Abstract
In recent years, theories of structuralism in anthropology are being re-examined. This article uses structural analysis to create an anthropological interpretation of the Joseph story in the Bible and to evaluate its modes of interpretation and how it influences the formation of Jewish religious practices. The structural interpretation shows how stories serve as models for the process of cultural creation. In the case of Joseph’s story, the narrative creates a mythology but also a recurring operational infrastructure that echoes in different contexts: in ethical actions, in halachic perception, and in the foundation of various practices in Judaism including concealment and removal, covering and disrobing, that appear repeatedly and function as structures that signify and enable change.
Highlights
Return to Structuralism and Its Place in the Holistic Interpretation of Jewish CulturesAs is customary among anthropologists, we will begin with an anecdote from the field
Two Jewish anthropologists who are engaged in the anthropology of Jews and Judaism
I got a number on my arm, but my great-grandson is here and he is making a halaka and we’re holding it now!” I said to him, “Do you know what you do with the hair from the halaka? Anthropologist Yoram Bilu (2003) says you give some of it to the mother and some of it to the grandmother
Summary
Return to Structuralism and Its Place in the Holistic Interpretation of Jewish Cultures. In the study of Jewish culture that we will deal with in this article, there was a large gap between the knowledge of Jewish scholars who were well-versed in the sources but did not know, or did not as a rule avail themselves of anthropological theory, and the anthropologists who had not acquired knowledge and had not developed tools that would allow them to examine. This paper is concerned with how cultures employ their own rules, how the anthropologist defines those rules, and how she or he discovers them It becomes the task of the anthropologist to describe the tools of “the savages” and how they produce a new culture, using what Lévi-Strauss called “the work of the bricoleur” (construction by means of whatever materials are at hand), which is applied by the anthropologists themselves using “the savages’ ideas,” to determine how it is used to provide local identity as well (Lévi-Strauss 1966).. They must be included in the category of all practices of the same type, and instances of this practice must be examined in terms of the broad cultural aspects of the culture being studied. Once again, despite our yearning for a universal cultural theory, it is something we had to relinquish long ago
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