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In many churches nowadays, there has been a standardized approach to premarital counseling for couples involving social, pastoral, and psychological perspectives. In contrast, many rabbis and other Jewish officials still concentrate on legal aspects alone. The need for resolving important issues on the verge of wedlock is too often left to secular experts in law, psychology, or counseling. However, in recent years, this lack of formal training for marriage preparation has also been acknowledged by the Jewish clergy in order to incorporate it in the preparatory period before the bond is tied. This case study focuses on Jewish and Roman Catholic conceptions of marriage, past and present. We intend to do a comparative analysis of the prerequisites of religious marriage based on the assumption that both Judaism and the Roman Catholic Church have a distinct legal framework to assess marriage preparation.
The abrahamic religions
(2023)
United in Diversity
(2023)
What are the future perspectives for Jews and Jewish networks in contemporary Europe? Is there a new quality of relations between Jews and non-Jews, despite or precisely because of the Holocaust trauma? How is the memory of the extermination of 6 million European Jews reflected in memorial events and literature, film, drama, and visual arts media? To what degree do European Jews feel as integrated people, as Europeans per see, and as safe citizens? An interdisciplinary team of historians, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, and literary theorists answers these questions for Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany. They show that the Holocaust has become an enduring topic in public among Jews and non-Jews. However, Jews in Europe work self-confidently on their future on the "old continent," new alliances, and in cooperation with a broad network of civil forces. Non-Jewish interest in Jewish history and the present has significantly increased over decades, and networks combatting anti-Semitism have strengthened.
New Relations in the Making?
(2023)
Zimzum
(2023)
The Hebrew word zimzum originally means “contraction,” “withdrawal,” “retreat,” “limitation,” and “concentration.” In Kabbalah, zimzum is a term for God’s self-limitation, done before creating the world to create the world. Jewish mystic Isaac Luria coined this term in Galilee in the sixteenth century, positing that the God who was “Ein-Sof,” unlimited and omnipresent before creation, must concentrate himself in the zimzum and withdraw in order to make room for the creation of the world in God’s own center. At the same time, God also limits his infinite omnipotence to allow the finite world to arise. Without the zimzum there is no creation, making zimzum one of the basic concepts of Judaism.
The Lurianic doctrine of the zimzum has been considered an intellectual showpiece of the Kabbalah and of Jewish philosophy. The teaching of the zimzum has appeared in the Kabbalistic literature across Central and Eastern Europe, perhaps most famously in Hasidic literature up to the present day and in philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem’s epoch-making research on Jewish mysticism. The Zimzum has fascinated Jewish and Christian theologians, philosophers, and writers like no other Kabbalistic teaching. This can be seen across the philosophy and cultural history of the twentieth century as it gained prominence among such diverse authors and artists as Franz Rosenzweig, Hans Jonas, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Harold Bloom, Barnett Newman, and Anselm Kiefer.
This book follows the traces of the zimzum across the Jewish and Christian intellectual history of Europe and North America over more than four centuries, where Judaism and Christianity, theosophy and philosophy, divine and human, mysticism and literature, Kabbalah and the arts encounter, mix, and cross-fertilize the interpretations and appropriations of this doctrine of God’s self-entanglement and limitation
In postsocialist Potsdam, religious diversity has risen surprisingly in public life since 1990 although more than 80% of the residents have no religious affiliation. City and state authorities have actively embraced issues around immigration and integration as well as the promotion of religious diversity and interreligious dialogue and have linked this to the agenda of rejuvenating the city’s religious heritage. For years, negotiations have been going on about the need of a mosque, the reconstructions of a synagogue and the so-called “Garrison Church,” a landmark military church building. These initiatives have been dominating the public space for different reasons. They implied, beyond religion, questions of memory, identity, immigration, and culture. This article puts these three cases into perspective to offer a nuanced understanding of the importance of religious spaces in secular contexts considering city politics.
This study offers a view into Buber's conception of the social role of the “person of spirit” – the individual who, in other contexts, would be called philosopher, thinker, or intellectual.A key element of the person of spirit's role, according to Buber, is the evaluation of social reality – judging the public's ability to be guided by the realm of the spirit at any given hour while responding to the challenges that this particular hour may present. The person of spirit is required to constantly mediate between “heaven” and “earth” – between the ideal and reality – even if in a particular situation the moral action which has to be taken can only be partial, and will fall short of the absolute demand of the spirit.Buber emphasizes that the influence of the spirit on reality always begins with an effort of the “person of spirit” to transform him or herself from a monological to a dialogical person. Without a dialogical affinity between the person of spirit and their community, there can be no real effect of the spirit on reality.The person of spirit is, therefore, according to Buber, fully involved in the social life of the community. Our study shows that Buber shaped this figure of the “person of spirit” by combining the model of the biblical prophet, who is sent to the people, with the model of the Hasidic leader who acts according to the principle of the “Descent of the Zaddik.” The person of spirit is required to live their life in a “Thou” relationship with their community, and is therefore frequently descending from an elevated spiritual level to the level of the people, in order to empathetically share their mundane worries, fears, and afflictions.By comparing the models of the biblical prophet and the Hassidic Zaddik to the model of the Greek prophetes and Plato's philosopher-king, we can, according to Buber, reflect on the role of the person of spirit in society in our time as well.
Breslau has been almost entirely forgotten in the Anglophone sphere as a place of Enlightenment. Moreover, in the context of the Jewish Enlightenment, Breslau has never been discussed as a place of intercultural exchange between German-speaking Jewish, Protestant and Catholic intellectuals. The story of Moses Hirschel offers us an excellent case-study to investigate the complex reciprocal relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish enlighteners in a prosperous and influential Central European city on the cusp of the 18th century.
Gilgul of Meaning
(2021)
The valediction of Moses
(2021)
Wilhelm Moses Shapira's infamous Deuteronomy fragments have long been deemed forgeries, with Shapira himself serving as the obvious suspect. I provide new evidence that Shapira did not forge the fragments and was himself convinced of their authenticity. Indeed, the evidence for forgery is illusory. In a companion monograph, I show that the Shapira fragments are not only authentic ancient artifacts but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy.
Heimweh
(2021)
The concept of Heimweh conveys a set of emotions and images that have been described in different ways in different languages. This article intends to analyze the Heimweh experienced by Galician intellectual Jewry during the process of linguistic and cultural change that took place from 1867 until the mid.-1880s. This will be discussed while focusing on the urban intelligentsia circles in Lemberg (Lviv), which had a tremendous influence on some Galician Jewish intellectuals during that period. I will analyze the nature of a clash of identities that eventually brought some of the urban intelligentsia in Lemberg to consider themselves as living a "Spiritual" or "linguistic exile"(Sprachexil), regardless of whether they had migrated or not. Longing for the homeland as a nostalgic destination, whether they referred to it as Heimat or Ojczyzna, and whether they called it Lemberg or Lwow, was longing to be part of a group holding a distinct Kultur or Kultura, a set of values, culture and language, which coexisted with their Jewish identity.
The return of the tribe
(2021)
As a part of “Xenophilia: A Symposium on Xenophobia’s Contrary” in Common Knowledge, this essay examines the interest in, affection for, friendship with, and romanticization of Native Americans by Jews in the United States since the 1960s. The affinity is frequent among Jews with “progressive” or “countercultural” inclinations, especially those with strong environmental concerns and those interested in new forms of community and spirituality. For such Jews, Native Americans serve as mirror, prod, role model, projection, and fictive kin. They are regarded as having a holistic and integrated culture and religiosity, an unbroken connection to premodern attitudes and practices, an intimate relationship with the earth and with nonhuman creatures, along with positive feelings toward their own traditions and a simple, honest, and direct way of living. All of these presumed characteristics offer to progressive Jews parallels and contrasts to contemporary Jewishness and Judaism. For some, Native America has become a path back to a reconstructed Jewishness and Judaism; for others, a path away. Each path is assessed in this article with respect to questions of authenticity, psychobiography, family history, theology, and theopolitics.
Deuteronomy 14.3-21
(2021)
The almost verbatim parallels of the dietary laws in Lev. 11 and Deut. 14 have baffled scholars for a long time. We reexamine the evidence, offer a novel approach to determining the direction of dependency, and point out the notable similarities the borrowing bears to Second Temple editorial and redactional practices, drawing on recent Qumran scholarship. We conclude that Deut. 14.3-21 may be one of the earliest specimens of Rewritten Scripture.
This article raises the question why is it that, despite Jewish tradition devoting much thought to the status and treatment of animals and showing strict adherence to the notion of preventing their pain and suffering, ethical attitudes to animals are not dealt with systematically in the writings of Jewish philosophers and have not received sufficient attention in the context of moral monotheism. What has prevented the expansion of the golden rule: »Love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD« (Lev 19,18) and »That which is hateful to you do not do to another« (BT Shabbat 31a:6; JT Nedarim 30b:1) to animals? Why is it that the moral responsibility for the fellow-man, the neighbor, or the other, has been understood as referring only to a human companion? Does the demand for absolute moral responsibility spoken from the face of the other, which Emmanuel Levinas emphasized in his ethics, not radiate from the face of the non-human other as well? Levinas’s ethics explicitly negates the principle of reciprocity and moral symmetry: The ›I‹ is committed to the other, regardless of the other’s attitude towards him. Does the affinity to the eternal Thou which Martin Buber also discovers in plants and animals not require a paradigmatic change in the attitude towards animals?
Idolatry
(2021)
What is the nature of interactions between Jews and Muslims in contemporary Dubai, Berlin, and Warsaw? The purpose of the three presented case studies is to evaluate the state of affairs and identify newly emerging trends and patterns in the given trans-urban context. The methodology is based on qualitative anthropological research, emphasising an emic perspective that centralises respondents' own lived experiences and worldviews. The main research's findings made evident that interactions between Muslims and Jews in each examined location are, to various extents, acknowledged, and in some cases, also embody a formative part of public discourses. Perhaps the most visible manifestations of these relations are represented by the ambitious interfaith projects that were recently established in each geographical area in focus. The Abrahamic Family House (UEA), The House of One (GE), and The Community of Conscience (PL) reveal the aspirations of multi-faith religious leaders to overcome polarising dichotomies and search for common ground. One of the conclusive outcomes of the study is a somewhat diminishing impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the Jewish-Muslim relations; however, the extent differs in each destination in focus. Finally, an unpredicted observation can be made. A surfacing inclination towards embracing a joint Muslim-Jewish Middle Eastern identity was perceived.