scholarly journals Judaism, Enlightenment, and Ideology

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Randi Lynn Rashkover
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Life World ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Immanent Critique

The co-existence of Enlightenment and ideology has long vexed Jews in modernity. They have both loved and been leary of Enlightenment reason and its attending scientific and political institutions. Jews have also held a complex relationship to ideological forms that exist alongside Enlightenment reason and which have both lured and victimized them alike. Still, what accounts for this historical proximity between Enlightenment and ideology? and how does this relationship factor into the emergence of modern anti-Semitism? Can Jewish communities participate in contemporary societies committed to scientific developments and deliberative democracies and neither be targeted by totalizing systems of thought that eliminate Judaism’s difference nor fall prey to the power and seduction of ideological forces that compete with the Jewish life-world? This article argues that Hegel’s discussion of the Enlightenment in the Phenomenology of Spirit as a social practice of critical common sensism provides an immanent critique of Max Horkheimer’s and Theodore Adorno’s analysis of the absolutism of the Enlightenment that can bolster Jewish communal and philosophical hope in the commensurability between Judaism and the contemporary expressions of Enlightenment reason, even if it does not fully eradicate the challenges presented by ideology for Jewish communities and thinkers.

The Tropes of Jewish/Muslim Difference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The chapter explores how notions of Jewish and Muslim difference play out in the history of communal violence in independent India. In doing so it will first interrogate the way in which trajectories of anti-Muslim ideologies intersect in India with Nazi rhetoric that harks back to Hitler’s Germany, and the (lack of) the memory of the Holocaust on the subcontinent. It will then discuss how the experiences of contemporary Indian Jewish communities both mirror and contrast those of Indian Muslims and how Indian Jews and the alleged absence of anti-Semitism in India have become a reference point in the discourse of the Hindu right deployed to mask anti-Muslim and other forms of intolerance.

Jewish Identities in the Arab Middle East: The Case of Egypt in Retrospect

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 593-596
Author(s):  
Rami Ginat
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Target Population ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Historical Past ◽  
Generation Offspring

Much work has been done in recent decades on the histories of the Jews of Arab lands across a variety of time periods, reflecting an increasing interest in the historical past of the Jews of the “Orient.” While diverse, this literature may be divided into several general groups. The first comprises studies written by Western and Israeli scholars and encompasses a broad spectrum of Arabic-speaking countries. This literature has explored, among other things, issues relating to the way of life and administration of ethnically and culturally diverse Jewish communities, their approaches to Zionism and the question of their national identities, their positions regarding the Zionist–Israeli–Arab conflict in its various phases, and the phenomena of anti-Semitism, particularly in light of the increasing escalation of the conflict. It includes works by Israeli intellectuals of Mizrahi heritage, some of whom came together in the late 1990s in a sociopolitical dissident movement known as the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition. The target audience of this movement was Mizrahi Jews: refugees and emigrants from Arab countries as well as their second- and third-generation offspring. The movement, which was not ideologically homogeneous (particularly regarding approaches to the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict), took a postcolonialist approach to the Zionist narrative and enterprise, and was critical of the entrenchment of the Ashkenazi (European-extraction) Jews among the elites of the emerging Israeli society. The movement had scant success in reaching its target population: the majority of Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews living in Israel. Nevertheless, it brought to the fore the historical socioeconomic injustices that many Jews from Arab countries had experienced since arriving in Israel, whether reluctantly or acquiescently.

John F. O. Fernandez: Enlightened Lay Catholic Reformer, 1815–1820

1981 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-129
Author(s):  
Patrick W. Carey
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
American Catholic ◽  
American Catholic Church ◽  
The Church

The American republican form of government and the effects of the Enlightenment upon the European Catholic church provided fertile ground for theological reflection and ecclesiastical adaptation in early nineteenth-century American Catholicism. A number of immigrant Catholic laymen were influenced by their previous European Catholic experiences and by the American enthusiasm for republicanism to reform their understanding of the laity's role in the American Catholic church and to adapt ecclesiastical structures to American political institutions. In light of these experiences, some of these laymen began to reflect upon the Christian Scriptures and tradition, and to formulate a democratic conception of the layman's role within the church.

Medieval Roots of the Myth of Jewish Male Menses

2000 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irven M. Resnick
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Blood Libel ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Middle Ages

Good historical fiction reveals not only the realities of a particular epoch, but also its cultural attitudes. An excellent example is Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, which succeeds in disclosing the nature of Russian anti-semitism by artfully weaving together enduring themes of anti-Jewish Christian mythology—the blood libel and accusations of ritual murder—to illustrate the fabric of Jewish life in early modern Russia. Perhaps almost unnoticed in his work, however, are references to the myth of Jewish male menses. Consider the following passages from The Fixer, in which the Jewish defendant, Yakov Bok, is confronted by this bizarre contention:“You saw the blood?” the Prosecuting Attorney said sarcastically. “Did that have some religious meaning to you as a Jew? Do you know that in the Middle Ages Jewish men were said to menstruate?” Yakov looked at him in surprise and fright. “I don't know anything about that, your honor, although I don't see how it could be.”

They Sure Will Be of Minority Groups

2018 ◽  
pp. 112-135
Author(s):  
Samira K. Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
American Jewish Life ◽  
The Family ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
The One

Interfaith families that are also interracial are less able to seamlessly fit into “mainstream” American Jewish life, which is dominated by Ashkenazi culture and racially coded as white. On the one hand, this can make interactions in Jewish communities more challenging. On the other, these families are often given more freedom and flexibility for including traditions from the Christian side of the family than their white interfaith counterparts.

Critique

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irfan Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Race Studies ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
Immanent Critique

The main argument of this chapter is: the Enlightenment was an ethnic project and its conceptualization of reason highly local as it pitted itself against a series of Others, Islam included. Evidently, feminist and race studies scholarship offers a critique of the Enlightenment and its universalism. A point less stressed is that the erasure of non-Western philosophy in Enlightenment thinking construed universal as only "to all," not "from all." Consequently, non-Westerners were construed as empirical objects, not thinking subjects. As it disregarded from all, Western universalism claiming that it is for all and to all could only be missionary-like, for the only option it leaves open for those not subscribing to or already within is to convert. The blueprint for conversion stemmed from Enlightenment ideas of "civilizational infantilism" of the non-West and the obligation to "better the world." To substantiate this argument, the chapter discusses the German Enlightenment and the French Enlightenment both of which reconfigured rather than erased Christianity. Building on works, among others, of Talal Asad, the chapter alternatively outlines the possibility of analyzing Islam and reason as interwoven to show how immanent critique has been central to Islamic histories and cultures.

Society, Nature, Emancipation

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 154-190
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Vicarious Experience ◽  
Human History ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
National Differences ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of

This chapter is predominantly concerned with the thought tendencies grouped under the heading ‘the Enlightenment’, with regulation caveats about variations in character, national and otherwise, of the intellectual traditions denoted by the term: the French, Scottish, and German cases are each given separate attention. The governing concern is with the most theoretically self-conscious attempts to establish the utility of History as a way of understanding the human experience in light of influential concepts like Volksgeist, circonstance, esprit général, represéntations, and even ‘relations of production’, that elucidated human diversity across time and place. When explaining the broad sweep of human history providential accounts were replaced by secular ones, though in some instances the latter were structurally similar to the former and so had some of the character of History as Speculative Philosophy. On the whole the scholarship under examination evinced a liberal spirit as regards confessional and national differences, though it was frequently marked by a partiality to occidental civilization. Overall, we see a shift away from the study of religious and political institutions and towards—or back towards, insofar as there was some crossover with the French ‘new History’ of the sixteenth century—civic morals, culture, and the structural conditions of social life. History expanded further from being an instruction in statecraft for public men to proffering more rounded edification in the form of vicarious experience of different spheres of life.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
pp. 175-180
Author(s):  
Sarah Wobick-Segev
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Future ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Pluralistic Contexts

The epilogue returns to the theme of community building and the contexts under which Jewish life can and has flourished. It argues strongly against narratives in which persecution is seen as the cement that binds Jewish communities together over time. Instead, the Epilogue asserts that Jewish belonging thrives in places of choice and that Jews find more reasons and ways to remain connected to their culture and to each other in cities and countries with multiple viable options. It also asks an open-ended question regarding the future of Jewish belonging in a time of continued individualistic belonging. Taking an optimistic approach, the Epilogue concludes with a call for increased and pluralistic contexts for the perpetuation of Jewish belonging and self-identification.

The Shaping of Irish Presbyterian Attitudes to Mission, 1790–1840

2006 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW HOLMES
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Religious Conviction ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Recent Growth ◽  
Missionary Movement ◽  
Religious Factors ◽  
The Times

This article explores the various factors that both encouraged Irish Presbyterian involvement in mission and shaped how they understood their missionary calling. It contributes to the recent growth of interest in the Protestant missionary movement and takes issue with the predominant interpretation of Irish Presbyterianism offered by David Miller who misunderstands the complex relationship between traditional Presbyterianism, evangelicalism and modernity. After an overview of the main developments between 1790 and 1840, a consideration of the influence of the Reformed theological tradition, eschatology and the growth of evangelicalism is followed by an examination of the Enlightenment, the expansion of the British empire and the Presbyterian sense of patriotic duty. Though various non-religious factors shaped Presbyterian attitudes to mission, it will be argued that their active involvement was a product of sincere religious conviction and an eschatological reading of the signs of the times.

The Special Education Paradox: Equity as the Way to Excellence

1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Skrtic
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Regular Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Culture ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Institutional Practice ◽  
Regular Education Initiative ◽  
Immanent Critique

In this article, Thomas M. Skrtic analyzes and critiques the special education system in the United States, focusing on its policies, practices, and grounding assumptions. He provides an expansive and in-depth literature review, applying a form of criticism he calls "immanent critique" to three areas: 1) special education as a professional practice, 2) special education as an institutional practice, and 3) public education as a social practice of society. In critiquing these areas, he compares the debate over the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 with the current debate over the Regular Education Initiative and reflects on the positions of the leading scholars who advocate reform within special and regular education. After deconstructing the discourses in these areas, Skrtic argues that the current bureaucratic school organizational structure and specialized professional culture are inappropriate forms to fulfill our social goals of educational excellence and equity. In their place, Skrtic proposes an alternative school organizational structure and professional culture,which he terms "adhocracy." He argues that this form, which stresses collaboration and active problem solving, would provide all students with schooling that is both excellent and equitable, and thus prepare today's youth for the challenges and requirements of the post-industrial era of the coming twenty-first century.

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