Future Redemption Research Articles

Вчення р. Цві Гірша Шапіри про владу цадиків та їхню роль у наближенні месіанського визволення єврейського народу

The second tzadik of Mukachevo Tzvi Hirsh Shapira is a little-studied figure among the Hasidic leaders of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. However, his teaching had a considerable influence on the development of modern Hasidic thought. Unlike the founders of Hasidism, the attention of this rebbe was directed mainly to the interpretation of the sacred law and religious ritual. At the same time, almost all aspects of worship are reinterpreted in his works as a tool for understanding the history of the Jewish People and the existing system of government in the Hasidic community. According to R. Tzvi Hirsh, the unlimited power of a tzadik over his followers is determined by his ability to independently fulfill all the obligations of the community of believers before God. The worship of a perfect righteous man maintains proper order in the higher worlds. But, on the other hand, the longevity of a leader depends on the piety of the community and faith of believers in their teacher. There are clear parallels between the tzadik’s influence on the divine pleroma and the followers’ influence on rebbe. Our author combined this kind of reflection with ideas of future liberation of the Jewish People. According to the views of the second tzadik of Mukachevo, we are living in the age when it is possible to avoid the pre-Messianic suffering prophesied by the Bible and medieval mystics. Today any tragic events have ceased to be a necessary prerequisite for the victory of the kingdom of goodness and justice. But the realization of this opportunity depends both on the selfless service of the tzadiks and on the proper efforts of the community. As a result of this efforts the life of the great tzadik – messiah son of Joseph, who, according to Talmudic stories, must die for the salvation of the Jewish people, will be saved. Thus, the total commitment to power of current righteous leaders ensures a future redemption in the best way. The teachings of R. Tzvi Hirsh had a great influence on the views of his famous son R. Chaim Elazar Shapira.

On-demand ride-sourcing markets with cryptocurrency-based fare-reward scheme

Cryptocurrency-based fare-reward scheme has been emerging from on-demand ride-sourcing platforms. The reward scheme provides each passenger with some units of cryptocurrency as rewards for use of ride service. The passengers can redeem the rewards for various redemption options. The redemption options offer the passengers economic benefits to offset a portion of costs of using ride services. In this way, the economic benefits serve as incentives for the passengers to repeatedly use ride services, which leads to increase in passenger demand for the platforms. From a passenger perspective, the reward scheme has a distinctive feature in that economic benefits can fluctuate according to changes in price of cryptocurrency in the future. Therefore, the passengers perceive the benefits differently based on their own risk preference and expectation of future price changes. It creates a challenge for the platforms because the optimal decisions for ride services vary by the value that the passengers place for their cryptocurrency rewards. To tackle this challenge, this paper analyzes the impacts of the reward scheme on on-demand ride-sourcing markets. The analysis is done with a mathematical model where a ride-sourcing platform makes decisions for trip fare, vehicle fleet size and cryptocurrency reward size. The reward decision is available under the assumption that the platform secures as many units of cryptocurrency as it rewards to passengers at their equilibrium price level. The model defines passengers’ perceived value of cryptocurrency rewards in terms of risk aversion level and expectation of future price growth of cryptocurrency. Afterwards, we investigate equilibrium and optimal properties of monopoly, social-optimum and second-best optimum ride-sourcing markets. Our analysis gives several key insights on the markets. First, the markets always locate at normal regime where interactions between passenger demand and vehicle supply for ride services converges to a stable equilibrium state. Second, this study shows that a ride-sourcing platform would make a decision to reward if passengers expect larger economic benefits from future redemption of cryptocurrency rewards than their current value. Third, it is shown that the quality of ride services would get worse because average pick-up time for passengers and drivers gets longer with more passenger retention. Fourth, this paper finds that the markets have more room to improve profit or social welfare as passengers expect larger speculative gains from reward redemption.

The Elder Testament: Canon Theology Trinity

The Elder Testament: Canon Theology Trinity

Posttraumatic Healing in Caesar's Things

Abstract Caesar's Things, the unpublished religious novel by Zelda Fitzgerald, is considered a product of her mental disorder, yet it is rarely analyzed with the tools available through psychoanalytic theory. The often-remarked incoherence of the text becomes more legible when read in terms of psychological trauma instead of the vague idea of madness. At the literal center of the novel in chapter 4 are traces of an unrepresented trauma, which doubles and is screened by an explicitly described trauma in chapter 1, and whose repercussions affect the main character Janno throughout the novel. The narrative form itself exhibits features associated with posttraumatic experience, such as the centrality of death, the splitting of the self, the distortion of temporality, and the shattering of witness seen in failures of memory and language. Yet far from merely recording psychosis, the narrative frame consciously establishes a stabilizing architecture for these posttraumatic traits, adapting a clear structure derived from biblical motifs and decentering the psychiatrists represented in the manuscript. In Caesar's Things, Zelda Fitzgerald represents an unresolved wound to the psyche but indicates hope of healing in a future redemption.

Final Words, Final Shots: Kurosawa, Bortko and the Conclusion of Dostoevsky’s <em>Idiot</em>

In their article "Final Words, Final Shots: Kurosawa, Bortko, and the Conclusion of Dostoevsky’s Idiot" Robert O. Efird and Saera Yoon discuss film adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novel. Both in his homeland and abroad, the major works of Fyodor Dostoevsky have largely made for disappointing film adaptations. This article examines the cultural diversity and aesthetic motivations underlying two very different adaptations of his novel Idiot, with particular attention to the concluding scenes. Both Akira Kurosawa and Vladimir Bortko follow the novelist's lead by hinting at some form of hope and future redemption amidst the tragedy but, for different reasons, they both fail to capture the rich ambiguity and creative ambivalence of Dostoevsky's final words. As the authors argue, the novelist's fluid dialogic aesthetic tends to disappear in visual adaptations, yet paradoxically thrives when released into new contexts less dependent on fidelity to his words. These two adaptations, despite their relative success, demonstrate the inherent difficulty of cinematizing the dynamics of Dostoevsky's art.

Leaving Home: Yemeni Students Discuss Study Abroad Migration

The decision to migrate for educational purposes is often stressful, but for those leaving countries embroiled in major warring conflicts, the decision may be overshadowed by feelings of sadness, anger and loss. And for many, the ostensible purpose of migration - education, is overshadowed by the desire or need to leave for economic and security reasons. In such situations, migrants hope they can power through those negative feelings and emerge successful, and with familial honor intact. The narrative weapon used to defeat negative feelings are stories of pride and resourcefulness. In this study Yemeni students studying at a university in Guangdong Province, China were interviewed concerning their decisions to leave Yemen. Participants were between 20 and 30 years old: all were male. Most hailed from Aden or Sana’a or areas adjacent to those major cities and all aligned themselves with pre-1990 South Yemen, as described by their fathers. Narrative analysis revealed a striking similarity: stories of hopeful future redemption through economic opportunities found abroad. Indeed, participants revealed a consuming desire for economic success - an obligation that was energized by feelings of pride in being trusted with custodial duties of familial honor. The results are discussed qualitatively in terms of categorical content and episodic form. This study is limited in that it only includes Yemeni males aligned with pre-1990 South Yemen, and those who hail from Sana’a, Aden or nearby urban centers. Future studies should include women, and those who encompass wider political views and reside in rural areas.

Adorno on Kierkegaard on Love for the Dead

This article employs Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia to clarify Adorno’s reading of Kierkegaard. Adorno finds in Kierkegaard’s view of love for the dead both the consummate reified fetish of our instrumentalizing exchange society, and the only unmutilated relation left to us in our otherwise thoroughly damaged lives. Adorno’s negative dialectics emerges as the melancholy science resulting from a disfigured mourning’s present impossibility, upholding a material moral motive rooted in the unmournability of historical catastrophe. Yet this very melancholia also proves to be the last unlikely refuge of hope—in a Kierkegaardian sense—for a future redemption.

Héctor Manjarrez’s Uncertainty; or, Politics Without Dogma

Héctor Manjarrez’s fictional worlds are populated by characters who are uncertain about their place in the Mexican Student Movement of 1968 both before and after the massacre at Tlatelolco on October 2. In contrast to the certainty that underscores the Mexican state’s paternalistic prescriptions, exclusions, and violence in the mid-twentieth century, this essay analyzes how Manjarrez deploys uncertainty in order to restore the potential for a democratizing politics. Through an analysis of París desaparece (2014), Pasaban en silencio nuestros dioses (1987), as well as the short story, “Johnny,” from Acto propiciatorio (1970), this essay explores Manjarrez’s attempt to construct secularized narratives of 1968 that resist defining the Tlatelolco massacre as a necessary sacrifice for future redemption. Building from that violent defeat, Manjarrez sheds the disillusionment of his generation and mobilizes literature to search for new political alternatives. Thus the literary becomes an important site from which to think and narrate a radically democratic politics for the left by making room for the contradictions and everyday indecisions of human beings whose uncertainty exceeds their dogmatic desires and programs.

Conditioning on future exposure to define study cohorts can induce bias: the case of low-dose acetylsalicylic acid and risk of major bleeding.

BackgroundA principle of cohort studies is that cohort membership is defined by current rather than future exposure information. Pharmacoepidemiologic studies using existing databases are vulnerable to violation of this principle. We evaluated the impact of using data on future redemption of prescriptions to determine cohort membership, motivated by a published example seeking to emulate a “per-protocol” association between continuous versus never use of low-dose acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) and major bleeding (e.g., cerebral hemorrhage or gastrointestinal bleeding).Materials and methodsDanish medical registry data from 2004 to 2011 were used to construct two analytic cohorts. In Cohort 1, we used information about future redemption of low-dose ASA prescriptions to identify cohorts of continuous and never-ASA users. In Cohort 2, we identified ASA initiators and non-initiators using only contemporaneous data and censored follow-up for changes in use over time. We implemented propensity score-matched Poisson regression to evaluate associations between ASA use and major bleeding and estimated adjusted incidence rate differences (IRDs) per 1,000 person-years and ratios (IRRs) overall and stratified by time since initiation.ResultsAmong >6 million eligible Danish adults, we identified 403,693 low-dose ASA initiators (Cohort 2), of whom 189,150 were defined as continuous users (Cohort 1). Overall, IRDs and IRRs were similar across cohorts. However, the IRD for major bleeding in the first 90 days was substantially larger in Cohort 1 (IRD=25 per 1,000 person-years) compared with Cohort 2 (IRD=10 per 1,000 person-years).ConclusionUsing future medication redemption data to define baseline cohorts violates basic epidemiologic principles. Compared with an approach using only contemporaneous data to define cohorts, the approach based on future redemption data generated a substantially higher short-term association between low-dose ASA use and major bleeding on the absolute, but not the relative, scale possibly due to selection and immortal time biases.

Narrating Violence, Narrating Self: Exodus and Collective Identity in Early Rabbinic Literature

Narrating Violence, Narrating Self: Exodus and Collective Identity in Early Rabbinic Literature

The Ten Principles of Karaite Faith in a Seventeenth-Century Hebrew Poem from Troki

The ten principles of Karaite faith were originally compiled by medieval Byzantine Karaite scholars to sum up the basics of the Karaite Jewish creed. Early modern Karaites wrote poetic interpretations on the principles. This article provides an analysis and an English translation of a seventeenth-century Hebrew poem by the Lithuanian Karaite, Yehuda ben Aharon. In this didactic poem, Yehuda ben Aharon discusses the essence of divinity and the status of the People of Israel, the heavenly origin of the Torah, and future redemption. The popularity of Karaite commentaries and poems on the principles during the early modern period shows that dogma―and how to understand it correctly―had become central for the theological considerations of Karaite scholars. The source for this attentiveness is traced to the Byzantine Karaite literature written on the principles and to the treatment of the Maimonidean principles in late medieval rabbinic literature.

Historical Books: 1 Chronicles–2 Maccabees

Historical Books1 Chronicles–2 Maccabees Todd R. Hanneken 942. [Chronicles] Eugene H. Merrill, "The Theology of the 'Chronicler': What Difference Does It Make?" JETS 59 (2016) 691-700. The thesis of M.'s paper is that the unknown author or compiler of the Book of Chronicles, who lived most likely at the end of the 5th cent. b.c.e., wrote from the vantage point of postexilic Judah (Yehud), a part of the Persian Empire. His interpretation of the history of his people varied right from the start from that of the composer of Samuel–Kings, the difference between them reflecting the trauma of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 b.c.e. and the ensuing deportation of the bulk of Judah's population to Babylonia. The small community in which the Chronicler lived was burdened with fear and hopeless despair. The book, however, offers that community hope of revival and future redemption. Evidence of that hope is the very last verse of 2 Chronicles 36 which quotes from the decree of Cyrus allowing the Jews to return to their homeland. As Cyrus had been God's instrument to deliver the exiles from Babylon, so a Cyrus yet to come would effect an eschatological deliverance. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 943. [1 Chronicles 1–9, etc.] Andrew Tobolowsky, "Reading Genesis through Chronicles: The Creation of the Sons of Jacob," JAJ 7 (2016) 138-69. Scholars are increasingly aware of the dynamic nature of the interaction between the nine-chapter long genealogy that begins the Book of Chronicles (1 Chronicles 1–9) and its source material. However, little attention has been paid hitherto to the role this interaction might have played in the creation of some key biblical ideas, particularly in the "eponymous imagination" of the tribes as literally the sons of Jacob. By way of comparison with scholarly approaches to the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and an investigation into the ramifications for biblical studies of ethnic theory and historical memory on the fluidity of ethnicity and memory over time, T. seeks to reassess the dynamic power of the Chronicles genealogy as an ethnic charter for the elites of Persian-era Yehud. A focus on the distinctive imagination of Israel in the crucial narratives in the Book of Genesis, as compared with those elsewhere in the Primary History, and on the contribution of the Chronicles genealogy to the re-definition of these narratives, allows us to address the Bible's dependence upon the lens the Chronicles genealogy imposes upon it. [Adapted from published abstract—C.T.B.] 944. [2 Chronicles 29–31] David A. Glatt-Gilad, "Echoes of Solomon and Nehemiah: Hezekiah's Cultic Reforms in the Book of Chronicles," in Cana Nerman (ed.), From Author to Copyist: Essays on the Composition, Redaction, and Transmission of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Zipi Talshir (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015). Pp. xxiv + 390. $62.50. ISBN 978-1-57506-350-8, 189-200. G.-G. examines the literary analogy between Hezekiah and his two Temple-building ancestors David and Solomon in 2 Chronicles in order to portray the greatness of Hezekiah. G.-G. identifies 12 specific links between the Chronicler's account of Hezekiah's rededication and David and Solomon's building of the Temple: (1) Hezekiah's direct reference to the sorry state of the cult during the time of his immediate predecessor (2 Chr 29:6-7); (2) Hezekiah's use of the expression "I intend," stressing his dedication to the service of [End Page 296] God (2 Chr 29:10); (3) the ritual purification of the Levites as first step in preparing the Temple (2 Chr 29:14-15, 34); (4) the description of Hezekiah as carrying out the cultic legacy of David (2 Chr 35:4, 14); (5) the prostration of the entire assembly as the sacrifices are consumed (2 Chr 29:25-27, 30); (6) the large number of sacrifices at Hezekiah's rededication ceremonies (2 Chr 29:28-30); (7) the successful completion of service and rededication of the Temple (2 Chr 29:35); (8) the addition of seven days of rejoicing...

Worlds at War, Nations in Song: Dialogic Imagination and Moral Vision in the Hymns of the Book of Revelation by Kendra Haloviak Valentine

Reviewed by: Worlds at War, Nations in Song: Dialogic Imagination and Moral Vision in the Hymns of the Book of Revelation by Kendra Haloviak Valentine Russell Morton kendra haloviak valentine, Worlds at War, Nations in Song: Dialogic Imagination and Moral Vision in the Hymns of the Book of Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016). Pp x + 196. Paper. $23. Originally submitted in 2002 as a Ph.D. dissertation to the Graduate Theological Union, Valentine’s book is a literary-critical analysis of the hymns of Revelation. She employs the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin as her methodological paradigm. Her interest in utilizing this method was informed by her Adventist heritage and the abuse of that heritage by David Koresh and the Mount Carmel Community before and during their disastrous 1993 standoff with federal authorities in Waco, Texas (chap. 1, Introduction). In light of Koresh’s ties to Adventist theology, V. expresses a desire “to read the book of Revelation in a way that is sensitive to how the text means, and thus proved an alternative to monologic readings that claim to uncover what the text means” (p. 13; emphasis original). She finds Bakhtin’s dialogic theories to be helpful points of departure for this enterprise. In chap. 2, V. applies Bakhtin’s understanding of genre to the hymns of Revelation 4–5. According to Bakhtin, genres are more than literary devices; they are “utterances” that anticipate future “utterances.” “The author and audience form some type of relationship” (p. 27). Thus, all genres anticipate future dialogues with future audiences. John’s use of the apocalyptic genre, informed by the book’s self-understanding as prophecy, meant that John’s vision was a “prophetic apocalypse.” It is as expressions of a “prophetic apocalyptic” perspective that Revelation’s hymns impact different eras. For example, when John alluded to Isa 6:3 LXX in Rev 4:8, he not only employed an earlier text; he also adopted a way of thinking about humanity’s relationship to the God of Israel. The result is a multidirectional dialogue, where “the transcendent realm takes on the ideology of prophetic throne room encounters” (p. 51). In chap. 3, V. explores the temporal and spatial perspectives of Revelation’s hymns. These perspectives, referred to as “chronotopes,” are “temporal and spatial relationships expressed in literature” (p. 87). Specific attention is given to the hymns of Revelation 7–16. The hymns of chap. 7, for example, reflect time and space “in flux” (p. 111). The redeemed are saved by the Lamb. They also await future redemption. This chronotopic perspective of salvation within time combined with eschatological hope also figures in the hymns of chaps. 11, 12, and 15, making Revelation’s dual outlook unique among apocalypses. [End Page 160] In chap. 4, V. discusses the hymns of Rev 19:1–10. Do these hymns, which express delight in God’s violent judgment, reflect a moral vision? The four hymns, like those of chaps. 11–16, are chonotopically complex. This vision is just because it anticipates God’s new relationship to humanity (p. 178). This discussion is hampered by its failure to interact with the work of Loren T. Stuckenbruck and J. Nelson Kraybill, who note how, despite its violent imagery, Revelation’s understanding of divine victory, in fact, eschews human violence. V. does, however, seek an affirmation of how Revelation’s hymns function as a moral witness in her postscript (pp. 180–88), which narrates how local Seventh-day Adventist congregations employed Revelation’s hymns during ordination services of women to the clergy. In light of Adventist opposition to women’s ordination, the use of Revelation’s hymns in this setting is given as evidence of the Apocalypse’s continuing moral and prophetic impact. Valentine’s use of Bakhtin’s theories provides an interesting perspective for reading Revelation. It can free readers from both a literalist understanding of the text, and a rigid historicism. Her plea for reading the text as interactive dialogue is welcome and necessary. These observations, however, do not mitigate the work’s numerous inadequacies. First, one may ask if her working hypothesis is overly deterministic? Do genres in and of themselves create dialogue? More problematic is the fact...

From Splendour and Admiration to Ruin and Condescension: Western Travellers to Iran from the Safavids to the Qajars

This essay charts Western perceptions of Iran between 1600 and 1900 through the prism of ruins. It distinguishes three periods: the reign of the Safavids, when Iran's many ruins hardly undermined the admiration Europeans expressed for the country's vibrant present; the three-quarters of a century following the fall of the Safavids in 1722, when the few who still visited saw in the many ruins they encountered the foreordained fate of a decadent civilisation; and the period after 1800, when Europeans, returning to Iran as self-confident representatives of rising and expansive nations, condescendingly described these same ruins as a metaphor for Iranian stagnation and their own superiority. But it also discerns an older strain in views of the country, especially among nineteenth-century visitors, a patronising optimism about Iranians and their presumed preternatural intellect and creativity, giving hope for future redemption under Western tutelage.

Tz’dakah, Tikkun Olam , and the Educational Pitfalls of Loose Talk

Tz’dakah, Tikkun Olam, and the Educational Pitfalls of Loose Talk Earl Schwartz (bio) Jill Jacobs contends, “There may be no other term that is simultaneously as beloved and as reviled in Jewish progressive circles . . .”1 Arnold Jacob Wolf has bemoaned its “capture” by “liberal political circles,”2 while Byron Sherwin describes its popularity as “promiscuous.”3 The term is tikkun olam, and it has taken its place in a long line of expressions associated with social progress that have risen to prominence among Jewish educators, only to be replaced, in time, by yet another catchphrase. In the nineteenth century, terms such as “elevation” and “prophetic Judaism” served this purpose. More recently, a growing concern for “authenticity” has spurred a return to Hebrew as a source of such terminology. Current usage of tikkun olam as a rubric for positive social involvement exemplifies this pattern.4 Criticism of this usage is increasing, but comparison with a similar appropriation of the term tz’dakah a few decades earlier demonstrates a larger process at work. A short review of recent reconfigurations of these expressions follows, along with a discussion of the problems such terms pose for Jewish educators. Shifting Definitions of Tz’dakah and Tikkun Olam Tz’dakah In the Tanakh: One of the connotations of the word tz’dakah in the Tanakh is “receiving one’s due.” It is this connotation that gave rise to use of the term in rabbinic [End Page 3] sources to mean support due to poor people, though it already may be indicated in the latest layers of Tanakh.5 However, the associated obligation was also clearly implied in the biblical designation of leket (“gleanings”), pei·ah (“corners,” i.e., of a field being harvested), shikh’ḥah (“produce left in the field”), and olelet (“misshapen grape clusters”) as the property of the poor, in as much as God, as true proprietor of the land, had designated poor people as owners of a portion of its produce. In Early Rabbinic Sources: During the period of the Mishnah, the term tz’dakah came to specify monetary support of poor people.6 Characterizing this support as “due” was in keeping with biblical precedent, and though unlike crops “left” in a field it would seem that tz’dakah taken from one’s pocket would necessarily be “given,” early sources had an enduring effect on subsequent thinking regarding tz’dakah in two important respects: (1) tz’dakah continued to refer specifically to financial support of poor people, and (2) it continued to be commonly characterized as the property of the poor, even before it had been “given.” Neither the Tanakh nor the Mishnah speaks of “giving” leket, pei·ah, shikh’ḥah, and olelet to poor people, insofar as these are already theirs.7 The would-be landowner’s claim to the crop comes after satisfaction of this encumbrance. Counting contributions for other purposes as tz’dakah, no matter how worthy the cause, was in halakhic terms stealing from the poor, akin to “putting a basket under falling grapes.”8 Recent Usage: Despite tz’dakah having long denoted financial support of poor people, by the 1970s it was commonly being used more broadly to signify “charitable giving, philanthropy,”9 or even “all manner of good deeds.”10 American tax law played a role in the transformation of the term, as did Jewish fundraisers eager to capitalize on its provenance. The appropriation of the charity box, the pushke—commonly associated with tz’dakah—by the JNF epitomizes the process. Distinctions frequently drawn in this period between “Christian charity” and the “justice” of tz’dakah had little influence on this trend, typically going only so far as to contrast the obligatory nature of “justice” with the voluntary character of “charity.” [End Page 4] Tikkun (Ha-)olam: In the Tanakh: Many biblical passages foretell a world made right through God’s reassertion of sovereignty, but none uses the terms tikkun or tikkun olam, or describes a perfected world as a human accomplishment. People are called to act in accordance with God’s ultimate designs, but they neither author nor effect them. In Early Rabbinic Sources: The rabbinic movement sustained the expectation of future redemption...

'Conquest by War' in Jewish Law: The Beautiful Woman Case

War is usually portrayed in Talmudic sources as a result of national or racial disputes between different groups. According to the Talmuds, wars are God’s will. Some wars are based on religious norms and are called “God’s wars,” or “a war dictated by religious commandments,” in which a person has a religious obligation to fight the enemy. Other wars are characterized in the Talmuds as Divine chaos, the Divine consequence of man’s sins. Even the future redemption is described in the Talmuds as the chaos of the Day of Judgment. The nature of war therefore entails conquest of the enemy’s land, destruction of his military potential and religious establishment - his military power and central administration, together with the destruction of his temples - and plundering his property and capturing the inhabitants to be used as slaves.

A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States , and: The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse (review)

A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States. By Stephen Mihm. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. 457. Cloth, $29.95.)The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse. By Jane Kamensky. (New York: Viking Press, 2008. Pp. xvii. 442. Cloth, $29.95.)Reviewed by Cathy MaisonOur picture of the early republic's economic culture customarily features elements of a nation in the making: a unifying print culture and buoyant participatory polity, an elite willing to advocate an opportunistic economy, revived and expanding foreign trade, and a national government that promoted internal development and financial innovation. Stephen Mihm and Jane Kamensky join a group of more skeptical scholars who insist that we see a more contested, fragile economic culture. In these riveting studies, counterfeiting and wild paper speculation denned the identities of certain Americans, and these people helped define the outer limits of what kind of economic culture would be possible and tolerated. There were few obstacles in early America, once the strictures of oldstyle republican virtue and imperial political authority gave way to the emergence of a raucous era in which greed and deception bubbled up regularly from the soup of widespread entrepreneurial ambition. Both studies also keenly appreciate not only how illicit and deceptive economies worked in the early republic, but also how Americans created a culture that praised risk-taking and was reluctant to condemn its greatest economic outlaws.In Mihm's account, the illegality of counterfeiting was outweighed by Americans' boundless entrepreneurial energies and constant shortage of specie. Given the country's weak institutional authority and the colonial legacy of provincially issued paper money, the latter of which Mihm addresses only briefly, Americans of the early republic granted papermoney-making authority to a burgeoning number of private banks that had been chartered by states. Although most of these banks had minimal assets on hand to back up their loans, governments gave them full privileges to print notes with impunity and make sketchy promises about their future redemption. In short order, the flood of paper money washed beyond the walls of banks; improvement companies, insurance firms, mechanics' associations, and all manner of entrepreneurs printed a mind-boggling variety of currency denominations in colors and designs that baffled credit-hungry Americans. Among the practitioners of this money-making craft in post-Revolutionary America was an underworld of counterfeiters.One of Mihm's most important contributions in this deftly told story is his portrait of the blurred territory - ideologically and in practice - separating legitimate banking and forbidden counterfeiting. In the early republic's Janus-faced currency economy, legitimately chartered private banks issued mountains of paper money without providing adequate sinking funds, while floods of counterfeit paper money entered mainstream circulation, where many Americans happily fueled their entrepreneurial energies with the fake notes. Both kinds of currency rested on lies about how value is created and relied on a confidence game of extraordinary proportions. Yet despite many bank failures, periodic financial panics, and destroyed reputations of borrowers and lenders alike, private bank notes and counterfeit paper mingled in the pockets of countless Americans for decades.Counterfeiters, of course, had no need for sinking funds or bank buildings. In Mihm's fascinating narrative, we see sophisticated criminal networks of engravers, printers, distributors, and shovers who hid out in Canada or on the fringes of early national settlements, then trekked with migrants into the Ohio Valley during the 1820s and soon infiltrated eastern cities. Stealing the names of defunct private banks, or fabricating a plausible-sounding bank name to print on their fake money, counterfeiters flourished in their nests of illicit activity until private vigilantes hired by conservative bankers hunted them down. …

Planting Christian Trees in Jewish Soil

This chapter shows how Matthew has done away with the Jewish messiah who is to redeem Israel from the Nations. In his place, he has provided a Christian messiah who is to redeem the disadvantaged and the gentiles from the Jewish leaders. The chapter takes note of Jewish rituals that look backward in order to look forward. The Passover seder rituals revolve around two poles. The first relates the Israelite experience of past slavery in Egypt. The second concerns the experience of Israel's future redemption from current persecutions. The chapter discusses Jesus' entry into Jerusalem in the midrashic contexts of the Ark's coming to Jerusalem and Sukkot. It also discusses that Matthew has painted the scenarios of gradual fulfillment of prophetic signs in the pre-Easter world to lead to a sudden eruption in the appearance of the messiah in some as yet undefined reality in the post-Easter world.Keywords: Christian messiah; Jewish messiah; Matthew; Sukkot

Reflections from a damaged discipline: Adorno, religious radio, and the critique of historical reason

The Psychological Techniques of Martin Luther Thomas' Radio Addresses (Adorno, 2000) echoes Adorno's analogous critique of the culture industry by detecting an ideological effect, prior to any given content, intrinsic to the form of radio religion. Notwithstanding the text's narrowness, I argue that Adorno's analysis of Thomas' ‘fait accompli technique’—presenting claims as previously established certainties—was both typical of his work and insightful for issues in cultural criticism. First, it refused subjectivist reductions of sociological effects to false consciousness. Second, it warned that historicism runs the risk of repeating the fait accompli when it treats what exists empirically as the only possible reality, or when it treats empirical givens as representatives of a future redemption. I argue that Adorno's dismissal of religious radio was consistent with his critique of positivism, and that the Thomas study models an historicist methodology that refuses, against its own logic, to reduce otherness to its own categories.

A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, the Exile and the Torah

A New Heart and a New Soul: Ezekiel, Exile and Torah, by Risa Levitt Kohn. JSOTSup 358. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 148. $85.00 (cloth). ISBN 0826460577. Risa Levitt Kohn's interest in Ezekiel's message to exiles, during one of most traumatic periods in Israelite history (p. 1), brought her to study systematically lexical and thematic similarities between Ezekiel and P, and Ezekiel and D/Dtr. She poses questions regarding nature of relationship between Ezekiel and abovementioned sources. By considering implications of these literary connections on evolution of Torah, Levitt Kohn is able to place Ezekiel within context of Israelite history, theology, and literature. Levitt Kohn joins a gigantic controversy in biblical scholarship, with J. Wellhausen and Y. Kaufmann as major speakers. In a thorough introduction (ch. 2), she examines Wellhausen's thesis as well as counterthesis regarding evolution of Pentateuch and Ezekiel's contribution to this process. Studying idiomatic similarities between language of Ezekiel and P, on one hand, and D/Dtr phrases, on other, Levitt Kohn establishes (once again) improbability of assumption that Ezekiel preceded both and D/Dtr sources. She thus joins Kaufmann's school in this debate. In her study, Levitt Kohn strives to release Ezekiel from burden laid on him by Wellhausen, who considered prophet to be no less than the original spiritual of Judaism (thus Levitt Kohn [p. 110]). Levitt Kohn presents four major arguments regarding relationship between Ezekiel and Torah (ch. 6). First, though she argues that Ezekiel does not know entire Torah (p. 117), prophet is certainly aware of both and D/Dtr sources in their written form. Yet Ezekiel is not working furiously to preserve these traditions for posterity . . . Ezekiel is not safeguarding Israelite tradition from extinction (p. 111). Rather, uses both traditions, separately and in combination, as sources for his own pronouncements; he questions these traditions, comments upon them, and, ultimately, reformulates them (p. 111). Second, Levitt Kohn refutes moderate path that explains connections between Ezekiel and as resulting from common priestly concerns, ideology, vocabulary, or heritage in general. She rather emphasizes direct literary allusions to P in Ezekiel (p. 112, emphasis original). Third, Levitt Kohn illuminates Ezekiel's independence with respect to his sources and explains his position in accordance with his main motives in using them. The legal standards of both and D serve Ezekiel, on one hand, as theological arguments to explain 587 B.C.E. disaster and, on other, as potential standards for his contemporaries' improvement or as means to a future redemption. Yet, when neither nor D serves his purpose, Ezekiel paves his own new way, which oftentimes integrates both schools' ideologies (pp. 113-14). Finally, through a comparison with exilic and postexilic literary compositions, Levitt Kohn places Ezekiel at roots of a process of synthesizing pentateuchal literary sources, exemplified years later in redactor's work on Torah, in Ezra-Nehemiah, and in Chronicles. By articulating Ezekiel's combination of contradictory theologies of and D, then, Levitt Kohn gives prophet primacy as precursor of Torah redactor(s). Thus, she argues that Ezekiel anticipated restoration authors and redactors in constructing an inclusive ideology that intentionally combined rival streams of thought known to us as and D. Hence, while denying Wellhausen's appointment of Ezekiel as architect of Judaism, Levitt Kohn nevertheless awards prophet another major role: Ezekiel established an integrated ideology that went beyond preexilic separate Priestly and Deuteronomistic schools of thought. …