Jewish Groups Research Articles

The Questioning Jew and the Jewish Question

The Questioning Jew and the Jewish Question James A. Diamond The recent Pew Research Center's independent comprehensive study of American Jewry is a shocking wake‐up call. It has stimulated much needed debate and breast beating within the Jewish community in response to the bleak portrait its findings paint for the future survival of Jews and Judaism. Here I will single out only one statistic that is characteristic of the study as a whole which speaks for itself in regards to the pessimistic demographic prospects it indicates—the rate of intermarriage among American Jews is 58 percent, with the percentage escalating to an astounding 71 percent among non‐Orthodox Jews. I am not a social scientist nor a demographer but a scholar of Jewish thought and history. It is out of that expertise, as well as a lifelong existential commitment to Judaism that I offer here a philosophically optimistic response to the study by identifying something elusive about Jews that polls, surveys, and sociological studies can never hope to reveal. What does it mean to be Jewish and what is it that sustains my Jewishness and my deeply rooted loyalty to, and membership in, the Jewish community? These appear to be curious questions to those outside the community who may easily identify themselves ethnically, nationally, culturally, or even religiously, most often with definitive results. However, the questions of what constitutes identity in the case of Jews and what amounts to Jewishness are acutely perplexing. The “Brother Daniel” case, adjudicated in the earlier years of the nascent State of Israel, highlights this perplexity. It involved the question of whether the right granted every Jew to claim Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return extends to a “naturally born” Jew who converted to Christianity. A strict application of orthodox religious law would have substantiated the convert's Jewishness, since it posits the rule once a Jew always a Jew. However, the application of secular modern conceptions of nationality and peoplehood by the Supreme Court of Israel found conversion a betrayal of cultural and national heritage and therefore a categorical denial of Jewishness. In other words, Israeli civil law conflicts with Jewish law on the fundamental issue of Jewish identity. Attempts at reducing Jewishness to a single marker, or cluster of characteristics that all, or even most, Jews would acknowledge sharing and that would provide the critical ingredients for constructing an organic cohesive community of any kind, all break down at some point. When the protagonist in a James Salter novel finds himself among a group of Jews, he reflects on what particularly accounts for membership in this group—“they were a people, they somehow recognized and understood each other, even as strangers. They carried it in their blood, a thing you could not know.” Can we at least approximate this “thing” which cannot be known? In an age when the vast majority of those considering themselves Jewish do not subscribe to the tenets, rituals, or laws of Judaism, religion alone fails to account for the confident and deeply felt assertion, “I am Jewish”, that cuts across the variegated spectrum of those claiming membership in this group. Indeed, Martin Buber, one of the most eminent of modern Jewish philosophers, considered religious commandments and ritual inimical to any authentic relationship with the divine. Whether adjudged as a remnant fossil by the likes of historians such as Arnold Toynbee, or claimed to be superseded by Christian theologians, or philosophically relegated to a curious anachronism by no less a thinker than Hegel (Immanuel Kant another great eighteenth century philosopher called for Judaism's euthanization), or nearly physically annihilated by racial anti‐semitism in the twentieth century, something inherent in Jews and Judaism continues to defy the “logic” of history, philosophy, genetics, and theology in its resolute perpetuation and endurance. Even some vaguely held theological abstraction that reduces Judaism to monotheism does not suffice when both Christianity and Islam are themselves popularly acknowledged as monotheistic religions. Furthermore, many of the most outspoken contemporary atheists are, and would consider themselves, Jewish. The late Christopher Hitchens, one of the most articulate voices for a principled godlessness, suggested, somewhat facetiously yet bearing a certain truth, that Jews are genetically...

Identification of Genes Promoting Skin Youthfulness by Genome-Wide Association Study

To identify genes that promote facial skin youthfulness (SY), a genome-wide association study on an Ashkenazi Jewish discovery group (n=428) was performed using Affymetrix 6.0 Single-Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) Array. After SNP quality controls, 901,470 SNPs remained for analysis. The eigenstrat method showed no stratification. Cases and controls were identified by global facial skin aging severity including intrinsic and extrinsic parameters. Linear regression adjusted for age and gender, with no significant differences in smoking history, body mass index, menopausal status, or personal or family history of centenarians. Six SNPs met the Bonferroni threshold with Pallele<10−8; two of these six had Pgenotype<10−8. Quantitative trait loci mapping confirmed linkage disequilibrium. The six SNPs were interrogated by MassARRAY in a replication group (n=436) with confirmation of rs6975107, an intronic region of KCND2 (potassium voltage-gated channel, Shal-related family member 2) (Pgenotype=0.023). A second replication group (n=371) confirmed rs318125, downstream of DIAPH2 (diaphanous homolog 2 (Drosophila)) (Pallele=0.010, Pgenotype=0.002) and rs7616661, downstream of EDEM1 (ER degradation enhancer, mannosidase α-like 1) (Pgenotype=0.042). DIAPH2 has been associated with premature ovarian insufficiency, an aging phenotype in humans. EDEM1 associates with lifespan in animal models, although not humans. KCND2 is expressed in human skin, but has not been associated with aging. These genes represent new candidate genes to study the molecular basis of healthy skin aging.

Bukharan Jews and the Dynamics of Global Judaism by Alanna E. Cooper (review)

Alanna E. Cooper, and the Dynamics of Global Judaism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. 336 pp.As anthropologist Alanna Cooper notes in her book, and the Dynamics of Global Judaism, Jewish studies long rested on the presumption of global Jewish unity, or what she calls Jewish Peoplehood. Contemporary anthropology, however, deconstructs such assumptions, asking how, when, and why identity emerges from (or is submerged in) lived experiences of difference. Cooper combines these perspectives, analyzing two centuries of historical and ethnographic material to show how a small population of Central Asian instantiates general processes of global articulation and local differentiation. In other words, she describes how Bukharan produce both Jewish Peoplehood and Jewish difference.Cooper also uses the case of to critique two dominant models that Jewish studies has mobilized for thinking about the problem of identity despite the lived experience of difference: center-periphery and edah, the biblical Hebrew term that Cooper understands as ethnic group. Whether they were Hegelians like Heinrich Graetz or social historians like Simon Dubnow, the founders of the late 19th century Science of the Jews (Wissenschaftdes Judentums) tended to resolve the problem of Jewish identity despite diversity by invoking historically variable Jewish to which scattered Jewish populations deferred, particularly in matters of religious orthodoxy (25-27). Cooper sees the power of this kind of narrative-and its pitfalls-behind the handful of academic texts that treat Central Asian Jews. Many of these texts depict as socially isolated and religiously ignorant until the arrival of an emissary from Ottoman Palestine at some point in the 18th century (35-36). In these stories, the emissary settles among the Jews, teaches a grateful population how to practice their Judaism, and reconnects the community to the wider Jewish world (35-36). But Cooper notes that the sources for this neat narrative are actually quite messy. There may have been many emissaries, suggesting that had long been connected to the wider Jewish world. Those emissaries may have encountered a population deeply invested in local forms of Judaism, forms whose authenticity was hardly in doubt for its practitioners. And these emissaries' authority to reshape local Jewish practice may have been contested (38-56). By tracing out the gap between these extant academic accounts and their very complicated source materials, Cooper suggests that a simple center and periphery model may mask the real work of continuously creating Jewish Peoplehood. This work, she argues, happens in the messy details-in the power struggles over and arguments about what constitutes appropriate Jewishness.These stories about Jewish centers and peripheries style Jewishness as an unevenly possessed religious identity; in them, some people are more Jewish or at least authentically Jewish than others. In contrast, the edah model closely mirrors anthropological conceptions of culture (121). In an edah paradigm, Jewish groups are not or less Jewish, but are differently Jewish, with expressive practices that are irreducibly tied to their bodies and geographical locations. Cooper writes: Like other edot [plural for edah], are popularly portrayed as a Jewish diaspora group with colorful cultural attributes that are static and enduring (123). While noting that such a model gives voice and weight to marginal Jewish populations, Cooper shows that it too elides some of the important work of identity construction-namely the politics behind the creation and recognition of certain Jewish populations as sui generis cultural communities. To illustrate this, Cooper describes the invention of the term Bukharan to designate certain Central Asian Jews. …

Making the case for directed organ donation to registered donors in Israel

BackgroundThe number of deceased donor organ donations in Israel is lower than average when compared to other Western World countries. To address the organ gap, the 2008 Organ Transplantation Law provides new interventions, including important incentives to donors (and their families). The most notable of these was granting priority to registered donors (i.e., people on the waiting list who signed a donor card). The current study presents the normative arguments as well as the first documentation of public attitudes in Israel towards another possible incentive – allowing individuals to influence the allocation of their organs by permitting them to designate, to direct their donated organs [DD] to other registered donors, instead of the current allocation based primarily on medical criteria.MethodsA structured phone survey of 695 Israelis was conducted during Feb-March 2012. The sample is representative of the Israeli society in terms of age mix and gender, with adequate representation of the Arab and ultra-orthodox Jewish subgroups.ResultsAmong all Israelis, 68% stated a willingness to donate their organs, but only 16% reported to have already signed a donor card. 85% stated their interest in receiving an organ if the need arises. Overall, 64% of respondents felt that DD to a group of others who have registered as donors is justified, and the rate was remarkably higher in the Arab group (84%), and lower in the religious and ultraorthodox Jewish groups (52% and 50% respectively).ConclusionsThe majority of the Israeli public supports organ donation and its proven benefits. Thus, organ recovery policy should be grounded in a strong communitarian strategy as we all stand to benefit from cooperation. However, current legislation and practices are modeled on individual disposition based on an opt-in legal framework. DD allows personal choices of to-be donors that might interfere with social interests, principles, and values such as equal access to care (i.e. organs) or justice. However, based on the result of this survey, the conceptual case of DD to other registered donors should be viewed more favorably (while the details should be addressed in future analyses), as DD is not expected to be rejected by the public at the outset. From a normative perspective, it is possible to support an allocation scheme that allows DD to other registered donors, where individual preferences that promote just sharing of the burden (donating organs) as well as the benefits (receiving an organ) of transplantation medicine are respected. Yet, DD to other registered donors should be understood and portrayed as a transition step towards a more communitarian model, and as a signal of solidarity by sharing organs as a public good rather than as an exercise of a quasi-property right.

The power(lessness) of Czechoslovak Jews during the Second World War

The article evaluates the perceptions of Jewish power among the Czechoslovak exiles in Britain during the Second World War. The analysis documents the apparent persistence of prejudices against the Jewish minority among the Czechoslovak non-Jewish authorities that eventually formed the government-in-exile (1940–5), under the presidency of Edvard Beneš (1884–1948). The Czechoslovak exiles believed that the Jewish minority, in particular the Jewish nationalists (Zionists), had vehement supporters within Jewish circles in Western countries. Furthermore, they believed that the Jewish press played a significant role in the formation of public opinion in Britain and especially in the United States. In the early 1940s, the government-in-exile embarked on a policy of national homogenisation of post-war Czechoslovakia and was anxious to give concessions to the political representatives of the ethnic minority groups in exile, in particular the Germans, Hungarians and Jews. Yet the concerns about Jewish influence in liberal democracies granted several political concessions to the Jewish minority, in particular the appointment of a Zionist representative, Arnošt Frischer (1887–1954), to the exile parliament. This notwithstanding, by analysing the internal situation among the Czechoslovak Jewish groups in London, the article documents the internal weakness and disputes among the Jewish groups which gradually revealed the utter powerlessness of the Jewish exiles during their negotiations with the Czechoslovak authorities. The Jewish groups (the assimilationists, Orthodox and secular nationalists) were divided by mutual as well as internal disputes which were not concealed from outside observers and were utilised by the exile government. What emerges from the analysis is an impression of quarrelling groups that could not agree on any of the fundamental issues and whose only power was the ability to court the support of Western Jewish groups, which were perceived by the non-Jewish exiles as influential actors in US and British society.

Folklore and History

Folklore and History Chava Weissler (bio) As a folklorist, I study the expressive culture—rituals, prayers, music, and crafts—of ordinary people (in my case, ordinary Jews), rather than the intellectual or artistic creations of cultural elites—rabbis, philosophers, and classical composers. In practice, of course, these are not distinct categories, and I have often found that my most productive material comes from those who mediate between religious elites and “ordinary Jews.” Throughout my career, I have moved back and forth between ethnographic and historical research. My dissertation research was an ethnographic study of the havurah movement, groups of Jews who come together for fellowship, study, and prayer. I followed this with a historical study of the piety of eighteenth-century Central and Eastern European Jewish women. My present project, once again based in ethnography, is a study of the Jewish Renewal movement in North America. My study focuses on the organization now called ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, with forty-four affiliated communities, primarily in North America, and administrative offices in Philadelphia. It has its roots in the teachings of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a former Lubavitch Hasid and emissary of the Lubavitcher rebbe. Reb Zalman, as he is called, is still the “rebbe” of the Jewish Renewal movement. More specifically, I seek to understand the varieties of Judaism created in this movement through a study of the expressive culture of participants in ALEPH—their rituals, art, dance, and worship—as well as their writings. Members of ALEPH often quote the words of Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank, describing their movement as “Hasidism meets feminism.” I am particularly interested in the way women and feminism figure in Jewish Renewal. I’ll address each of the discussion questions in turn. 1. How does the history we choose to engage with shape the ethno-graphic tale we tell, and what type of historical consciousness do we bring to the work? While Jewish Renewal can be described as a “neo-Hasidic” movement, it can also be understood as part of the contemporary drive toward varieties of religion that stress intense experience and “spiritual practice.” Indeed, Jewish Renewal can be set into both of these historical frameworks: the history of Kabbalah and Hasidism and the history of American religion. [End Page 9] What difference does it make if I tell this as a Jewish tale or as an American tale? The study of Jewish Renewal started out for me very much as a Jewish story. I got interested in the topic because of my previous research on Jewish women’s piety in eighteenth-century Europe; I discovered kabbalistic motifs in writings for and by women. Especially in the 1980s and 1990s, when I was doing this research, scholars thought of Kabbalah as an elite mysticism, exclusively the province of learned Jewish men. I was among a cohort of scholars asking whether women and non-learned men could know Kabbalah, and how they learned it. In the course of that research, I encountered a literature in Yiddish that popularized Kabbalah. Although women were still excluded from learned circles of Kabbalah study (and the inner circles of the emergent Hasidic movement), they read and used this literature in the vernacular to gain some knowledge of kabbalistic ideas and symbols, and to use these as a resource to shape their own prayers and practices.1 Searching for a new research topic after I completed that study, I looked around, saw news about the pop star Madonna and her interest in the Kabbalah Centre,2 as well as other varieties of popular Kabbalah, with a whole literature in the vernacular—English, in this case—explicating Kabbalistic ideas. Jewish Renewal, which draws on Hasidism and Kabbalah, intrigued me as a site to investigate what I came to call contemporary, “vernacular Kabbalah.” What are the questions that emerge from this approach? First, they suggest a traditional “philological” methodology: What are the textual sources used by members of Jewish Renewal, and how are they interpreted or changed? How do contemporary works about Kabbalah and Hasidism in English compare with the earlier Yiddish works? Further, who has access to kabbalitic materials and concepts, how do they have access, and who has the...

Mordecai M. Kaplan’s proposal of Judaism’s renewal. Reconstrution or deconstruction?

Amidst all trends present nowadays, the latest and the most controversial appears to be the Jewish Reconstructionism, which has been conceived by Mordecai M. Kaplan. The starting point for Reconstructionist involves actual reconstruction of traditional Judaism, which takes place based on ideas taken from social and natural sciences. The performed analyses permit to state (but not to conclude decisively), that Jewish Reconstructionism is a specific Jewish theory, a way of living for a certain group of Jews, but it is not a Judaism. The Kaplan's system, which represents a result of an intentional reconstruction and revaluation of traditional Judaism, becomes in fact a deconstruction and a devaluation of Judaism.

A Multiplicity of Washing Rites and a Multiplicity of Experiences

If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience.

Quotations from Scripture and the Compilation of Hebrews in an Oral World

ABSTRACTThis study interacts with the work of Pieter Botha by presenting four scenarios from my own research on the use of Septuagint quotations by Philo of Alexandria and by the unknown author of Hebrews. The first scenario draws attention to the fusion of oral and written traditions from the Septuagint Pentateuch as perceived in Philo's Vita Mosis. The second scenario refers to Philo's Therapeutae which is used as an example of an ascetic Jewish group who studied and contemplated on the ‘Scriptures’. The third scenario tables an example of a first century C.E. catena-template for catechetical studies in an oral world—as found in 4 Maccabees. The fourth scenario shifts the emphasis to my research on the Septuagint Vorlage of the explicit quotations in Hebrews. It attempts to indicate, on the one hand, how the compilation of this document is based on a well-planned and well-thought through list of Scriptural passages, detectable in an underlying thread of ‘promises’. On the other hand, it hopes to illustrate the complexity of an integrated process that fused oral and written traditions. The study concludes that the author lives in both an oral and a written world and draws from both during the compilation of his document. Hebrews represents a document at an advanced stage in the history of first century early Christianity and fuses oral and written traditions. But this is not just a random design. It is a well-planned and well-thought through document.

From Generation to Generation: The Genetics of Jewish Populations

From Generation to Generation:The Genetics of Jewish Populations Noah A. Rosenberg and Steven P. Weitzman Keywords Ashkenazi Jews, Cohen Modal Haplotype, Population Genetics, Samaritans, Y Chromosome The year 2014 marks the 35th anniversary of two noteworthy papers, one in this journal and the other in the American Journal of Human Genetics, posing the same famous question: are the different Jewish populations from around Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa more genetically similar to each other, or are they more similar to the local non-Jewish populations in the regions where they were historically located? Both studies gathered blood group and protein variation data from a variety of Jewish and non-Jewish populations, compiling significant "classical marker" data sets commensurate with the standard for human population genetic studies at the time. Writing in the American Journal of Human Genetics, Karlin et al. (1979) reported, "We found the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Iraqi Jewish populations to be consistently close in genetic constitution and distant from all the other populations," concluding that, in fact, the Jewish populations were generally more genetically similar to each other. In Human Biology, Carmelli and Cavalli-Sforza (1979) wrote, "A wide scatter of the Jews was observed among clusters of non-Jews," finding that, on the contrary, the Jewish groups were largely more similar to the local non-Jewish populations. While these studies used some of the best statistics and data available at the time, they highlight the dramatic changes that have taken place in human population genetics research over the last 35 years. The field has proceeded through a succession of new types of genetic markers, the size of classical data sets has been spectacularly superseded, and the effort to understand new and larger collections of markers has provided many novel methods for the statistical toolbox of population genetics. Further, it has become clear that levels of similarity in human populations are sufficient that the resolution of population relationships among closely related groups often requires both an amount of data and a computational capacity that would have been unimaginable to researchers working in 1979. [End Page 817] What has not changed, however, is the interest in questions about the genetics of Jewish populations—in fact, it has intensified. From the viewpoint of population genetics, the history of the various Jewish populations provides a scenario capable of inspiring and testing new population genetic methods, a rare case in which multiple groups with a component of shared identity and descent have lived over a large geographic range for a long period of time in a region of the world with a deep written record. From the viewpoint of scholarly fields that treat Jewish culture and history as the object of investigation, the use of genetics as an approach for understanding Jewish populations and their history taps into an intrinsic Jewish cultural interest in origins and migrations, a recognition of nonidentical but overlapping senses of Jewish group membership—from cultural to religious to genealogical—and the centrality to Jewish culture of the inheritance of Jewishness within families, as reflected in the title phrase, "from generation to generation." Seeking to advance and understand trends in the genetics of Jewish populations, this special issue focuses on Jewish population genetics, setting new developments in relation not only to past population genetic studies but also in the broader context of Jewish studies scholarship. The special issue builds upon a course of the same name that we held jointly in the biology and Jewish studies programs at Stanford University in the autumn of 2012, featuring the issue’s contributors as guest lecturers. Human population genetics is, in part, a form of historical endeavor, potentially illuminating the effects of social practices such as endogamy and conversion, the history of population relationships, and the magnitude, direction, and timing of migration events. At the same time, the field can be viewed as historically situated, with its underlying assumptions, its expression in language, and its cultural reverberations and social implications subject to research in their own right. As a collection of articles spanning multiple forms of inquiry, this special issue aims to both present and contextualize current research, discussing its cultural environment and the challenges that lie ahead...

Kanada? The Canadian Jewish News and the Memory of the Holocaust in Canada

After the Second World War, Canada remained inaccessible to European victims of Nazism and made clear its position that the issue of survivors ‘was not Canada’s problem’. Nevertheless, after extensive lobbying by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) and other groups, Canada’s immigration policies began to ease, resulting in the greatest influx of Jewish immigrants to the country since 1911. Although the initial impact of the survivors was limited, The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) – the most influential vehicle for expressing the concerns of the Canadian Jewish community – created an awareness of the Holocaust’s long-term implications on Canadian and international Jewry by easing strained relations and bridging the gap between the established and survivor communities. If not for the pioneering achievement of the CJN and the Holocaust survivors who politicised important issues and made them resonate with the wider public, Canada’s memory and recognition of the Holocaust, legislation on hate crime, and school curriculum would be lacking.

“Justified dependency”: Effects of perceived stability of social hierarchy and level of system justification on help-seeking behavior of low-status group members

Recent research on intergroup helping has shown that receiving and seeking help can be a way in which groups assert or challenge the existing hierarchy. The present research, consisting of two studies conducted in the Arab–Jewish Israeli context, examined how the manipulated perceived stability of social hierarchy and dispositional levels of system justification (SJ) influence the willingness of Arab participants to seek assistance from a Jewish helper (representing low- and high-status groups in Israel, respectively). As expected, findings indicate that Arab participants who perceive the social hierarchy as just and stable, show a significantly higher preference to seek dependency-oriented help from Jews. On the other hand, those characterized as low SJs report overall low willingness to seek help from Jewish group members, but show some readiness to seek autonomy-oriented help when status relations between Arabs and Jews are perceived as stable. Theoretical and practical implications for intergroup helping relations are discussed.

The Intellectual Foundations of Jewish National Terrorism: Avraham Stern and the Lehi

The Lehi, a fringe Jewish paramilitary group created in 1940, conducted a concerted terrorist campaign against the British authorities in Palestine during and after World War II, proclaiming that its activities were undertaken in the name of national liberation. Lehi was founded and led by Avraham Stern, also known as “Yair.” Scholar, intellectual, and poet, Stern developed a fundamental ideology of national and messianic Jewish terrorism, which became the ideological basis not only for the work of the Lehi, but also for later Jewish terrorist activism. The present article examines the intellectual foundations of Lehi terrorism and how its intellectual and ideological principles influenced Lehi's most controversial activities—internal terrorism and the execution of its own members. In conclusion, the author traces the impact of Stern's intellectual legacy on later generations of Jewish terrorists.

Is the Concept of Conscience Found in Judaism?

Is the Concept of Conscience Found in Judaism?1 Gilbert S. Rosenthal (bio) Introduction Is the concept of conscience found in Judaism? If so, what are its parameters and implications in Jewish law and ethics? This is, in my view, an important and timely issue—one that has really been given short shrift by scholars of Judaism. There are those who claim that conscience is irrelevant because all that matters is what the Torah requires and what halakhah—Jewish law—demands of Jews. But there are others who insist that the ideal and goal of Jewish law is to nurture and develop in humans a sense of conscience. Some scholars maintain that in Judaism, all ethics and laws are theonomous—divinely inspired and ordained. And since conscience is an autonomous source of behavior, it is irrelevant. Others insist that heteronymous ethics, defined and legislated by society, are what matter—not autonomous ethics that are so personal and subjective.2 In this study, I propose to examine the sources that seem to prefigure the notion of conscience in the Bible, rabbinic literature, and medieval Jewish writings, and I shall endeavor to draw from the sources meaningful lessons relevant to a modern understanding of the role of conscience in Jewish individual and group behavior. What Is Conscience? I should start by defining conscience and citing several important and instructive scholarly reflections on this concept. The word comes from the [End Page 3] two Latin words that mean “knowing with.” Conscience is the authentic awareness of the self that makes decisions with regard to values. Its chief concerns are good and evil. It represents the totality of the human’s cognitive and judging faculties. It is generally thought of in a negative sense: it is the faculty that reminds us, by stimulating feelings of guilt and shame, that we are doing wrong. The troubled heart is a sign of conscience. Paul seems to have used the Greek term syneidesis to denote conscience.3 In the thirteenth century, Aquinas thought of conscience as “that which witnesses or binds, incites and also accuses, stings, or rebukes,” and he argued that “it must bind even in error and have all authority.”4 Sigmund Freud suggested that conscience is the product of what he called the superego. He defined conscience as that which gives our impulses “direction towards what is right,”5 further writing that “conscience is that internal perception of the rejection of a particular wish operating within us.” He connected it to the savage’s attitude to taboo and a “fearful sense of guilt.” It is “the higher side of human life; it incarnates ideals, moral decencies, as well as spiritual currents we’ve absorbed into ourselves,” and it both judges and directs humans.6 Lawrence Kohlberg suggested that conscience stands at the final stage of moral development; what is right is defined by the decisions of conscience: “At heart, these are the universal principles of justice, regarding reciprocity and equality of human rights and respect for the dignity of human beings as individual persons.”7 Erik Erikson wrote that conscience is the development from a child’s reaction to an adult’s autonomous values of reality and ideals and what selection to make of authoritative statements. That, he suggested, is autonomy in the moral decision-making process.8 Milton Konvitz argued that “each man has a heart, but each man is not a law unto himself.” He wrote, “The heart of conscience is not a voice that speaks out of man; it is a hearing agency given to man so that he may hear the voice of God.” He defines two aspects of conscience: the judicial aspect, which passes judgment on acts committed; and the directive aspect, which guides the person before the action has taken place. Konvitz adds that it is the role of legislation to nurture conscience, and the genius of Judaism was to translate conscience into legal principles.9 Martin Buber described conscience in these words: “Conscience is that court within the soul which concerns itself with a distinction between the right and the wrong, and proceeds against that which has been determined as wrong.”10 Abraham [End Page 4] Joshua...

Book Review: God, Jews and the Media: Religion and Israel’s Media, by Yoel Cohen

God, Jews and the Media: Religion and Israel's Media. Yoel Cohen. New York: Routledge, 2012. 258 pp. $135.00 hbk.This is a book to have on hand if you are trying to fathom the media situation (and even the political situation) in Israel. There is some serious reading here, but with enough anecdotes spread about to lighten the load.The author wants to show how the Jewish religion and the Jews of Israel have been influenced by the media age. He also wants to show how the media in Israel have been influenced by religion, which turns out to be a more interesting topic overall. Everyone, of course, has been influenced in one way or another by the media, but Cohen's book shows how religion has a strong influence on Israel's media and through the media (where he says most Israelis get much of their information about religious groups) on Israeli society in general. This influence may be growing. There may be a loss of reli- gious identity in the Western democracies (particularly in Europe), but the author sees an actual growth of religion in much of the world, especially in Israel. A huge majority of Israel's Jews feel at least some attachment to Jewish tradition. More and more young Jews identify themselves with the most conservative Jewish group, the Haredim.Cohen suggests God, Israel, and lsrael's media are intertwined, especially in the minds of the Haredim (or Pious Ones). In the preface, he not so subtly suggests that these most conservative religious elements in Israel will go to any lengths to use the media to promote a religion-based society despite the hopes of the nation's founders for a secular society. Cohen uses the tale of a highly promoted media interview of God by Israel's Chief Rabbi (a political appointee, he notes!) that fails to come off when God does not show up. Cohen is showing some authorial courage here as conservative reaction to much milder comments on religion have brought harassment and even physical attacks.The book focuses on the influence of the Haredim. Cohen justifies this by pointing out that with only 9% of the population, the Haredim get 43% of media coverage devoted to religion. Religious stories with a political connection get especially heavy coverage. Cohen suggests that the ultraorthodox Haredim are media stars because their distinctive black garb gives them visibility and their political clout gives them significant power in Israeli society. This is the reverse of the situation in the United States, he points out, where mainstream religions get most of the media coverage.As in the United States, the general population in Israel gets knowledge of its minority religious groups, in this case the Haredim, from the general media. But these ultraconservative Jews see the general media and even democracy itself in conflict with the values of the Torah and deal with them only grudgingly. …

Female Arab Students’ Experience of Acculturation and Cultural Diversity upon Accessing Higher Education in the Northern Galilee-Israel

This qualitative study addresses the issue of the cultural transition of Arab women who for the first time leave their secluded villages and traditional society in the Northern Galilee to access Western-style Israeli institutions of higher education located in the region in which they will study in Hebrew, their second language. This study uses several models of acculturation in order to better understand these women’s experience of acculturation, cultural diversity, ethnic identity and at times discrimination as they come into contact with students belonging to a diversity of Arab and Jewish ethnic groups. Content analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with 42 female Arab students of Druze, Muslim and Christian origin, revealed that parental and/or husband support, lower college admission requirements, and the geographical proximity of the colleges to the villages allowed gave these women the opportunity to access higher education without compromising their traditional values of modesty and virginity. Hebrew language proficiency, seldom spoken in the villages, and consequent academic self-efficacy perception were for these women key factors for academic success and integration in the dominant Israeli socio-economic structures. Lack of tolerance for cultural diversity, discrimination, and inter-groups conflict were at times, reported not only between Arab and Jewish but also between Druze and Muslim students and/or their instructors. Factors mentioned to be reducing cultural shock and acculturative stress were the presence of other female Arab students from the same or neighboring towns studying in the college and the going back and forth between cultures as these women returned every day back home to their villages. Exposed to other values and traditions these women sorted the values they cherished in their own and in other cultures while maintaining a strong sense of cultural identity.

Return of Secondary Genomic Findings vs Patient Autonomy

Return of Secondary Genomic Findings vs Patient Autonomy

The Archive, the Students, and the Emotions of a German Israeli Intellectual

Gershom Scholem. Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913-1919. Edited and translated by Anthony David Skinner. Cambridge Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. 374.Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem. Der Briefwechsel. Edited by Marie Luise Knott and David Heredia. Berlin: Judischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010. Pp. 693.Jacob Taubes. Der Preis des Messianismus: Briefe von Jacob Taubes an Gershom Scholem und andere Materialien. Edited by Elettra Stimilli. Wurzburg: Konighausen and Neumann, 2006. Pp. 179.Morton Smith and Gershom Scholem. Correspondence, 1945-1982. Edited by Guy G. Stroumsa. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. xxiv + 206.When the Berlin-born Jewish adolescent Gerhard Arthur Scholem decided in 1917 to change his name to Gershom Shalom, his intention was to express two major changes in his life. First, by omitting his father's name, which was given to him as a middle name, he turned his back on the German Jewish bourgeois culture that his father represented. Second, by changing his remaining names into Hebrew names, he turned his face toward the future: toward the revival of the Jewish people and its culture, first in Berlin and later in Palestine. The meaning of the biblical forename Gershom (from the root ger, sojourner) was surely known to Scholem. Moses and Tsiporah named their son Gershom to mark Moses's status as a stranger in a foreign land (Ex 2.22). name symbolized for Scholem his own journey toward what he now came to understand as home - Zion.This mostly inner journey is described in detail in Scholem's early German diaries, which are published in two volumes.1 In the English edition of the diaries, Anthony David Skinner compiled and translated parts of the German original, allowing the English reader a glance into the process of Gerhard's transformation into Gershom. Skinner makes the diaries of young Scholem available to the English reader for the first time. is an important contribution. Nonetheless, as Skinner himself states in his introduction (p. 7), this book is an abridgment of the two German volumes, which renders the reading sometimes confusing; veiy often this reader was compelled to return to the original in order to receive a more complete picture.The reader of the diaries encounters a young and rather confused searching for a group to which he could belong among the many options that the German Jewish world offered around the time of the First World War. Questions of identity and the wish to belong to a social or political Jewish group of the time are a central motif throughout the book. am not a German Jew, Gerhard states on October 15, 1917. don't know if I ever was one, but now I speak with absolute certainty: I am not one (Lamentations of Youth, p. 186). But with which group could young Gerhard identify, if not with German Jewiy?His first attempt at belonging, at the age of sixteen, was to Jewish Orthodoxy, but this romance lasted only the first five months of 1914. After experiencing difficulties observing Jewish law, he left the youth group of Agudat Israel. Summing up this shift in his diaiy, he wrote: It wasn't an easy decision and it caused quite a stir, but I'm now sailing full speed ahead in the direction of Martin Buber. I've also become a (p. 26).Gerhard's socialism cannot be separated from his relationship to his elder brother Werner, who was deeply involved in the movement.2 For a time, under the influence of Werner, Gerhard took part in the activities of the socialist party in Berlin. But the rivalry between Zionism and Socialism alienated him. Hearing from Werner about the anti-Semitic tendencies within the Socialist Party, he came to his own conclusion in December 1914: This is definitive proof for the correctness of Zionist teachings (p. 45). The most significant event in Gerhard's life during these years was undoubtedly the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914. …

Teaching about the Holocaust in English schools: challenges and possibilities

This article presents some principal findings from the first comprehensive national study of Holocaust education in England, which was conducted by the University of London’s Institute of Education. More than 2000 teachers provided insight into their teaching about the Holocaust, including their perceptions, perspectives and practice. This article identifies what appears to be some of the key challenges and concerns teachers encounter when teaching this emotive and complex subject. The findings suggest that teachers both value and recognise the importance of teaching about the Holocaust to young people. However, more than 80% of teachers declared themselves to be ‘self-taught,’ having previously had no professional development or formal instruction in teaching about the Holocaust. The research also demonstrated: (1) considerable uncertainty about the best way to teach the subject; (2) some ambiguity over aims and definitions; (3) narrowly focused content coverage; and (4) a lack of in-depth subject knowledge among many teachers. A central finding is that teachers proved more likely to focus on what may be termed perpetrator-oriented narratives: narratives that focus on the actions of the Nazis and their collaborators and commonly positioned Jewish people and other groups as silent and anonymous victims without agency or influence.

Rescue or Return: The Fate of the Iraqi Jewish Archive

AbstractShortly following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, an American mobile exploitation team was diverted from its mission in hunting for weapons for mass destruction to search for an ancient Talmud in the basement of Saddam Hussein's secret police (Mukhabarat) headquarters in Baghdad. Instead of finding the ancient holy book, the soldiers rescued from the basement flooded with several feet of fetid water an invaluable archive of disparate individual and communal documents and books relating to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world. The seizure of Jewish cultural materials by the Mukhabarat recalled similar looting by the Nazis during World War II. The materials were spirited out of Iraq to the United States with a vague assurance of their return after being restored. Several years after their arrival in the United States for conservation, the Iraqi Jewish archive has become contested cultural property between Jewish groups and the Iraqi Jewish diaspora on the one hand and Iraqi cultural officials on the other. This article argues that the archive comprises the cultural property and heritage of the Iraqi Jewish diaspora.