The article presents—using the Karaite work “The War at the Gates” by Shelomo ben Aharon (17th/18th century; a polemic with rabbinic Judaism)—three common issues related to the analysis of Hebrew manuscripts written before the 19th century. These issues include: (1) determining the fundamental meaning of individual parts of the work; (2) analyzing the argumentative structure of the work’s narrative in relation to its biblical interpretation, which seeks to justify specific religious laws established within the religious community of the tradition/author; (3) verifying certain commonly accepted scholarly assumptions. I demonstrate how I addressed these challenges while working on the aforementioned treatise and attempt to draw generalized, practical conclusions.
Spinoza has gained acceptance into Hebrew culture in the last two centuries, a period that includes the Jewish Haskalah in Europe, the culture created in Eretz Yisrael in the pre-statehood days, and contemporary Israeli culture. This acceptance is rather intimate by nature. Hebrew authors and their readers turned to Spinoza to clarify their own problems. To these audiences, Spinoza was not only a great philosopher, whose writings are worth interpreting and spreading. He was also perceived as someone who could help formulate what Judaism is and learn the possible meaning it can find in the world of Jews who had moved away from a religious lifestyle.
Gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts befand sich die bis dahin blühende Schweizer Uhrmacherein in einer tiefen wirtschaftlichen Krise. Das der Wirtschaftssektor aus dieser Notlage wieder herausfand war zu einem bedeutenden Teil jüdischen Uhrmachern und Händlern zu verdanken, die durch Offenheit und Innovationskraft einen Strukturwandel herbeiführten. Es gilt daher zu fragen, warum es dieser zugewanderten Minorität bedurfte, einen für den Schweizer Exporthandel zentralen Produktionszweig zu modernisieren.
Nach einer kurzen Einführung in die Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Schweiz und den Prozess der Industrialisierung, sowie einiger allgemeinen Darlegungen zur Geschichte der Uhrenproduktion in wird der Hauptteil des Aufsatzes den Beitrag der Juden zur Industrialisierung der schweizerischen Uhrmacherei behandeln. Dabei werden neben einer wirtschaftshistorischen Perspektive auch kultur-, religions- und gesellschaftshistorische Aspekte beleuchtet, da ein Erklärungsansatz für unsere Fragestellung nur mit einem methodisch integrativen Zugang erarbeitet werden kann. Abschließend soll anhand des hier behandelten Beispiels der jüdischen Uhrenfabrikanten der Frage nachgegangen werden, welchen Beitrag die Mikrogeschichte für das Verständnis großer Prozesse leisten kann, oder anders gefragt: was vermag der periphere Fall der jüdischen Uhrmacher im Neuenburger Jura der Geschichte der Industrialisierung beizutragen?
This article addresses the way the book of Ezra-Nehemiah on one hand and Chronicles on the other reflect the relationship between Samaria and Judah in the postexilic period. With regard to Ezra-Nehemiah, the focus is placed on Ezra 4:1−5, 6−23, 24, which evokes a particular image of the nature of the relationship between Samaria and Judah within the report of the construction of the temple in Ezra 1−6 that can function paradigmatically for the book as a whole. With regard to Chronicles, the focus lies on the theme of cult centralization, which became established in a particular manner through the reception of earlier tradition. The article concludes that both works, each in its own way, call forth critique of Samaria and the Samaritans in order to establish a separate Judean or Jewish group identity. The critique of the two works is dated to the late fourth or early third centuries BCE. As such, both are reckoned among the first witnesses heralding a <i>shift</i> in the perception of Samaria in biblical literature, namely toward a polemical and unequivocally negative perspective attested later in, for example, Josephus.
The Burden of the Theological Tradition in Gospel Translations – Suggestions for New Solutions
The research problem of this article concerns the following phenomenon: the original meaning of a specific term appearing in the text of the Gospel, contextually conditioned by Judaism of the first century or culturally neutral, has been burdened over the centuries with a context of the Christian doctrine, which has evolved and developed a new religious and cultural background. To what extent, then, would it be justified, in translation, to refer to the original conditions? In conclusion, we state firstly that the proposals aimed at freeing the translation from the burden of interpretative traditions can, on the one hand, result in a more appropriate embedding of the text in the original context, while at the same time complicating its reception by modern readers. Secondly, they usually require descriptive translations. Thirdly, in reference to the text of the Scripture, they could be alternative suggestions rather than attempts of replacing existing translations.
El objetivo de este artículo es identificar en la escritura/lectura de Franz Kafka, a partir de El Castillo, la intersección entre la problemática de la crisis de la tradición, planteada por Walter Benjamin y Gershom Scholem, y la textualización de la verdad que se desprende de las prácticas exegéticas en la tradición mística del judaísmo, sobre todo en la teoría cabalística del lenguaje. Siguiendo la discusión de las principales teorías presentes en el referencial bibliográfico, analizaremos cómo la escritura en Kafka utiliza el comentario como método, fundiendo exégesis y creación literaria. Podemos concluir que la verdad, en Kafka, se encuentra inseparable del texto y del comentario, lo que nos remite al Nombre de Dios infinitamente interpretable vislumbrado por la tradición mística de la Cábala. En la escritura de Kafka, la verdad inseparable del laberinto de interpretaciones apunta a la crisis de la tradición como característica esencial de su modernidad, expresando los límites entre religión y nihilismo.
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The objective of this paper is to identify in the writing/reading of Franz Kafka, from The Castle, the intersection between the problem of the crisis of tradition, raised by Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, and the textualization of the truth that emerges from exegetical practices in the mystical tradition of Judaism, especially in the kabbalistic theory of language. Following the discussion of the main theories present in the bibliographic reference, we will analyze how the writing in Kafka uses the commentary as method, merging exegesis and literary creation. We can conclude that the truth in Kafka is inseparable from the text and commentary, which brings us to the infinitely interpretable Name of God envisioned by the mystical tradition of Kabbalah. In Kafka’s writing, the inseparable truth of the labyrinth of interpretations points to the crisis of tradition as an essential feature of its modernity, expressing the boundaries between religion and nihilism.
French literature - Italian literature - Spanish literature - Portuguese literature, Philosophy (General)
<p>This paper deals with a genealogy of anti-Semitism in German-speaking Europe. The starting point consists in a conceptual history of “secularisation”, from its juridical origin to its transformation into a philosophical-historical category. In this way, I bring to light the relevance of Hegel’s concept of mundanisation (Verweltlichung) in order to comprehend the specificity of the relation between Germanness and Judaism. Finally, I present some reflections on the myth of a German-Jewish symbiosis (assimilation), the emergence of sionism and the possibility of a Jewish dissimilation.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> Jewish Question, Germany, Emancipation, Secularisation, Mundanisation, Antisemitism, Antijudaism.</p>
Sünnet (ختان -circumcision), cerrahi bir uygulamadır. Daha ziyade erkek-lere uygulanmakla birlikte az da olsa kızlara da uygulanmaktadır. Sünnet uy-gulaması tarih boyu farklı milletlerde görülmekte ve genelde dini bir sorum-luluk olarak değerlendirilmektedir. Yahudilik’te sünnet, Rab ile Yahudiler arasında yapılan bir sözleşme olup kesinlikle yapılması gereken dini bir gö-revdir ve sadece erkeklere uygulanmaktadır. Hıristiyanlık’ta sünnet, manevi temizlik olarak değerlendirilerek cerrahi uygulama yapılmamaktadır. Müslü-manlar arasında ise sünnet, erkeklere az da olsa bazı ülkelerde kadınlara uy-gulanmaktadır. Fıkıhçılar arasında erkeklerin sünnet olmasının hükmü üze-rinde farklı görüşler olmakla birlikte daha ziyade yapılması gereken güzel bir örf olarak değerlendirilmektedir. İlk sünnet olan kişi İbrahim Peygamber olarak bilinmektedir. O Rabb’ın emriyle ilerlemiş yaşlarda sünnet olmuştur. İbrahim peygamber daha sonra yine Rabbının emriyle oğlu İsmail ve İshak’ı sünnet etmiştir. Tıbbi açıdan uzmanların ekseriyetine göre sünnet uygulama-sının erkekler için faydalı, kadınlar için ise zararlı olduğu belirtilmektedir.
Avicenna and Maimonides are philosophers of religion, who were concerned about rational affirmation of their religious beliefs. Based on his Islamic view, Avicenna accepts bodily and spiritual resurrection, but has two different approaches to their acceptance. He accepts bodily resurrection not by argument but because of his faith in the Word of God, and proves spiritual resurrection by argument. He provides spiritual exoteric interpretation of resurrection and all its characteristics and attributes, and believes that pleasure and pain is eternal, belonging to the soul. It is the soul that experiences happiness or unhappiness after separating from body. The ultimate pleasure is looking at the essence of God and angels. In the same vein, Maimonides provides arguments to prove spiritual resurrection and believes in punishment and reward, and hereafter spiritual pleasure and pain. He holds that the ultimate pleasure is seeing Our Sheikh, interpreted as knowledge. The present paper seeks to compare these two philosophical views, one based on Islam and the other on Judaism.
Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjects
The article discusses the commemorative concept of Gunter Demnig’s ongoing art project Stolpersteine, which is considered one of the world’s largest decentralised Holocaust memorials. Stolpersteine are small, cobblestone-size memorial stones in urban spaces which are dedicated to individual victims of Nazism; it is the project’s aim to install the stones in the pavement in front of an individual’s last-known place of residence. The article aims to analyse the commemorative facets of the project’s spatial dimension in relation to the concept of the ‘residential’. The value of dwelling, presented in Demnig’s project as a common ground for the commemoration of all victims as individual citizens, forms a predominant component in public reception. It contributes to a synthesising perception of each stone as being part of a vast commemorative landscape. This landscape, however, is semantically marked by an immanent concept of border, which suggests a polarising separation between included civil spaces and excluded heterotopias. By deviating from the project’s general principles of placement and inscription, certain individual stones render visible this implicit borderline, thereby also critically reflecting on concepts of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’.
El presente artículo estudia algunos aspectos relativos a la vida y obra de Juan de Ávila, uno de los autores más importantes de la literatura espiritual del siglo XVI español. El hecho de ser descendiente de judíos, por vía paterna, algo que fue bien conocido por sus contemporáneos, y su singular postura frente al problema converso, le causó distintos problemas, entre ellos un proceso inquisitorial ante el tribunal de Sevilla. En este artículo hemos analizado la huella que dejaron estas experiencias personales en sus principales trabajos (Audi, filia, sermones, Epistolario espiritual), en los cuales se expresa su actitud y su pensamiento sobre la polémica cuestión de la limpieza de sangre.
En este artículo se ofrece un estudio preliminar, la edición crítica basada en dieciséis manuscritos, y la traducción castellana de ͗Iggeret ha-musar atribuida a Yehudá al-Ḥarizí (siglos XII-XIII). Este texto hebreo, de extraordinaria difusión en círculos judíos, reúne reflexiones y enseñanzas del conocido médico egipcio ͗Alī Ibn Riḍwān (siglo X) junto a una supuesta carta de Aristóteles que constituye el núcleo del escrito. Conservado en al menos treinta y seis manuscritos, este heterogéneo texto reúne materiales de muy diversa procedencia con los que se pretende proporcionar códigos de conducta basados en principios universales.