SEPHARDI AND ASHKENAZI CONCEPTIONS OF WORLD HISTORY: FROM GEDALIAH IBN YAHYA TO DAVID GANS

Author(s): Carsten Wilke / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

Research on sixteenth-century Jewish historiography, of which the chronicle Tzemah David [Sprout of David] by the Prague scholar David Gans is in some respect the culmination, has been vivified by the ‘historiography boom’ of the last quarter of the twentieth century. This general trend started with the polemical insights of New Historicists (such as Hayden White in his Metahistory of 1973) and has left a deep uncertainty about the nature and function of historical knowledge. Scholars emphasized the narrative, or – to say the same with a Greek word – mythical character of the historiographical endeavor. A complementary research interest has invited historical studies with a particular emphasis on the literary media, social tasks, and institutional framework of the historical profession.2 From the angle of Jewish studies, the research on the eight Jewish sixteenth-century authors of chronicles is mainly remembered through the history-memory paradigm formulated by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi in his Zakhor thirty years ago, but this study, which the author incidentally did not wish to apply to David Gans,4 is only one position in a far larger debate. Discussion focused on a number of central questions concerning the sixteenth-century revival of historiography: why were there suddenly no less than eight Jewish historians, seven in Hebrew and one in Portuguese? Why were there only eight, as compared to entire libraries on the Christian side? Why did these eight authors have so few successors until the Enlightenment? Do we have to see them as a medieval rearguard, as harbingers of modernity, or as part of the European movement we call the Renaissance? Is there a sense in comparing these Hebrew writers to contemporary Christian humanists?

DAVID GANS’ NEHMAD VE-NAIM: HISTORY OF TEXTUAL TRANSMISSION

Author(s): Tamás Visi / Language(s): English,Hebrew Issue: 1/2016

The first serious attempt at reconstructing the textual history of David Gans’ Nehmad ve-naim was published by Georg (Jiøí) Alter (1891–1972) in 1958. Alter was a Czech scholar from a German-speaking Jewish background; most of his research was conducted and published in Czechoslovakia during the Communist period. The story of his life and his research is a subject in its own right. Alter’s study of Nehmad ve-naim has recently been republished by Gad Freudenthal. The second attempt is that of André Neher (1914–1988). In his rather controversial monograph on David Gans “and his times” Neher devoted a full chapter to the printed edition and manuscripts of Nehmad ve-naim that were known to him. Neher accepted some of Alter’s conclusions, disagreed with others, and proposed an alternative reconstruction of the transmission history of the text. The purpose of the present paper is to reconsider the main arguments of these two scholars in light of a new source material, chiefly manuscripts of Nehmad ve-naim that were not accessible to either of them. First I will summarize Alter’s results, Neher’s critique, and his alternative theory. Afterwards a list of manuscripts known today will be presented and analyzed. Finally, I will argue that a revised version of Alter’s theory explains the available data the best.

The Advantage of Marginality: R.A. Braudes’ Short Stories of His Lviv Period

Author(s): Einat Baram Eshel / Language(s): English Issue: 35/2015

This paper discusses R.A. Braudes’ short stories that were published in the second half of the 1870s, during his three-and-a-half-year residency in Lviv. This was a period of dramatic changes in Haskalah literature, and also a significant period in Braudes’ work when he first attained his status as a novelist. In light of this success, I will explore why Braudes persisted in using the short-story genre, one that was considered trivial and did not earn him the recognition he received for his longer works, and discuss what literary and conceptual possibilities the short story gave him that his novels failed to give.

The Principles of Transparency and Judging Others Favorably: The Talmudic View

Author(s): Hershey H. Friedman,Robert B. Fireworker / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2021

Many scholars believe that conflicts of interest are an ethical issue and a critical impediment to effective management. An organization interested in functioning honestly and efficiently should first do everything possible to reduce or eliminate this problem. The current opioid crisis responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the Great Recession of 2008 have been attributed to conflicts of interest in the pharmaceutical industry and the financial sector, respectively. In order to understand these modern problems, this paper examines two relevant and seemingly contradictory Talmudic principles: First, that a person is required to behave in a transparent manner and not act in a way that will cause others to suspect that s/he is doing something immoral or unethical. Second, that one should judge others favorably and give them the benefit of the doubt. The problem of persistent rumors about misbehavior is also studied.

Dört Kaynak Hipotezi Karşıtı Olarak John Van Seters ve Tevrat Eleştirisi

Author(s): Muhammed Ali Bağır / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 56/2021

For centuries, the Pentateuch has been believed to be a revelational work written by Moses. This belief, which traditional Judaism holds even today, has begun to be questioned by critical studies in the Western world. In these researches, it was revealed that the Pentateuch is a work written by different people who lived in different times. The peak of these critical researches is The Four Source Hypothesis, which was finalized by Julius Wellhausen. He claimed that the Pentateuch consists of four different sources. This widely accepted view has been seriously challenged by some studies since the 1970s. The subject of this article is the Pentateuch criticism of the Canadian researcher John Van Seters (b. 1935), who opposed the Four Source Hypothesis and suggested that the Pentateuch consists of three basic sources. His most striking claim is that the Yahwist source -one of the sources of the Pentateuch- was written by a historian writer who lived in the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century B.C., taking into account of Deuteronomy, Deuteronomistic History, prophetic books and Ancient Near Eastern narratives. Van Seters’s most striking claim will be emphasized in this study.

GŁUPI, GŁUPSZY… BEZBOŻNY. O ROZUMIENIU GŁUPOTY W BIBLII HEBRAJSKIEJ

Author(s): Piotr Briks / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

Stupidity, or folly, as seen in the Hebrew Bible, is a diverse, multi-aspect phenomenon. It embraces concepts pertaining to ethics, law, social relations, and religion (broadly understood). Stupidity is also conceived, albeit rarely, as a lack of knowledge. A variety of kinds of stupidity is reflected in, among others, numerous terms applied to describe it. The article discusses the terms most frequently used in the Tanakh: iwwelet-”), ĕwîl ( ĕwīlî, iwwelet-), nāb-āl (nebālāh), and kesîl (kesîlût-, kislāh), as well as the derivatives of the stem sk-l (verbal forms, nouns sāk-āl, sik-lût-). The common denominator among these terms and concepts related to stupidity is acting against a certain Order, Harmony or Good which, for Israelites, not only come from God, but were his emanation. Thus, according to the Hebrew Bible, stupidity is not limited to negative behavior causing destruction, but constitutes an infringement of what is most important for man and for Israel as a whole: their relationship with YHWH.

Hebrew gravestone inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries in the Raysn region (Belarus and Ukraine)

Author(s): Michael Nosonovsky / Language(s): English Issue: 13/2021

Hebrew gravestone inscriptions from Jewish cemeteries from the region called Raysn (mostly in current Belarus and partially in Ukraine) are studied as a historical source and a literature genre. The epitaphs express the idea of a connection between the ideal world of Scripture and religious Hebrew books and the world of everyday life of a shtetl or community. This can be traced at several levels. First, at the level of inscriptions’ structure, the epitaph includes an indication of the place (“here lies”), time (date), and name, thus tying the deceased to a specific “coordinate system”. Second, biblical quotations emphasize the relation of a particular life and death to the situation with that described in the Bible. Third, at the language level, despite the fact that epitaphs are almost always written in Hebrew and not in Yiddish, we are dealing with certain features of Hebrew—Yiddish bilingualism. Hebrew terms could simultaneously be Yiddish lexemes. We observe orthography code-switching between Hebrew consonant spelling and Yiddish phonetic spelling, depending on whether the concept is found in Hebrew holy books or in everyday life. Fourth, epitaphs occupy an intermediate position between the “high”, author's literature and canonical religion, on the one hand, and folk literature and religion, on the other hand. The difference between the epitaphs from Ukraine and Belarus is discussed.

David Biale, David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel C. Heilman, Moshe Rosman, Gadi Sagiv, Marcin Wodziński: Hasidism. A New History. With an Afterword by Arthur Green.

Author(s): Grażyna Jurewicz / Language(s): German Issue: 4/2021

Review of: David Biale, David Assaf, Benjamin Brown, Uriel Gellman, Samuel C. Heilman, Moshe Rosman, Gadi Sagiv, Marcin Wodziński: Hasidism. A New History. With an Afterword by Arthur Green . Princeton University Press. Princeton – Oxford 2018. 875 S. ISBN 978-0-691-17515-7. Reviewed by: Grażyna Jurewicz.

MORAL OBLIGATION AND ‘PERSONHOOD’ IN EMMANUEL LEVINAS PHILOSOPHY

Author(s): Onos Godwin Idjakpo / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2021

This work attempts to trace the concept of “personhood” in the historical background and explore the meaning and its implication with regard to ethics in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. This work is presented with two-fold subdivisions: the first part locates the concept of personhood from philosophical positioning and the second part deals elaborately with the ethics of the human person from Emmanuel Levinas perspective. The concept of ‘personhood’ is related to ethics because it connotes the idea that human beings are members of a moral community. Thus, for Levinas, genuine ethical thinking must question the ontological attitude of traditional ethics that is concerned only with knowing moral phenomena and knowing the essence of the other human being. Levinas attempt to answer the questions: what happens to a self in its relation to the other? Is there any other basic experience in a self than its capacity to incarcerate the other into its conceptual frame of consciousness in relating to the other? Levinas submits that human being fundamentally is responsible for the other. One is emptying oneself for the other, dying oneself for the other, and thereby caring for the other. Levinas explores in his philosophy the other-roots of a self.

Beyond Case Studies: Alternate Methods for Teaching Ethics with an Emphasis on the Jewish Tradition

Author(s): Hershey H. Friedman,Deborah S. Kleiner,James A. Lynch / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

There is evidence that traditional courses in business ethics have not been successful in making students ethical. The conventional methods used to teach ethics include discussing case histories and studying the writings of great philosophers such as Kant. Using a text-based approach may not be ideal for reaching today's digitally-savvy students. The authors demonstrate numerous ways to instill values that include analyzing and studying cases, philosophy, history, literature, film, television, YouTube/TED talks, music, famous speeches, quotations, social justice humor, Scripture, Talmud/Midrash, Kabbalah, and Mussar.

15. mezinárodní konference o židovských jménech (5. 10. 2021)

Author(s): Žaneta Dvořáková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2022

Report about the conference

Herzl Tivadar – Theodor Herzl, avagy kötelező volt-e Herzl számára a német kultúra paradigmája?

Author(s): Hedvig Ujvári / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2021

РЕЛИГИОЗНАЯ ЭКУМЕНА ИМПЕРИИ В ВОЗЗРЕНИЯХ ЮЛИАНА ОТСТУПНИКА В КОНТЕКСТЕ ПРОЕКТА ВОССТАНОВЛЕНИЯ ИЕРУСАЛИМСКОГО ХРАМА

Author(s): Roman Svetlov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2022

Julian the Apostate carried out his religious reforms, relying on the concept of religious piety, which he developed on the basis of the "Chaldean oracles" and contemporary Neoplatonism. His attempt to find a concordat with the Jewish communities fully fits into this concept. Having discovered the "Chaldean" origins of the religion of Abraham, Julian was able to include even the worship of Yahweh in the framework of neo-Platonic theology. The restoration of the Jerusalem temple was for him one of the elements of the renovation of divine-human communication. The lack of information about these events in medieval Jewish literature demonstrates that his attempt to include Judaism in the imperial religious ecumene was based on a misinterpretation of the Abrahamic type of religion.

Pojam krvi u Starome zavjetu: krv koja čisti i krv koja onečišćuje

Author(s): Dalibor Kraljik / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2022

The central notion explored in this article is the notion of blood and its role, meaning, and significance in the Old Testament. The author tries to answer how blood can be seen as the means of purification or consecration in some Old Testament contexts, but elsewhere as a polluting or defiling substance, and offers a two-level answer. On the first level of his thesis, he believes the context of the functioning of blood to be prescribed by God, while on the second level, attempting to explain the mentioned claim, he argues that regarding blood there exists a certain dichotomy of life and death. Namely, when blood ultimately represents life, it functions as a means of purification and consecration, and when it ultimately represents death, it becomes the substance that pollutes or defiles. To support his thesis, the author gives interpretations and conclusions about the theological implications of certain Old Testament texts and the accompanying examples which point to them. The article is divided into two basic parts. The first part presents the notion of blood in the Old Testament through themes of the blood–life relation, the prohibition of eating of blood, and the place of blood in the Old Testament sacrificial system. The second part is an analysis of specific Old Testament examples showing blood that purifies and consecrates or blood that defiles and pollutes.

İslâm Hukuku ve Antik İbrani Hukukunda Yargıçlık

Author(s): Melikşah Aydın / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 1/2022

Judgeship is one of the oldest professions in history. In the ancient Hebrew law, which is a religious-based legal system, judgeship arose and practised both by the Torah and later by the contributions of judges. In the Written and Oral Torah, which is the main source of Hebrew law, it is mentioned that the other prophets and Moses were authorized both as rulers and judges. Moreover, judges are ordered to make fair judgments on the basis of protecting the weak and without any bribery. We see that there are similar or even the same provisions in Islamic law. In Islamic law, it is seen that both the previous prophets and the last prophet Muhammad carries the authority as the prophet, the ruler and the judge. Moreover, in the Qur'an, judges are ordered to make fairly judgments, avoid bribery, and without favoring any litigants. In this study, the rules of ancient Hebrew law and Islamic law will be compared. Since the subject is limited to judges and courts, first the status and appointment of judges will be explained, then the courts and the trial procedure will be compared, and afterwards the responsibilities of judges and the qualifications required to be appointed as a judge will be discussed. In this respect, the rules in Hebrew law will be compared to Islamic law only in the light of the information given, and the more detailed rules in Islamic law will not be cited because they don’t have equivalents in ancient Hebrew law. As a result, the similarities and differences of these divinely emerging and developing legal systems will be revealed. By examining the history of legal systems, the field of legal history can give an idea of possible changes in today's legal system. Legal systems that have been applied and disappeared in the past and that are out of date can actually be a source for us to develop the law more justly. Hebrew law, perhaps the oldest of those whose sources have reached us from religious-based legal systems, aims to regulate every aspect of a person's life, and it seems to have achieved this goal. Currently, Israel's legal system is not entirely disinvolved from secular and religious law. Due to this purpose of Hebrew law, detailed regulations can be found both in the Torah and the Talmud about court, judge and trial matters. In these regulations, it has been taken place about who will be selected among the people who will conduct the trial, the rules that the judges should follow while conducting the trial, the types of courts and many other issues. The compared aspect of Islamic law; is that Islamic law is also based on religion. Islamic law also makes regulations in every aspect of a person's life. And in the field of judicial law there are perhaps more rules than the regulations in Hebrew law. It is seen that many rules of Islamic law and Ancient Hebrew law are similar in the subjects on which the study is limited. In fact, the decomposing points are only on one or two issues. In Islamic law, it is seen that some rules in previous legal systems are preserved exactly. In this respect, Islamic law did not abolish all of the rules of the previous legal systems, but took some of the same rules and changed some of them. In particular, the rules that judges have to follow while continuing their judicial activities are almost the same in Ancient Hebrew law and Islamic law. It should be noted that there are additionally more detailed rules in Islamic law. This situation has led to the determination of the qualifications such as justice, impartiality, knowledge and education, which should be found in a judge who must conduct a trial fairly. It will be seen that the rules of thousands of years ago have not changed even today. It will be understood that the regulations in the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct and in the domestic laws of the countries are not very different.

Između Jeruzalema i Atene – Leo Strauss i granice političke filozofije

Author(s): Žarko Paić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1-2/2022

Uz Carla Schmitta i Hannu Arendt, političku filozofiju, mišljenje politike i znanost o politici u 20. stoljeću dalekosežno je obilježio Leo Strauss. Ono što njegov intelektualni položaj čini izazovnim zacijelo je i nešto prijeporno, ako ne još danas nedostatno razjašnjeno.

Između dva svijeta: Put Franza Rosenzweiga

Author(s): Emmanuel Levinas / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1-2/2022

Zamoljen sam prikazati Rosenzweigovu duhovnu biografiju, a ne njegovu filozo fiju. Govorit ću vam o tom životu onako kako se kroza nj manifestirala njegova misao, budući da je Rosenzweigova misao bitni element toga značajnog života.

Hans Jonas i pojam boga nakon Auschwitza

Author(s): Eric Jacobson / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 27/2022

Pojam boga je nakon šoe doživio radikalan zaokret, što su ga židovski mislioci tijekom posljednjih desetljeća na različite načine dovodili do izražaja. Iza onoga što je postalo poznato pod pojmom teologije šoe krije se zajedničkim snagama proveden napor da se pronađe objašnjenje za Auschwitz. Iz perspektive jednog preobraženog nebeskog svijeta njezini predstavnici predlažu novo tumačenje saveza između židovskog naroda i boga, uključujući i nov akcent, koji bi jamčio trajanje i vječnost židovskog naroda kroz židovsku državu. U svijetu profanog i kao žarište židovskog naroda država Izrael postala je antitezom Auschwitza. Na mjesto istraživanja božje providnosti i znanosti o svetome stupa praksa svjetovnog angažmana. Značaj i re- levantnost bivanja Židovom pritom su se bitno promijenili.

The Talmud – a paideic perspective

Author(s): Stelian Tusa - Pasca,Constantin Radu Iliescu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

From a hermeneutical point of view, the Christian tradition is much closer to the Jewish tradition than to the rigors imposed by the historical-critical method, especially when it relates to the holy texts. Therefore, it is appropriate to rebuild the bridges of connection with the Jewish writings that the Church has preserved throughout time, even if sometimes there were tensions that caused a temporary separation. In this sense, it is necessary to know the fundamental literature of the Jewish tradition which is summed up in a collection of writings called the Talmud. The element of novelty that we have in mind in the present research, in addition to the synthetic presentation of the architecture of the collection, is related to the paideic perspective that the rabbis propose in the Talmud. We want to highlight the role that reason has when it serves the sacred and to emphasize the positive effects of theological debates.

Human-Nature Blends and the Parent-Child Relationship in Isaiah and Neo-Assyrian Prophecy

Author(s): David Bosworth,Lucia Tosatto / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

Texts from Isaiah and the Neo-Assyrian prophetic corpus attest a range of blends between the natural and human worlds in the domain of parent-child relationships. This essay uses conceptual blending theory to analyze the integration of natural imagery with human and divine parents in both corpora. The results of this analysis reveal patterns in the use of nature to conceptualize parenthood and differences in the manner and extent to which each prophetic corpus draws on specific taxonomies within nature.