Jewish Liturgy and Jewish Scholarship: Method and Cosmology

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The State ◽  
Scientific Rigour ◽  
Jewish Liturgy

The state of Jewish liturgy as a modern discipline has received treatment in many quarters. This article describes liturgical study in Judaism. It examines how Jewish liturgy is a discipline on its own. It now turns out that if it is a discipline, it is a very postmodern one, in the sense that it asks how Jews construct the meaning of their lives. New paradigms do not necessarily displace old ones; they build on them. The scientific rigour of the philologists is as important as ever; the reconstruction of piyyutim and rites serves as raw. With the abandoning of the model by which only origins matter, and with the understanding that every communal ritualizing deserves attention for what it says about Jewish identity, liturgy is becoming a ‘post-discipline’ with enormous potential.

Jewish Liturgical Memory and the Non-Jew

2012 ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Ruth Langer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Biblical Narratives ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Jewish Liturgy ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines the power and construction of Jewish memory as well as the image of the religious Other in Jewish liturgy, which has been so heavily conditioned by adversarial biblical narratives and the experience of historical persecution. In the memory shaped by Jewish liturgy — be it the daily Amidah, the High Holiday prayers, Passover and Purim texts, or the Ninth of Av piyutim (liturgical poems) memorializing the destruction of the Temple, the tragedies of the Middle Ages, and the Holocaust — the religious or political Other is portrayed as almost universally negative. The non-Jew — usually considered in the impersonal abstract, rather than the particular other — is a threat to Jewish uniqueness. It disrupts God's covenantal plan for Israel. The chapter then looks at the ongoing tension between making historical memory part of Jewish identity and an openness to allowing history to unfold into a future that may move beyond tragedy.

The Challenge of a Jewish State

2015 ◽  
pp. 135-180
Author(s):  
David H. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
The Creation ◽  
First Time ◽  
State Of Israel

This chapter investigates the first of three external challenges which defined Jewish life in western Europe in the late 1940s and 1950s. This was the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. For the first time in modern history, Jews could choose whether or not to live in the diaspora. There were hundreds of survivors in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands who were convinced that they had no future in Europe and migrated to Palestine as soon as they could. Those who chose not to were now forced to think more seriously about their decision to remain in western Europe. Zionist stalwarts, in particular, were challenged to reassess their role now that the Jewish state was a reality. What resulted was a transformation in collective and personal behaviour and attitudes that largely strengthened collective Jewish identity and commitment.

Judaic Challenges to the Legitimacy of Israel

Global Jurist ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yakov Rabkin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Schools ◽  
State Of Israel

Abstract Legitimacy implies the existence of a framework within which it is assessed. The framework chosen for this paper is the religion of Judaism. This is, of course, contingent on the assumption that the state of Israel is related to Judaism, whatever its stream. Both the founding fathers of Zionism and their detractors emphasized the discontinuity and the revolutionary nature of the new political movement in Jewish history. Traditional leaders of Judaism almost unanimously condemned Zionism as an alien and perfidious import. They refused it all legitimacy. However, the policy of centrality of Israel exported around the world by Israeli educators for several decades has borne fruit. Many Jews find it difficult to separate Zionism from the Jewish identity as it has been taught to them. Their identity is often centred on political support for the State of Israel, and they see advocacy for Israel — a special course in the curriculum of many private Jewish schools — as a key part of being Jewish. The question of Israel divides the Jews more than any other. In view of the vast diversity of views, Judaic legitimacy of Israel depends of the kind of Judaism in question. In terms of traditional Judaic scholarship, espoused by most Haredim, Zionism and the state that embodies it are at best irrelevant to their Judaism. Yet, more modernized Jewish communities embrace the centrality of Israel with a lot of emotion. They cannot imagine a Judaism without Israel. In their often romantic view of Israel they cannot understand how a pious Jew can live in Jerusalem and remain intransigent in his rejection of Zionism.

scholarly journals Societal Values in Jewish State Religious and State Secular Schools in Israel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaacov J Katz
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High Schools ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Societal Values ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Heritage Education ◽  
Secular Schools

The Israeli Jewish educational system offers mandatory religious and heritage education specially tailored to the specific needs of the state religious and state secular sectors of the Israeli population. In both state religious and state secular schools, study about Jewish religion, Jewish tradition, Jewish history, and Jewish culture falls under the category of religious and heritage education and, as such, addresses the normative societal values common to both sectors in Israeli Jewish society. In state religious schools religious and heritage education is both faith and knowledge based and is characterized by an emphasis on religious themes underlying societal values, whereas in state secular schools religious and heritage education is entirely knowledge based with emphasis on the secular character of societal values. In the present study a questionnaire designed to examine the values of Jewish identity, Jewish tradition, Jewish peoplehood, humanism and universalism was administered to 84 eleventh grade students in Israeli state religious and state secular high schools. Results of the study indicate that while students in the state religious high school hold significantly more intense attitudes toward Jewish identity, Jewish peoplehood and Jewish tradition, students in the state secular high school exhibited significantly more intense attitudes toward humanism and universalism. The results of the study were explained in light of the different emphases characterizing religious and heritage education studied in state religious and state secular high schools and the resulting differences in the intensity of the influence of religiosity or secularity on the formation of societal values of students in the two educational sectors.

Map-Making and Nation-Building

2020 ◽  
pp. 56-97
Author(s):  
Christine Leuenberger ◽  
Izhak Schnell
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Local Municipalities ◽  
Before And After

Jewish organizations and Israeli institutions, before and after the establishment of Israel in 1948, produced various maps that fostered an “imagined community” and helped build the state. The Jewish National Fund, in particular, become a powerful socializing agent into notions of territory. Its widely disseminated Blue Box helped brand the territory and territorialize Jewish identity. Moreover, after 1948, the newly appointed Governmental Names Committee established a Hebrew toponomy of the land. Yet top-down naming practices often encountered bottom-up resistance by local municipalities, as ideological directives would mix with local politics. At the same time, the Israeli atlas became a powerful representation of Israeli’s national story, reconstructing its history, its achievements, and its modern prowess. Last, at that time, various political parties also used maps to put forth different visions for a new society, a new human being, and a new state commanding a yet to be defined territory.

Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Alon Harel
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Constitutional Evolution

Abstract Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. It also includes several symbolic and operative provisions which are designed to strengthen the Jewish character of the state. The Basic Law purports to legally define and entrench the particular rather than universal values of Israel—the values that distinguish Israel from other nations rather than those that are shared by other nations. It anchors the Jewish identity of the state in its formal constitutional structure. My aim in this article is to present the history of the constitutional evolution of Israel and then to describe the conservative reactions to the constitutional liberalization of Israel. Then, I turn to examine the Basic Law, its provisions, and the arguments of advocates and opponents. Last, I evaluate its impact on the Israeli legal system. I shall argue that the Basic Law is part of a systematic attack on democratic liberties in Israel that may eventually transform Israel from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian democracy.

Marx and Rosenzweig on Community and Redemption

Naharaim ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-285
Author(s):  
Eugenio Muinelo Paz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
German Jewry

Abstract The first and second parts of the paper will deal with the problem of assimilation and the genesis of a kind of cultural hibridity in the context of the German Jewry in the Modern Age. I will try to understand the figures of Karl Marx and Franz Rosenzweig as complementary visions of Jewish identity, the latter from within, and the former from without it. The third and the fourth parts will tackle the question of how that identity may be fully realized in a socio-institutional sense, not necessarily restricted to a narrow political conception of the State. My conclusion will be that both Marx and Rosenzweig affirmed human freedom as an essentialy social phenomenon enacted through redemption, which must take always in account the problem of alterity.

Marx and Rosenzweig on Community and Redemption

Naharaim ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenio Muinelo Paz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
German Jewry

Abstract The first and second parts of the paper will deal with the problem of assimilation and the genesis of a kind of cultural hibridity in the context of the German Jewry in the Modern Age. I will try to understand the figures of Karl Marx and Franz Rosenzweig as complementary visions of Jewish identity, the latter from within, and the former from without it. The third and the fourth parts will tackle the question of how that identity may be fully realized in a socio-institutional sense, not necessarily restricted to a narrow political conception of the State. My conclusion will be that both Marx and Rosenzweig affirmed human freedom as an essentialy social phenomenon enacted through redemption, which must take always in account the problem of alterity.

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