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Repetition in Bible narratives is very often a sign for scholars to identify in the text the presence either of a doublet or of different sources. One of the examples is the end of the story of the Creation, the lost Paradise (Gen 2–3). This article analyses the conclusion of the story (Gen 3:23-24) trying to answer the question: Is Genesis 2–3, a narrative with a double conclusion? The analysis is divided into four sections, complementary to each other. The first part of the research has a preliminary character, dedicated to the delimitation of the text. The second part compares Gen 3:23 and Gen 3:24, at the level of style and content; the third part concerns the comparison between Gen 3:23-24 and other narratives in the Bible that possess a similar concluding structure. Finally, the forth part is dedicated to the study of the legal meaning of two particular verbs šlh (send away) and grš (drive out) and other legal aspects of the narrative in Gen 3.
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The article presents main threads of the ongoing debate around the permanent exhibition of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Analyzing differences between two fields of research, Jewish studies and studies on Polish-Jewish relations, the article makes the case that many of the critical voices in this debate stem from a lack of understanding of the differences between these two fields of research; these in their turn arise from the current state of affairs in Poland, and the pressure of nationalism and ethnocentrism, exerted also on Polish historical debates. If the telling of the 1,000 years of the history of Jewish life in Poland were to concentrate on the attitudes of the majority population towards Jews, as the critics seem to suggest should be the case, the Museum’s narrative would run the risk of falling into a teleological fallacy, whereby all previous events and processes are interpreted as mechanically leading to the Holocaust, and of omitting all of these elements of Jewish history which are not relevant from the perspective of the Holocaust and of anti-Semitism studies. Making anti-Jewish hatred or the attitudes of the general majority towards Jews into the central axis of Jewish history could deprive Jews of their own historical subjectivity. At the same time, the article points out where and how the narrative of the Polin Museum indeed insufficiently includes the subject of anti-Semitism as an important factor of Jewish experience and of Jewish history in Poland. Renewing the dialogue between representatives of Jewish studies and Polish-Jewish relations studies is crucial from the standpoint of the current situation in Poland, in which the Polin Museum can be used by various actors in their attempts to build highly biased, politicized and uncritical versions of the history of Poland generally and of Polish attitudes towards the Jews specifically. This kind of understanding between the fields of Jewish studies and Polish-Jewish relations studies and their representatives’ common struggle against such attempts require an understanding of the autonomy of and differences between these two fields of research.
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1. Review of: Götz Aly, "Europa gegen die Juden 1880–1945", Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2017, 431 s.; 2. Review of: Christian Gerlach, "Der Mord an den europäischen Juden" Ursachen, Ereignisse, Dimensionen, München: C.H. Beck, 2017, 576 s.; by: Daniel Logemann
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The sages of the Talmud determined the ways of treating aliens, especially in the case of the Sabbath during which Mishnah (Shab. 7:2) prohibits any of the thirty-nine types of labour. The question arose whether the alien may perform any type of prohibited work for the Jew. The Hebrew Bible most definitely prohibits this: “Remember the Sabbath day in order to sanctify it. Six days you shall work and you shall do your tasks. But the seventh day is the Sabbath to the Lord your God; on it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your cattle, nor the resident alien who is within your gates” (Ex 20:9-10). The basic principle of the Talmud states: ”No work which the Jew is not allowed to do on the Sabbath may be done by the alien.” The Written Torah is a closed set which does not permit any addition or subtraction of books. The purpose of the Oral Torah is to interpret the meaning of the written Law and to bring it up to date. Doesn’t life bring extraordinary situations and may we ask the alien to do the prohibited work in such cases, and if so, how can it be done? The author of the paper presents the Talmud’s treatment of this subject and modern-day attempts to solve the problem.
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An analysis of Jom Kipur, one of the essays written in the Warsaw ghetto by Icchak Berenstein (?–1942), discloses a specific type of religious experience within the domain of paradox, doubt, and rejection. Berenstein developed a personal theology of the Holocaust. The author of the article placed in the centre of his interpretation reflections on the concept of “helplessness”, crucial for the text. In Berenstein’s meditation helplessness brims with meanings that overlap each other and reveal their paradoxical nature. Here helplessness possesses a purely human, sociological, and historical dimension: everyone is helpless in the face of the horror of the ghetto. It also has a spiritual, religious dimension: it constitutes doubt, a process of turning away from God and forgetting the Ten Commandments. The dialogue between God and man expires. In the case of Berenstein we are dealing with the experience of theological inversion and are entitled to assume that this reversal allowed him to touch the untouchable mystery of the Holocaust. The forbidden (reaching for moral self-knowledge and the power of constituting independently what is good and what is bad) is now enjoined. Man becomes thrust into the hell of the knowledge of good and evil, enrooted only in him. This is the satanic temptation suggested to man by the serpent of the Book of Genesis. In Berenstein’s writings it is God who condemns man to enjoying knowledge reserved for Him. The phenomenon of essays by Icchak Berenstein consists of close relations between the present and eternity, material detail and universal sense, concrete event and exemplum, secular and holy history. The topography of the Warsaw ghetto, with which the author of the article is thoroughly acquainted, becomes part of eschatological topography.
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As both a journalist and a philosopher, Karl Marx had one eye on the present and the other on the future. This dual concern is particularly clear in On the Jewish Question, where Marx persons his theory of secularization. In this article, I claim that his account of political secularization is far more convincing; while his account of human emancipation – his wish for the future – rests on a thin reading of human rights.
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The article provides a brief analysis of sources known to the author on the history of the participation of Jews in the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire.The methods of modern source study were used, with the help of which the informational possibilities of unpublished and published documents were established, and their assessment was given in terms of their scientific significance for studying the place and role of Jews in the history of the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire.
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Carl Isidor Beck was a Hungarian-born poet of the Vormärz period who focused in his literary work on social criticism as well as on political reflections. Due to his Jewish background he often depicted in his literary work outcasts, like Hungarian Roma and their music. Inspired by this topic, which was already extensively employed by Nikolaus Lenau, a poet Beck highly admired, he revisited Roma music not only in a merely instrumental manner, but also in political, social and philosophical approaches.
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In the author's opinion, the Dada movement was more philosophical than it is commonly accepted. Beyond the aesthetic revolt of the avant-gardism, some authors, like Ilarie Voronca, Ljubomir Micić or Gherasim Luca, have tried to systematize a innovative philosophy, calling it integralism, zenithism or meta-metaphysics, which were all no more than isomorphisms of the same conceptual research. In order to discover the original Dada philosophy, the author starts his demonstration from the Jewish origins of many Dadaists, including Tristan Tzara himself. From this perspective, Dada reveals to be a hermeneutic view from Kabbalah to the world of words, a mistic interpretation of the total freedom held in the beginning by the divine logos that creates and reveals at the same time the history of humanity. Not coincidentally, the Dada started from Eastern Europe, where the belief in the freedom of the Words of God has become a common place in the Hasidic Judaism, the spiritual movement to which Tristan Tzara and many Romanian Dadaists belonged. From this rhizome would have grown not only the Dada movement of liberation under the authority of aesthetic, logical, ethical and social constraints, but also a metaphysics after metaphysics a philosophy that will be experienced and expressed by the postmodernity as well.
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In Germany, a culture of remembrance first began to emerge haltingly in the 1960s before establishing itself in a remarkable show of solidarity between scholarship, politics, and the public culture of history. This culture of remembrance aims at a critical engagement with Germany’s calamitous history. Through its relentless demand to come to terms with the past, a fundamental consensus has emerged in Germany’s culture of history in the past decades that was most recently declared to be a „part of our national self-understanding“ by the current federal government in its coalition agreement. However, the signs are increasing that this paradigm of a resolute and critical re-examination of a suppressed and silenced history is losing its validity. The rise of right-wing populism in Germany and the significantly diminished acceptance of democracy in eastern Germany raise the question of whether the belief in a secure democratic culture of remembrance has not in fact led the country astray; whether the process of coming to terms with the past in Germany has not failed in its aim to secure the future of democracy through an engagement with the collapsed dictatorships of the past. This lecture investigates the causes of this new uncertainty. It traces the creeping shift from critical self-reflection to affirmative self-vindication that has increasingly characterised Germany’s understanding of its calamitous past since the 1990s. It thereby elucidates possible alternatives to the ever clearer crisis experienced by Germany’s culture of remembrance.
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„Odbicie Gęsiówki” – niemiecki obóz dla Żydów na warszawskiej Woli od powołania do wyzwolenia w powstaniu warszawskim w wyborze wspomnień i dokumentów źródłowych
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Herman Kruk, „Papierowa brygada” – ratowanie książek z wileńskiego getta 1941–43 Kontekst historyczny: David E. Fishman
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The purpose of the article. The article explores the specifics of the activity of choir collectives of Vinnytsia region at the beginning of the 20th century. The role of local centres of the Prosvita Society in the process of formation of choral ensembles has been determined. Characterized by the peculiarities of the creative activity of workers' choirs and Jewish choir groups. Separately, the process of reorganisation of the Ukrainian and Jewish choir in the Vinnytsia district chapel named after them is considered. M. D. Leontovich, features of her rehearsal work, selection of repertoire and concert activity. The methodology of the study is to apply the cultural approach and the systemic method. Іt is possible to identify features of the development of choral art in the Vinnytsia region as a subsystem of the cultural system of the area and Ukraine in general. The artistic approach also allows analysing the features of the professionalisation of the regional choral art in the context of the general cultural situation of the first third of the twentieth century. Scientific novelty is the publication of materials from archival funds, which allow recreating the specifics of the choral life of Vinnytsia region. Also, new facts about the activities of choir collectives are presented. The creative work of the proletarian choir named after them I. M. Kedrin, a Jewish choir headed by D. M. Pisarevsky is highlighted. Conclusions. A diverse study of the activities of the choir collectives of the Vinnytsia region of the first third of the twentieth century, their orientation towards a particular audience, analysis of their repertoire allows us to realize the specifics of the process of professionalization of the choral art of the region as a component of the original image of the regional musical culture.
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Human history has always been characterized by repeated cycles of crisis and transitional periods bringing about transformation in various aspects of people’s coexistence and interaction with each other be it on the individual, ethnic, national, or even the international level. Currently, we have become eyewitnesses of what can be called the modern times crusades and exodus. The present free movement of people imposed by the globalization trend in contemporary society and particularly the new wave of migration with its relevant migrant crisis set in motion by numerous armed conflicts in the Middle East, will undoubtedly establish new relations among them, among ethnicities, among groups of different religious affiliation and even between migrants and host countries.
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Review of: Ben Caspit, The Netanyahu Years, trans., Ora Cummings New York, Thomas Dunne Books-St. Martins Press, 2017, 512 pages, ISBN: 978-1250087058.
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Security barriers and lines of reinforcements built during the wars conducted in the second half of the 20th and early in the 21st century in the Middle East were both to protect the areas and citizens inhabiting them, and to protect the planned operating theatres. The fortifications did not withhold the engagements of the attacking side. The lines of defence cannot replace the soldiers will to fight. Thus, the technical capacity for protecting armed effort through fortification will still be used by the combating parties. Even though the forms of engineering will be changing, they will play a large role as “security walls and fences” to protect citizens against the threat of terrorism.
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The paper deals with the problem of treatment on the Sabbath from the formal point of view of Rabbinic Judaism often reaching to the beginnings of Halakhah. The Torah teaches in the Book of Exodus 20:9-11 that the Sabbath is sanctified and that no work is to be performed on this particular day which is so special for the followers of Judaism; and the Mishnah in its Tractate Shabbat 7:2 provides more details of this prohibition by mentioning thirty-nine types of prohibited work which from today’s perspective form the basis for further bans. Is it permitted then to heal on the Sabbath? In order to avoid breaking the Sabbath law, the Mishnah forbids the setting of fractures by concluding: ”and if it heals, it will heal” (Shabbat 22:6). Elsewhere, in cases of childbirth, fire, foreign invasion, a person drowning in a river or being buried in debris, in order to save lives on the Sabbath, the Mishnah allows one to cross the Sabbath limits by two thousand cubits in each direction (Rosh Hashanah 2:5; Eruvin 4:3). It is the Gemara that speaks more strongly about this problem, and the Talmudic principle pikuah nefesh (……) – saving human life, constitutes the overriding principle in Judaism, taking precedence over all religious commandments. There is also another Talmudic maxim: ”Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world” Sanhedrin (37a). The article explores the topic of treatment on the Sabbath in the light of selected texts of Rabbinic Judaism with particular emphasis on the Mishnah and the Gemara as well as on the collection Sheelot u-Teshuvot.
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