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The names of God and the celestial powers : their function and meaning in the Hekhalot literature
(1987)
Excerpt: "Names and adjurations are the two main theurgic means found in the Hekhalot literature applied in connect ion with the descent to the Merkhavah and the invocation of angels to come down to earth and to reveal secrets," says Ithamar Gruenwald in his book on the Merkavah literature. He continues and maintains, with Gershom Scholem, that "that particular element in the Hekhalot Literature actually belonged to its very heart and this almost from its beginning." It is very seductive for the student of this literature to go straight to the heart of these texts; but the danger of this approach is as great as the danger of yeridat merkavah itself. Indeed, I feel as if I am passing the gates of the Hekhalot, the watchers of the gates standing on both sides prepared to throw their iron axes at my head. I can only hope that I may present the proper names! [...]
Excerpt: The shrill sounds of the now seemingly outdated controversy between Gershom Scholem and Martin Buber at the beginning of the sixties are still in the minds of every student of Hasidic literature and thought. - The "Scholem-community" feels content and the "Buber-community" upset. We can summarize the case in a few words. Martin Buber, the pioneer of Hasidism in the Western World, held the position that whoever would want to understand Hasidism had to turn to Hasidic tale as here, in the tales of the Hasidim, real Hasidic life was to be found. Whereas in the Hasidic homilies we meet mere non-creative tradition especially in the form of Kabbalah. Buber did not totally deny the importance of the Hasidic Midrash but he regarded it just as a commentary, i.e. as secondhand material, whereas, in his view, the tale was a true mirror of real Hasidic life [...]
Excerpt: The writings from the thirteenth century called by Gershom Scholem the "Writings of the 'lyyun circle" are one of the most intriguing chapters of early kabbalah - this I need not to elaborate on as it is a well known fact to anyone whoever had read these texts or the literature about them. When reading these texts, one gets the impression as if the authors had at hand a box full of terms and phrases into which everybody could just stick his hand and take terms and phrases out of it in order to arrange them according to his own taste, disregarding the meaning they have in the writings of his fellow kabbalists. The result was, that we now have before us a large number of varying mosaic pictures in which we detect again and again the same mosaic pebbles, however composed differently.
Excerpt: Hasidic Ashkenazi literature is known to scholars of Jewish religion as one of the most prolific sources of medieval Jewish magic or magical beliefs. This is all the more astonishing as the non esoteric writings of the Hasidey Ashkenaz represent a rather traditional Jewish piety as known to us from talmudic sources. Considering this duality of an almost traditional Jewish piety on the one hand and very distinct magic tenets on the other, we may ask whether the Hasidey Ashkenaz themselves perceived any difference between magic and religion. There are indeed a number of modern historians of religion who completely deny the validity of such a distinction, for in most historical religions magic and religion are in fact intertwined to a certain degree, thus permitting almost no differentiation between the two.
There Is No Return To Egypt
(2013)
Who are those Polish Jews, who in the wake of the Antizionist Campaign of the year 1968 left their home country and migrated to Israel? How do they, 40 years after these traumatic events, look back at their own history? Which development have they made in the Jewish State, a society torn by wars and inner political tensions? How do they live in Israel at the beginning of the 21st century? In the documentary There Is No Return To Egypt seven members of the Polish-Jewish migration cohort of the late 1960s, early 1970s and there todays environment are represented. These people, while being on camera in their mid-fifties till late seventies of age, allow an intimate view into their Israeli-Polish daily-life and into their world of memories. Interestingly, having survived the atrocities of the Shoah and being forced out of Poland some twenty years later, the older interviewees draw their very own conclusions for their further lives in Israel. In contrast, the younger interviewees deal very differently with the loss of their home and the break in their career life caused by the Antizionist Campaign. The personalities presented in this documentary have various professions: There is a successful musician, a former employee at the Israeli broadcasting service, and there are skilled workers. Their religious identities widely vary: from Jewish orthodox and national-religious to atheist to Judeo-Christian. The protagonists in There Is No Return To Egypt do also represent the political spectrum of Israel: from members of the chauvinist-militarist camp through to members of the peace movement. At the same time, the shooting locations in the documentary are important stages of life for the seven 1968ers: the home being decorated for Shabbat or for Israels national holiday Yom ha-atzmaut, the working place, an army museum, a Jewish settlement in the Palestinian Westbank, a Shoah memorial event at the university campus, a pop concert and a peace demonstration.
The Babylonian Talmud (BT) attributes the idea of committing a transgression for the sake of God to R. Nahman b. Isaac (RNBI). RNBI's statement appears in two parallel sugyot in the BT (Nazir 23a; Horayot 10a). Each sugya has four textual witnesses. By comparing these textual witnesses, this paper will attempt to reconstruct the sugya's earlier (or, what some might term, original) dialectical form, from which the two familiar versions of the text in Nazir and Horayot evolved. This article reveals the specific ways in which, value-laden conceptualizations have a major impact on the Talmud's formulation, as we know it today.
Food and fear
(2016)
From the 1940s well into the 1960s, a new sociocultural constellation let American Jews redefine their relationship to the religious tradition. This article analyzes the response of a religious elite of rabbis and intellectuals to this process, which was driven by various factors. Many American Jews were at least one generation away from traditional Judaism, which seemed out of place in postwar America. Liberal Judaism, with its narrow concept of religion, on the other hand, while fitting a larger social consensus, did not satiate many Jews' spiritual and identity needs. Sensing this deficit, rabbis and other religious thinkers explored broader concepts of Judaism. Religious journals that sprang up in the postwar decades served as vehicles for the attempt to understand Judaism in broader, cultural terms, while preserving a religious core. The article shows how in this search religious thinkers turned to the Eastern European past as a resource. As other groups similarly tried to mine this past for the sake of their present agendas, its reconstruction became a key process in the transformation of postwar American Judaism and its relationship to the tradition.
Yiddish in the Andes
(2019)
This article elucidates the efforts of Chilean-Jewish activists to create, manage and protect Chilean Yiddish culture. It illuminates how Yiddish cultural leaders in small diasporas, such as Chile, worked to maintain dialogue with other Jewish centers. Chilean culturists maintained that a unique Latin American Jewish culture existed and needed to be strengthened through the joint efforts of all Yiddish actors on the continent. Chilean activists envisioned a modern Jewish culture informed by both Eastern European influences and local Jewish cultural production, as well as by exchanges with non-Jewish Latin American majority cultures.
Speaking the unspeakable
(2019)
This article discusses the filmic representation of the infamous Wannsee Conference, when fifteen senior German officials met at a villa on the shore of a Berlin lake to discuss and co-ordinate the implementation of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question. The understanding reached during the course of the ninety-minute meeting cleared the way for the Europe-wide killing of six million Jews. The article sets out to answer the principal challenge facing anyone attempting to recreate the Wannsee Conference on film: what was the atmosphere of this conference and the attitude of the participants? Moreover, it discusses various ethical aspects related to the portrayal of evil, not in actions but in words, using the medium of film. In doing so, it focuses on the BBC/HBO television film Conspiracy (2001), directed by Frank Pierson, probing its historical accuracy and discussing its artistic credibility.
Speaking the Unspeakable
(2019)
This article discusses the filmic representation of the infamous Wannsee Conference, when fifteen senior German officials met at a villa on the shore of a Berlin lake to discuss and co-ordinate the
implementation of the so-called final solution to the Jewish question. The understanding reached during the course of the ninety-minute meeting cleared the way for the Europe-wide killing of six million Jews. The article sets out to answer the principal challenge facing
anyone attempting to recreate the Wannsee Conference on film: what was the atmosphere of this conference and the attitude of the participants? Moreover, it discusses various ethical aspects related to the portrayal of evil, not in actions but in words, using the medium of film. In doing so, it focuses on the BBC/HBO television film Conspiracy (2001), directed by Frank Pierson, probing its historical accuracy and discussing its artistic credibility.
“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.
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.
When the "Ostjuden" returned
(2021)
This article examines the dynamics that allowed the derogatory term "Ostjuden" to reappear in academic writing in post-Holocaust Germany. This article focuses on the period between 1980's and 2000's, complementing earlier studies that focused on the emergence of the term "Ostjuden" and on the complex representations of Eastern European Jews in Imperial and later Weimar Germany. It shows that, despite its well-evidenced discriminatory history, the term "Ostjuden" re-appeared in the scholarly writing in German and has also found its way into German-speaking public history and journalism. This article calls for applying the adjectival term "osteuropaische Juden" (Eastern European Jews), using a term that neither essentializes Eastern European Jews nor presents them in an oversimplified and uniform manner.
The Jews' Indian
(2021)
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.
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).
History of Forgetfulness
(2021)
This paper addresses terrorism trials as sites of research and proposes an approach for the analysis of ethnographic data collected during these trials. The suggested approach offers multi-level analytical access, it centers around interactionist conceptions and knowledge discourses. The conceptual framework we suggest is spelled out in terms of how to observe and being sensitive of (re-)production of power structures inside the courtroom as well as in regard to relations imported into the courtroom. For this purpose, we integrate (i) the micro-level of courtroom interactions and (ii) (self-)presentation, (iii) the meso-level of knowledge (re)production and the establishment of knowledge orders and (iv) an intersectional perspective on gender, race, and class in knowledge discourses. By applying a multi-level approach, we open up new explanatory avenues to understand the constitution of terrorism as a socio-legal object. The methodical framework connects hitherto unconnected elements, that is, participants' interactions and negotiation, their (self-)representations, ascriptions and narrative performances, and knowledge (re-)production in order to establish or maintain political and social orders.
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 study on the Messianic Jewish movement and its relationship to the Torah explores the various aspects of the relationship to the Torah on the basis of 10 interviews with selected Yeshua-believing Jews in leadership positions. The selection of interviewees results in a range of different positions typical of the movement as a whole, which overlap in many respects but are often fundamentally different and sometimes contradictory. Particular attention is paid to the theologically based, divergent and contradictory positions in an attempt to make these understandable.
After a brief introduction to the Messianic Jewish movement, aspects of the Messianic Jewish dual identity are examined and their relevance for the relationship to the Torah is demonstrated. This is followed by an overview of the forums in which Yeshua-believing Jews discuss their relationship to the Torah. The extensive bibliography at the end of the work provides an insight into a lively discussion process within the movement that is still far from complete. A briefly annotated differentiation of terms serves as an overview of the most important meanings of Torah used in the Messianic Jewish movement. Following this preliminary work, the field study is presented. A description of the research field and methodological reflections precede the interviews. In the interviews, the associations with the term Torah are first recorded and the conceptual meaning and use clarified. This already reveals some serious differences. The theological positions and understandings of Torah are presented with the biographical context and main field of influence, and the most important formative influences are named. The points on which they all agree are noted first, as they serve as a common basis. All study the written Torah and consider it, as well as the rest of the Tanakh and the writings of the New Testament in their present form, to be divinely inspired and authoritative. All have found a positive approach to the Torah according to their own definition of the term. For all of them, the written Torah and the Tanakh point to Yeshua. All agree that Yeshua did not abrogate the Torah, but fulfilled it. And all feel a responsibility as a Jew to the Torah in some way. With regard to keeping commandments, all say that no one can earn their way to heaven by doing so. G-d's faithfulness to His promises to Israel is affirmed by all, but whether the new covenant in Yeshua superseded the old covenant of Mt. Sinai, or whether it is simply added to the already existing covenant of Sinai, whether ritual commandments are to continue to be kept after Yeshua's death and resurrection and the destruction of the Temple, whether the commandments aiming at separation from the nations should continue to be kept, whether and under what conditions rabbinic halacha should be followed and what individuals do and teach in their families and communities - all this is discussed interview by interview. It becomes clear how different ways of reading and weighting key scriptures produce different positions. Just as the diversity of positions in relation to the Torah already suggests, the interview partners are divided on the question of a Messianic Jewish Halacha. But here too, the term halacha is interpreted differently by the representatives. At the end of the field study, the attempts to produce Messianic Jewish Halacha and the problems and points of criticism expressed by other interviewees are explained. The work concludes with a theological framework able to contain all the different positions and relationships to the Torah and some starting points for a possible Messianic Jewish hermeneutic theology of the Torah.