‘Arab Chains’ and the ‘Good Things of Spain’: Aspects of Jewish Exile

2014 ◽  
pp. 253-270
Author(s):  
Marc Saperstein
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Central Concept ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Traditional Concept ◽  
Actual Treatment ◽  
Land Of Israel

This chapter analyses three brief, powerful passages, from different environments and different literary genres. These reveal an enduring ambivalence towards Jewish life in ‘exile’, a reluctance to concede that the centuries of Jewish life in foreign lands were devoid of any positive qualities, and even — rather surprisingly — the suggestion that life in exile might have religious advantages for Jews that were not available in the Holy Land. In short, the actual treatment of exile in Jewish literary texts reveals more nuanced and multivalent aspects. The familiar geography of the traditional concept — exile as forced removal from the Land of Israel and the end of exile as return to that land — is occasionally subverted in unexpected ways. Perhaps even more surprising is a revalorization of the concept, in which living in the ancestral homeland is no longer automatically identified as good, and living outside the land as bad. This chapter attempts to illustrate some of the permutations of this central concept through a literary and conceptual analysis of the three pre-modern passages from Jewish literature.

scholarly journals The Land of Israel (Eretz Yisra’el) in Jewish and Christian Understanding

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Lux
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
Land Of Israel

One of the principal issues confronting Christians in the dialogue is the significance of the land in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This article explores the significance of the Land of Israel in the Scriptures as land given, retained and holy – especially to Christians. The history of the significant Christian religious relationship to the land is reviewed and finally a re-imaging of our relationship to the Holy Land in terms of a post-Vatican II expansion of our understanding of Catholic sacramental theology is suggested: that as Christ is the sacrament of encounter with God, so the Holy Land is a sacrament of our encounter with Christ.

Burke O. Long. Imagining the Holy Land: Maps, Models, and Fantasy Travels. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. xi, 258 pp.

AJS Review ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-398
Author(s):  
Rehav Rubin
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
New Towns ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Good Book ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Land Of Israel

Many of the pioneers and settlers who came to America held the Bible in their right hands and were strongly inspired by this “Good Book.” They believed they had come to the “New Promised Land,” and consequently gave Biblical names to the new towns and villages, as well as to their children. It was, therefore, almost natural that the remote land in the east, known as the Holy Land, Palestine, the Promised Land, or The Land of Israel, had, and probably still has, a very special place in American culture and society.

Holy land, holy language: A study of an Ultraorthodox Jewish ideology

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Glinert ◽  
Yosseph Shilhav
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Sociology Of Language ◽  
Sacred Land ◽  
Land Of Israel

ABSTRACTThis study explores the correlation between notions of language and territory in the ideology of a present-day Ultraorthodox Jewish group, the Hasidim of Satmar, in the context of Jewish Ultraorthodoxy (Haredism) in general. This involves the present-day role of Yiddish vis-à-vis Hebrew, particularly in Israel. We first address the relative sanctity of a space that accommodates a closed Haredi lifestyle and of a language in which it is expressed, then contrast this with the absolute sanctity of the land of Israel and the language of Scripture both in their intensional (positive) and in their extensional (negative) dimensions, and finally examine the quasi-absolute sanctity with which the Yiddish language and Jewish habitat of Eastern Europe have been invested. Our conclusion is that three such cases of a parallel between linguistic and territorial ideology point to an intrinsic link. Indeed, the correlation of language and territory on the plane of quasi-absolute sanctity betokens an ongoing, active ideological tie, rather than a set of worn, petrified values evoking mere lip-service. These notions of quasi-sanctity find many echoes in reality: in the use of Yiddish and in the creation of a surrogate Eastern European lifestyle in the Haredi “ghettos.” (Cultural geography, sociolinguistics, Judaism, Hasidism, religion, Israel, sociology of language, Yiddish, sacred land, Hebrew, territory)

scholarly journals Double Tendance: The Photographic Message in the Egyptian Jewish Youth Magazine L’Illustration Juive, 1929–1931

Images ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-69
Author(s):  
David Guedj
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Visual Elements ◽  
Jewish Youth ◽  
Land Of Israel

Abstract The present article investigates the visual elements of the illustrated youth quarterly L’Illustration Juive, which was published in Alexandria between 1929 and 1931 in French and Hebrew. The analysis sets out to expose the ideologies and worldviews informing the publication’s editorial board, as well as the conscious or unconscious message that the quarterly tried to communicate to its young readership. The article explores more than 300 photographs and reproductions that featured in twelve issues published over the journal’s three years of existence. Analysis of the visual elements in this article shows that the quarterly featured many photographs of holy sites in the Land of Israel, as well as reproductions of artworks that reflected the religious Jewish way of life in the diaspora and Israel, including the Jewish calendar and Jewish life cycle. These works hold the Old Testament as a key book for Judaism, as well as for Jewish nationalism. Clearly evident in the visual elements, as in the overall visual messages of the quarterly, is the harmony struck between Jewish nationality, Zionism, and a religious Jewish cultural—or diasporic—world. It was this harmonious view that editor Rabbi David Prato sought to convey, upholding as he did a religious nationalist Jewish future, which he defined in the newspaper as a double tendance.

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.

New Light on the Jews of Mozarabic Toledo

AJS Review ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Roth
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Medieval Spain ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Land Of Israel

Medieval Spain represents a unique phenomenon in the history of Jewish civilization. Not only did the Jews live longer in Spain than in any other land in their history (indeed, almost as long as they occupied their homeland in the land of Israel from Abraham to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.), but the Jewish population of medieval Spain was greater than that of all other lands combined, and the rich achievements of Jewish culture there were unequaled elsewhere. Of all the cities in Spain which served as major centers of Jewish life and culture, Toledo perhaps stands out as the most important. Studies dealing with Jewish life in Spain have recognized this, and the long-awaited appearance of a recent two-volume work in Spanish devoted to the Jews of Toledo has helped focus attention once again on the vast archival material available.

scholarly journals Representativeness in Corpora of Literary Texts: Introducing the C18P Project

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Iris Gemeinböck
Keyword(s):  
Early Development ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Prose Fiction ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Linguistic Research

Currently there are very few specialised corpora of literary texts that are tailored to the needs of literary critics who are interested in corpus stylistic analyses of prose fiction. Many existing corpora including literary texts were compiled for linguistic research interests and are often unsuitable for corpus stylistic purposes. The paper addresses three of the main problems: the absence of labelling of the texts for literary genre, the use of extracts, and the prevalence of linguistic periodisation schemes. C18P is a corpus of prose fiction designed specifically to address these issues. It traces the early development of the novel from 1700 up until the Victorian era. It can, for instance, be used for an analysis of the characteristic linguistic features of individual literary genres and forms. The following paper introduces the design of the corpus as well as some of its potential uses.

diaspora, Jewish, 332 BCE–c. 600 CE

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Know How ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Land Of Israel

For some ancient Jews, “diaspora” (together with its cognates) was an actor’s and not an observer’s term. But its import was primarily theological: God punished the Jews for their sins by dispersing them from their native land of Israel. Yet “diaspora” retains analytic utility for historians, if taken to refer to the geographically and temporally varied modes of Jewish life outside Palestine. It is not known to what extent diaspora Jews were emigrants from Palestine and their descendants; nor do we know how numerous they were. But we can follow the evidence where it exists. The main lesson is that the onset of Roman rule created crises around the integration of the Jews into their host societies. Intentionally or not, in the cities of the east (and the big villages of Egypt) the Romans fomented discord between different elements of the population. In Egypt, this led at once to the ultimately lethal—for the Jews, anyhow—three-way competition between Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians. Even in Asia Minor, normally understood as the best-case scenario for Jews under Roman rule, the evidence indicates that Jewish life in the Roman imperial period was more fragile, constrained, fraught, and impermanent than is often supposed.

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