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.

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.

Censorship in High School Libraries in Israel: An Exploratory Field Study

The issue of censorship in school libraries has long concerned researchers and practitioners in the field and is well documented in literature. A literature survey reveals dozens of opinion articles as well as research papers reporting empirical field studies, especially in the US, which attempt to determine the extent and objects of censorship and its underlying factors. Although school libraries have existed in Israel for several decades, some of them dating back to the 50's, the issue of censorship has not been studied. The objective of the present exploratory study was to empirically assess the current state of censorship in a sample of high school libraries in the country. The sample comprised 25 high schools, from both the 'religious' and 'non-religious' sectors. The main research tool was a two-parts questionnaire, designed to be filled out during researchers visit to the library. Most librarians reported that some form of control, restriction or censorship was, always or very often, applied to books to be added to the collection, usually by the head librarian. No library had any kind of written document, or even some permanent unwritten statement specifying instructions or policy regarding book acquisition. None of the librarians mentioned any external pressure to censor the existing collection or books to be acquired, and it was dear that the only censorship was an internal one, initiated by the librarians themselves and other members of the school staff. In both sectors there was wide agreement on banning titles which included violence, hard pomography, racism and drugs, but there were considerable differences regarding 'soft' pornography, Holocaust denial, sexual pemissiveness and books degrading the Jewish religion or its values, principles or commands. A comparison of four lists of specific titles against the catalogs showed that the `non-religious' libraries owned three times the percentage from the first list (explicit violence and sex), but only half the percentage from the fourth list ('Judaism), compared to the 'religious' one. Interestingly, the religious group had lower percentages of both the 'rightist' and 'leftist' lists, due to its smaller collections, but relatively more from the 'rightist' list than the 'leftist' one.

Censorship in Israeli High School Libraries: Analysis of Complaints and Librarians' Reactions

The study sought to determine the extent of censorship in high school libraries in Israel, using a questionnaire mailed to 442 schools and yielding 187 usable replies. Significant differences were found regarding both complaints about book content and librarians' response, between the religious sectors and the non-religious one, indicating a much lower rate in the latter. More complaints were received from teachers than principals, but the latter elicited a higher compliance, probably due to their special status in school. Very little parental involvement was reported, receiving the lowest compliance. Topics of the complaints ranked as follows: pornography, degrading the Jewish religion, hard violence, sexual permissiveness, missionizing, racism, drug use, holocaust denial and bizarre sects. Pornography and violence ranked high in all sectors, but sexual permissiveness and degrading Judaism ranked high among the two religious sectors but much lower in the nonreligious one. Few complaints about certain genres may result from preliminary censorship during book selection process, but in most cases it indicates less sensitivity in that sector concerning that genre.

Encounters with Antisemitism

Encounters with AntisemitismThe Holocaust destroyed Jewish communities across Europe and in Poland. Subsequently, in the Soviet bloc, most Jewish survivors were expelled from or coerced into leaving their countries, while the memory of the millennium-long presence of Jews in Poland was thoroughly suppressed. Through the lens of a scholar’s personal biography, this article reflects on how snippets of the Jewish past tend to linger on in the form of absent presences, despite the national and systemic norm of erasing any remembrance of Poles of the Jewish religion. This norm used to be the dominant type of antisemitism in communist Poland after 1968, and has largely continued unabated after the fall of communism. Spotkania z antysemityzmemZagłada zniszczyła społeczności żydowskie w Europie i w Polsce. Następnie w bloku sowieckim większość Żydów, która przeżyła, wygnano lub zmuszono do wyjazdu, a pamięć o tysiącletniej obecności Żydów w Polsce została całkowicie stłumiona. Artykuł ten, z perspektywy osobistej biografii badacza, stanowi zadumę nad tym, jak fragmenty żydowskiej przeszłości mają tendencję do trwania w formie nieobecnej obecności, pomimo systemowo-narodowej normy wymazywania jakiejkolwiek pamięci o Polakach religii żydowskiej. Norma ta była dominującym rodzajem antysemityzmu w komunistycznej Polsce po roku 1968. Po upadku komunizmu raczej nic się nie zmieniło w tym względzie.