Jewish Concepts Research Articles

Jewish perspectives on Hellenistic rulers

preface abbreviations Introduction: Tessa Rajak part one: theories and practices of hellenistic rulers 1. Philosophy and Monarchy in the Hellenistic World Oswyn Murray 2. The Character of Ptolemaic Aristocracy: Problems of Definition and Evidence Jane Rowlandson part two: rulers in greek-jewish texts 3. Persia through the Jewish Looking-Glass Erich Gruen 4. Ben Sira on Kings and Kingship Benjamin Wright 5. The Image of the Oriental Monarch in the Third Book of Maccabees Philip Alexander and Loveday Alexander 6. The Angry Tyrant Tessa Rajak 7. The Narrative Function of the King and the Library in the Letter of Aristeas Sylvie Honigman 8. Kingship and Banditry: The Parthian Empire and Its Western Subjects Richard Fowler part three: light from the septuagint translators? 9. Translating for Ptolemy: Patriotism and Politics in the Greek Pentateuch? Sarah Pearce 10. Poet and Critic: Royal Ideology and the Greek Translator of Proverbs James Aitken 11. The King's Good Servant? Loyalty, Subversion, and Greek Daniel Jennifer Dines 12. The Terminology of Government in the Septuagint--in Comparison with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Other Languages Lester Grabbe 13. The Court Function of the Interpreter in Genesis 42.23 and Early Greek Papyri Trevor Evans part four: ideologies of jewish rule 14. The Greek Bible and Jewish Concepts of Royal Priesthood and Priestly Monarchy Arie van der Kooij 15. Royal Ideology: 1 and 2 Maccabees and Egypt Jan Willem van Henten 16. Constructing Kings--from the Ptolemies to the Herodians: The Archaeological Evidence Douglas Edwards cumulative bibliography list of contributors indexes general ancient sources modern authors

Exile and Diaspora. Jewish Concepts of Dispersion

The Jewish experience of Diaspora can be seen as a condensation of the diasporic condition. The present paper intends to illustrate this paradigmatic (albeit atypical) imprint of Diaspora, in processes subject to dynamic change, using two examples: (1) the place of the exile/return topic in religious and modern representations, moving from a center/periphery paradigm to one of circulation and mobility; (2) the confrontation between the Jewish traditional lexicon of Diaspora, which retained a traditional diasporic geography (Ashkenaz, Sefarad, Mizrah), dissociated from its territorial substratum, and real geography.

Infertility counseling for Orthodox Jewish couples

To examine traditional Jewish concepts and practices of reproduction, and define problems that may arise in members of Orthodox Jewish society that follows the Halachah (the Jewish codes of conduct). Expert opinion based on clinical experience. Academic-affiliated fertility clinic situated in an observant Jewish community. Orthodox and Ultraorthodox (Haredi) couples of the Jewish community. We examined traditional Jewish concepts and practices of reproduction and defined problems that may arise in Jewish Orthodox society. None. The concepts and practices of reproduction of Orthodox religious Jewish couples may lead to halachic subfertility and modification of the usual infertility workup. Treatments are limited to and determined largely by considerations related to religious doctrine. Understanding the religious, social, and cultural background of patients, particularly religious Orthodox women, enables appropriate fertility counseling and treatment.

In Search of Genre: Hebrew Enlightenment and Modernity (review)

Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 373 Reviews IN SEARCH OF GENRE: HEBREW ENLIGHTENMENT AND MODERNITY. By Moshe Pelli. Pp. 361. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005. Paper, $45.00. There is no way whatsoever to underestimate the importance and prominence of the Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement in the evolution of modern Hebrew/Jewish thought, culture, and literature as well as the evolution of Jewish nationality. Like the Bible, the Mishnah, and the Talmud, the Haskalah movement that budded in Italy, Germany, Austria, and later in Russia and Poland at the end of the eighteen century, blazed a new trail in the Hebrew/Jewish world. That new trail introduced modernity to the Jewish world in the broadest meaning of the term. Indeed, modern Hebrew literature that commenced with Mendele (Sh. Y. Abramowitz) and later with Ch. N. Bialik and S. Tchernichowsky at the commencement of the twentieth century could not evolve and thrive without the pioneering and daring work of the early Haskalah writers. The Haskalah was not limited, however, to belle letters only. It produced a bountiful yield in fields such as science, philosophy, education, Hebrew linguistics, biblical commentary, history, pedagogy, and much more. Like the Bible, the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Responsa literature in their times, the Haskalah molded and dictated the spiritual portrait of the Jewish people for numerous years to come. In his comprehensive and insightful book under review, Professor Moshe Pelli does the most worthy justice to the nature of the early Haskalah and its role in sculpting the new secular world of the Jewish nation after hundreds of years of being “besieged” by religious thought and scholarship only. Although no one aims to undermine that stupendous value of Jewish religious scholarship, it eventually acted in the capacity of a stumbling block that dammed modernity and secular knowledge and creativity upon the part of the Jewish people. In this respect, the Haskalah movement operated as a harbinger that knocked down the suffocating walls of the Jewish mental/spiritual ghetto and heralded modernity and freedom of thought and creativity in the new world of the Jewish people. Pelli’s book introduces the commencing evolution of the Hebrew/Jewish Haskalah movement in the late eighteenth century in Prussia with both elucidating attention and penetrating insight. The book casts a valuable light upon the Haskalah’s agenda and accomplishments: the rebirth of Hebrew letters, the revival of the Hebrew language and the rejuvenation of the Jewish people. The first Hebrew periodical, “Hame’asef” (The Gatherer) was established at the dawn of the Haskalah in Germany. That periodical heralded and advocated the ideology, credo, and practice of the Haskalah. The Maskilim (the enlightenment/Haskalah seekers) focused on Jewish/ Hebrew issues. They desired to bring modernity to the Jewish world and to establish Hebrew Studies 49 (2008) 374 Reviews a bridge between the past and the present. Hence the Haskalah brought the long period of Jewish passivity and sole religiously-oriented inclinations to an end by revitalizing the Jewish concept of “ge’ula” (redemption) in the most vigorous fashion. One of the cultural-national proclivities of the Haskalah was reviving the Hebrew language as a language that could unite the Jewish nation in times of modernity. As a linguistic model for the latter, Haskalah chose Biblical Hebrew, although Mishnaic Hebrew is more “modern” and rich. Nevertheless , as the orthodox rabbis opposed both bitterly and blatantly Haskalah (that promoted the departure from the Jewish religious-mental ghetto) and as the Mishnah (as well as the Talmud) are associated with Jewish orthodoxy, the Maskilim “by-passed” Mishnaic Hebrew and inclined to Biblical Hebrew. That was a time of awakening upon the part of the Jewish nation. It is quite customary that national inclinations go back to the glorious national past in order to nourish and fortify the budding nationality. Upon the part of the Jews, the biblical past was the very vertex of national might, thriving, and pride. When the Maskilim endeavored to revive Jewish nationality, they naturally went back to the biblical past and revived its language. That revival , however, was not only of the Hebrew language but of Hebrew literature as well (next to numerous fields of study from geography to...

Exile and Diaspora. Jewish Concepts of Dispersion

The Jewish experience of Diaspora can be seen as a condensation of the diasporic condition. The present paper intends to illustrate this paradigmatic (albeit atypical) imprint of Diaspora, in processes subject to dynamic change, using two examples: (1) the place of the exile/return topic in religious and modern representations, moving from a center/periphery paradigm to one of circulation and mobility; (2) the confrontation between the Jewish traditional lexicon of Diaspora, which retained a traditional diasporic geography (Ashkenaz, Sefarad, Mizrah), dissociated from its territorial substratum, and real geography.

Romans 5:12–21 against the Background of Torah-Theology and Hebrew Usage

Paul was an original thinker, and his epistles are full of novel, at times paradoxical, ideas. Christology stands at the center of Paul's system, and his Christological teaching is unique among Jewish writings of the Second Temple period. Some, especially non-Christological, elements of Pauline theology do, however, have illuminating parallels in earlier Jewish teachings, which seem to have been modified and adapted by Paul to fit his own revolutionary thought. While Paul's theology cannot be reduced to these elements, they might help to explain (at least partly) its emergence. After all, even the ideas of the most original thinkers owe their emergence to prevailing conceptions of the culture in which those thinkers operated, taking some of them for granted and incorporating them naturally into their thought, while struggling with and reacting to others. In Paul's case, Jewish concepts played a significant role in shaping some central features of his theology. Thus, reading Paul in the light of the Dead Sea scrolls and rabbinic writings is important both for understanding Paul as well as for dating and interpreting rabbinic parallels.

The Death and Life of a Jewish Judith Shakespeare: Rebecca Goldstein's Mazel

This essay argues that Rebecca Goldstein's Mazel calls upon Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own not only to provide feminist critical memory of the shtetl experience but also to challenge feminist narratives that essentialize Orthodox Judaism. In Mazel, Goldstein presents us with a Jewish Judith Shakespeare figure who could find no outlet for her genius in the oppressively traditional shtetl. However, Mazel is a narrative of three generations, and in the third generation, Goldstein makes good on the promise that ends A Room of One's Own and re-embodies her Judith Shakespeare in the form of Phoebe, a baalot teshuva who resides in a Modern Orthodox community and who professes mathematics at Princeton. By imagining Phoebe as Fraydel's transhistorical double, Goldstein allies Woolf's vision of the future with Jewish conceptions of a soul's transmigration. Moreover, Phoebe's life challenges feminist assumptions that Orthodoxy is the practice of ethnic and gender chauvinism. By adopting and adapting Woolf's narrative of a woman of genius, Goldstein creates a Jewish feminist classic all her own, one in which feminist desire serves as a bridge rather than a battleground for intra-Jewish difference.

How the Essential Jewish Concept of Education Holds an Essential Role in Improving Ethics in the Republik

How the Essential Jewish Concept of Education Holds an Essential Role in Improving Ethics in the Republik

Dialog Menuju Transformasi

Jesus response to the Canaanite woman "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs" (Matt 15:26) has caused not a few problems of interpretation. How could Jesus call the Canaanite woman a dog, which is a derogatory description of the Gentiles? Who will not be shocked by Jesus' saying? Jesus seems to be out of character. However, did Jesus really intend to despise the woman and the foreigner? It seems that Jesus' saying should be understood as a usage of rhetoric language. That is to say, Jesus was not expressing His understanding but He was quoting Israel's conception of woman and Gentiles in order to refuse and to correct it. In other words, He said this derogatory ironically to remind the Israelites how bad and incorrect their conception of God's salvation was. On the other hand, as a Jew, Jesus was probably influenced by Jewish conception of woman and Gentiles. Matt 15:24, for instance, expresses how Jesus sees His mission as exclusively devoted to Israel. The fact that by the end of the story Jesus conceives the salvation as open to Gentiles shows that Jesus was transformed as well. Jesus' encounter and dialog with the Canaanite Woman transformed not only the Canaanite woman but also Jesus' perception of the Canaanite woman and Jesus' understanding of His own mission. At the beginning, He perceived the woman as a worthless person. By the end, He recognized her as someone with great faith and worthy for salvation. Thus, an encounter and a dialog with a person from different culture bring transformation of the both partners of dialog.

A JEWISH CONCEPTION OF HUMAN DIGNITY

ABSTRACTThis paper depicts the meanings of human dignity as they unfold and evolve in the Bible and the Halakhah. I posit that three distinct features of a Jewish conception of human dignity can be identified in contrast to core characteristics of a liberal conception of human dignity. First, the original source of human dignity is not intrinsic to the human being but extrinsic, namely in God. Second, it is argued that the “dignity of the people” has precedence over personal autonomy and liberty, which are core liberal pillars. The third characteristic pertains to the potential conflict between personal autonomy and liberty, and God's commandments. The theoretical analysis of human dignity is then examined in light of several Supreme Court decisions in Israel during the 1990s. I illustrate that Jewish religious and secular‐liberal conceptions pull in different directions in the rulings of liberal and religious Justices in Israel.

Jesus and the Rites of Repentance

The question as to whether Jesus preached repentance has been discussed in historical Jesus research over the past twenty years, apparently without any scholarly consensus being at hand. This article seeks to eliminate some unnecessary confusion from the debate by investigating early Jewish conceptions of repentance and suggesting that a distinction should be maintained between moral and ritual repentance. It argues that Jesus, while most probably expecting moral repentance of his followers, did not uphold the customary rites of repentance. The article suggests some reasons for Jesus' avoidance of traditional penitential prayers and practices, which may account for the instances of strong criticism against him indicated by the synoptic Gospels.

Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse (review)

Reviewed by: Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse Kathleen Troup Jaritz, Gerhard and Gerson Moreno-Riaño , eds, Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse ( International Medieval Research 9), Turnhout, Brepols, 2003; hardback; pp. viii, 535; 21 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €80; ISBN 2503513123. For anyone thinking about the past, time along with its meaning and nature are of central importance, though surprisingly often these topics are not explicitly considered by scholars. The 'Time and Eternity' stream of the 2000 International Medieval Congress, Leeds, followed the then recent excitement over the 'new millennium', and this substantial volume collects papers from that conference. Wesley Stevens (who gave the plenary address) begins with a discussion of Augustine's musings on time and memory, and goes on to the problems of the calendars on which the dating of medieval annals and chronicles was based. Following Stevens's chapter, the first section of the book, 'Time, Its Computation and the Use of Calendars' contains technical papers about methods of computation, a number of which rest on the accepted wisdom that the system of counting years from the birth of Christ originated with Dionysius in the sixth century. McCarthy challenges this view, however, suggesting that it was Eusebius who determined which Julian year should be considered the year of Christ's birth. Verbist examines the accuracy of computations of this date, challenged at least as early as the tenth century, while Ohashi discusses problems in the transmission of the text of Bede's De Temporibus, and the effect this had on the calculation of the date of Easter. Papers by Kleist, Hill and Limacher-Riebold consider the implications of different ways of thinking of time, astronomical versus eschatological, the Roman solar versus the Judaic lunar calendar, and finally the liturgical calendar. The second section of Time and Eternity focuses on Jewish concepts of time. Stern's discussion of the meaning of time in early rabbinic sources is situated in Norbert Elias's idea that the modern concept of time has come about through the 'civilising process' and modernization. For the rabbinic writers of the third to seventh centuries, however, Stern suggests that reality is subject to 'process, change and motion' without the abstract notion of time or even a word for it. When [End Page 143] time became a scarce resource and therefore a source of internal anxiety, ways of referring to time changed. Rudavsky and Maccoby consider the meanings of time and of eternity depending on whether one thinks from a 'scientific' viewpoint of the universe as created, or from a 'religious' perspective where the universe is eternal. Caputo more specifically investigates the significance of messianic redemption in the commentaries of the thirteenth-century Catalonian rabbi, Nahmanides. The following three papers by Goris, Lewis and Matula focus on Christian ideas about eternity, Aquinas's thought contrasting with that of Hus. Lewis examines Hugh of St Victor's writings on Noah's ark and reconstructs the drawings of the ark that Hugh is known to have made. These works were explicitly educational but also had a greater purpose of elevating the monks to the band of the elect on its journey. Lewis suggests that Hugh does this by reinvesting with spiritual meaning the temporal dimension of human life (and history) which may seem cut off from eternity. The ark in this sense is a mnemonic device linking the mortal to eternity. In the section 'Monastic and Clerical Conceptions', the theme of the preservation of the spiritual life of monks is continued in Verbaal's explication of how Bernard of Clairvaux used dramatic and rhetorical devices to keep his listeners focused on their ongoing spiritual progress rather than becoming sluggish in the tedium of the daily round of the monastic calendar. Caron considers the temporal liminality of the monastic space and of the celebration of the eucharist in Mechtild's Liber specialis gratiae, while Kircher's examination of the sea as an image of temporality points up the also liminal nature of this image. Cullum grounds his sense of time by comparing the life-cycle and life-course of clerics in northern England with their non-clerical counterparts: while life-course at first glance might...

‘Unlicensed’ War in Jewish Tradition: Sources, consequences and implications

The prevalence of military activity in the experience of modern Israel has recently generated several attempts to compare western teachings on warfare and its exercise with those found in Jewish sources. The present article constitutes a contribution to that enterprise, focusing on attitudes towards what are here termed ‘unlicensed wars’ in the overall just war tradition. The article first defines that specific category of armed conflict, arguing that ‘unlicensed wars’ are characterized by a failure to follow the constitutional procedures required to set the military apparatus in motion. It then goes on to analyze specifically Jewish textual traditions relating to the consequences of this situation. Finally, the paper discusses the broader messages conveyed by the term ‘unlicensed war’, demonstrating how it reflects the Jewish conception of the polity as a covenantal community.

Introduction: Jewish Conceptions and Practices of Space

his issue of Jewish Social Studies presents a collection of articles centering on general theme of space in Jewish culture. In recent years, connection between spatial practices and identity formations has come to play a prominent role in various fields in humanities, such as in anthropology and its various subfields, which together establish what could more broadly be called critical cultural studies. Thus, anthropologists have begun to interrogate their own spatial practices and constitutive role these play for representing cultures, as for instance ethnographic practice of going into the field. Accordingly, traditional conceptions of the have been criticized as a taken-for-granted space in which an 'other' culture or society lies waiting to be observed and written,1 a space therefore that one supposedly enters and then leaves to return to one's own culture. As critical anthropologists now recognize, very distinction between home and field tends to minimize, if not make invisible, multiple ways in which these conceptual spaces are bound together, namely travel, colonialism and imperialism, and global cultural flows.2 But it is perhaps in anthropology that issues arising from dynamics of economic and cultural globalization have been dis-

Between Perspectives of Space: A Reading in Yehuda Amichai's "Jewish Travel" and "Israeli Travel"

Between Perspectives of Space:A Reading in Yehuda Amichai's "Jewish Travel" and "Israeli Travel" Vered Shemtov (bio) "My body is in the East, my heart in the extreme West" The Land knows where the clouds come from and whence the hot wind Where hatred and whence love. But its inhabitants are confused, their heart is in the East And their body in the far West. Like migratory birds who lost their summer and winter, Lost in the beginning and the end, and they migrate To the end of pain all their days.1 Amichai's poetic sequences "Jewish Travel: Change Is God and Death Is His Prophet" and "Israeli Travel: Otherness Is All, Otherness Is Love"2 seem to touch a controversial issue regarding Jewish space. To what extent did the Zionist movement succeed in creating a Jewish identity that bridges the gap between physical and [End Page 141] mental space? Does this new identity completely replace the concept of "the wandering Jew" with a new Jew who is rooted in his land? Is there really a substantial difference between a Jewish and an Israeli- Jewish concept of place? In his introduction to A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, Eli Barnavi claims that the Jewish consciousness "constantly shifts between awareness of physical spaces (the birth place, for example) to spaces of reference (the ancestral homeland, Hebrew, etc.), a shift which actually constitutes the Jewish spatial experience." This definition, he argues, includes the perspective of the Israeli Jew, "My body is in the East, my heart in the extreme West—an inversion of Halevi's verse seems most appropriate to the inhabitants of Israel" he writes. "The present protagonist in the mental drama created by a differential and discontinuous space is no longer the Diaspora Jew but the Israeli."3 Since the 1990s, we find that—even among the many scholars who claim that the establishment of a Jewish center in Israel created a fundamental shift "from an existence outside time and space to an existence with space"4there have been growing tendencies to view Israeli culture (especially after the 1970s) as reflecting a tension between a nomad identity and a "native's identity." Zali Gurevitch and Gideon Aran, in their oft-quoted article "Al ha-makom" (About the Place), revealed the gap between mental and physical place in Jewish and Israeli culture.5 Risa Domb looked at the increasing number of novels in which the Israeli protagonist travels abroad in search of self. These journeys reflect more than the "state of mind of the modern humanity, which has lost the sense of belonging." Domb puts these travels also in the specific context of the Jewish-Israeli search for locus, and she refers to works by Dan Miron and others, including A. B. Yehoshua, who, as she claims, argues that "Zionism failed to tie Jewish consciousness to one place."6 A number of recent novels written by authors who were born in Israel (or who are second or third generation) also question the existence of one personal and national geographical center. Ronit Matalon's novel The One Facing Us takes place outside Israel, following pictures from a family album, and does not locate "home" necessarily in Israel. Maya Arad's Makom aher ve-ir zarah (A Different Place) ends with the protagonist's acknowledgment that his home is not in Israel.7 Sidra DeKoven Ezrakhi argues that "there are growing signs of dislocation, shifts in the center of gravity corresponding to increasingly mobile boundaries of the Hebrew self. 'Exile' as the repressed other becomes the critique of a culture of the static and the whole. The stagnant waters and mirrors that reflect an ossified relationship to sacred space are beginning to show ripples and cracks."8 Although Israeli literature [End Page 142] has always reflected the tension between different (and often conflicting) definitions of identity and homelessness/home/homeland, these recent cracks expose a more critical version of the issue. Thus, though it is probably much too early to conclude whether Zionism succeeded in establishing a wholly new perspective of place in the Israeli-Jewish consciousness, we can already witness the process of rethinking "Jewish Space" in Israeli...

From Pintele Yid to Racenjude: Chaim Zhitlovsky and racial conceptions of Jewishness

The Russian Jewish intellectual, Chaim Zhitlovsky (1865–1943), a leading architect of secular Jewish culture and thought, was a central figure in the progressive Jewish intelligentsia of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In an essay written in 1927, “Yidn un Yiddishkayt” (“Jews and Jewishness”), he sought to define the secular essence of what he calls Yiddishkayt. This essay is not the first in Zhitlovsky’s long publicistic career in which he searches for new, secular definitions of Jewish identity and culture. But this essay differs, since it is marked by Zhitlovsky’s use of contemporary “social scientific” notions of race and racial traits to conceptualize what he believes constitutes Jewishness in a non-religious context, along with his adoption of the mystical Jewish concept of the “pintele yid,” the theory of an innate Jewishness embodied by a “Jewish spark.” Zhitlovsky’s desire to craft a truly secular theory of Jewish identity led him ironically to accept models of Jewish identity at odds with his stated larger vision. In turning to contemporary racial theory, as well as long nurtured mystical models of Yiddishkayt, Zhitlovsky reveals the wide range of ideological discourses that led him to innovative and controversial notions of modern Jewish identity.

Justice and Argument in Judaism: A D'var Torah on Shofetim

In the form of a commentary on passages from the Torah and the Talmud about the death penalty, this essay identifies unique characteristics of the Jewish concepts of justice and of argumentative dialogue. The Jewish concepts of justice and argument potentially serve as a useful corrective to some current efforts by conservative Protestants to bring religion into the public sphere.

The Figure of Jerusalem: Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx

beautiful golden city is the heart and soul of the Jewish people. You cannot live without a heart and soul. If you want one simple word to symbolize all of Jewish history, that word would be --Teddy Kolleck, Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem in 1977 intifadah is Palestinian self-determination, and is not a of speech. --Edward W. Said, The Politics of Dispossession In this essay, I explore Jacques Derrida's evocation of the Jerusalem by contrasting Jewish and Christian approaches to allegorical interpretation, and by closely examining Fredric Jameson's suggestion that Specters of Marx advocates a figurative exegesis or an inherently didactic hermeneutics. The claims of Marxist critics like Antonio Negri and Pierre Macherey that Derrida relies upon a disguised ontological interpretive system are rejected insofar as they imply the impossibility of non-European belief systems. (1) I argue that such readings of Derrida tend to activate the Shylock Complex, or the violent conversion of the Jew to logocentric modes of interpretation. Deconstruction does not therefore offer us yet another footnote to Plato, or a new way of practicing Western philosophy, but a potentially liberating alternative to dominant Western modes of theorizing the real. However, in describing the war for the appropriation of Jerusalem, Derrida subordinates &construction to serve the interests of specific politics that are far from neutral. He does this by authorizing a hypostasis of the Jerusalem in the pages of Specters of Marx (but also at the Whither Marxism? conference in Riverside, California) at the expense of actual Palestinian peoples and the historical city of M-Quds, the Arabic name for Jerusalem. The Jerusalem is universalized rather than identified as a strictly Zionist obsession. The inherently didactic nature of this allegorical maneuver is further strengthened by Derrida's assumption of a homiletic and pedagogical posture at the Whither Marxism? conference, where he offers to lead disoriented Marxists into the future, provided that they accept his unalterable condition of re-politicization: namely, that the Marxist theory of ideology be rewritten as a variety of messianic eschatology, or Abrahamic religion. Derrida seeks to convert Marx into a thinker of technics, or a deconstructionist avant le lettre. Specters of Marx is haunted by an evangelical spirit, by Derrida's desire to transform Marxism into an imperfect version of deconstruction. Even Francis Fukuyama, a Platonic-Hegelian Liberal, is recast as a thinker of technics, albeit an immature and childish one. Derrida imagines that his Marxist student-readers are also in need of his benign pedagogical assistance. Specters of Marx is therefore offered to the incompetent reader as a lesson in Middle Eastern politics. To this end, the of Elsinore and the medieval kingdom of Denmark from Shakespeare's Hamlet are set before the reader to elicit a judgment about the modern capital of Jerusalem and the rotten State of Israel. I urge the reader to decline Derrida's charitable gift, as well as his sermonic lesson about the Jerusalem and the mortified remains of the messianic. This rejection will almost always be necessary for Christian and Muslim readers of Derrida because his allegedly universal concept of messianicity promotes a Jewish concept of the Messiah as a structure of expectation rather than absolute or even historical event. In Specters of Marx, Jacques Derrida will agree with Max Stirner that [the Christian God] Jesus is at once the greatest and fine most 'incomprehensible of ghosts,' a kind of horrible being [... who] introduced great distress into (144). It may well be, however, that there is no ghost in more recent global history that has brought greater distress to human life everywhere, but especially to Levantine peoples in the Middle East, than the ghostly that continues to haunt the dreams of Zionists throughout the world: the symptomatic figure of a Holy City built upon the ruins of Palestinian Al-Quds (or Arab Jerusalem) and countless Arab lives. …

Jerusalem: Nabel der Welt: Uberlieferung und Funktionen von Heiligtumstraditionen im antiken Judentun

Jerusalem-Nabel der Welt: Uberlieferung und Funktionen von Heuigtumstraditionen im antiken Judentum, by Michael Tilly. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2002. Pp. 307. euro35. The phrase navel of the world, the title of this work, occurs at times in today's parlance too. This figure of speech derives from an important mythical idea from the viewpoint of the history of religion that one can regard rightly as a universal (religion-sgeschichtliches Universale, p. 251). Michael Tilly's study approaches this phenomenon from the perspective of ancient judaism and the Jewish conceptions of a sanctuary. Tilly succeeds in presenting an impressive overview of a long-standing tradition that stretched from biblical times up to the era of the Amoraim in late antiquity. He presents a plausible history of development of the following religious-mythical ideas: Jerusalem as the navel of the world, as the center of the world, and as the foundation stone from which the world came into being. Tilly's study presents an abundance of details as well as a comprehensive knowledge of early Jewish and rabbinic literature, both of which function to persuade thoroughly. Most of all, however, the meticulous hermeneutic basis of the methodological procedure should not go unmentioned. The analysis of the traditions, aided by the ancient versions and other witnesses from the literature of late antiquity, does not aim at discovering the intention of the original author of the biblical text. As Tilly rightly stresses repeatedly, one needs to focus on the individuality of every single biblical and postbiblieal text. Every text has a right of its own and is a testament to a creative and rereading of the tradition that comes before. All texts are products of authors who first read many earlier texts; this process of reading is a creative achievement that readers today need to acknowledge. Moreover, these processes of productive and rewriting the tradition happen independently from the intention of the original author (see, e.g., pp. 9-13). Thus ancient versions like Septuagint and Peshitta are by no means only adequate reproductions of the Hebrew Vorlage, but rather are always the work of scribes veiy well acquainted with Scripture. Hence, translations are products of scribal efforts to open the text for a valid understanding in their time and to make the text accessible for a changing religious conscience. After the hermeneutic introduction, Tilly presents a helpful survey of the history of the city of Jerusalem, the second Temple, and the Temple Mount from the Babylonian Conquest (586 B.C.E.) up to the rise of Islam. An overview over the status quaestionis and former scholarship shows that it is necessary to approach the sources anew. Tilly rightly opts against a tendency to harmonize the texts, motifs, and terms, because to speak of a single, coherent, and systematic worldview at the time of the Old Testament or Ancient Judaism is not a historical construction. …

Jews on Ships; or, How Heine's Reisebilder Deconstruct Hegel's Philosophy of World History

Although it is known that Heine attended Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of world history and became involved with the Hegelian-inflected “science of Judaism” just before beginning the Reisebilder, little attention has been given to Heine's early engagement with Hegelian ideas in his travel writings. This essay argues that Heine transforms the travel narrative into a critique of history by taking the grand historical narrative, with its investment in the “Greek” trope of seafaring, and deconstructing its systematic claims of national belonging and teleological development. Through an analysis of the North Sea poems, I show how Heine reworks both the genre of travel literature as self-discovery and Hegel's geographically determined movement of “World Spirit.” The result is a nonsystematic Jewish conception of historicity, which, in its embrace of particularity, subverts the absolutism of Hegel's philosophy of history by exposing the metaphors on which the philosophy's progressive development relies.