|
Showing 1 - 19 of
19 matches in All Departments
This book offers a new insight into the political, social, and
religious conduct of religious-Zionism, whose consequences are
evident in Israeli society today. Before the Six-Day War,
religious-Zionism had limited its concern to the protection of
specific religious interests, with its representatives having
little share in the determination of Israel's national agenda.
Fifty years after it, religious-Zionism has turned into one of
Israeli society's dominant elements. The presence of this group in
all aspects of Israel's life and its members' determination to set
Israel's social, cultural, and international agenda is
indisputable. Delving into this dramatic transformation, the book
depicts the Six-Day War as a constitutive event that indelibly
changed the political and religious consciousness of
religious-Zionists. The perception of real history that had guided
this movement from its dawn was replaced by a "sacred history"
approach that became an actual program of political activity. As
part of a process that has unfolded over the last thirty years, the
body and sexuality have also become a central concern in the
movement's practice, reflection, and discourse. The how and why of
this shift in religious-Zionism - from passivity and a
consciousness of marginality to the front lines of public life - is
this book's central concern. The book will be of interest to
readers and scholars concerned with changing dynamic societies and
with the study of religion and particularly with the relationship
between religion and politics.
This book offers a new insight into the political, social, and
religious conduct of religious-Zionism, whose consequences are
evident in Israeli society today. Before the Six-Day War,
religious-Zionism had limited its concern to the protection of
specific religious interests, with its representatives having
little share in the determination of Israel's national agenda.
Fifty years after it, religious-Zionism has turned into one of
Israeli society's dominant elements. The presence of this group in
all aspects of Israel's life and its members' determination to set
Israel's social, cultural, and international agenda is
indisputable. Delving into this dramatic transformation, the book
depicts the Six-Day War as a constitutive event that indelibly
changed the political and religious consciousness of
religious-Zionists. The perception of real history that had guided
this movement from its dawn was replaced by a "sacred history"
approach that became an actual program of political activity. As
part of a process that has unfolded over the last thirty years, the
body and sexuality have also become a central concern in the
movement's practice, reflection, and discourse. The how and why of
this shift in religious-Zionism - from passivity and a
consciousness of marginality to the front lines of public life - is
this book's central concern. The book will be of interest to
readers and scholars concerned with changing dynamic societies and
with the study of religion and particularly with the relationship
between religion and politics.
The relationship between morality and religion has long been
controversial, familiar in its formulation as Euthyphro's dilemma:
Is an act right because God commanded it or did God command it
because it is right. In Morality and Religion: The Jewish Story,
renowned scholar Avi Sagi marshals the breadth of philosophical and
hermeneutical tools to examine this relationship in Judaism from
two perspectives. The first considers whether Judaism adopted a
thesis widespread in other monotheistic religions known as 'divine
command morality,' making morality contingent on God's command. The
second deals with the ways Jewish tradition grapples with conflicts
between religious and moral obligations. After examining a broad
spectrum of Jewish sources-including Talmudic literature, Halakhah,
Aggadah, Jewish philosophy, and liturgy-Sagi concludes that
mainstream Jewish tradition consistently refrains from attempts to
endorse divine command morality or resolve conflicts by invoking a
divine command. Rather, the central strand in Judaism perceives God
and humans as inhabiting the same moral community and bound by the
same moral obligations. When conflicts emerge between moral and
religious instructions, Jewish tradition interprets religious norms
so that they ultimately pass the moral test. This mainstream voice
is anchored in the meaning of Jewish law, which is founded on human
autonomy and rationality, and in the relationship with God that is
assumed in this tradition.
The book grapples with one of the most difficult questions
confronting the contemporary world: the problem of the other, which
includes ethical, political, and metaphysical aspects. A widespread
approach in the history of the discourse on the other,
systematically formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and his followers,
has invested this term with an almost mythical quality-the other is
everybody else but never a specific person, an abstraction of
historical human existence. This book offers an alternative view,
turning the other into a real being, through a carefully described
process involving two dimensions referred to as the ethic of
loyalty to the visible and the ethic of inner retreat. Tracing the
course of this process in life and in literature, the book presents
a broad and lucid picture intriguing to philosophers and also
accessible to readers concerned with questions touching on the
meaning of life, ethics, and politics, and particularly relevant to
the burning issues surrounding attitudes to immigrants as others
and to the relationship with God, the ultimate other.
The relationship between morality and religion has long been
controversial, familiar in its formulation as Euthyphro's dilemma:
Is an act right because God commanded it or did God command it
because it is right. In Morality and Religion: The Jewish Story,
renowned scholar Avi Sagi marshals the breadth of philosophical and
hermeneutical tools to examine this relationship in Judaism from
two perspectives. The first considers whether Judaism adopted a
thesis widespread in other monotheistic religions known as 'divine
command morality,' making morality contingent on God's command. The
second deals with the ways Jewish tradition grapples with conflicts
between religious and moral obligations. After examining a broad
spectrum of Jewish sources-including Talmudic literature, Halakhah,
Aggadah, Jewish philosophy, and liturgy-Sagi concludes that
mainstream Jewish tradition consistently refrains from attempts to
endorse divine command morality or resolve conflicts by invoking a
divine command. Rather, the central strand in Judaism perceives God
and humans as inhabiting the same moral community and bound by the
same moral obligations. When conflicts emerge between moral and
religious instructions, Jewish tradition interprets religious norms
so that they ultimately pass the moral test. This mainstream voice
is anchored in the meaning of Jewish law, which is founded on human
autonomy and rationality, and in the relationship with God that is
assumed in this tradition.
This book deals with the meaning of identity in general and Jewish
identity in particular. Different notions of Jewish identity have
been formulated in the history of Jewish thought, many of them
supporting a rigid and one-sided view of it. Relying on a cultural
historical analysis of various theoretical and empirical dimensions
of this concept, the book shows that the term Jewish identity
denotes a field covering a broad range of options for Jewish
existence. Common to all is the affirmation of Jewish identity, but
not necessarily one single approach as the sole possible course of
Jewish life.
The widespread view is that prayer is the center of religious
existence and that understanding the meaning of prayer requires
that we assume God is its sole destination. This book challenges
this assumption and, through a phenomenological analysis of the
meaning of prayer in modern Hebrew literature, shows that prayer
does not depend at all on the addressee humans are praying beings.
Prayer is, above all, the recognition that we are free to transcend
the facts of our life and an expression of the hope that we can
override the weight of our past and present circumstances.
The religious-Zionist community in Israel developed as an attempt
to combine Jewish Law commitment with the values of modernity, two
networks of meaning coexisting in tension and not easily
reconciled. This book develops a new paradigm for reading religious
cultures through a description and analysis of the sexuality
discourse as it emerges in the virtual exchange in the
Religious-Zionist writings. This is a new endeavor in the study of
religious-Zionism or of modern Orthodoxy, centering on the body as
the realm of confrontation and considering aspects such as
homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, and relationships between
the sexes.
Faith: Jewish Perspectives explores important questions in both
modern and premodern Jewish philosophy regarding the idea of faith.
Is believing a voluntary action, or do believers find themselves
within the experience of faith against their will? Can faith be
understood through other means (psychological, epistemic, and so
forth), or is it only comprehensible from the inside, that is, from
within the religious world? Is a subjective experience of faith
fundamentally communicative, meaning that it includes intelligible
and transmittable universal elements, or is it a private experience
that we can point to or talk about through indirect means (poetic,
lyrical, and so forth), but never fully decipher? This book
presents various manifestations of the concept of faith in Judaism
as a tradition engaged in a dialogue with the outside world. It
will function as an opening and an invitation to an ongoing
conversation with faith.
'Faith: Jewish Perspectives' explores important questions in both
modern and premodern Jewish philosophy regarding the idea of faith.
Is believing a voluntary action, or do believers find themselves
within the experience of faith against their will? Can faith be
understood through other means (psychological, epistemic, and so
forth), or is it only comprehensible from the inside, that is, from
within the religious world? Is a subjective experience of faith
fundamentally communicative, meaning that it includes intelligible
and transmittable universal elements, or is it a private experience
that we can point to or talk about through indirect means (poetic,
lyrical, and so forth), but never fully decipher? This book
presents various manifestations of the concept of faith in Judaism
as a tradition engaged in a dialogue with the outside world. It
will function as an opening and an invitation to an ongoing
conversation with faith.
In the last three decades, Israel has been undergoing a dramatic
revolution: the hegemonic secular Zionist ethos that founded it is
cracking, and various sub-groups seek to realize their specific
identity in the public sphere. Ultra- Orthodox, Arabs, Mizrahim,
immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and others are rejecting
the peripheral status that had ranked them according to their
proximity to the principles of this ethos and insist on their own
voice. Israeli society has consequently become a seething
entanglement of confl icts and identity struggles. This book is one
of the first attempts to examine various aspects of the current
multicultural transformation of Israeli society. It deals with
fundamental questions such as the character of Israel as a Jewish
state, the status of minorities and their right to
self-realization, and the farreaching influence of the
multicultural turn on a variety of legal and social dimensions.
Theoretical questions are reconsidered in light of specific case
studies in Israel, off ering a significant contribution to the
interdisciplinary discussion of multicultural theories and their
application.
"Jewish Religion after Theology" offers an account of attempts to
deal with this question in contemporary Jewish thought. It points
to a post-theological trend that shifts the focus of the discussion
from metaphysics to praxis, and examines the possibilities of
establishing a religious life centered on immanent-practical
existence. Key questions considered include the possibility of
toleration and pluralism in Jewish religion and the perception of
the Holocaust as a theological or religious-existential problem.
Professor Avi Sagi teaches philosophy at Bar-Ilan University in
Israel, where he is also the founding director of a graduate
program on Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies. Sagi is senior
research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He
has published extensively on continental philosophy, philosophy of
religion and ethics, Jewish philosophy, philosophy and sociology of
Jewish law. Among his books: Religion and Morality (with Daniel
Statman); Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence: The Voyage of the
Self; Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd; The Open
Canon: On the Meaning of Halakhic Discourse; Tradition vs.
Traditionalism.
Avi Sagi's book ponders one of the most intriguing shifts in modern
Jewish thought: from a metaphysical and theological standpoint
toward a new manner of philosophizing based primarily on practice.
Different chapters study this great shift and its various
manifestations. The central figure of this new examination is
Isaiah Leibowitz, whose thoughts encapsulate more than any other
Jewish thinker this stance of religion without metaphysics. Sagi
explores corresponding issues such as observance, the possibility
of pluralism, the meaning of penance without messianic
suppositions, and pragmatic coping with theodicy after the
Holocaust, presenting the different possibilities within this great
alteration in Jewish thought. Avi Sagi (Ph.D. Bar Ilan University,
1988) is a Professor at Bar Ilan University and Senior Research
Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem. His recent books
include Circles of Jewish Identity (with Zvi Zohar), Tel Aviv,
2000; Elu va Elu A Study on the Meaning of Halakhic Discourse, Tel
Aviv, 1996
This is an exploration of the existentialist Jewishness which is
advocated, promoted and displayed in Brenner's writings. "To Be a
Jew" deals with the question of the meaning and rationale that the
writer Joseph Chayim Brenner attributes to Jewish existence. Many
of Brenner's readers assumed that Brenner completely negated Jewish
existence and sought to form a new way of life completely
disconnected from the traditional Jewish existence. In contrast to
this perception, Avi Sagi proves that not only did Brenner not
reject the value of the Jewish existence, but the core of his
creation was written out of a deep Jewish commitment. Brenner's
greatest innovation is found in his new conception of Jewish
existence. "To be a Jew", according to Brenner, involves the
willingness to discover solidarity with actual Jews, to participate
in a society in which Jews can live a free life and to fashion
their culture as they wish. Sagi presents the idea that Brenner's
is not a Utopian, but a realistic, conception of Jewish existence.
Thus this unique conception of Jewish existence is founded on an
infrastructure of existential thought. The Robert and Arlene Kogod
Library of Judaic Studies publishes new research which provides new
directions for modern Jewish thought and life and which serves to
enhance the quality of dialogue between classical sources and the
modern world. This book series reflects the mission of the Shalom
Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and leadership institute,
at the forefront of Jewish thought and education. It empowers
scholars, rabbis, educators and layleaders to develop new and
diverse voices within the tradition, laying foundations for the
future of Jewish life in Israel and around the world.
In this groundbreaking study, Avi Sagi outlines a broad spectrum of
answers to important questions presented in Jewish literature,
covering theological issues bearing on the meaning of the Torah and
of revelation, as well as hermeneutical questions regarding
understanding of the halakhic text.This is the first volume to
attempt to provide a comprehensive map of the available views and
theories concerning the theological, hermeneutical, and ontological
meaning of dispute as a constitutive element of Halakhah. It offers
an attentive reading of the texts and strives to present, clearly
and exhaustively, the conscious account of Jewish tradition in
general and of halakhic tradition in particular concerning the
meaning of halakhic discourse.The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library
of Judaic Studies publishes new research which serves to enhance
the quality of dialogue between Jewish classical sources and the
modern world, to enrich the meanings of Jewish thought and to
explore the varieties of Jewish life.
In this groundbreaking study, Avi Sagi outlines a broad spectrum of
answers to important questions presented in Jewish literature,
covering theological issues bearing on the meaning of the Torah and
of revelation, as well as hermeneutical questions regarding
understanding of the halakhic text.This is the first volume to
attempt to provide a comprehensive map of the available views and
theories concerning the theological, hermeneutical, and ontological
meaning of dispute as a constitutive element of Halakhah. It offers
an attentive reading of the texts and strives to present, clearly
and exhaustively, the conscious account of Jewish tradition in
general and of halakhic tradition in particular concerning the
meaning of halakhic discourse. The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library
of Judaic Studies publishes new research which serves to enhance
the quality of dialogue between Jewish classical sources and the
modern world, to enrich the meanings of Jewish thought and to
explore the varieties of Jewish life.
Of all Judaic rituals, that of giyyur is arguably the most radical:
it turns a Gentile into a Jew - once and for all and irrevocably.
The very possibility of such a transformation is anomalous,
according to Jewish tradition, which regards Jewishness as an
ascriptive status entered through birth to a Jewish mother.What is
the internal logic of the ritual of giyyur, that seems to enable a
Gentile to acquire an 'ascribed' identity? It is to this question,
and others deriving from it, that the authors address
themselves.Interpretation of a ritual such as giyyur is linked to
broad issues of anthropology, religion and culture: the relation of
'nature' and 'culture' in the construction of group boundaries; the
tension between ethnicity and religion; the interrelation of
individual identity and membership in a collective. Fully aware of
these issues, this groundbreaking study focuses upon a close
reading of primary halakhic texts from Talmudic times down to the
present as key to the explication of meaning within the Judaic
tradition.In our times, the meaning of Jewish identity is a core
issue, directly affecting the public debate regarding the relative
weight of religion, nationality and kinship in determining basic
aspects of Jewish life throughout the world. This book constitutes
a seminal contribution to this ongoing discussion: it enables
access to a wealth of halakhic sources previously accessible only
to rabbinic scholars, fleshes out their meanings and implications
within the cultural history of halakha, and in doing so situates
halakha at the nexus of contemporary cultural discourse.The Robert
and Arlene Kogod Library of Judaic Studies publishes new research
which serves to enhance the quality of dialogue between Jewish
classical sources and the modern world, to enrich the meanings of
Jewish thought and to explore the varieties of Jewish life.
Of all Judaic rituals, that of giyyur is arguably the most radical:
it turns a Gentile into a Jew once and for all and irrevocably. The
very possibility of such a transformation is anomalous, according
to Jewish tradition, which regards Jewishness as an ascriptive
status entered through birth to a Jewish mother.What is the
internal logic of the ritual of giyyur, that seems to enable a
Gentile to acquire an ascribed identity? It is to this question,
and others deriving from it, that the authors address
themselves.Interpretation of a ritual such as giyyur is linked to
broad issues of anthropology, religion and culture: the relation of
nature and culture in the construction of group boundaries; the
tension between ethnicity and religion; the interrelation of
individual identity and membership in a collective. Fully aware of
these issues, this groundbreaking study focuses upon a close
reading of primary halakhic texts from Talmudic times down to the
present as key to the explication of meaning within the Judaic
tradition.In our times, the meaning of Jewish identity is a core
issue, directly affecting the public debate regarding the relative
weight of religion, nationality and kinship in determining basic
aspects of Jewish life throughout the world. This book constitutes
a seminal contribution to this ongoing discussion: it enables
access to a wealth of halakhic sources previously accessible only
to rabbinic scholars, fleshes out their meanings and implications
within the cultural history of halakha, and in doing so situates
halakha at the nexus of contemporary cultural discourse.
To Be a Jew deals with the question of the meaning and rationale
that the writer Joseph Chayim Brenner attributes to Jewish
existence. Many of Brenner's readers assumed that Brenner
completely negated Jewish existence and sought to form a new way of
life completely disconnected from the traditional Jewish existence.
In contrast to this perception, Avi Sagi proves that not only did
Brenner not reject the value of the Jewish existence, but the core
of his creation was written out of a deep Jewish commitment.
Brenner's greatest innovation is found in his new conception of
Jewish existence. To be a Jew, according to Brenner, involves the
willingness to discover solidarity with actual Jews, to participate
in a society in which Jews can live a free life and to fashion
their culture as they wish. Sagi presents the idea that Brenner's
is not a Utopian, but a realistic, conception of Jewish existence.
Thus this unique conception of Jewish existence is founded on an
infrastructure of existential thought.
|
|