondere verwagting nie.

scholarly journals Tikkun Olam: Collectivity, Responsibility, History

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-307
Author(s):  
Alex Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Cultural Genocide ◽  
Tikkun Olam ◽  
Community Contribution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rabbinic Law

This paper presents findings from qualitative interviews with five Jewish people — two Rabbis and three workers in various community service capacities — about their understandings and practices of the Jewish principle oftikkun olam.Tikkun olamis a Hebrew phrase that means “the repair of the world,” has its roots in Rabbinic law, the Kabbalah and the ‘Aleinuprayer, and became a mainstream term for Jewish social justice work and community contribution in North America following the Shoah (Holocaust). In this study, participants spoke to the imperative to act and responsibility; externaltikkunand internaltikkun; collectivity and interconnectedness; the presence of Jewish history in their work, particularly in the case of the Holocaust; and the spiritual dimension of working with people. This study was undertaken with a narrative approach, to honour and preserve understandings oftikkun olamacross Jewish communities. This study indicates the continuing influence oftikkun olamin settings both within and outside the Jewish community. Potential future areas of research are the role of spirituality in social workers’ commitment to social justice and the commitment expressed by several participants to work with Aboriginal people based on a shared history of cultural genocide.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document