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William S. Campbell’s research on the apostle Paul has been at the forefront of overcoming anti-Jewish interpretations. His career has been characterised by academic rigour and social and interfaith engagement. His interpretive approach is committed to formulating Christian identity in positive relation to others and thus contributes to provide a vital basis for Jewish-Christian and Interfaith relations in general for the future.
In this article, I deal with the concept of truth and lie in Jewish traditional literature, examining its development in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature. An essential aspect in understanding this concept is the dualism of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ impulses and the free will of human beings, who were created in the image of God and have the choice to decide between right and wrong.
The Jews' Indian
(2021)
This study explores the identity of the Bene Israel caste from India and its assimilation into Israeli society. The large immigration from India to Israel started in the early 1950s and continued until the early 1970s. Initially, these immigrants struggled hard as they faced many problems such as the language barrier, cultural differences, a new climate, geographical isolation, and racial discrimination. This analysis focuses on the three major aspects of the integration process involving the Bene Israel: economic, socio-cultural and political. The study covers the period from the early fifties to the present.
I will focus on the origin of the Bene Israel, which has evolved after their immigration to Israel; from a Hindu–Muslim lifestyle and customs they integrated into the Jewish life of Israel. Despite its ethnographic nature, this study has theological implications as it is an encounter between Jewish monotheism and Indian polytheism.
All the western scholars who researched the Bene Israel community felt impelled to rely on information received by community members themselves. No written historical evidence recorded Bene Israel culture and origin. Only during the nineteenth century onwards, after the intrusion of western Jewish missionaries, were Jewish books translated into Marathi . Missionary activities among the Bene Israel served as a catalyst for the Bene Israel themselves to investigate their historical past . Haeem Samuel Kehimkar (1830-1908), a Bene Israel teacher, wrote notes on the history of the Bene Israel in India in Marathi in 1897. Brenda Ness wrote in her dissertation:
The results [of the missionary activities] are several works about the community in English and Marathi by Bene-Israel authors which have appeared during the last century. These are, for the most part, not documented; they consist of much theorizing on accepted tradition and tend to be apologetic in nature.
There can be no philosophical explanation or rational justification for an entire community to leave their motherland India, and enter into a process of annihilation of its own free will. I see this as a social and cultural suicide. In craving for a better future in Israel, the Indian Bene Israel community pays an enormously heavy price as a people that are today discarded by the East and disowned by the West: because they chose to become something that they never were and never could be. As it is written, “know where you came from, and where you are going.” A community with an ancient history from a spiritual culture has completely lost its identity and self-esteem.
In concluding this dissertation, I realize the dilemma with which I have confronted the members of the Bene Israel community which I have reviewed after strenuous and constant self-examination. I chose to evolve the diversifications of the younger generations urges towards acceptance, and wish to clarify my intricate analysis of this controversial community. The complexity of living in a Jewish State, where citizens cannot fulfill their basic desires, like matrimony, forced an entire community to conceal their true identity and perjure themselves to blend in, for the sake of national integration. Although scholars accepted their new claims, the skepticism of the rabbinate authorities prevails, and they refuse to marry them to this day, suspecting they are an Indian caste.
Narratives of Belonging
(2017)
Die Darstellungen genealogischer Netzwerke waren in der Antike Ausdruck der Weltsicht ihrer Erzähler, mit deren Hilfe Nähe und Distanz zwischen verschiedenen Gruppen und Völkern ausgedrückt und hergestellt werden konnte. Auch Paulus bedient sich genealogischer Argumente, um die Beziehung nicht-jüdischer Christus-Gläubiger zu Israel und ihrem Gott zu verdeutlichen. Es handelt sich um eine ethnozentrische Argumentation, deren Fokus aber gleichzeitig eindeutig theozentrisch ist.
The narrative in BT Kiddushin 81b about R. Hiyya bar Ashi tells of a sage who waged a battle with his Urge after he refrained from engaging in sexual relations with his wife. He, however, did not reveal to her the battle being waged within him, but rather pretended to be an ‘angel’. When his wife incidentally found it, she disguised herself as a harlot and set out to seduce him. After they had engaged in sexual relations, the rabbi wanted to commit suicide. The traditional readings view R. Hiyya as the hero of the tale. This article claims that the aim of the narrative is to present the rabbi as being carried away by dualistic-Christian conceptions. The article further argues that the topic of the narrative is not sexual relations, but dialogue.
Peace orders of modern times
(2019)
In recent years, “transnationalism” has become a key concept for historians and other scholars in the humanities and social sciences. However, its overuse threatens to dilute what would otherwise be a distinct approach with promising heuristic potential. This danger seems especially pronounced when the notion of transnationalism is applied to Jewish history, which, paradoxically, most scholars would agree, is at its core transnational. Many studies have analyzed how Jewries in different times and places, from the biblical era to the present, have been shaped by people, ideas, texts, and institutions that migrated across state lines and between cultures. So what is new about transnationalism in Jewish Studies? What new insights does it offer?
American Jewry offers an obvious arena to test transnationalism’s significance as an approach to historical research within Jewish studies. As a “nation of nations,” the United States is made up of a distinct and unique society, built on ideas of diversity and pluralism, and transcending old European concepts of nation and state. The transformative incorporation in American life of cultural, political, and social traditions brought from abroad is one feature of this distinctiveness. American Jewish history and culture, in particular, are best understood in the context of interaction with Jews in other places, both because of American Jews’ roots in and continued entanglement with Europe, and because of their differences from other Jews.
These considerations guided the participants in a roundtable that formed a prologue to an international conference held July 20–22, 2016, at the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam and the Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, Germany. The conference title, “Re-Framing American Jewish History and Thought: New Transnational Perspectives,” indicated the organizers’ conviction that the transnational approach does have the potential to shed fresh light on the American Jewish experience. The participants were asked to bring their experiences to the table, in an effort to clarify what transnationalism might mean for American Jewish Studies, and where it might yield new approaches and insights.
The conference brought together some thirty scholars of various disciplines from Europe, Israel, and the United States. In addition to exploring a relatively new approach (at least, in the field of American Jewish Studies), the conference also served a second purpose: to further the interest in American Jewry as a subject of scholarly attention in countries outside the U.S., where the topic has been curiously neglected. The assumption underlying the conference was that a transnational perspective on American Jewry would bring to bear the particular interests and skills of scholars working outside the American academy, and thereby complement, rather than replicate, the ways American Jewish Studies have been pursued in North America itself.