Author: Eliezer Ben-Rafael
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047409647
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Are Jews today still the carriers of a single and identical collective identity and do they still constitute a single people? This two-fold question arises when one compares a Hassidi Habad from Brooklyn, a Jewish professor at a secular university in Brussels, a traditional Yemeni Jew still living in Sana’a, a Galilee kibbutznik, or a Russian Jew in Novossibirsk. Is there still today a significant relationship between these individuals who all subscribe to Judaism? The analysis shows that the Jewish identity is multiple and can be explained by considering all variants as “surface structures” of the three universal “deep structures” central to the notion of collective identity, namely, collective commitment, perceptions of the collective’s singularity, and positioning vis-à-vis “others.”
Author: David Biale
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168040
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Not in the Heavens traces the rise of Jewish secularism through the visionary writers and thinkers who led its development. Spanning the rich history of Judaism from the Bible to today, David Biale shows how the secular tradition these visionaries created is a uniquely Jewish one, and how the emergence of Jewish secularism was not merely a response to modernity but arose from forces long at play within Judaism itself. Biale explores how ancient Hebrew books like Job, Song of Songs, and Esther downplay or even exclude God altogether, and how Spinoza, inspired by medieval Jewish philosophy, recast the biblical God in the role of nature and stripped the Torah of its revelatory status to instead read scripture as a historical and cultural text. Biale examines the influential Jewish thinkers who followed in Spinoza's secularizing footsteps, such as Salomon Maimon, Heinrich Heine, Sigmund Freud, and Albert Einstein. He tells the stories of those who also took their cues from medieval Jewish mysticism in their revolts against tradition, including Hayim Nahman Bialik, Gershom Scholem, and Franz Kafka. And he looks at Zionists like David Ben-Gurion and other secular political thinkers who recast Israel and the Bible in modern terms of race, nationalism, and the state. Not in the Heavens demonstrates how these many Jewish paths to secularism were dependent, in complex and paradoxical ways, on the very religious traditions they were rejecting, and examines the legacy and meaning of Jewish secularism today.
Author: Ethan B. Katz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812247272
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
Secularism in Question examines how twentieth-century revivals of religion prompt a reconsideration of many issues concerning Jews and Judaism in the modern era. Scholars of Jewish history, religion, philosophy, and literature illustrate how the categories of "religious" and "secular" have frequently proven far more permeable than fixed.
Author: Yaacov Yadgar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113693992X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 607
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Book Description
Common discourse on Jewish identity in Israel is dominated by the view that Jewish Israelis can, and should, be either religious or secular. Moving away from this conventional framework, this book examines the role of secularism and religion in Jewish society and politics. With a focus on the ‘traditionists’ (masortim) who comprise over a third of the Jewish-Israeli population, the author examines issues of religion, tradition and secularism in Israel, giving a fresh approach to the widening theoretical discussion regarding the thesis of secularisation and modernity and exploring the wider implications of this identity. Yadgar’s conclusions have significant social, cultural and political implications, serving not only as a new contribution to the academic discourse on Jewish-Israeli identity, but as a platform upon which traditionist positions on central issues of Israeli politics can be heard. Offering a detailed investigation into a central and important Jewish-Israeli identity construct, the book is relevant not only to the study of Jewish identity in Israel but also within the wider social-theoretical issues of religion, tradition, modernity and secularization. The book will be of great interest to students of Israeli society and to anyone looking into the issues of Jewish identity, Israeli nationalism and ethnicity, religion and politics in Israel, and the sociology of religion.
Author: David M. Gordis
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761857931
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 137
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Book Description
A growing number of Jews identify themselves as secular or "somewhat secular." Is this expansive definition of Jewishness a new phenomenon? What are its roots? This insightful book provides an overview of a profound development in the evolving history of Jewish life in America.
Author: Shmuel Feiner
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812201892
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah. In The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by listening to the voices of those who participated in the process and by deciphering its cultural codes and meanings. On the one hand, a great majority of observant Jews still accepted the authority of the Talmud and the leadership of the rabbis; on the other, there was a gradually more conspicuous minority of "Epicureans" and "freethinkers." As the ground shifted, each individual was marked according to his or her place on the path between faith and heresy, between devoutness and permissiveness or indifference. Building on his award-winning Jewish Enlightenment, Feiner unfolds the story of critics of religion, mostly Ashkenazic Jews, who did not take active part in the secular intellectual revival known as the Haskalah. In open or concealed rebellion, Feiner's subjects lived primarily in the cities of western and central Europe—Altona-Hamburg, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Breslau, and Prague. They participated as "fashionable" Jews adopting the habits and clothing of the surrounding Gentile society. Several also adopted the deist worldview of Enlightenment Europe, rejecting faith in revelation, the authority of Scripture, and the obligation to observe the commandments. Peering into the synagogue, observing individuals in the coffeehouse or strolling the boulevards, and peeking into the bedroom, Feiner recovers forgotten critics of religion from both the margins and the center of Jewish discourse. His is a pioneering work on the origins of one of the most significant transformations of modern Jewish history.
Author: Erich Fromm
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480401927
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
From the social philosopher and New York Times–bestselling author of The Sane Society: An analysis of the Old Testament as a revolutionary humanist work. The Old Testament is one of the most carefully studied books in the world’s history. It is also one of the most misunderstood. This founding text of the world’s three largest religions is also, Erich Fromm argues, an impressive radical humanist text. He sees the stories of mankind’s transition from divided clans to united brotherhood as a tribute to the human power to overcome. Filled with hopeful symbolism, You Shall Be As Gods shows how the Old Testament and its tradition is an inspiring ode to human potential. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erich Fromm including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.
Author: Judith Seid
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806521909
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Here is a handbook for Jews looking for creative & meaningful new ways to express their own ways of being Jewish. The book discusses the historical evolution of the Jewish religion and takes up the question of what it means to be a 'cultural Jew'. God-optional Judaism provides alternative, nontheistic ways to celebrate every Jewish holiday and all the rites of passage in life, including baby naming ceremonies, bar/bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals
Author: Max Rosenfeld
Publisher: Sholom Aleichem Club Press
ISBN:
Category : Fasts and feasts
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
Author: Asher Cohen
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801863455
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180
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Book Description
The role of religion in a democratic society Best Book award given by the Israel Political Science Association Since the 1980s, relationships between secular and religious Israelis have gone from bad to worse. What was formerly a politics of accommodation, one whose main objective was the avoidance of strife through "arrangements" and compromises, has become a winner-take-all, zero-sum game. The conflict is not over who gets what. Rather, it is a conflict over the very character of the polity, a struggle to define Israel's collective character. In Israel and the Politics of Jewish Identity Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser show how this transformation has been caused by structural changes in Israel's public sphere. Surveying many different levels of public life, they explore the change of Israel's politics from a dominant-party system to a balanced two-camp system. They trace the rise of the Haredi parties and the growing consonance of religiosity with right-wing politics. Other topics include the new Basic Laws on Freedom, Dignity, and Occupation; the effects of massive immigration of secular Jews from the former Soviet Union; the greater emphasis on liberal "good government"; and the rise of an aggressive investigative press and electronic media.
