The Eunuch and the Baldhead: Sexuality in Early Jewish-Christian Polemic

Defining appropriate attitudes towards sexuality has always been an issue in Jewish-Christian polemic. Contemporary Jewish writers tend to boast of Judaism’s liberal attitude toward sexuality, while medieval Jewish polemicists were defensive when confronting Christian attacks on this matter. In ancient times, when sexual puritanism was less popular, Jewish theologians did not refrain from showing their contempt for the Christian value ​​of celibacy. This article proposes a new reading of the Talmudic legend about an argument between Joshua b. Karhah and a Christian eunuch. In this reading, the Christian figure stands for Origen, a Church father described in Christian sources as having castrated himself owing to a literal interpretation of the New Testament. In this reading, the debate summarizes the Talmudic rabbis’ perspective on the difference between Jewish and Christian views of sexuality.

Dancing With a Ghost

This chapter evaluates British musicals in the 1930s and 1940s. This period, the chapter argues, was characterized by a lack of ambition. One problem was the paucity of Jewish writers in the UK. This ethnic group is notable for imaginative expertise in musical theatre and this is one of many reasons why the American brand is so protean. The most disappointing element could be argued to be passéiste choreography. In the meantime, the American musical was letting dance evolve most originally than in the UK. It is worth noting that Charles B. Cochran hired American choreographers for his most aspiring shows of the early 1930s, Ever Green (1930) and Nymph Errant (1933). Ever Green is a spectacular book musical that introduced Britain to the recent German invention of the revolving stage. The comedy musical then became less popular. However, Me and My Girl (1937) was an outstanding comedy musical. Me and My Girl was the work of composer Noel Gay, with L. Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber involved. Though as producer-director Lupino Lane could be called the show's auteur.

Jewish Nietzscheanism

Jewish Nietzscheans have traditionally shied away from any detailed examination of Nietzsche’s comments on contemporary Jewry or the Jewish religion. Scholars who have examined Jewish Nietzscheans have therefore sought to connect Nietzsche with some dimension of Jewish thought through similarities in views between Nietzsche and the Jewish intellectuals who were purportedly influenced by him. The two books under consideration in this essay strain to find solid connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the writings of eminent Jewish writers. Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris examine how selected Nietzschean concepts can also be found in the work of the noted Jewish thinker Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. David Ohana, by contrast, examines a variety of Jewish writers who at some point exhibited an enthusiasm for Nietzsche, ranging from Hebrew scholars and translators to German-Jewish intellectuals. Both books suffer from many of the shortcomings of general Nietzschean influence studies: there is often no sound philological evidence of influence, or the “connection” is so general that it is difficult to see Nietzsche as the source of influence, or the alleged influence was of short duration, and it is difficult to understand what remains Nietzschean in the individual influenced.

Jewish Nietzscheanism

Jewish Nietzscheans have traditionally shied away from any detailed examination of Nietzsche’s comments on contemporary Jewry or the Jewish religion. Scholars who have examined Jewish Nietzscheans have therefore sought to connect Nietzsche with some dimension of Jewish thought through similarities in views between Nietzsche and the Jewish intellectuals who were purportedly influenced by him. The two books under consideration in this essay strain to find solid connections between Nietzsche’s philosophy and the writings of eminent Jewish writers. Daniel Rynhold and Michael Harris examine how selected Nietzschean concepts can also be found in the work of the noted Jewish thinker Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. David Ohana, by contrast, examines a variety of Jewish writers who at some point exhibited an enthusiasm for Nietzsche, ranging from Hebrew scholars and translators to German-Jewish intellectuals. Both books suffer from many of the shortcomings of general Nietzschean influence studies: there is often no sound philological evidence of influence, or the “connection” is so general that it is difficult to see Nietzsche as the source of influence, or the alleged influence was of short duration, and it is difficult to understand what remains Nietzschean in the individual influenced.

Zwarte inkt: de karaktermoord op Gaius Caligula

Black ink. The defamation of Gaius Caligula This article analyses how ancient media were used for the character assassination of the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula. Why was Caligula’s reputation so severely damaged? How was this done? In the complicated situation in which Caligula came to power, the Augustan system of an autocratic rule hidden behind a republican veil was pushed aside. As a result, the conflict between Caligula and the Roman elite became insuperable. When Caligula demonstrated the realities of absolute power, he was assassinated. Shortly after, senatorial authors used the medium of historiography to start their character assassination, depicting Caligula as an insane psychopath. This article discerns between three different groups of attackers with different motives for their character assassination: eyewitnesses, Jewish writers, and later Roman senatorial authors. The article concludes with an assessment of the differences and similarities of the attacks by the three groups. The defamation of Caligula turned out to be highly successful.

5. Into the mainstream

“Into the mainstream” looks at immigrant Jewish writers in America, such as Abraham Cahan (The Rise of David Levinsky), Anzia Yezierska (Bread Givers), and Isaac Bashevis Singer (Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories), all of whom transitioned from Yiddish into English, and analyzes Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep as a transitional novel. We notice here the transition from “ethnic” to “national” writer in the careers of Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, and Cynthia Ozick. Much was gained and lost in Jewish literature as a result of Jews becoming a “successful minority” in America. Jewish readers have always been a voracious audience of international literature.

Introduction

“Introduction” explores the appellation “People of the Book” as it pertains to the Jews, arguing that, theologically as well as culturally, Jews depend on books to exist. The work of Argentine man of letters Jorge Luis Borges is invoked to introduce the concept of aterritoriality. Modern Jewish literature does not have a specific address and is written in multiple languages. There is a connection between Hasidism, Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Israeli literature, and the work of Jewish writers in other diasporas. Jewish literature should also include graphic novels, film scripts, television shows, and other textual manifestations.

THE CULTURAL IDENTITY OF IRAQI JEWS IN ISRAEL

We can say that culture includes knowledge, arts, morals, beliefs, customs and other capabilities that a person obtains from life. The difference in the cultures that the groups of Jews from different parts of the world carried to (Israel) led to a difference in customs and traditions between them, and this in turn led to a conflict between them in particular and between cultures in general. That is, the culture of the Sephardi Jews and the culture of the Western Ashkenazi Jews.Sephardi are the Jews who immigrated from Arab and eastern countries, while Ashkenazim are the Jews who immigrated from Western countries (European, America and Russia(. Therefore, (Israel) worked in two directions with these immigrants, some of them called for integration with the new society, and the other part to assimilate them. But with all these attempts, some of them ended in failure. The eastern Jews (Iraqis in particular) have kept the Iraqi customs and traditions that they were brought up with and did not lose their identity. I will discuss in this research some of these customs and traditions that they maintained even after their immigration to (Israel). Such as the use of some Arabic expressions, oriental food, eastern folklore, through some stories and novels written by Iraqi Jewish writers who immigrated to (Israel), such as Shimon Palace, Samir Naqqash, Anwar Shaul, Sami Michael.

Omri Asscher, Reading America, Reading Israel: The Politics of Translation between Jews. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. 256 pp.

This chapter studies Omri Asscher's Reading America, Reading Israel: The Politics of Translation between Jews (2020). This book employs translation to think about how two groups — American and Israeli Jews — understand and relate to one another. It stresses how adoption of different everyday languages and residence in distinct territories produced two collectives possessing divergent modern Jewish identities: when Jewish people and institutions came to mediate, manage, and regulate the social meanings of translated texts in the United States and Israel, they employed translations to define their center in contradistinction to its perceived antipode. Asscher also convincingly demonstrates how Israeli critics of the 1950s through the 1980s took pride in the literary successes of American Jewish writers, while dismissing the contents of their writing on ideological grounds. In contrast with his points about American Jewish translations of Israeli literature and Israeli translations of American Jewish literature from the 1950s to the 1980s, Asscher's broader claim about translation lacks effective substantiation.

Wisdom Literature of the Apocrypha and Related Compositions of the Second Temple Era

By examining the approaches to wisdom evident in its literary production, it is possible to get a glimpse of the diversity of Second Temple Jewish viewpoints. The identification of one trajectory is an attempt to describe and evaluate certain trends that are apparent in the literature without being able to make the claim that such an attempt is exhaustive. On the basis of the evidence available in one specific trajectory, Ben Sira and Wisdom of Solomon make the closest correlations between wisdom and Torah. While not providing evidence that the Torah was valued primarily as a collection of Pentateuchal law, it is apparent why these two compositions were valued by Jewish writers for whom this became the case.