This article discusses the main challenges that secularization presented to Judaism and to Jewish thought, and maps the key strategies and central thinkers who responded to this challenge, from the eighteenth century up to the turn of the twenty-first. Attention is also given to some secular theologies, to Zionist thinkers embracing secularization, and to the challenges of post-Holocaust Jewish theology. In particular, the entry highlights the frequent questioning of a religious/secular divide that figures within modern Jewish thought. In the dominant European context of Western secularization, it argues that eighteenth-century Hasidism effectively opposed the creation of separate secular and religious spheres, and it presents a view of Hasidic and other Orthodox leaders as modern thinkers whose engagement with secularism included openness to key secular notions. In addition, paying attention to responses to secularization within Sephardi Jewry, who lived among Muslim-majority societies primarily in North Africa and the Middle East, the entry suggests that Sephardi rabbis viewed Judaism as an inclusive whole, and tacitly rejected an assumed division of Judaism into religious and secular elements. Finally, the entry also claims that, for key modern Jewish theologians, the secular served as a theological category that is employed within projects of criticism of ‘religion’. For such thinkers, secularization then becomes a step, and even a foundation stone, for broader spiritual, religious, and even messianic global futures.
Anjar Windarsih, Florentinus Dika Octa Riswanto, Nor Kartini Abu Bakar
et al.
Adulteration of high-quality meat products using lower-priced meats, such as pork, is a crucial issue that could harm consumers. The consumption of pork is strictly forbidden in certain religions, such as Islam and Judaism. Therefore, the objective of this research was to develop untargeted metabolomics using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) combined with chemometrics for analysis of pork in beef meatballs for halal authentication. We investigated the use of non-targeted LC-HRMS as a method to detect such food adulteration. As a proof of concept using six technical replicates of pooled samples from beef and pork meat, we could show that metabolomics using LC-HRMS could be used for high-throughput screening of metabolites in meatballs made from beef and pork. Chemometrics of principal component analysis (PCA) was successfully used to differentiate beef meatballs and pork meatball samples. Partial least square-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) clearly discriminated between halal and non-halal beef meatball samples with 100% accuracy. Orthogonal projection to latent structures-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) perfectly discriminated and classified meatballs made from beef, pork, and a mixture of beef-pork with a good level of fitness (R<sup>2</sup>X = 0.88, R<sup>2</sup>Y = 0.71) and good predictivity (Q<sup>2</sup> = 0.55). Partial least square (PLS) and orthogonal PLS (OPLS) were successfully applied to predict the concentration of pork present in beef meatballs with high accuracy (R<sup>2</sup> = 0.99) and high precision. Thirty-five potential metabolite markers were identified through VIP (variable important for projections) analysis. Metabolites of 1-(1<i>Z</i>-hexadecenyl)-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, acetyl-<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">l</span>-carnitine, <span style="font-variant: small-caps;">dl</span>-carnitine, anserine, hypoxanthine, linoleic acid, and prolylleucine had important roles for predicting pork in beef meatballs through S-line plot analysis. It can be concluded that a combination of untargeted metabolomics using LC-HRMS and chemometrics is promising to be developed as a standard analytical method for halal authentication of highly processed meat products.
The philosophical works of F. Rosenzweig have particular meaning for both academic and existential inquiries and interests, as he deeply re-observes the religious life of Judaism and Christianity through the reflection of human existence. Fear of death, observation of Plato’s understanding of Eros, overcoming of atheism of Goethe in the experience of faith - these key motives form a challenging discourse of Rosenzweig’s theological and philosophical thought, which invites reader into a truly charming spiritual journey. The article provides an intriguing introduction to the issue of RUDN Journal of Philosophy , which is dedicated to F. Rosenzweig and provides a scope to various aspects of the philosophy of one of the most prominent German-Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century, including topics such as criticism and reception of German idealism and existentialism, «new thinking» as a philosophical system, philosophical interpretation of biblical texts, Kabbalah and mysticism.
Solomon Schechter (1849-1915) is undoubtedly the main figure that left a mark in the history of Conservative Judaism, which started to evolve into an institutional structure, centered in America, from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. His institutional contributions to Conservative Judaism through the Jewish Theological Seminary (1886), which was established to train rabbis to address modern Jewish communities in America, and the United Synagogue of America (1913), which is his own legacy, are of indisputable importance. In addition, it is possible to find traces of Schechter's thoughts in the background of the religious approach that the movement continues to adopt today. In the article, the views of Schechter, who actively participated in the Conservative movement in the early period, on Tanakh, tradition and halakha and his view on the issue of authority and change in religion in the context of the Catholic Israel principle and its reflection on the movement will all be examined. In the study, it has been tried to determine the effect of Schechter on the basic ideology of the movement and the nature of the Conservative identity that he tried to reveal in the context of his approach to the Reformist and Orthodox stance.
Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjects
This article discusses the altering image of American Jews in Hollywood movies. Coming to America during the great migration, mostly from Eastern Europe, this Azkenazic Jews then contributed to the building and transformation of the Hollywood movies as a world icon. Though quite dominant, Jews are quite careful in this industry. Anti-Semitism, the World War and the Great Depression are some of the things that make Jews uncomfortable about being in the spotlight or talking about their identity among the Christian audience of the movies. However, the condition changed after the Second World War and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Jews and Judaism later appeared in various representations, which does not only change their image in Hollywood, but also the acceptance of American society broadly. Focusing on the movie, Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1959) as the object of research, the study explores how Jewish people represent themselves through films produced, including the negotiations and changes made as part of the American Jews. Using the theory of Stuart Hall’s Politics of Representation and Critical Discourse Analysis from Fairclough and Leuween as an approach, this work focuses on the analysis of text and images as a sign that represents the Jews and Judaism in the movie. Related to movie as a media construction, the filmmakers are able to reconstruct Jews in different image. Through the movie, the represented Jews are found to have conveyed various messages to the audience about their cultural and religious identity.
In this article we will make a brief diagnosis about the crisis of modernity, as it is proposed by the Jewish thinker Zygmunt Bauman. He make reference to the notion of "liquid modernity", which is characterized by a precariousness of human bonds, marked by the transitory and volatile nature of their relations, including the link with the religious, where man, according to the thinker, is "trapped" in technology, in relationships that become disposable and where individualism prevails over the collective, where the "other" is typified as strange and superfluous. In this scenario of technical epoch, we will make reference to the certain proposed solutions proposed by the German Jewish thinker Martin Buber, in order to recover the links with the sacred, getting out of these times of emergency. The thinker proposes a turn towards dialogue, which translates into a movement from oneness to multiplicity, that is, from the thought centered in the "I-It" to the thought "I-You", which allows a genuine and transcendent dialogue with people, nature and, above all, with God.
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology, Judaism
The current 27th volume of Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis is based on a symposium arranged by the Donner Institute in March 2015, under the title: ‘Jewish Studies in the Nordic Countries Today’. All the articles published in this volume were initially presented as papers at this conference and have, through a double-blind peer-review process, been selected for this volume.
En este trabajo se vincula la idea de preguntar con la de la violencia. A partir de las cuatro preguntas (¿“Ma Nishtaná?”) que habitualmente se realizan para abrir el seder de Pésaj o Pascua judía se hará un breve recorrido por la interpretación que se hace en el Talmud de estas preguntas y su intención primaria. De esta manera, se retoma el breve pasaje talmúdico de Rabi Yanai y la pregunta que le hace su hijo la víspera de Pésaj para ejemplificar lo que las preguntas pueden hacer en este contexto y en otros. La violencia de la pregunta sincera que desestructura se opone, entonces, a la pregunta prefabricada que suelen memorizar los niños para el inicio de esta fiesta. Concluye el texto con una reflexión levinasiana en torno a la libertad de la humanidad y esta fiesta.
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology, Judaism
El objeto de este trabajo es poner de manifiesto la labor desempeñada por los diplomáticos españoles en favor de las comunidades sefardíes de Grecia durante el primer tercio del siglo XX a través de la correspondencia diplomática. Un período justificado en sí mismo por cuanto coincide con el hundimiento del Imperio otomano y el traspaso de Salónica a Grecia al finalizar las guerras balcánicas en 1913, la Primera Guerra Mundial, la ocupación y derrota de Grecia en Asia Menor y la Primera República griega. En cuanto a las fuentes utilizadas, la correspondencia diplomática, al ser España neutral y carecer de intereses en la zona, ha sido fundamental para conocer de forma objetiva las dificultades de las comunidades sefardíes de Grecia durante esta época, aportando información muy interesante sobre ciertos hechos ocurridos en el país, casi desconocidos o nada tratados hasta ahora por los especialistas.
Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropology, Judaism
In the pre- virtual world which took about two milleniums, “God” was assumed as the cornerstone of traditional theology especially in Abrahamic religions i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
But now in the virtual world provided by the internet, we are witnessing a new situation that could be called “Media –oriented religion” or “popularization of religion”. The outcome is, therefore, “virtual theology”, the essence of which is “virtual God”. This phenomenon is regretfully neglected in sociological, cultural, and media studies of religion. This article first undertakes a theoretical review of “virtual theology and God,” and then makes a qualitative analysis of the “virtual representation of God” in Persian weblogs, especially blogfa. It is shown that in comparision with traditional media, the western academia and Islamic seminaries in pre- virtual world, these weblogs have managed to challenge the traditional notion of God and theology, due to their unique virtual and media – based status. They have launched, instead a “textual hegemony” and a “popularized God”. This challenge, apart from our for or against judgment and its threatening or opportunity providing nature vis - a - vis the traditional religiousness in the third millennium, has afforded an intriguing subject for the sociology of religion, especially by focusing on the trio: “sociology of religious weblogs” , “cultural studies of virtually popularized religion” and “studies of the religious media”, in Iran.
The main aim of this article is to show the principal acts of martyrdom that have been found in nearly all the world major religious traditions. Martyrdom as a phenomenon peculiar to monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) has also analogies in Far East belief systems (e.g. Buddhism, Shinto, Hinduism, Sikhism). The phenomenon of suicide martyrdom – not only specific to Islamic religion – forms of fundamental values of self-sacrifice as a supreme ideal – a God (gods) – given opportunity – for salvation of the soul, as much as for redemption of society and state. The text presents the ideals and religious ideologies and convictions which refer to martyrs who sacrifice their life for the sake of great value principle. Martyr, one who voluntarily suffers death rather than deny his religion by words or deeds; such action is afforded special, institutionalized recognition in most major religions of the world.
Comparative religion should not remain isolated from other sciences. To enable interdisciplinary dialogue with other fields of study, scholars in comparative religion should make use of precise scientific concepts. 'God' is not a scientific but an emic concept used intuitively. Behind our intuitions about the concept of 'god' there are implicit Judeo-Christian assumptions. Substituting 'superhuman agent' for 'god' is no solution. The author provides some possible solutions; A) We might use the concept of 'god' only as a loose heuristic or interpretative term and drop it from theoretical language; B) We might also restrict the concept of 'god' only to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and conceptualize other traditions preferring their own emic terms; C) 'God' is made to refer to a very broad category of all kinds of entities somehow violating people's expectations of how entities ordinarily behave, and conceived of as superior to human.
In this introduction the author gives some comments on the Hebrew or Jewish Bible and the literature of the rabbis, based on the Bible, and then presents the background of the articles included in this volume.