scholarly journals António Vieira: A Jesuit Missionary to the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-249
Author(s):  
Adma Muhana

Abstract Between the years 1646 and 1648, António Vieira maintained close contact with the Portuguese-Jewish community of Amsterdam, in particular with Menasseh ben Israel, a rabbi of Portuguese-converso origin. Under interrogation by the Inquisition, Vieira characterized this period of his life as the one in which he began to elaborate his messianic thesis of the so-called Fifth Empire. Unlike ben Israel, however, Vieira maintained that the Fifth Empire would arrive when the Jews recognized Christ as the messiah. Moreover, commanded by a Portuguese emperor-king, these Fifth Empire Christianized Jews would have their own political state, king, and cultural ceremonies. Always a missionary, Vieira argued that Jews would convert to the Catholic faith without the use of force as long as their idiosyncratic expectations were accepted, much like the Asian peoples and Indians of the New World, who, despite having been converted by the Jesuits, maintained some of their customs, beliefs, and institutions.

2014 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Author(s):  
James Carleton Paget

Albert Schweitzer's engagement with Judaism, and with the Jewish community more generally, has never been the subject of substantive discussion. On the one hand this is not surprising—Schweitzer wrote little about Judaism or the Jews during his long life, or at least very little that was devoted principally to those subjects. On the other hand, the lack of a study might be thought odd—Schweitzer's work as a New Testament scholar in particular is taken up to a significant degree with presenting a picture of Jesus, of the earliest Christian communities, and of Paul, and his scholarship emphasizes the need to see these topics against the background of a specific set of Jewish assumptions. It is also noteworthy because Schweitzer married a baptized Jew, whose father's academic career had been disadvantaged because he was a Jew. Moreover, Schweitzer lived at a catastrophic time in the history of the Jews, a time that directly affected his wife's family and others known to him. The extent to which this personal contact with Jews and with Judaism influenced Schweitzer either in his writings on Judaism or in his life will in part be the subject of this article.


1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerardo L. Munck ◽  
Chetan Kumar

As the Cold War has receded, it has left behind a world system characterized by two divergent trends. On the one hand, as the two superpowers have withdrawn their security umbrellas, a host of ethnic and territorial conflicts have sprouted around the globe. On the other hand, as former rival blocs now create alliances, international mechanisms for the peaceful resolution of contentious issues have proliferated. A central concern of our times, then, is whether, and under what circumstances, these new mechanisms will be successful in dealing with the disorderly aspects of the new world ‘order’.


1984 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 838-840

The Security Council,Having heard the statement of the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Nicaragua,Having also heard the statements of various States Members of the United Nations in the course of the debate,Deeply concerned, on the one hand, at the situation prevailing on and insid the northern border of Nicaragua and, on the other hand, at the consequent dange of a military confrontation between Honduras and Nicaragua, which could further aggravate the existing crisis.situation in Central America,Recalling all the relevant principles of the Charter of the United Nations,, particularly the obligation of States to settle their disputes exclusively by peaceful means, not to resort to the threat or use of force and to respect the self-determination of peoples and the sovereign independence of all States,Noting the widespread desire expressed by the States concerned to achieve solutions to the differences between them,


2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Gerson Klumpp

AbstractThis article provides an account of the functional range of Kamas valency operators. Kamas is an extinct South Siberian language of the Samoyed branch of Uralic, which was in close contact with Turkic for many centuries. In the early 20th century, Kamas had two valency operators: (i) -Tə derived transitive from intransitive verbs as well as causative from transitive verbs; and (ii) -Ō derived intransitive from transitive verbs; in addition the intransitivizer, probably departing from pairs like edə- ‘hang up (tr.)’ > ed-ȫ- ‘hang (itr.)’, had acquired the function of specifying imperfective state-of-affairs, e.g. iʔbə- ‘lie down, lie’ > iʔb-ȫ- ‘lie’. The two markers may occur in combination in the order “increase-decrease” (-T-Ō), but not vice versa. While on the one hand the valency operators may be understood as verb derivation morphemes proper, i.e. verbs derived with the suffixes -Tə- and -Ō- are considered new lexical entries, their functional range also covers combinations with participles otherwise unspecified for voice. The valency decreaser -Ō occurs with participles of transitive verbs in order to specify P-orientation. The valency increaser -Tə has a variety of causative readings, among them causative-reflexive, causative-permissive, and causative-instrumental, and it also qualifies as a marker of control and/or characterizing activity. The discussion in this article is focused mainly on classificational issues.


2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 1235-1237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Boerlin ◽  
Hans H. Siegrist ◽  
André P. Burnens ◽  
Peter Kuhnert ◽  
Purita Mendez ◽  
...  

We report a case of Pasteurella multocida meningitis in a 1-month-old baby exposed to close contact with two dogs and a cat but without any known history of injury by these animals. 16S rRNA gene sequencing of the isolate from the baby allowed identification at the subspecies level and pointed to the cat as a possible source of infection. Molecular typing of Pasteurella isolates from the animals, from the baby, and from unrelated animals clearly confirmed that the cat harbored the same P. multocidasubsp. septica strain on its tonsils as the one isolated from the cerebrospinal fluid of the baby. This case stresses the necessity of informing susceptible hosts at risk of contracting zoonotic agents about some basic hygiene rules when keeping pets. In addition, this study illustrates the usefulness of molecular methods for identification and epidemiological tracing ofPasteurella isolates.


Author(s):  
Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld

This chapter highlights the various aspects of the daily lives of the poor. In Amsterdam, the poor among the Portuguese Jewish community ranged from the highly educated to the illiterate. On the one hand there were those whose sense of honour debarred them from asking for poor relief, and on the other there were those described as inveterate beggars. There were men and women; large, complete families and fragmented units; and there were people left completely on their own. Some were healthy or young or both, others old or sick or both, with all sorts of variations between them. Many applied for poor relief no more than occasionally; others relied permanently on outside help. The poor relief provided by the Portuguese community constituted no more than a supplement to income from work, private funds, and legacies, and help from friends, relatives, private charity, and other sources. Sephardi Jews who had no access to these sources, or who missed out in other ways, found themselves forced to seek their fortune elsewhere sooner or later.


Author(s):  
Floris Verhaart

This chapter introduces the debate on classical learning, as well as some of the key players in these debates, such as Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736), Pieter Burman (1668–1741), Richard Bentley (1662–1742), and Charles Rollin (1661–1741), against the background of the culture wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The opposing approaches to Latin and Greek texts are discussed. On the one hand, we find a more text-critically oriented focus that was associated by contemporaries with scholars either operating in the United Provinces or in close contact with Dutch peers. The other approach was associated with French scholars and focused on the historical and moral content of texts. This opposition is helpful in understanding the culture wars at the turn of the eighteenth century as it guards us from simplifying the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns to a straightforward clash between ‘old’ and ‘new’.


Author(s):  
Ward Thomas

International law and armed conflict have a rather contentious history together. One the one hand, armed conflict implies and absence of law, and yet, on the other, international law plays an important role in codifying the use of force. The UN Charter’s restrictions on the use of force, drafted in the waning days of a second cataclysmic world war, were intended to radically transform the centuries-old ideology of raison d’état, which viewed war as a sovereign prerogative. More precisely, Article 2(4) of the Charter forbids not just war but force of any kind, or even the threat of it. On its face, the Charter system is a model of simplicity, consisting of a clear prohibition and two exceptions to that prohibition. The apparent simplicity is misleading, however. Article 2(4) is violated so often that experts disagree about whether it should even be considered good law. The Chapter VII enforcement exception is rarely used, and the meaning of self-defense under Article 51 is the subject of contentious disagreement. Moreover, even some UN bodies have supported creating another exception (humanitarian intervention) that coexists uneasily with the organization’s foundational principles. In addition, there is yet another exception (the use of force by national liberation movements) that may be as significant as the others, yet is little discussed by contemporary commentators.


2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Brunstetter ◽  
Megan Braun

In the preface of the 2006 edition ofJust and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer makes an important distinction between, on the one hand, “measures short of war,” such as imposing no-fly zones, pinpoint air/missile strikes, and CIA operations, and on the other, “actual warfare,” typified by a ground invasion or a large-scale bombing campaign. Even if the former are, technically speaking, acts of war according to international law, he proffers that “it is common sense to recognize that they are very different from war.” While they all involve “the use of force,” Walzer distinguishes between the level of force used: the former, being more limited in scope, lack the “unpredictable and often catastrophic consequences” of a “full-scale attack.” Walzer calls the ethical framework governing these measuresjus ad vim(the just use of force), and he applies it to state-sponsored uses of force against both state and nonstate actors outside a state's territory that fall short of the quantum and duration associated with traditional warfare. Compared to acts of war,jus ad vimactions present diminished risk to one's own troops, have a destructive outcome that is more predictable and smaller in scale, severely curtail the risk of civilian casualties, and entail a lower economic and military burden. These factors makejus ad vimactions nominally easier for statesmen to justify compared to conventional warfare, though this does not necessarily mean these actions are morally legitimate or that they do not have potentially nefarious consequences.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (46) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Siegfried Zielinski

In this article, the author examines the contrasting worldviews of specific philosophers, architects, and physicists in an attempt to identify a position that would represent a viable alternative to the concept of universalization. In the history of civilization, he asserts, almost all wars have been of a territorial nature. Territories tend toward uniformity and universalization. He contrasts this worldview with reflections on oceanic thinking, which perceives bodies of water such as the Mediterranean as mediators between continents as well as between opposing worldviews, connecting and dividing at the same time. The sea, however, does not connect in order to homogenize but rather creates distance as an important prerequisite for true communication, thus linking multiplicity in all its variety as a viable alternative to universalism. The author moves on to scrutinize the cosmopolitan attitude as a paradox that on the one hand is oriented to the particular individual and on the other hand to an imaginary world community, that is, the universal. Taking this notion further to consider today’s world that is saturated with the imaginary and symbolic power of the Internet, the author proposes that cosmopolitanism could be understood as an adequate expression for the technologically advanced world community by its capability to strike a balance between the individual and the world as a whole, on one side, and synthetic identity generated by culture and technology, on the other. Nevertheless, deviating from all of these worldviews, the author concludes with a short reflection, inspired by two films, on an alternative to cosmopolitanism that he calls cosmoethics, which employs ethics as the guiding principle of thought and action and commits to a practice that stays in close contact not only with real but also with diverse realities.


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