Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and the Mystification of Maimonidean Rationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 59-86
Author(s):  
James A. Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Political Advocacy ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Jewish Intellectual

This chapter points out how modern Jewish thinkers looked back and engaged a foundational Jewish canon of scriptural and rabbinic texts when they staked out their own novel ground and advanced Jewish thought in the twentieth century. It mentions the intellectual and jurisprudential legacy of Maimonides as a major part of the development of Jewish law and thought. It also focuses on Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook, who embodies modern Jewish authenticity in the twentieth century. The chapter discusses Jewish intellectual, literary, and activist currents that intersected Rabbi Kook. It explores Rabbi Kook's passionate spiritual and political advocacy of Zionism, and his rabbinic leadership of pre-state Jaffa. It describes how Rabbi Kook was constantly driven by an irrepressible urge to disclose his most intimate reflections, no matter what the consequences might be.

Collected Essays

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haym Soloveitchik
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Methodological Study ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
Hasidei Ashkenaz

Continuing the contribution to medieval Jewish intellectual history, this book's author focuses here on the radical pietist movement of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz and its main literary work, Sefer Ḥasidim, and on the writings and personality of the Provençal commentator Ravad of Posquières. In both areas the author challenges mainstream views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought. Some of the essays are revised and updated versions of work previously published, and some are entirely new, but in all of them the author challenges reigning views to provide a new understanding of medieval Jewish thought. The section on Sefer Ḥasidim brings together over half a century of the author's writings on German Pietism, many of which originally appeared in obscure publications, and adds two new essays. The first of these is a methodological study of how to read this challenging work and an exposition of what constitutes a valid historical inference, while the second reviews the validity of the sociological and anthropological inferences presented in contemporary historiography. In discussing Ravad's oeuvre, the author questions the widespread notion that Ravad's chief accomplishment was his commentary on Maimonides' Mishneh Torah; his Talmud commentary, he claims, was of far greater importance and was his true masterpiece. He also adds a new study that focuses on the acrimony between Ravad, as the low-born genius of Posquières, and R. Zeraḥyah ha-Levi of Lunel, who belonged to the Jewish aristocracy of Languedoc, and considers the implications of that relationship.

Introduction of domestic animals to the Japanese archipelago

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hitomi Hongo
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Dairy Products ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Domestic Species ◽  
Japanese Archipelago ◽  
Biological Studies ◽  
Chinese Continent ◽  
The Japanese Archipelago ◽  
Textual Records

Zooarchaeological and molecular biological studies indicate that all domestic animals found in Japan were introduced and local domestication of wild boar and wolf is unlikely. Timing of introduction and husbandry practice for dog, pig, horse, cattle, and chicken are discussed. These main domestic species were introduced from the Chinese continent in prehistoric times, probably via the Korean peninsula. Meat of domestic animals and dairy products were not a major part of the diet until the twentieth century ad, partly because of the Buddhist prohibition of the consumption of animal meat. Zooarchaeological data from the Yayoi and Kofun period sites as well as the historical era have been gradually accumulating, helping the interpretation of textual records as well as supplementing them.

SageBook: Toward a cross-generational social network for the Jewish sages’ prosopography

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 676-695
Author(s):  
Maayan Zhitomirsky-Geffet ◽  
Gila Prebor
Keyword(s):  
Social Network ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Related Data ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
Argumentation Analysis

Abstract In this research we devised and implemented a semi-automatic approach for building a SageBook–a cross-generational social network of the Jewish sages from the Rabbinic literature. The proposed methodology is based on a shallow argumentation analysis leading to detection of lexical–syntactic patterns which represent different relationships between the sages in the text. The method was successfully applied and evaluated on the corpus of the Mishna, the first written work of the Rabbinic Literature which provides the foundation to the Jewish law development. The constructed prosopographical database and the network generated from its data enable a large-scale quantitative analysis of the sages and their related data, and therefore might contribute to the research of the Talmudic literature and evolution of the Jewish thought throughout the two last millennia.

Nice Work if You can Get it: Ethnic Penalties in Great Britain

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIN YI CHEUNG ◽  
ANTHONY HEATH
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Visible Minorities ◽  
First And Second Generation

Britain has long been home to migrants from Ireland (which until 1921 had been part of the United Kingdom). More recently, it has seen major inflows from a number of less-developed countries such as Jamaica, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Hong Kong that had formerly been part of the British Empire. While there is some reason to believe that the Irish experienced some discrimination in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century or before, evidence implies that the Irish, both first and second generation, now compete on equal terms with the indigenous British. The ethnic penalties experienced by the visible minorities from the less-developed members of the Commonwealth have declined markedly in the second generation, but all the major visible minorities still find it more difficult to obtain jobs commensurate with their qualifications than do the various white groups, even in the second generation. Continuing discrimination against visible minorities is likely to be a major part of the explanation for the difficulty in gaining employment.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Gatrell
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Major Part ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The World ◽  
John Berger ◽  
Involuntary Displacement ◽  
Different Parts

The English writer and critic John Berger regarded the twentieth century as ‘the century of departure, of migration, of exodus, of disappearance: the century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon’.1 Berger’s characterisation of ‘helplessness’ invites us to consider not only how people were rendered liable to sudden and involuntary displacement, but also how those processes were represented at the time and subsequently. Global conflicts, revolutions and civil wars have played a major part in these processes of movement and loss, exposing combatants and non-combatants to personal risk. Civilians have frequently been the chief actors in the dramas of ‘departure’ and ‘disappearance’. Massive displacement has not necessarily entailed movement across state borders, although it is only relatively recently that policy-makers have taken into account the large numbers of internally displaced persons in different parts of the world....

‘National Dignity’ and ‘Spiritual Reintegration’: The Discovery and Presentation of Jewish Folk Music in Germany

Jewishness ◽  
2008 ◽  
pp. 105-130
Author(s):  
Jascha Nemtsov
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Martin Buber ◽  
Cultural Divide ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
East And West ◽  
West European ◽  
Modern Jewish Thought

This chapter details how Jewish folk music was presented as high art to concert audiences in early twentieth-century Germany and how that strategy was criticized. In January of 1901, the first issue of the journal Ost und West (East and West) appeared in Berlin. It served as the most important organ of cultural Zionism for the next two decades, and, as its title suggests, it attempted to bridge the cultural divide between east and west European Jews with the aim of creating an ethnic nationalist goal. The first issue contained, among other things, an article by the renowned Jewish philosopher Martin Buber entitled ‘Jewish Renaissance’ — a term that was to characterize this movement. Critical to this renaissance was the establishment of a common spirit binding a modern nation. Although based in Germany, the leaders of the movement envisioned that this spirit would be found in the ‘authentic folk’ of eastern Europe and the ethno-poetry of the folk song. The chapter then uncovers the often overlooked story of these leaders, particularly Leo Winz and Fritz Mordechai Kaufmann, and the significance of their renaissance movement for modern Jewish thought and culture.

Disease Constituencies

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-66
Author(s):  
Rachel Kahn Best
Keyword(s):  
Breast Cancer ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women's Health ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Political Advocacy ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Disease Advocacy ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
New Type

In the second half of the twentieth century, disease advocacy evolved from universal campaigns to patients’ constituencies. Changes in the experience of health and illness and the nationwide expansion of political advocacy laid the groundwork for patient-led campaigns. Then, AIDS and breast cancer activists constructed a new type of disease advocacy on the foundations of the gay rights and women’s health movements. Unlike the earlier disease crusades, these movements were led by patients banding together to fight diseases that affected them personally, and they blazed a trail for patients suffering from other diseases. As patients’ activism became increasingly legitimate, disease nonprofits proliferated, patients took over congressional hearings, and disease walks and ribbons became an inescapable feature of American public life.

Schism?

One People? ◽  
1993 ◽  
pp. 169-195
Author(s):  
Jonathan Sacks
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Self ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Similar Position ◽  
Community Or ◽  
System A

This chapter explores the possibility of a different route by which the collision between tradition and modernity might be negotiated, one that does not involve the fragmentation of Jewry into denominations. One possibility of what one might call a non-denominational non-Orthodoxy is suggested by the thought of one of the most profound twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig, as a characteristically modern thinker, places the self — not community or law — at the heart of his system. A very similar position, philosophically more explicit, was advanced by Emil Fackenheim in an essay written in 1938. The chapter then addresses the challenge of reinterpreting Jewish law in such a way as to make it viable as the code of a modern society. In the early decades of the twentieth century, this line of thought was explored by Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn. But the most complex, haunting response to the crisis of halakhah and modernity was given by Rabbi Abraham Kook. The chapter also discusses the differences between Orthodoxy and Reform.

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