Around the Bloc: Russian Orthodox Church Goes High-Tech to Reach Believers
In addition to usual messaging features, a new app will fulfill needs for “interaction and continuous contact between parishioners and the Church."
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In addition to usual messaging features, a new app will fulfill needs for “interaction and continuous contact between parishioners and the Church."
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The paper presents the idea of transcendence of God as depth of being in the philosophy of Józef Życiński (1948–2011). This idea has two main interpretations: moral (searching for the meaning of life by man and discovering it in the world of values) and ontological (the presence of some formal structures in the being of the world as the expression of the divine Logos). The paper consists of three parts: 1) a presentation of those aspects of human existence whose main feature is the question of the meaning of life, and the role of ethics, aesthetics and religion in answering it; 2) a presentation of the idea of God as the depth of the world and structure of laws, ideas and values; 3) a presentation of the aspiration of man to the harmony of life through the openness to the depth of existence in the moral and ontological aspects.
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A debate over the morality of Kosher slaughter [Shechita (Hebrew: שחיטה)] has raged in Poland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark, where the Jewish ritual slaughter was outlawed. The more the debate goes on, the more awareness arises to Shechita as a basic Jewish religious practice. Yet veganism is a Hebrew religious operation too. This article discusses Hebrew vegan belief in terms meaningful to Jews, yet considering its utopian nature, in terms applicable to others as well. Both Shechita and veganism have universal Hebrew claims. Yet both claims are to be studied. Within this vast theme, I will analyze here veganism only, with respect to its utopian role and as a theological structure of one, yet global, community: the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. They believe themselves to be the descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob Israel. They are Jewish by their cultural nature: they observe Shabbat, Torah and a weekly fast. In 70 A.D. after the Romans destroyed the second temple they escaped and fled southward and westward to various nations in Africa two millennia ago where they were sold as slaves and were enslaved in America. They left America in 1967 led by their spiritual leader Ben Ammi, defined their departure as an exodus from America. Via Liberia – where they became vegans – they arrived in Israel in 1969, established an urban kibbutz, a collective communal living which is located in a desert region. Like most Jews, their diet has tremendous importance, but unlike most Jews they are vegan. The African Hebrews have very specific vegan dietary practices. Their tradition includes teaching and studying a special diet, which is vegetarian, organic and self-produced. They observe Shabbat strictly. On Shabbat, they fast and cleanse. This mirrors their spiritual outlook that eating is a hard labor of which they are obliged to rest from by the Ten Commandments. This article presents a breakthrough idea that fasting on Shabbat indeed reflects an ancient Israelite religious tradition. “Food for Peace” s a metaphor for the theology of the Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem unfolding their messianic utopia through which they believe people may achieve inner peace and even world peace, encompassing decades of powerful hopes, realities and nutritious lifestyle.
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Pafnucy Siehen, from Bielsk, was the founder of the Suprasl monastery. He was the one who had the biggest contribution to the creation of the first churches, financial security and determination of the status of the monastery in the Orthodox Church. The Siehen family incurred costs of raising the monastic congregation in Gródek. The Siehens, who co-founded the construction of the monastery, received numerous estates from King Sigismund the Old (Zygmunt Stary). Pafnucy Siehen created a well-organized religious community and supervised legal and material protection of his monastery. At the beginning of 1509 Hegumen Pafnucy Siehen made a request to the king for permission to build a stone Orthodox church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The construction of the church began in October 1510. According to the majority of historians, this year was the date of Pafnucy Siehen’s death. On the basis of new evidence, it has been proven that Pafnucy Siehen did not die that year; he participated in the council of Vilnius in 1509–1510. At this council Pafnucy Siehen, the hegumen of Supraśl, was declared a bishop. After bishop Wassian’s death in 1512, Pafnucy Siehen became the ordinary of Vladimir-Brest diocese. His nomination was supported by the Metropolitan of Kiev, Joseph and secular Orthodox elites. After choosing hegumen Pafnucy the Vladimir-Brest leader, the importance of the Siehen family rapidly increased. Bishop Siehen, as a bishop, initiated the restoration of numerous churches and monasteries destroyed during the Tatar invasion in 1491. In the years 1514–1516 Pafnucy received from the king the confirmation of privileges granted to the episcopate and the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir-Volynski. Bishop Pafnucy managed the Lutsk-Ostroh diocese since 1523. He officially took over the Lutsk diocese after the death of bishop Cyril in 1526. Pafnucy Siehen held his episcopal function in Lutsk until 1528.
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In the third period of Ukrainian prerevolutionary statehood, called Directorate, national groups took over the authority. As a result of various events, in February 1919 Symon Petlura became the leader of the republic. One of the most revolutionary decisions of the Directorate consisted in adoption of the act of autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Although the episcopate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church boycotted this act, the Directorate strived hard to execute its resolutions. One of the most important Directorate’s actions was sending to Constantinople a representative of O. Łotocki’s government, with the mission of gaining the ecumenical patriarch’s – Germanos V’s support. A fast collapse of the new authority made it impossible for the Ukrainian nationals to achieve the main objective – the autocephaly of the Church.
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Uniate Church in the Republic of Poland was established as a result of the Brest Union in 1596. During the following centuries it evolved towards Latin Church. Mainly on the basis of the adopted by zamoyski synod (1720) resolutions it underwent widespread Latinizing and Polonization. It concerned the dogma, liturgy, church services, rituals, laity and clergy. The interiors of the churches were changed, iconostasis, sacrificial tables and altars equipped according to the Greek rite were removed. The main and side altars, confessionals, pulpits, organs and other Latin utensils were introduced instead. The actions of the Basilian congregation were of equal significance. As a result of those changes the Uniate Church gradually wondered off from the eastern rite bringing itself closer to the Latin one. The Polonization was in full swing. Old Slavonic was replaced by Polish. From that moment on this was the language of prayers, sermons, religious singing and communication with the priests. At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries Polonization of the Unite Church was advanced. The prestige of the clergy and of the Church as an institution didn’t raise, what was expected at the moment of introducing the union, the same could be said about its economic situation. All that was leading to the fall. The situation was worsened by the fact that the church founders, most often of the different faith weren’t interested in supporting financially the churches of their serfs. The sad picture of the Uniate Church emerges from the deans’ inspections from the end of 18th and the beginning of 19th century. In the Bialystok district constituting the religious and ethnic borderland Latinizing and Polonization of the Uniate Church were the most intensive.
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The Targums are early Jewish translations of books of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. According to the definition, but also in practice, Aramaic translations operate at two levels: translation of the Hebrew text and its interpretation. The Pentateuch is at the centre of Jewish life, therefore more than one Aramaic versions of the Torah have been created: Targum Onqelos, Palestinian Targum (Targum Neofiti, fragments from Cairo Geniza, Fragment Targums, and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan). The character of these versions depends on the date, place and dialect of at the original targumic tradition. The targumists read the Torah as the Scripture transmitted to them and their contemporaries. Their reflection on the text led to the contribution of new elements to it. The material was added to the Aramaic translations of the biblical text not for linguistic reasons, but because of current theological exegesis, formed inside Jewish religious communities. The Aramaic translators used a variety of methods and techniques of translation. Significantly, they resorted to contemporarization of the Sacred texts, which occurred at three levels: historical, cultural, and religious. The targumists tried not only to convey the text of the Pentateuch, which included the law of Moses, but also to solve problems associated with the interpretation of the meaning of the Torah. Thus the Targums can be seen as an attempt to adapt the Scripture to the official Jewish law (halakah). With regard to the liturgical context, the Aramaic translations became midrashic and exgegetical commentaries. The targumists aimed at reconciling the ancient text books of the Hebrew Bible with its later theological vision. This phenomenon is defined as the targumization or ideologization of the Biblical Hebrew text. The aim of this article is to describe the characteristics of targumic literature and present selected examples of different Aramaic “actualizations” of the Torah.
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The larger the gap between languages, cultures and religions involved in the translation process, the more challenging it becomes, as was the case with the Septuagint [LXX] rendition of the Hebrew Bible [HB], which aimed at compromising Hellenistic and Semitic entourages. Valuable insight into the translator’s work is offered by an analysis of a particular word or phrase which undergoes a linguistic and cultural transmission. The word nephilim appears just three times in the Masoretic text of the HB: once in Genesis 6:4 and twice in Numbers 13:33. In the LXX both of these instances have been rendered by the Greek gigantes, which means that the translator identified the mysterious antediluvian figures as the primeval inhabitants of one of the Canaanite valleys and, at the same time, interpreted both of them as the Semitic equivalent of the Greek giants. Given the etymological and semantic differences between nephilim and gigantes, the question arises: why was this particular decision made? This study follows the hypothetical process of interpretation and translation by reconstructing the ancient Greek mythical complex of giants and by analyzing the biblical sources (Genesis 6:1–4; Numbers 13:28–33; Ezekiel 32:22–27) where the nephilim/nophelim appear. Moreover, this article outlines the factors that have influenced the translation. Finally, by scrutinizing the issue of the nefilim–gigantes this article describes the ancient biblical translator’s workshop on the particular example. Given the limitations of every translation, it is crucial to acknowledge the ambivalent nature of this process: undoubtedly, the translator strives to find the most appropriate term being the closest semantic equivalent of the word in question at the same time, however, the particular decision reducing the semantic uncertainty blurs other interpretative options. In other words, whatever had been the initial interpretation of the mysterious nephilim in these passages, it was in a way “overwritten” and thus substituted by the Greek gigantes.
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This essay examines the rhetoric and practice of translation in the Russian Empire’s Hebrew and Yiddish cultural communities and focuses on the intriguing fact that by 1917, many of the writers, critics, intellectuals, and publishers committed to a Jewish nationalist vision of Hebrew or Yiddish cultural renaissance were convinced that a massive program of literary translation was their most essential task. The study reconstructs the guiding translation program of this divided intelligentsia, which posited a universal canon of European and even world literature that had to be incorporated whole into Hebrew and Yiddish literature systematically and rapidly, without any sort of Judaization or popularization, and with an emphasis on the expansion of the expressive capacities of the target language and its writers. The essay traces how this commitment was expressed and embodied in translation theory, practices of selection and publishing, and in several acts of translation themselves. It further demonstrates how this translation program and its practices were linked to a larger vision of programmatic ‘de-Judaization’ or ‘de-parochialization’ of Hebrew and Yiddish culture propounded by some of the most committed Hebraists and Yiddishists in Russia. Finally, it argues that this translation program expresses a more general and seemingly paradoxical variant of East European Jewish cultural nationalism which held that a modern Jewish national culture could only be truly worthwhile and compelling to modern creators and consumers if it was universal in its expressive potentials and demarcated from other national cultures by language rather than content.
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This article addresses the complex relationship of both Jews and non-Jews to Yiddish language and Jewish literature in Poland. It analyses the evolution of translators’ motivations and their approach to the original texts, as well as the reactions of readers of Jewish literature during three decades (1885–1914). The study opens with the first translations from Yiddish into Polish (and at the same time the first translations from Yiddish to foreign languages in general): Klemens Junosza-Szaniawski’s Donkiszot żydowski (The Jewish Don Quixote, 1885) and Szkapa (The Nag, 1886) by Mendele Moykher Sforim (Sholem-Yankev Abramovitsh). Their publication was a notable event in Warsaw’s intellectual circles and provoked lively polemics in the press. In his introduction, Junosza used the expression “the Great Wall of China” to define the barriers dividing the Jewish and Polish societies, which he hoped to overcome at least in part through his translations. The phrase was later adopted by critics and the following generation of translators, who regularly, albeit with different intentions, made references to the work of their predecessor. Apart from the translations of Mendele’s novels, the article also discusses the texts published by Yiddish-language writers in assimilatory periodicals in Congress Poland (Izraelita in Warsaw) and in Galicia (Ojczyzna in Lwów). They were programmatically hostile to the language of Ashkenazi Jews, but their relationship to Yiddish literature turns out to have been more complex and changing with time. The analysis also includes: the anthology Miliony! (Millions!, 1903) translated by Jerzy Ohr, a journalist close to the extreme right circles; Miasteczko (The Shtetl, 1910) by Sholem Ash, whose introduction reflected the radicalization of Polish-Jewish relations; and Safrus (1905), a collection of fiction and essays edited by Jan Kirszrot, who represented the Jewish nationalist milieu. These translations and their reception illustrate well the complex issues of identity, cultural belonging, assimilation, return to the roots, image of the Other, cultural stereotypes or fascination and rejection, characteristic of a multicultural and a multinational society.
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Existing studies on interwar Polish editions of translations of Hebrew and Yiddish literature have focused on various literary genres published in a book form (mostly prose but also poetry and drama). This article analyses Polish-Jewish cultural relations from the bibliological point of view, concentrating on the different book-forms in which translations from Jewish languages were published, such as almanacs, books for children, textbooks and series. The analysis of the editorial framework, designs, illustrations, information on covers, and book structure can not only provide insight into the editorial strategies of publishers but also give information on intended readers. Moreover, a comparison of pre-WWII and post-war editions sheds light on the changes in the reading public, its needs, expectations and knowledge about Jewish culture.
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The article discusses foreign magical incantations within the healing practices of the East-European Jewry. Indicating the importance of the category of “strangeness”, it examines several magical texts, focusing on their adaptation and translation into Yiddish culture.
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Robert Gilbert (b. Robert David Winterfeld, 1899–1978) was one of Germany’s most successful writers of popular songs, many of them made famous by operettas and movies in the late years of the Weimar Republic (Ein Freund, ein guter Freund; Liebling, mein Herz läßt Dich grüßen; Was kann der Sigismund dafür?). In 1933, Gilbert emigrated to Vienna and later moved on to Paris, 1938, and New York, 1939. After his return to Europe in 1951, Gilbert started a second, again very successful, career as translator of American Musical Comedies, from My Fair Lady (1951) via Oklahoma or Annie Get Your Gun to Cabaret (1970). During his years in New York, he had acquired the English language he needed for this new activity. Recently discovered documents – manuscripts donated to the Vienna City Library by the Leopoldi family – give an insight into the translatory workshop and into the conditions of exile: Gilbert, together with the piano artist Hermann Leopoldi (1888–1959), produced a large number of songs, many of which were written in a mixture of German and English, with language (problems) as their subject. This paper traces Gilbert’s life and work, his translations and his thoughts on translation. The discussion focuses on the role of returning exiles as mediating agents and cultural translators between American (popular) culture and post-War Germany and Austria.
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Przekład jako polityka. Biblioteczka niemiecka po hebrajsku
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This article analyses the Polish translation of Yosef Haim Brenner’s short story The Way Out, carried out by Polish Zionist Józef Szofman and published in 1925 in Warsaw. It discusses the story’s origin and its reception, especially its writer’s status and his work with the Zionist discourse and imagery. Referring to interwar Polish-Jewish press, the article points to Szofman’s role in creating a mythological narrative about Brenner in the local Jewish milieus. The analysis of Szofman’s translation strategies raises the question about the intentions of the translator and the premises of his work.
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Two cases underscore the government’s hard line approach to dealing with those it believes subscribe to foreign versions of Islam.
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Philosophical forces gathered in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Catholic Modernism have crystallized into theological views which permeate the antinomian atmosphere in the Church today, resulting in an ongoing Catholic identity problem, both within the Church and in relation to the world. In place of the perennial philosophy and its contemplative ideal, many now welcome the incoherence of broad philosophical and theological pluralism, while pastoral practice is infused with the fruits of pragmatism and the rhetoric of false dichotomies (justice/mercy, intellectual/pastoral, tradition/living faith, speculative truth/charity, for example). To reverse this anti-intellectual course, rehabilitation of Aquinas’s positions on the primacy of the speculative order and contemplative charism, his integration of natural, revealed and mystical wisdoms, and his sense of objective worship, is needed. A brief account of the robust role of philosophy in the Church’s mission and of Gilson’s nuanced position on the encounter of Thomism and Modernism supports this assertion.
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The “new atheism” and the “new evangelization” have become the buzzwords of the age. Atheism is now the fastest growing “religious” group in the United States; the new evangelization decisively shaped the conclave that elected Jorge Bergoglio to the papacy. Twenty years ago, in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II reflected pastorally on some of the philosophical, spiritual, and cultural roots of both. His insights, embodied in Christians who live them, offer the Church a key to our times. If evangelization today is to announce the Gospel in the languages of today, what script might it use? What images might it evoke? What might its cadence be like?
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