Abstract:Academic scholarship on the Cracow Bais Yaakov teachers' seminary in interwar Poland, and on the Bais Yaakov movement in general, has relied to a large extent on internal sources, such as promotional literature, the Bais Yaakov journal, semihistorical accounts by interested parties, and memoirs written after the Holocaust. The reason for that was the dearth of other sources. The present article provides an analysis of excerpts from a hitherto unnoticed diary written by Bracha Levin, a Polish Lithuanian student at the Cracow Bais Yaakov teachers' seminary in the years 1929–1930. The diary records personal sentiments and observations about the seminary that were not intended for external view or public recognition, and thus is of immense importance for historical research. The wealth of information contained in it reflects the experience of other young seminary students like her: teenage girls struggling with religious faith, desiring freedom, love, and intimacy, attending the seminary for the purpose of acquiring professional training, and grappling with school expectations on the one hand and the challenges of modernity on the other. On the whole, the diary's critical attitude toward the seminary reflects the views and educational background of students coming from the Lithuanian regions annexed to Poland after World War I, and emphasizes the gap between those students and students coming from Polish Hasidic homes.
{"title":"The Cracow Bais Yaakov Teachers' Seminary and Sarah Schenirer: A View from a Seminarian's Diary","authors":"Rachel Manekin","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0027","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Academic scholarship on the Cracow Bais Yaakov teachers' seminary in interwar Poland, and on the Bais Yaakov movement in general, has relied to a large extent on internal sources, such as promotional literature, the Bais Yaakov journal, semihistorical accounts by interested parties, and memoirs written after the Holocaust. The reason for that was the dearth of other sources. The present article provides an analysis of excerpts from a hitherto unnoticed diary written by Bracha Levin, a Polish Lithuanian student at the Cracow Bais Yaakov teachers' seminary in the years 1929–1930. The diary records personal sentiments and observations about the seminary that were not intended for external view or public recognition, and thus is of immense importance for historical research. The wealth of information contained in it reflects the experience of other young seminary students like her: teenage girls struggling with religious faith, desiring freedom, love, and intimacy, attending the seminary for the purpose of acquiring professional training, and grappling with school expectations on the one hand and the challenges of modernity on the other. On the whole, the diary's critical attitude toward the seminary reflects the views and educational background of students coming from the Lithuanian regions annexed to Poland after World War I, and emphasizes the gap between those students and students coming from Polish Hasidic homes.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"13 1","pages":"546 - 588"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74386879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Recent years witnessed a growing scholarly awareness to the centrality of practice among early modern kabbalists, and particularly in Lurianic Kabbalah. While the importance of human action to this branch of Safedian Kabbalah has long been recognized, the significance of its "over-detailed," "bewildering," practical discourse to the formation of its meaning has received much less attention. This article reexamines how R. Hayim Vital, Luria's closest disciple, shaped the Lurianic notion of action, through an exploration of one of the most highly technical and formulaic practical loci in his writings: the tikune avonot (sin amendments or penitentials). The article proposes a reading of these practical formulae as a medical, or rather medicalized, discourse, closely related to the contents of Vital's lifelong medical activity—a factor that has been hitherto almost entirely neglected in the Lurianic scholarship. The article analyses these penitentials through the two traditions that have been presented as lying at their basis, the magical prescriptive tradition and the pietistic (especially Ashkenazi), so-called "ethical," penitential literature. It demonstrates in what ways they are altered by the discursive presence of medicine, and moreover, how medical discourse provides a key to the uniqueness of the Lurianic discourse of action, as it arises from the details of these tikune avonot. Thus, the article shows that in order to comprehend the rise in the place of action in Lurianic Kabbalah, one must acknowledge the oft-concealed contribution of epistemic shifts—such as the assimilation of medical discourse—to changing kabbalistic perceptions and attitudes.
{"title":"Medicalizing Magic and Ethics: Rereading Lurianic Practice","authors":"Assaf Tamari","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Recent years witnessed a growing scholarly awareness to the centrality of practice among early modern kabbalists, and particularly in Lurianic Kabbalah. While the importance of human action to this branch of Safedian Kabbalah has long been recognized, the significance of its \"over-detailed,\" \"bewildering,\" practical discourse to the formation of its meaning has received much less attention. This article reexamines how R. Hayim Vital, Luria's closest disciple, shaped the Lurianic notion of action, through an exploration of one of the most highly technical and formulaic practical loci in his writings: the tikune avonot (sin amendments or penitentials). The article proposes a reading of these practical formulae as a medical, or rather medicalized, discourse, closely related to the contents of Vital's lifelong medical activity—a factor that has been hitherto almost entirely neglected in the Lurianic scholarship. The article analyses these penitentials through the two traditions that have been presented as lying at their basis, the magical prescriptive tradition and the pietistic (especially Ashkenazi), so-called \"ethical,\" penitential literature. It demonstrates in what ways they are altered by the discursive presence of medicine, and moreover, how medical discourse provides a key to the uniqueness of the Lurianic discourse of action, as it arises from the details of these tikune avonot. Thus, the article shows that in order to comprehend the rise in the place of action in Lurianic Kabbalah, one must acknowledge the oft-concealed contribution of epistemic shifts—such as the assimilation of medical discourse—to changing kabbalistic perceptions and attitudes.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"154 1","pages":"434 - 467"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79876889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The Damascus Affair of 1840 has often been interpreted as one the finest hours of modern Jewish solidarity. This essay probes an unexplored legacy of that chain of events, a sense of entitlement to spoils in the form of cultural artifacts, especially Hebrew manuscripts, a Jewish mutation of "informal imperialism" in the Ottoman East. Among others, scholars and institutions associated with the Wissenschaft des Judentums, a transnational but highly occidental republic of letters, became a beneficiary of this migration of primarily Hebrew books from the Jewish Orient. The geographical orbit of this study extends north to Aleppo, to the imperial capital of Istanbul, as well as to both Cairo and Alexandria in Khedival and subsequently British-ruled Egypt. The primary focus, however, is on Damascus, where a communal sense of custodianship regarding local textual treasures failed to materialize over time. Subsequent Zionist efforts directed at the Jews of post-Ottoman Damascus reveals continuity with the above pattern and eventually two important Bibles, the Aleppo Codex and Crown of Damascus, were smuggled out of Syria to Jerusalem. The essay concludes by reflecting on the fortunes of native Shami agency in these changing contexts.
摘要:1840年的大马士革事件经常被解释为现代犹太人团结的最佳时刻之一。这篇文章探讨了这一系列事件中未被探索的遗产，一种以文化文物的形式获得战利品的权利感，尤其是希伯来手稿，这是奥斯曼帝国东部“非正式帝国主义”的犹太人变种。其中，与犹太文学协会(Wissenschaft des Judentums)有关的学者和机构，是一个跨国但高度西方化的文学共和国，成为这次主要来自犹太东方的希伯来书迁移的受益者。这项研究的地理轨道向北延伸到阿勒颇，到帝国首都伊斯坦布尔，以及凯迪瓦尔的开罗和亚历山大，以及后来英国统治的埃及。然而，主要的焦点是大马士革，随着时间的推移，对当地文本宝藏的公共监护意识未能实现。随后，犹太复国主义者针对奥斯曼帝国后大马士革的犹太人所做的努力揭示了上述模式的连续性，最终，两本重要的圣经——《阿勒颇抄本》和《大马士革王冠》——被从叙利亚走私到耶路撒冷。文章最后反思了本土沙米机构在这些变化的背景下的命运。
{"title":"Redeeming Books from the People of the Book: Politics of Rescue from 1840 to the Legacy of a Zionist Mission in Damascus","authors":"Noah S. Gerber","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0026","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Damascus Affair of 1840 has often been interpreted as one the finest hours of modern Jewish solidarity. This essay probes an unexplored legacy of that chain of events, a sense of entitlement to spoils in the form of cultural artifacts, especially Hebrew manuscripts, a Jewish mutation of \"informal imperialism\" in the Ottoman East. Among others, scholars and institutions associated with the Wissenschaft des Judentums, a transnational but highly occidental republic of letters, became a beneficiary of this migration of primarily Hebrew books from the Jewish Orient. The geographical orbit of this study extends north to Aleppo, to the imperial capital of Istanbul, as well as to both Cairo and Alexandria in Khedival and subsequently British-ruled Egypt. The primary focus, however, is on Damascus, where a communal sense of custodianship regarding local textual treasures failed to materialize over time. Subsequent Zionist efforts directed at the Jews of post-Ottoman Damascus reveals continuity with the above pattern and eventually two important Bibles, the Aleppo Codex and Crown of Damascus, were smuggled out of Syria to Jerusalem. The essay concludes by reflecting on the fortunes of native Shami agency in these changing contexts.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"12 1","pages":"520 - 545"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87862624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This ethnobotanical, historical study explores modern Sephardic Jews’ abiding affection for ruta graveolens, rue, or ruda (as it is known in Ladino). Folkloric writing on ruda has emphasized the immutability of Mediterranean Jewish folkways, but ruda has a history that reveals how a plant can further a particular diaspora—not the Jewish diaspora from biblical Israel, nor the Sephardic diaspora from medieval Iberia, but the Jewish diaspora from the modern Ottoman Balkans. Ruda offers a fresh perspective on the caterwaul of change engulfing modern Sephardim, refocusing attention from politics to the intimate, tactile, and gendered.
{"title":"The Queen of Herbs: A Plant’s-Eye View of the Sephardic Diaspora","authors":"S. A. Stein","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This ethnobotanical, historical study explores modern Sephardic Jews’ abiding affection for ruta graveolens, rue, or ruda (as it is known in Ladino). Folkloric writing on ruda has emphasized the immutability of Mediterranean Jewish folkways, but ruda has a history that reveals how a plant can further a particular diaspora—not the Jewish diaspora from biblical Israel, nor the Sephardic diaspora from medieval Iberia, but the Jewish diaspora from the modern Ottoman Balkans. Ruda offers a fresh perspective on the caterwaul of change engulfing modern Sephardim, refocusing attention from politics to the intimate, tactile, and gendered.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"96 1","pages":"119 - 138"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74373914","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article explores the works of four Jewish intellectuals who lived in or near Avignon at the end of the fourteenth century: Isaac de Lattes, Joseph Kimḥi, Eliezer Crescas, and Jacob Salomon. Each of these authors wrote a different type of rabbinic book, shedding light on shared themes and concerns that dominated their city. Their works express—sometimes explicitly, but often implicitly and through their very structure—deep-seated anxieties about the state of Jewish knowledge and communal memory in late medieval Provence. Their concerns with the construction of identity, magic, patronage, and the preservation of knowledge all set the stage for the enigmatic Moses Botarel. Shameless self-promoter and ingenious literary forger, Botarel served as a mirror of the achievements and vulnerabilities of late medieval rabbinic culture in Provence.
{"title":"Authors, Collators, and Forgers: Recovering Rabbinic Culture in Late Medieval Avignon","authors":"Pinchas Roth","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article explores the works of four Jewish intellectuals who lived in or near Avignon at the end of the fourteenth century: Isaac de Lattes, Joseph Kimḥi, Eliezer Crescas, and Jacob Salomon. Each of these authors wrote a different type of rabbinic book, shedding light on shared themes and concerns that dominated their city. Their works express—sometimes explicitly, but often implicitly and through their very structure—deep-seated anxieties about the state of Jewish knowledge and communal memory in late medieval Provence. Their concerns with the construction of identity, magic, patronage, and the preservation of knowledge all set the stage for the enigmatic Moses Botarel. Shameless self-promoter and ingenious literary forger, Botarel served as a mirror of the achievements and vulnerabilities of late medieval rabbinic culture in Provence.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"33 1","pages":"31 - 59"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76812749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Interwar Europe saw a deep yearning for eternity among Jewish and Christian thinkers. This yearning also included a renewed attention to the difficult concepts of immortality and resurrection, which took on moral meaning akin to repentance and repair. Beginning with Karl Löwith’s famous critique of Heidegger’s Being and Time through Rosenzweig’s eternity philosophy, this essay reads the Star of Redemption in concert with the writings of Max Scheler, Hermann Cohen, Leo Baeck, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Martin Buber, and Ernst Cassirer, situating Rosenzweig’s work within an interwar “eternalism,” in which eternity appeared as a worldly concept resisting historical pessimism and the politics of fate. As such, the concept of eternity functioned less as a flight from history and worldly politics than as a conscious critique of historical time and the power of finitude. This restores meaning to Löwith’s assertion that politics as an endeavor of humanity needs the horizon of eternity, while the same horizon of eternity, for Cohen and Rosenzweig, offered also a vision of perpetual peace.
{"title":"A World of Weak Eternities: Modern Jewish Thought, the Political, and the Interwar Quest for Immortality","authors":"A. Biemann","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Interwar Europe saw a deep yearning for eternity among Jewish and Christian thinkers. This yearning also included a renewed attention to the difficult concepts of immortality and resurrection, which took on moral meaning akin to repentance and repair. Beginning with Karl Löwith’s famous critique of Heidegger’s Being and Time through Rosenzweig’s eternity philosophy, this essay reads the Star of Redemption in concert with the writings of Max Scheler, Hermann Cohen, Leo Baeck, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Martin Buber, and Ernst Cassirer, situating Rosenzweig’s work within an interwar “eternalism,” in which eternity appeared as a worldly concept resisting historical pessimism and the politics of fate. As such, the concept of eternity functioned less as a flight from history and worldly politics than as a conscious critique of historical time and the power of finitude. This restores meaning to Löwith’s assertion that politics as an endeavor of humanity needs the horizon of eternity, while the same horizon of eternity, for Cohen and Rosenzweig, offered also a vision of perpetual peace.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"105 1","pages":"164 - 191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84130414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:Since their discovery, the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls have typically been understood to represent “popular” Jewish religious practice that stood in marked contrast with the scholastic rabbinic elite. As a result of this characterization, the usefulness of the bowls for understanding Babylonian Jewish society and the position of the rabbis within it has remained largely unexplored. With the continued publication and study of the bowls, however, the dichotomy between the world of the learned elites and the masses allegedly responsible for the bowls has become increasingly difficult to maintain. This article argues that the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls do not constitute a single corpus; rather, they were produced by different groups of scribes, some of whom consistently employed recognizable Jewish literature from a variety of genres and eschewed non-Jewish invocations. Moreover, we demonstrate how some bowl scribes invoke in an unprecedented manner not only rabbis of the distant past but also local rabbis, the rabbinic class, and even rabbinic academy heads. This evidence suggests that some bowls scribes had greater intellectual and social proximity to the rabbis, rendering a more complicated depiction of Babylonian Jewish society.
{"title":"Babylonian Jewish Society: The Evidence of the Incantation Bowls","authors":"Simcha Gross, Avigail Manekin-Bamberger","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Since their discovery, the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls have typically been understood to represent “popular” Jewish religious practice that stood in marked contrast with the scholastic rabbinic elite. As a result of this characterization, the usefulness of the bowls for understanding Babylonian Jewish society and the position of the rabbis within it has remained largely unexplored. With the continued publication and study of the bowls, however, the dichotomy between the world of the learned elites and the masses allegedly responsible for the bowls has become increasingly difficult to maintain. This article argues that the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic incantation bowls do not constitute a single corpus; rather, they were produced by different groups of scribes, some of whom consistently employed recognizable Jewish literature from a variety of genres and eschewed non-Jewish invocations. Moreover, we demonstrate how some bowl scribes invoke in an unprecedented manner not only rabbis of the distant past but also local rabbis, the rabbinic class, and even rabbinic academy heads. This evidence suggests that some bowls scribes had greater intellectual and social proximity to the rabbis, rendering a more complicated depiction of Babylonian Jewish society.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"18 1","pages":"1 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79130113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article analyzes three sermons given by António Vieira in the church of Santa Engrácia (Lisbon) during the commemoration ceremonies for a host desecration allegedly perpetuated by a Converso in 1630. How could an ardent advocate of the New Christians such as Vieira, who is perceived as the embodiment of early modern Iberian philosemitism, agree to deliver homilies in such a notorious anti-Jewish and anti-Converso hub? Although these sermons were part of a homiletical tradition developed in Santa Engrácia around the profanation of the Eucharist, I will argue that they provide a novel means to understand Vieira’s pro-Converso and pro-Jewish approach, usually understood through his prophetic and mercantilist writings.
{"title":"Host Desecration, Conversos, and “Philosemitism”: Father António Vieira’s Sermons at Santa Engrácia","authors":"Claude B. Stuczynski","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article analyzes three sermons given by António Vieira in the church of Santa Engrácia (Lisbon) during the commemoration ceremonies for a host desecration allegedly perpetuated by a Converso in 1630. How could an ardent advocate of the New Christians such as Vieira, who is perceived as the embodiment of early modern Iberian philosemitism, agree to deliver homilies in such a notorious anti-Jewish and anti-Converso hub? Although these sermons were part of a homiletical tradition developed in Santa Engrácia around the profanation of the Eucharist, I will argue that they provide a novel means to understand Vieira’s pro-Converso and pro-Jewish approach, usually understood through his prophetic and mercantilist writings.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"40 1","pages":"118 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88000110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The story explored in this essay represents an example of an integrated zoharic tale—that is, a series of kabbalistic homilies integrated into an organizing narrative frame. One of the interesting aspects of this genre is the interlacing of narrative and homily. There are zoharic stories in which the narrative layer serves as a frame story and nothing more, meaning there is no significant relationship between the story and the contents of the homilies delivered within it. In other cases, however, a connection between narrative and homiletical layers is forged through the linguistic and thematic affinities between the two textual strata. Only in a handful of cases are these affinities profound and comprehensive, sometimes fundamentally constructing the meaning of the text and constituting an indispensable key for understanding it. This article analyzes a single zoharic story that exists in two variant-versions. Uncovering the relationship between the story’s two versions offers a rare glimpse into the editing and reworking of a zoharic text. We see how the story was transformed from a relatively short and simple narrative into a story rich in literary sophistication and thematic complexity, along with profound connections between narrative and homiletical layers. Studying these processes sheds further light on the literary mechanics of zoharic stories as well as the character of their textual development, yielding, among other things, insights into the composition and editing techniques of the zoharic authors.
{"title":"A Weary Child Grown Insolent: A Case Study of a Reworked Zoharic Story","authors":"Omri Shasha","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The story explored in this essay represents an example of an integrated zoharic tale—that is, a series of kabbalistic homilies integrated into an organizing narrative frame. One of the interesting aspects of this genre is the interlacing of narrative and homily. There are zoharic stories in which the narrative layer serves as a frame story and nothing more, meaning there is no significant relationship between the story and the contents of the homilies delivered within it. In other cases, however, a connection between narrative and homiletical layers is forged through the linguistic and thematic affinities between the two textual strata. Only in a handful of cases are these affinities profound and comprehensive, sometimes fundamentally constructing the meaning of the text and constituting an indispensable key for understanding it. This article analyzes a single zoharic story that exists in two variant-versions. Uncovering the relationship between the story’s two versions offers a rare glimpse into the editing and reworking of a zoharic text. We see how the story was transformed from a relatively short and simple narrative into a story rich in literary sophistication and thematic complexity, along with profound connections between narrative and homiletical layers. Studying these processes sheds further light on the literary mechanics of zoharic stories as well as the character of their textual development, yielding, among other things, insights into the composition and editing techniques of the zoharic authors.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"326 1","pages":"60 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76362893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:When did the first genocide take place in history? In theory, a universal crime transcends time and space. In practice, the moral imagination demands a specific origin story. In this article, I explain how and why Raphael Lemkin chose to locate genocide’s archetypal origins in the early Christian martyrdom at the hands of the ancient Romans. That choice emerged from a dramatic public confrontation with Catholic antisemitism in interwar Poland. Haunted by the charge of Jewish moral parochialism, after the war Lemkin fashioned a cosmopolitan narrative for his discovery of genocide. Today, scholars are consumed by debates about the historical and conceptual relationship between the Holocaust and other genocides. Yet we cannot move forward in that endeavor until we retrieve Lemkin’s Polish Jewish past.
{"title":"The First Genocide: Antisemitism and Universalism in Raphael Lemkin’s Thought","authors":"James Loeffler","doi":"10.1353/jqr.2022.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jqr.2022.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:When did the first genocide take place in history? In theory, a universal crime transcends time and space. In practice, the moral imagination demands a specific origin story. In this article, I explain how and why Raphael Lemkin chose to locate genocide’s archetypal origins in the early Christian martyrdom at the hands of the ancient Romans. That choice emerged from a dramatic public confrontation with Catholic antisemitism in interwar Poland. Haunted by the charge of Jewish moral parochialism, after the war Lemkin fashioned a cosmopolitan narrative for his discovery of genocide. Today, scholars are consumed by debates about the historical and conceptual relationship between the Holocaust and other genocides. Yet we cannot move forward in that endeavor until we retrieve Lemkin’s Polish Jewish past.","PeriodicalId":22606,"journal":{"name":"The Jewish Quarterly Review","volume":"13 1","pages":"139 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90863152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：