Judaism and Violence

This Element explores the potential in Judaism to incite Jews to engage in violence against non-Jews. The analysis proceeds in historical fashion, with sections devoted to the Hebrew Bible, rabbinic Judaism, medieval and early modern Judaism, and modern Zionism. The last topic is given special attention because of its relevance to the current Middle East conflict. This Element also draws on insights from social psychology to explain Jewish violence - particularly Social Identity Theory.

Interreligious dialogue in the Polish lands in the 18th century

Dov Ber of Bolechov (1723-1805), Jewish wine merchant and polyglot, known for his dispute with the Frankists in Lwów (Lemberg) in 1759, left the Hebrew manuscripts of his two main works: זכרונות ר׳ דוב מבולחוב (The Memoirs of Dov Ber of Bolechov) and iדברי בינה (Understanding Words). In the former work he describes his life story and the story of his family but also the history of Jews in Eastern Galicia, writing also about important events from the history of Poland, and his description as an outside observer seems to be reliable. In the latter work Dov Ber reveals his attitude towards other religions, especially towards Christianity, and the defence of Rabbinic Judaism and its main book Talmud, or more precisely, of the complete reliability of the Oral Torah, is the leitmotif of Diwre binah. Can we speak of religious dialogue in the 18th century? The purpose of the paper is to present Christian-Jewish relations in the Polish lands, in particular in Eastern Galicia in the 18th century from a Jewish perspective in the description of Dov Ber of Bolechov.

Translation versus Midrash

This chapter covers Leopold Zunz’s account of the relationship between the Bible and rabbinic literature in his pioneering 1832 work The Sermons of the Jews. The book is situated in several contexts. These include the Protestant scholar Wilhelm De Wette’s use of biblical scholarship to oppose granting Jews greater civil rights by casting rabbinic Judaism as degenerate and alien to the noble “Hebraic” strata of the Bible and a Catholic call for a reformation of Judaism based on rejecting the Talmud and returning to the Bible. Zunz’s use of historical scholarship in The Sermons to ground religious reforms, demonstrate the organic connection between the Bible and rabbinic literature, and explicate the roles of Bible translation and Midrash in preserving Judaism as living religion of spirit is explored.

Jewish Religion in the Apocrypha

In this chapter, the Apocrypha are read through the lenses of Jewish observances in their original Second Temple era milieu, in their (dis-)continuity with biblical as well as post-Temple Rabbinic culture. This allows for these writings, all dating from the Graeco-Roman period, to be put on a trajectory from pre-exilic times (to which they were heir and to which they refer), through Second Temple times, to Rabbinic Judaism. The total known textual corpus dating from this period is much greater and also comprises the Pseudepigrapha, Qumran, and the Hellenistic-Jewish historians. Early Christian texts in their interaction with their Jewish subtexts, too, shed light on the development of Early Judaism of this period although these fall outside the purview of this article, which narrows its focus to a selection of representative examples, namely, 1 and 3 Maccabees, Tobit and Judith, the Additions to Daniel and to Esther, as well as the Wisdom of Solomon.