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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 Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.
In Time and the Other Johannes Fabian analysed how modern conceptions of time were “not only secularized and naturalized but also thoroughly spatialized.” According to Fabian, this was particularly visible in modern anthropology which “promoted a scheme in terms of which not only past cultures but all living societies were irrevocably placed on a temporal slope, a stream of Time – some upstream, others downstream.”3 Anthropologists attributed otherness to a distant past which was traditionally associated with cultural retardation, i.e. a lower degree of development, progress, and civilization. Cultural difference was expressed in terms of temporal distance while temporal distance was attributed to spatial remoteness. The result was a phenomenon that Fabian coined “the denial of coevalness” which pointed towards “a persistent and systematic tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse.
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
This year’s edition of the Yearbook of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg (ZJS) highlights innovative approaches to the study of Sephardic history in colonial and postcolonial contexts beyond Europe. The authors intertwine the particularities of their case studies with reflections on patterns of belonging, memorial cultures, and a transnational network of connections spanning from early modern times to the twentieth century.
In the context of the early modern Atlantic world, two essays explore the notion of a Sephardic empire among Portuguese Jewish communities as well as transatlantic entanglements in and beyond the Danish Caribbean. In the frameworks of Spain as well as (post-)colonial Egypt and Morocco, three articles reflect on Jewish citizenship, modes of belonging, and present-day commemorative events of Jewish history across the Mediterranean and beyond.
These collected contributions are the outcome of activities at the ZJS dedicated to Sephardic Studies during the academic year 2020—21.
Miguel de Luna as arbitrista
(2023)
This article deals with Miguel de Luna, a Morisco from Granada, who is most famous for his involvement in the Lead Books of Sacromonte affair. In the following pages I will, however, focus on a facet of his life that has been rather neglected. Rather than recount again his activities as translator for Arabic, I will shed light on his work as physician and claim that his medical paper on the benefits of bathing and the reopening of public baths in Granada may very well put him in league with the arbitristas, a group of intellectuals who advised the monarch in economic and financial matters.
Jewish Studies and Postcolonial Studies are often thought to be at odds. Both disciplines intensively debate modernity, troubling its universalist claims and showing the contradictory nature of its promises. The call to provincialize Europe allows scholars from both disciplines to think, articulate and represent modern experiences beyond Europe and engage critically with traditions of modernity across disciplines, temporalities and geographies. Mapping Sephardi and other minor perspectives on modernity from across the globe in this volume, we are presenting fascinating cases and exploring new terrain where a fruitful encounter between Jewish and Postcolonial Studies can happen.
In the first book-length study of Takkanot Kandiyah, Martin Borýsek analyses this fascinating corpus of Hebrew texts written between 1228 –1583 by the leaders of the Jewish community in Candia, the capital of Venetian Crete. Collected in the 16th century by the Cretan Jewish historian Elijah Capsali, the communal byelaws offer a unique perspective on the history of a vibrant, culturally diverse Jewish community during three centuries of Venetian rule. As well as confronting practical problems such as deciding whether Christian wine can be made kosher by adding honey, or stopping irresponsible Jewish youths disturbing religious services by setting off fireworks in the synagogue, Takkanot Kandiyah presents valuable material for the study of communal autonomy and institutional memory in pre-modern Jewish society.
Interfaith controversies and disputes regarding the role of reason in interpreting the Scriptures characterised scholarly discussion in the Low Countries between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Jewish author Abraham Gómez Silveira contributed to this discussion with an eclectic body of literature. This article focuses on his Libro Mudo (Mute Book), which embodies his efforts to present the Jewish religion as the only rational one and the Christian dogma as irrational. In order to corroborate his reading, Silveira mostly bases his argumentation on non-Jewish texts. By selecting passages from the New Testaments, Christian religious commentaries as well as Qur'anic excerpts, Silveira aims to demonstrate that even non-Jewish sources prove the rationality of the Jewish theological system. The novelty of Silveira's approach consists in confuting Christian dogma by accepting the Gospels as reliable historical sources. In this argumentative structure, the Qur'an has a similar although not identical function.
Zimzum
(2023)
Zimzum is the kabbalistic idea that God created the world by limiting his omnipresence. Zimzum originated in the teachings of the sixteenth-century Jewish mystic Isaac Luria and here, Christoph Schulte follows its traces across the Jewish and Christian intellectual history of Europe and North America over four centuries.
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.
Carvajal and the Franciscans
(2022)
Luis de Carvajal the Younger (1567–1596) is without doubt one of the most famous victims of the Mexican Inquisition. In 1595, Luis and his family were found guilty of “Judaizing” and sentenced to death. Due to his autobiography and letters which survived in the dossiers of his trials, scholars have been able to trace important aspects of Carvajal’s life, his religious thought, and his self-fashioning as a Jewish martyr. However, one question that has not yet been entirely discussed is Carvajal’s messianism in the context of New World geographies and influences.
This chapter uses Carvajal’s autobiography, his letters, and his declarations during the trials to analyze the meaning of “the Americas” in Carvajal’s eschatological thought and to reflect upon possible influences from Mexican Franciscans and Christian millenarians with whom Carvajal was in contact between 1590 and 1595. It places Carvajal’s case in the broader context of recent studies of “converso messianism” and Jewish-Christian interactions in early modern eschatological and millenarian settings. It thus contributes to the exploration of entanglements between Jewish and Christian eschatological expectations in the early modern Atlantic World.
In search of Ovidian hebrew
(2022)
This paper focuses on the first substantial translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into modern Hebrew, whose author was Yehoshua Friedman (1885–1934). The first part of the paper sets Friedman into the context of modern Hebrew classical philology and explores the character of his verse. The core of the text consists of three case studies of selected excerpts from Ovid’s story of Apollo and Daphne (Met. I, 456–465; 481–482; 545–552). Based on detailed linguistic and stylistic analysis of these texts, I argue that Friedman did not simply adopt a pre-existing linguistic register, but rather created an original Ovidian idiom that helped to win him lasting significance in the history of Hebrew translations from classical languages.
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.
Studies in the Jewish reception of Christian theological discussions beyond the proper field of polemics are rare and only in their beginnings. Until now, scholars have often argued that Portuguese Jews discussed Christian concepts of divine foreknowledge and human free will because they were either struggling with their own Christian past or sought to help their 'New Jewish' coreligionists to turn into reliable members of the Amsterdam Sephardic community. This article uses the example of the Catholic Controversia de auxiliis, and the Protestant fight over Predestination before and after the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619) to argue that Portuguese Jews such as Menasseh ben Israel and Daniel Levi de Barrios recognised the cross-confessional dimension of the Christian debates on divine grace; they used their Iberian background and knowledge to order and explain what they observed; and they displayed their position as outsiders to deconstruct religious boundaries, imagine alternative religious landscapes, and finally re-insert themselves into their newly created religious maps and orders. The argument is based on a close reading of one chapter of the last volume of Menasseh ben Israel's Conciliador (1651) as well as Daniel Levi de Barrios's poem Libre Alvedrio y Harmonia del Cuerpo, por disposicion del alma (1680).
Sephardim and Ashkenazim
(2021)
Sephardic and Ashkenazic Judaism have long been studied separately. Yet, scholars are becoming ever more aware of the need to merge them into a single field of Jewish Studies. This volume opens new perspectives and bridges traditional gaps. The authors are not simply contributing to their respective fields of Sephardic or Ashkenazic Studies. Rather, they all include both Sephardic and Ashkenazic perspectives as they reflect on different aspects of encounters and reconsider traditional narratives. Subjects range from medieval and early modern Sephardic and Ashkenazic constructions of identities, influences, and entanglements in the fields of religious art, halakhah, kabbalah, messianism, and charity to modern Ashkenazic Sephardism and Sephardic admiration for Ashkenazic culture. For reasons of coherency, the contributions all focus on European contexts between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
Sephardim and Ashkenazim
(2021)
History of Forgetfulness
(2021)
Tsimtsum
(2021)
When he founded Schocken Books in 1945, department store magnate, philanthropist, and publisher Salman Schocken (1877–1959) called his new American publishing business an imitation of its German predecessor, which had functioned from 1931 until 1938. He intended it to replicate the success of the Berlin Schocken Verlag by spiritually fortifying a Jewish community uncertain in its identity. The new company reflected the transnational transfer of people, ideas, and texts between Germany, Palestine/Israel, and the United States. Its success and near-failure raise questions about transnationalism and American Jewish culture: Can a culture be imposed on a population which has its own organs and agencies of cultural production? Had American Jewish culture developed organically to the specific place where several million Jews found themselves and according to uniquely American cultural patterns? The answers suggest that the concepts of transnationalism and cultural transfer complement each other as tools to analyze American Jewry in its American and Jewish contexts.
Foreign Entanglements
(2021)
Religious Mapping Erbil (RME) is a joint project of teams from the Catholic University in Erbil (CUE), Salahaddin University-Erbil (SUE) and Tishk International University (TIU) under the guidance of the University of Potsdam (UP). From 2018 to 2022, the project was financed by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
This project involves scholars of various disciplines including religious studies, Islamic studies, English language, applied computing, and computer engineering. The research is a cooperation of students, PhD candidates and advanced scholars.
The project attempts to display the religious diversity in Erbil, the fast-changing capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Unlike a census or a survey, which focuses on individuals, RME presents the locations (mosques, churches, synagogues, temples and other venues) together with the history and social profiles of the congregations meeting there. [insert tiny map or part of it]
The data were obtained by visiting the locations, observing their services, interviewing community leaders (mostly imams and priests), evaluating information from the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, and by consulting websites. All investigations followed the same pattern, consisting of (I) spatiotemporal and (III) social dimensions, framed by (II) religious performance.
In Berlin two rabbinical seminaries, a Reform and a Conservative, have recently been established. The historical and intellectual roots of these institutions in the nineteenth century is sketched, and then contrasted with the present curriculum and the religious profile of the students. Some theological questions for the future of these projects conclude the article.
From 1933, the inner Protestant 'German Christians Church Movement' from Thuringia took control over some Protestant regional churches in Germany. For the German Christians the main motives of their agitation were the creation of a 'volkisch' belief system based on race, Christianity and 'dejudaization' (of Christianity). <br /> Based on the theoretical considerations of spaces, boundaries and exclusion, the article uses the example of the German Christians to show under which conditions individuals are denied entry into an imaginary religious space. 'Exclusivist border crossings,' as this phenomena is named here on the theoretical perspective, can explain how religious arguments exclude people from entering a religious space such as salvation when the access criteria are linked to birth-related conditions.
The Jewish family has been the subject of much admiration and analysis, criticism and myth-making, not just but especially in modern times. As a field of inquiry, its place is at the intersection – or in the shadow – of the great topics in Jewish Studies and its contributing disciplines. Among them are the modernization and privatization of Judaism and Jewish life; integration and distinctiveness of Jews as individuals and as a group; gender roles and education. These and related questions have been the focus of modern Jewish family research, which took shape as a discipline in the 1910s.
This issue of PaRDeS traces the origins of academic Jewish family research and takes stock of its development over a century, with its ruptures that have added to the importance of familial roots and continuities. A special section retrieves the founder of the field, Arthur Czellitzer (1871–1943), his biography and work from oblivion and places him in the context of early 20th-century science and Jewish life.
The articles on current questions of Jewish family history reflect the topic’s potential for shedding new light on key questions in Jewish Studies past and present. Their thematic range – from 13th-century Yiddish Arthurian romances via family-based business practices in 19th-century Hungary and Germany, to concepts of Jewish parenthood in Imperial Russia – illustrates the broad interest in Jewish family research as a paradigm for early modern and modern Jewish Studies.
The will of the masses
(2020)
This article describes the way of Conrado Balweg from the Tingguian-tribe in the Cordillera mountains/Philippines, who was educated in Catholic seminaries, entered a missionary congregation, was ordained priest and joined the communist insurgency New People’s Army. There he quickly attained the rank of a political officer and military commander. Balweg held teachings on Marxism in remote villages, he organized several ambushes on government troops and conducted people’s courts against traitors. Over time he developed a special indigenous Maoism and broke away from the party-line and, which was the reason why he was killed by the NPA in 1999. In a contextualized biographical portrait we track the question: How did Maoist thought become part of Balweg’s conviction? As a hypothesis we assumed, that Maoist thought was integrated in Catholic tenets (e.g. interpreting God’s will as the will of the masses). After a close analysis of intellectual backgrounds and political events it turned out, that Maoist ideology superseded religious motives instead. This is crucial to understand if violence was justified in the name of God or in the name of the people.
This book brings together case studies dealing with historical as well as recent phenomena in former socialist nations, which testify the transfer of knowledge about religion and atheism. The material is connected on a semantic level by the presence of a historical watershed before and after socialism as well as on a theoretical level by the sociology of knowledge. With its focus on Central and Eastern Europe this volume is an important contribution to the research on nonreligion and secularity.
The collected volume deals with agents and media within specific cultural and historical contexts. Theoretical claims and conceptions by single agents and/or institutions in which the imparting of knowledge about religion and atheism was or is a central assignment, are analyzed. Additionally, procedures of transmitting knowledge about religion and atheism and of sustaining related institutionalized norms, interpretations, roles and practices are in the focus of interest.
The book opens the perspective for the multidimensional and negotiating character of legitimation processes, being involved in the establishment or questioning of the institutionalized opposition between religion and atheism or religion and science.
“Jewish, Gay and Proud”
(2020)
This publication examines the foundation and institutional integration of the first gay-lesbian synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1972. As early as June 1974, the synagogue was admitted to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the umbrella organization of the Reform congregations in the United States. Previously, the potential acceptance of a congregation by and for homosexual Jews triggered an intense and broad debate within Reform Judaism. The work asks how it was possible to successfully establish a gay-lesbian synagogue at a time when homosexual acts were considered unnatural and contrary to tradition by almost the entire Jewish community. The starting point of the argumentation is, in addition to general changes in American synagogues after World War II, the assumption that Los Angeles was the most suitable place for this foundation. Los Angeles has an impressive queer history and the Jewish community was more open, tolerant and innovative here than its counterpart on the East Coast. The Metropolitan Community Church was also founded in the city, and as the largest religious institution for homosexual Christians, it also served as the birthplace of queer synagogues.
Reform Judaism was chosen as the place of institutional integration of the community because a relative openness for such an endeavor was only seen here. Responsa written in response to a potential admission of Beth Chayim Chadashim can be used to understand the arguments and positions of rabbis and psychologists regarding homosexuality and communities for homosexual Jews in the early 1970s.
Ultimately, the commitment and dedication of the congregation and its heterosexual supporters convinced the decision-makers in Reform Judaism. The decisive impulse to question the situation of homosexual Jews in Judaism came from Los Angeles. With its analysis, the publication contributes to the understanding of Queer Jewish History in general and queer synagogues in particular.
In the following pages I discuss how,and to what extent, the eminent Zionist thinker Max Nordau, himself of Sephardic ancestry, viewed the history of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula in the context of his general critique of assimilation not only in regard to Jews,but in a more comprehensive understanding as well. My focus here is on the significance of assimilation in the history of the Jews on the Iberian Peninsula as reflected in Nordau’s writings, with an additional emphasis on his two visits to Spain, thefirst in 1875 and again between 1914 and 1920. In so doing, I attempt to integrate Ashkenazic and Sephardic history into one field of Jewish Studies. The relationship between the two has not yet been researched comprehensively, particularly in the context of the historical study of Zionism.