The Soul of Judaism

The Soul of Judaism
Author: Bruce D. Haynes
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2018-08-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1479811238

Explores the full diversity of Black Jews, including bi-racial Jews of both matrilineal and patrilineal descent; adoptees; black converts to Judaism; and Black Hebrews and Israelites, who trace their Jewish roots to Africa and challenge the dominant western paradigm of Jews as white and of European descent. The book showcases the lives of Black Jews, demonstrating that racial ascription has been shaping Jewish selfhood for centuries. It reassesses the boundaries between race and ethnicity, offering insight into how ethnicity can be understood only in relation to racialization and the one-drop rule. Within this context, Black Jewish individuals strive to assert their dual identities and find acceptance within their communities. Putting to rest the notion that Jews are white and the Black Jews are therefore a contradiction, the volume argues that we cannot pigeonhole Black Hebrews and Israelites as exotic, militant, and nationalistic sects outside the boundaries of mainstream Jewish thought and community life. it spurs us to consider the significance of the growing population of self-identified Black Jews and its implications for the future of American Jewry.

The Origin of the Jews

The Origin of the Jews
Author: Steven Weitzman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691191654

The scholarly quest to answer the question of Jewish origins The Jews have one of the longest continuously recorded histories of any people in the world, but what do we actually know about their origins? While many think the answer to this question can be found in the Bible, others look to archaeology or genetics. Some skeptics have even sought to debunk the very idea that the Jews have a common origin. Steven Weitzman takes a learned and lively look at what we know—or think we know—about where the Jews came from, when they arose, and how they came to be. He sheds new light on the assumptions and biases of those seeking answers—and the religious and political agendas that have made finding answers so elusive. Introducing many approaches and theories, The Origin of the Jews brings needed clarity and historical context to this enduring and divisive topic.

Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encyclopaedia Britannica
Author: Hugh Chisholm
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1090
Release: 1910
Genre: Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ISBN:

This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.

Judaism in Contemporary Thought

Judaism in Contemporary Thought
Author: Agata Bielik-Robson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2014-04-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317811615

The central aim of this collection is to trace the presence of Jewish tradition in contemporary philosophy. This presence is, on the one hand, undeniable, manifesting itself in manifold allusions and influences – on the other hand, difficult to define, rarely referring to openly revealed Judaic sources. Following the recent tradition of Lévinas and Derrida, this book tentatively refers to this mode of presence in terms of "traces of Judaism" and the contributors grapple with the following questions: What are these traces and how can we track them down? Is there such a thing as "Jewish difference" that truly makes a difference in philosophy? And if so, how can we define it? The additional working hypothesis, accepted by some and challenged by other contributors, is that Jewish thought draws, explicitly or implicitly, on three main concepts of Jewish theology, creation, revelation and redemption. If this is the case, then the specificity of the Jewish contribution to modern philosophy and the theoretical humanities should be found in – sometimes open, sometimes hidden – fidelity to these three categories. Offering a new understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology, this book is an important contribution to the fields of Theology, Philosophy and Jewish Studies.

Religion Or Ethnicity?

Religion Or Ethnicity?
Author: Zvi Y. Gitelman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2009
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Can someone be considered Jewish if he or she never goes to synagogue, doesn't keep kosher, and for whom the only connection to his or her ancestral past is attending an annual Passover seder? In Religion or Ethnicity? fifteen leading scholars trace the evolution of Jewish identity. The book examines Judaism from the Greco-Roman age, through medieval times, modern western and eastern Europe, to today. Jewish identity has been defined as an ethnicity, a nation, a culture, and even a race. Religion or Ethnicity? questions what it means to be Jewish. The contributors show how the Jewish people have evolved over time in different ethnic, religious, and political movements. In his closing essay, Gitelman questions the viability of secular Jewishness outside Israel but suggests that the continued interest in exploring the relationship between Judaism's secular and religious forms will keep the heritage alive for generations to come.

Jewish Experiences across the Americas

Jewish Experiences across the Americas
Author: Katalin Franciska Rac
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2023-08-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1683403975

Latin American Jewish Studies Association Best Edited Volume This volume explores the local specificities and global forces that shaped Jewish experiences in the Americas across five centuries. Featuring a range of case studies by scholars from the United States, Brazil, Europe, and Israel, it explores the culturally, religiously, and politically diverse lives of Jewish minorities in the Western Hemisphere. The chapters are organized chronologically and trace four global forces: the western expansion of early modern European empires, Jewish networks across and beyond empires, migration, and Jewish activism and participation in international ideological movements. The volume weaves together into one narrative the histories of communities and individuals separated by time and space, such as the descendants of Portuguese converts, Moroccan immigrants to Brazil, and U.S.-based creators of Yiddish movies. Through its transnational focus and close attention paid to local circumstances, this volume offers new insights into the multicultural pasts of the Americas’ Jewish populations and of the different regions that make up North, Central, and South America. Contributors: Lenny A. Ureña Valerio | Elisa Kriza | Raanan Rein | Adriana M. Brodsky | Lucas de Mattos Moura Fernandes | Katalin Franciska Rac | Zachary M Baker | Neil Weijer | Hilit Surowitz-Israel | Isabel Rosa Gritti | Tamar Herzog | Jose C Moya | Sandra McGee Deutsch | Dana Rabin Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Augustine and the Jews

Augustine and the Jews
Author: Paula Fredriksen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2010-10-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300166281

In Augustine and the Jews, Fredriksen draws us into the life, times, and thought of Augustine of Hippo (396–430). Focusing on the period of astounding creativity that led to his new understanding of Paul and to his great classic, The Confessions, she shows how Augustine’s struggle to read the Bible led him to a new theological vision, one that countered the anti-Judaism not only of his Manichaean opponents but also of his own church. The Christian Empire, Augustine held, was right to ban paganism and to coerce heretics. But the source of ancient Jewish scripture and current Jewish practice, he argued, was the very same as that of the New Testament and of the church—namely, God himself. Accordingly, he urged, Jews were to be left alone. Conceived as a vividly original way to defend Christian ideas about Jesus and about the Old Testament, Augustine’s theological innovation survived the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and it ultimately served to protect Jewish lives against the brutality of medieval crusades. Augustine and the Jews sheds new light on the origins of Christian anti-Semitism and, through Augustine, opens a path toward better understanding between two of the world’s great religions.

The Jewish Body

The Jewish Body
Author: Melvin Konner
Publisher: Schocken
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009-01-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 080524266X

A history of the Jewish people from bris to burial, from “muscle Jews” to nose jobs. Melvin Konner, a renowned doctor and anthropologist, takes the measure of the “Jewish body,” considering sex, circumcision, menstruation, and even those most elusive and controversial of microscopic markers–Jewish genes. But this is not only a book that examines the human body through the prism of Jewish culture. Konner looks as well at the views of Jewish physiology held by non-Jews, and the way those views seeped into Jewish thought. He describes in detail the origins of the first nose job, and he writes about the Nazi ideology that categorized Jews as a public health menace on par with rats or germs. A work of grand historical and philosophical sweep, The Jewish Body discusses the subtle relationship between the Jewish conception of the physical body and the Jewish conception of a bodiless God. It is a book about the relationship between a land–Israel–and the bodily sense not merely of individuals but of a people. As Konner describes, a renewed focus on the value of physical strength helped generate the creation of a Jewish homeland, and continued in the wake of it. With deep insight and great originality, Konner gives us nothing less than an anatomical history of the Jewish people. Part of the Jewish Encounter series

When Christians Were Jews

When Christians Were Jews
Author: Paula Fredriksen
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-10-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300240740

A compelling account of Christianity’s Jewish beginnings, from one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient religion How did a group of charismatic, apocalyptic Jewish missionaries, working to prepare their world for the impending realization of God's promises to Israel, end up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church? Committed to Jesus’s prophecy—“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”—they were, in their own eyes, history's last generation. But in history's eyes, they became the first Christians. In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers this question by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community. As her account arcs from this group’s hopeful celebration of Passover with Jesus, through their bitter controversies that fragmented the movement’s midcentury missions, to the city’s fiery end in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, she brings this vibrant apostolic community to life. Fredriksen offers a vivid portrait both of this temple-centered messianic movement and of the bedrock convictions that animated and sustained it.