Septuaginta – pragnienie poznania Biblii

Author(s): Piotr Łabuda / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2016

Septuaginta, zawierając teksty nieobecne w Biblii hebrajskiej i będąc równocześnie dostojnym, starożytnym jej tłumaczeniem, nie jest jedynie przekładem. Nie jest także tylko Księgą dla starożytnych, ale winna być również i dla nas niezwykle cennym Tekstem. Powstała bowiem jako rzeczywiste pragnienie poznania Biblii. Dzięki Septuagincie tekst Biblii hebrajskiej stał się dostępny zarówno dla Żydów, jak i dla Greków. Biblia grecka była użyteczna dla potrzeb literackich, prawniczych i synagogalnych. Tekst ten pomagał także w zbliżeniu się do tajemnicy Jezusa Chrystusa i poznaniu jej. The Septuagint which contains texts not presented in the Hebrew Bible is at the same time its formal and ancient translation. It is not just an interpretation either. It is not meant only for the ancient societies, but should be treated as a valuable Text by contemporary people as well. The Book was created as a result of the need to learn the Bible. The Septuagint made the texts of the Hebrew Bible accessible for both the Jews and the Greeks. The Greek Bible became useful for literary, legal and synagogical purposes. Undeniably it helped people get closer to the mystery of Jesus Christ.

Natręctwo niepamięci naszej o Zagładzie

Author(s): Marek Zaleski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 6/2016

Zaleski describes the pathogenic mechanisms that come into play in Polish society: in the processes of forgetting the extermination of our fellow citizens, Polish Jews, during the last war, as well as in the reasons behind the construction of a false historical imagination/ imaginarium of collective memory.  In the Polish affective economy, ‘the Jews’ are a symptom that allows a noisy ‘neurotic minority’ to cast the collective in the role of victim, to  give permanence to phantasms and pathological structures in our collective identity. Zaleski also expresses his alarm at the fact thatcurrently, official public discourse once again sanctions those practices.

Zwrot historyczny. Wstęp

Author(s): Łukasz Biskupski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 03/2013

Revolta ocultată sau despre revirimentul poetic al amintirii – Norman Manea, Vorbind pietrei

Author(s): Marian Antofi / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2015

The poem entitled Vorbind pietrei / Talking to a stone turns into an original lyrical version mirroring Norman Manea's spiritual - scriptural - biographic quest, in fact a text talking about life and death, about human condition and the power of writing to transgress time. Contextually related to the funeral stone with which the outcast lyrically and metaphorically talks - actually to eternal pain - the book (the Holy one and those following It) esthetically redefines death and human degradation beyond any limits - acting as an exorcist mechanism at the same time.

Fenomenologia zła. Kontekst bośniacko-hercegowiński

Author(s): Marinko Zekić / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2017

Muratović, Rasim, Holokaust nad Jevrejima i genocid nad Bošnjacima (Holokaust Żydów i ludobójstwo Boszniaków), Institut za istraživanje zločina protiv čovječnosti i međunarodnog prava, Univerzitet u Sarajevu, drugo izdanje (Instytut Badań Zbrodni przeciwko Ludzkości i Prawu Międzynarodowemu, Uniwersytet w Sarajewie, wydanie drugie), Sarajewo 2012, 277 s. Zbrodnia ludobójstwa oraz inne zbrodnie przeciwko ludzkości zdefiniowane przez prawo międzynarodowe stanowią część historii od najdawniejszych czasów, przy czym w najnowszej historii najgłębiej zapisało się w zbiorowej pamięci okrucieństwo II wojny światowej, podczas której w akcie ludobójstwa życie straciły miliony ludzi, co, po zakończeniu konfliktu, skłoniło państwa zwycięskie do utworzenia Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych (ONZ), której celem stało się utrzymanie pokoju i bezpieczeństwa na świecie, szerzenie tolerancji oraz promowanie poszanowania praw człowieka i wolności zagwarantowanych w Powszechnej Deklaracji Praw Człowieka.

Prečo "σοφία" v Sir 6,22? Disciplína cesty za múdrosťou.

Author(s): Pavel Prihatný / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2017

Present short essay aims to point out consistency in utilising wisdom terminology in Hebrew text of the Book of Ben Sira (Ben Sira) as well as in its Greek translation by the grandson (Sirach). Both of them, especially Sirach, work in strongly Hellenistic context and this fact influences methodologies they apply in their common effort which consists in fortifying their tribesmen in faith and in exposing them the teaching about authentic wisdom. Essay presents and endeavours to prove this methodology as used in the Poem of the sixth chapter of the Book.

Múdrosť a múdry: O poznaní a nepoznaní

Author(s): James L. Crenshaw / Language(s): Slovak Issue: 1/2017

Contemporary researchers have cast considerable light on the limits of ancient knowledge imposed from outside the human intellect. As for obstacles to learning from within, modern interpreters have yet to give an adequate analysis of students' resistance, despite translations of Sumerian and Egyptian scribal texts and corresponding comments in Sirach. A constant complaint runs through these school texts that some students resisted all effort to educate them. Also, a section in Sirach dealing with difficulties confronting teachers and students demonstrates the extent of affinities between Egyptian and Israelite wisdom literature. Ben Sira concentrates on irksome aspects of learning, using images from agricultural labor and recalling the desirable season of harvest. In trying to understand why so many obstacles stand between learner and a desired goal, Ben Sira suggests that knowledge plays a game of hide and seek, testing students to determine whether or not they deserve any reward. The paper offers the answer to the question: “Did biblical scholars think of knowledge as an achievement or a gift?”

THE REGION OF PODKARPACIE AS A MELTING-POT OF CULTURES AND RELIGIONS

Author(s): Wojciech Bedyński / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2011

This article is based on ethnographic research conducted by me in 2004–2010, alone in the beginning, then with a group of students from the University of Warsaw. The study initially involved only the memory of Jews among the elderly population of Podkarpacie. Later I expanded the topic on the ethnic relations, cultural and religious conditions in the multiethnic society. I will not, however, present here the outcomes, but will share some reflections which I had during my fielwork. Why did I choose this particular region? Podkarpacie constituted a unique area in terms of the complexity of the ethnic mosaic, even for East-Central Europe. In this multicultural world a specific relationship between ethnic groups emerged, each of which had its own specific socio-economic function. This system, created and perpetuated over the centuries of common existence, was the result of two factors – on the one hand, the internal characteristics of a single group, on the other hand, the impact of other groups.

Córki Syjońskie (Iz 3, 16-24). Błyskotliwy przykład ekwiwalencji dynamicznej czy dowód na istnienie nie-masoreckiej Vorlage LXX

Author(s): Anna Rambiert-Kwaśniewska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2017

Passus from Iz 3,16-24 describing splendor of Zion’s daughters is without a doubt a perfect base to perform a comparison between the Hebrew Bible and Septuagint. It is hard to identify many of the Hebrew hapax legomena used by Isaiah, however, this is not this particular difficulty that can be seen as a cause of differences in translation of LXX. Thorough analysis shows, that Greek translator made an acculturation of the text to Egyptian conditions, as the list of goods he compiles has its representation in papyrus texts, in particular in these listing items in bride’s dowry. Explanation based on the culture is, however, not sufficient, since Greek version of the fragment can be also interpreted by using specifically “vailed” theology. This is because the translator adds to his version of text the same precious items, which has been used, according to LXX Ex to build the tabernacle at the desert. It is well seen in analogies between LXXIsa 3,20 and LXXEx 35,22, and also LXXIsa 3,23 and LXXEx 25,4. In this context explaining the difference between LXX and Hebrew Bible by referring to different Vorlage cannot be justified and proved.

Żydowskie domy modlitwy oraz cmentarze na Warmii i Mazurach – stan obecny (na tle dziejów Żydów w Prusach Wschodnich i Zachodnich)

Author(s): Seweryn Szczepański / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

This article presents a description of Jewish places of worship and cemeteries within the boundaries of the current administrative region of Warmia-Masuria. The author focuses not only on cataloguing 49 districts (gmina), of which the majority had their own burial sites and houses of worship or synagogues, but also on the description of the activities of individual districts and on a presentation of the general history of the Jewish presence in old Prussia from the Middle Ages to 1945. The main aim of the article is to describe the current state of repair of cemeteries, places of worship and synagogues, their post-war fates in the reality of Communist Poland and during the period post 1989. The article also describes their role in the consciousness of the residents of Warmia-Masuria.

Wspólne DNA liturgii Wschodu i Zachodu

Author(s): Mateusz Rafał Potoczny / Language(s): English,Polish Issue: 51/2018

Even if each liturgy of the different liturgical traditions has its own characteristics which are results of the different evolution and different theological approaches, in its lessens it still remains the one and same liturgy of the Church. Before describing the common DNA of the Christian liturgy, as the starting point of this paper, we showed a couple of elements which differ the rites of the Church. In the main part of the study the elements containing the common liturgical DNA were presented. Among them we pointed: the Jewish liturgy, proclamation of the Kerygma, sacramental life, the common proto-geography, euchology which lex orandi and the structure of the Eucharistic Prayer.

Kol isza be-lakasz vs mulier taceat in ecclesia. Głos kobiecy w judaizmie i chrześcijaństwie

Author(s): Bożena Muszkalska / Language(s): English,Polish Issue: 51/2018

The object of the considerations in the present study is the prohibition of the use of female voice in Orthodox synagogues and similar restrictions which were in force in the Christian Church, as well as changes that have taken place in this regard While in the female monasteries religious music began to flourish relatively early, the Jewish women could turn to perform liturgical chants only in effect of resistance against the dictum called in brief Kol isha. Beginning of these changes coincides with the period of the Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, in the nineteenth century, and they have been proceeding to modern times.

Auto-da-fe in Lwów in 1728: The Jan Filipowicz Trial and Jewish Re-Conversion to Judaism in the Early Modern Poland

Author(s): Adam Kaźmierczyk / Language(s): English Issue: 116/2017

This article discusses the question of neophytes’ return to Judaism, especially the case of Jan Filipowicz, who was condemned to death for this crime in 1728 in Lwów. The return of Jewish converts to their religion of origin was a relatively frequent occurrence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but those charged with this crime, especially Jews from Lwów accused of persuading the neophytes to return, were not usually treated as harshly as Filipowicz. The exceptionally harsh sentence given to the rabbis responsible for the return of Filipowicz to Judaism resulted from the judges’ belief in the existence of a ritual of dechristianization, a special blasphemy against Christianity. The relationship of the courts and the Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the problem of apostasy among converts from Judaism is addressed. The penitential practices described in the court documents are similar to those described by the inquisitor Bernard Gui in the fourteenth century and to the ritual of dechristianization described by Jan Serafinowicz, the most famous eighteenth century convert.

Coping with Religious Diversity in Everyday Life in the Borderlands of Western Europe: Catholics, Protestants and Jews in Vaals

Author(s): Thomas Richter / Language(s): English Issue: 116/2017

After the re-Catholization of the Free Imperial City of Aachen (1611–16), Protestant congregations were forced to operate underground until the Reformed Church – openly supported by the Dutch States General – found a new place of refuge in the neighbouring Dutch village of Vaals. Ca. 1680, Vaals developed into a multiconfessional site of religious freedom where Roman Catholics, Germanand Frenchspeaking Reformed, Lutherans, and Mennonites lived peacefully side by side. With the exception of everyday controversies in the early decades, the preachers of different Protestant congregations worked together. Violence on religious grounds was not part of daily life in Vaals, although it did at times intrude from the outside. Examples of this were the violent attacks on Protestant churchgoers in the middle of the eighteenth century, which were carried out by lower-class Catholics from Aachen. The Catholic clergy, on the other hand, did not engage in hate sermons. Moreover, the presence of Jews did not cause problems in Vaals and the only documented action against Jewish property was not motivated by anti-Judaism. For the Protestants of this distinctly Catholic area, Vaals became an important place of refuge for the public exercise of their faith. The diverse congregations that worshipped in Vaals knew how to cope with each other’s presence in a peaceful manner during everyday life.

Valhala, Kalvarija i Aušvic

Author(s): Shlomo Giora Shoham / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 01+02/1988

In this work the author seeks for the explanation of the most monstrous crime in human history — the Holocaust, applying his core dialectics theory to the symbolic relationship between the Nazis and Jews. He thus claims that anti- -Semitism of the Nazis is related to the core dialectics of the German social character. The notion of »core dialectics« relates to the author’s core personality theory in which a basic distinction is made between the »separant« and »participant« personality types. This distinction is then applied to group relationships, where German social character is tabled separant and the Jewish participant. The author stresses that in accordance with their separant traits the Germans, having rejected Christianity and the characteristically Jewish participant restraints of law and morality, were liable to accept Hitler and Nazism as reincarnations of the old Germanic mythological values expressed in the amorality of the Northern Gods of war and the pagan tribal family of Aesir in which everything was permitted and where only power counted. On the other hand, a conspicuous characteristic of the Jewish social character is their tendency towards sacrificing themselves, the tendency initiated by Jesus Christ as the archetypal participant victim. The clashes between the Jews and European separant societies, which had started as early as 332. B. C. when Alexander conquered Palestine, resulted in the widest possible range of conflicts, where the Holocaust was the last and the most horrible one in the series.

Bez dna: Filozofska autobiografija

Author(s): Vilém Flusser / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1-2/2018

Riječ »apsurdno« izvorno znači »bez dna« u smislu »bez korijena«. Kao što je, primjerice, biljka bez dna kad je se ubere, kako bi je se stavilo u vazu. Cvijeće na stolu prostrtom za zajutrak primjer je apsurdna života. Pokušamo li se uživjeti u takvo cvijeće, moći ćemo osjetiti njegov poriv da pusti korijenje i utjera ga u bilo kakvo dno. Taj poriv korijena lišena cvijeća raspoloženje je apsurdna života. Namjera je ove knjige da svjedoči o tom raspoloženju.

Professor Jan Marian Małecki (1926-2017): In Memoriam

Author(s): Stefan Gąsiorowski / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2017

Jan Małecki was a historian and rector of the the Kraków Academy of Economics. While his most important research was devoted to economic history, his achievements also included works related to the grand synthesis of Polish history, methodology, source studies, bibliography, and biography. In the 1985/1986 academic year, together with two other scholars, he began an open series of lectures in the Institute of History at the Jagiellonian University entitled ‘Jews in Polish History’. He was the author of a number of academic papers on the history of the Jewish community in Poland in both Polish and English. Of particular importance are his extensive source entries from Kraków customs registers concerning Jewish trade at the end of the 16th century and start of the 17th century, published by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences. Małecki also popularized Jewish issues by including them in his numerous publications on the economic history of Poland and the history of Kraków. For many years, he also promoted Jewish studies outside of the Jagiellonian University and the Kraków University of Economics and reviewed numerous works of other scholars for degrees and publishing houses. In 2016, he was granted the Father Stanisław Musiał Award for his work on the history and culture of the Jewish community in Poland

Romans, jedzenie i zbrodnia. Nawiązania do tradycji seder w filmach Woody’ego Allena

Author(s): Kamila Kalista / Language(s): Polish Issue: 02/2018

Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays. It starts with dinner - Seder. Family gathered on this day drink red wine as a symbol of freedom and happiness. They eat matzo - flat bread to remember that Hebrews left Egypt grabbing unready bread leaven. The central place of the table is taken by the Seder plate with zeroa – shank bone, beitzah – roasted, hard – boiled egg, karpas – a vegetable, maror – bitter herbs, chazeret – bitter vegetable, charoset – sweet dessert. Most of described traditional dishes are visible in Seder scene of films Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) and Café Society (2016) by Woody Allen. In both films the extended families are gathered together. Their members’ personalities reflect symbols of Seder dishes.

A német nemzetiségi és faji politika Magyarországon a II. világháború idején

Author(s): Tibor Dömötörfi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2016

The chief aim of the foreign minority policies of nazi Germany was to secure the acknowledgement of „völkisch” German minorities as an officially organised ethnic group (Volksgruppe) with autonomy rights. But during World War II the integrative ethnic policy with regard to the Germans was gradually pushed to the background by an exclusion policy which the nazi regime applied to the „inferior” peoples and races, and took the form of prosecution and extermination on the basis of ethnicity and religion. Despite the discriminative „Jewish Laws” (1938, 1939), the Hungarian Jewry lived relatively undisturbed under the regime of governor Miklós Horthy. Dramatic change came in this regard with the German occupation of the country (19 March 1944). Then started the stigmatization, ghettoization and deportation of the Jews – predominantly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The exact number of martyrs is still hotly debated. According to the most authoritative scholarly opinions, the number of deported Jewish victims can be put to between 440 and 550 thousand. Yet in political parlance and public history the round and symbolic figure of 600 thousand has become rooted. Another debated issue is whether the prosecution by the nazis of the Sintis and Roma was done on racial grounds, or they were treated as so-called anti-social elements. The number of Gypsies deported to extermination camps from Hungary can be put to a couple of thousand. From the late 1930s the claim of instrumentalizing the German minorities in the service of the aggressive foreign political aims of the Third Reich became increasingly evident. In Hungary this role was assumed by the so-called Volksbund (People’s Association of Germans in Hungary). From the start of World War II, a new element in the policies of nazi Germany towards the foreign Germans appeared, which can be termed as the idea of „return” to the Empire („Heim ins Reich”). In order to accomplish the re-settlement plans, the Germans concluded interstate treaties with almost all countries in Europe where German minorities lived. (The agreement with Hungary was signed on 29 May 1940, but it was never put into effect.) In the eastern regions occupied during the war an overt and brutal Germanizing policy was implemented, based on the Generalplan Ost, which had been elaborated in offices of the SS specially assigned to this task. In the foreign policies of the Federal Republic of Germany, especially under the aegis of the Brandtian Ostpolitik, considerable emphasis was put on relations with the states belonging to the former German settlement area, such as Hungary, and on strengthening the bridge-function of those German minorities which had remained there after refuge and deportation in the war.

Die „Säuberung“ der Universitäten 1938 am Beispiel der Wiener Rechtswissenschaftlichen Fakultät

Author(s): Kamila Staudigl-Ciechowitz / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2018

The following contribution commemorates the racially- and politically-motivated expulsions of academic teachers and students in 1938 at the University of Vienna. Though these expulsions took place in the weeks after the “Anschluss” in March 1938, anti-Semitic occurrences were common at Austrian universities long before 1938. From 1918 on anti-Semitic tendencies at the universities were getting stronger, in spring 1938 Jewish as well as political opponent scholars and students were forced to leave the Austrian universities due to national socialistic ideology. The paper shows the expulsions from a legal point of view, stressing the significance of the laws that where enacted between 1934–1938 by the austrofacist government.