Jewish Critics Research Articles

Meet the New Paul, Same as the Old Paul: Michael Wychograd, Kendall Soulen, and the New Problem of Supersessionism

Meet the New Paul, Same as the Old Paul: Michael Wychograd, Kendall Soulen, and the New Problem of Supersessionism William Plevan I had the privilege of meeting both Kendall Soulen and Michael Wyschograd at a conference sponsored by the Institute for Christian‐Jewish Studies in Baltimore. ICJS had gathered a group of Jewish and Christian (all from Presbyterian and Lutheran backgrounds) scholars, clergy, educators and lay people to participate in six study and dialogue sessions over the course of two years on the subject of “The Scandal of Particularity.” The aim of the series was to engage a variety of stakeholders in the future of Jewish‐Christian relations by examining the question of how our different traditions conceive of their own particularity, and how expressions of particularity impact the way we understand our involvement in the public square of American political and social life and our relations with members of other faith traditions. Rather than limit interfaith dialogue by hoping to find some kind of “common ground” shared by Judaism and Christianity, the conference dared us to think that the differences between these two traditions might be more important than any similarities we might find, and that these supposed similarities might be superficial at best. Soulen and Wyschograd could not have been a better pair to bring as guest scholars to the ICJS conference. This is partly because Wyschograd has been one of the leading Jewish participants in Jewish‐Christian dialogue in the past forty years, and Soulen has been his most important Christian admirer and interpreter. More significantly, it is because of the way both Wyschograd and Soulen have dealt with the issue of particularity in their work on the theological relationship between Judaism and Christianity. In his seminal work, The Body of Faith, Wyschograd argued that the central theological concept of Judaism is God’s election of Israel to be God’s beloved people. While God demands that Israel observe the commandments and while certain beliefs about God’s nature may be implicit in the Biblical record, the essence of divine election is not the commandments or any beliefs about God, but rather God’s preferential and parental love of the carnal family of Israel, the flesh and blood decedents of Jacob. One of the most refreshing aspects of Wyschograd’s Jewish theology is his open acknowledgment that those aspects of Christian theology that Jews typically find most un‐Jewish, like the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, actually have roots in Jewish ideas, such as God’s presence in the people Israel. This willingness to reject simplistic dichotomies between Judaism and Christianity has greatly enriched interfaith dialogue, as it did for us at the conference. Indeed, Wyschograd’s philosophical and theological work has always been concerned with the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and he acknowledges his debt to Christian thinkers, particularly Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, not only for his understanding of Christianity but also for his understanding of Judaism as a religion of carnal election. Because of his serious and open‐minded engagement with Christianity, Wyschograd has also been influential in both academic and theological circles for his novel interpretations of the epistles of the Apostle Paul. Paul is often viewed by Jewish critics as the father of supersessionism for supposedly rejecting the validity of the commandments of the Torah after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is this interpretation of Paul that formed the basis for the Church’s claim that God has rejected the Jews for their rejection of Christ and made the Church the “new Israel,” the inheritors of God’s preferential love. And it is precisely this interpretation of Paul that Wyschograd challenges, suggesting instead that Paul not only maintains that the commandments have validity for Jews but also that Paul believes that Israel’s covenant with God is never abrogated. Centuries of Christian theologians have, according to Wyschograd, been misreading Paul. This new reading, sometimes dubbed “the New Paul,” undermines two millennia of theological rationales for Christian supersessionism. Although I am not a scholar of the New Testament, and hence unwilling to claim an authoritative judgment, I do find the basic elements of the New Paul reading convincing, some...

Odo of Tournai and the Dehumanization of Medieval Jews: A Reexamination

OVER THE PAST TWO DECADES, Odo of Tournai (d. 1113) has become better appreciated as an important thinker of the twelfth-century renaissance.1 First a prominent teacher of philosophy and science at Tournai's Notre-Dame cathedral school, Odo later withdrew to become abbot of the monastery of St. Martin of Tournai and ended his life as bishop of Cambrai. Among his many works Odo left one religious disputation: a Debate the Jew, Leo, Concerning the Advent of Christ, the Son of God.2 Like his contemporary Anselm of Canterbury,5 Odo sought to demonstrate the rational necessity of certain Christian beliefs. Perhaps even greater consistency than Anselm, Odo's polemic introduced rational for the Incarnation, while largely eschewing traditional appeals to scriptural prooftexts.4Although a polemic, the text maintains a remarkably irenic tone, unlike so many Christian dialogues with Jews. It appears all the more as a historical account precisely because its conclusion must have been so unsatisfying to a Christian authence: rather than allowing Odo's proofs to lead him to baptism, Leo-despite his admiration for some of the arguments-continues to embrace Judaism. By genuine I do not mean that Odo's text is a transcript of a debate with Leo (although Odo gives the impression that such a debate actually occurred)5 but only that it successfully captures some of the theological issues and attitudes that separated Jews and Christians. Its conclusion, however, does reflect a historical reality: despite nearly a millennium of Christian polemics, relatively few Jews had voluntarily adopted Christianity. Does Leo's refusal to follow Odo's rational to Christian baptism come to add verisimilitude, or, as some have proposed, does the conclusion to Odo's Debate rather function as an anti-Jewish polemic that stigmatized Judaism as inherently irrational, and so exacerbated Christian anti-Judaism?6 I will review the evidence here.THE VIRGIN BIRTH, POLLUTION, AND INCARNATIONDespite a lengthy defense of the rational necessity of the Incarnation, for Odo the conditions of the God-Man's birth remained troublesome, because Leo insisted that impurity attaches itself to all childbirth - even that of Jesus. Indeed, Lev 12.2-3 describes a parturient woman as unclean for seven days following the birth of a male child and fourteen days following the birth of a female. Christian theologians typically understood that it was because of his mother's impurity that the boy's ritual circumcision had to be delayed until the eighth day. In the fourth century Ambrose of Milan remarked that circumcision can be performed only when the mother of the child begins to be in pure blood, who is said to sit in unclean blood before the eighth day.7 Although Ambrose insisted that Jesus's death on the Cross rendered circumcision of the flesh unnecessary for his followers,8 the fact that the infant Jesus had been circumcised and that Mary had undergone postpartum purification (Lk 2.22ff.) remained theologically problematic.The standard medieval view held that Mary's purification in the Temple was of spiritual and not carnal significance. The twelfth-century Aelred of Rievaulx acknowledged that Mary fulfilled the purificatory rituals prescribed for a parturient; hence, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Purification of Mary (February 2). But, he insisted, Mary did not have to fulfill these rituals, since she conceived miraculously from the Holy Spirit. She was herself clean, but willed to be perceived as unclean, and chose to perform these rituals out of humility.9 His contemporaries Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153), Guernc d'Igny (d. ca. 1157), and Hermanus de Runa (fi. ca. 1150) expressed substantially the same view.10Twelfth-century Christian theologians, then, argued that the miraculous character of the Virgin Birth released Mary from the requirement of ritual purification, even though she performed it. Yet medieval Jewish critics raised disturbing questions about Jesus 's parentage, rejected the miraculous character of his birth, and also suggested that in childbirth Mary suffered impurity that was transferred to her son. …

Paris-Bruxelles : la polémique suscitée par l'Histoire abrégée des Juifs d'Élie Aristide Astruc (1870)

The Brief History of the Jews and their Religious Beliefs, a textbook written for Jewish youth, was published in 1869. Grounded in the “historical” viewpoint of its author, even before it was edited, this book created a sensation and nurtured an important controversy in French Judaism throughout the year 1870. In his Brief History, a significant contribution to Jewish biblical criticism of the xixth century, Astruc sought to free the biblical narration from its legendary aspect in order to present it in its historical context and assert the ethical superiority of religion over dogma, while providing new pedagogical materials for the study of Judaism in France and Belgium. The history of this controversy brings to light the ideas and the personality of the enfant terrible of French Judaism, Astruc, a chief rabbi in Belgium, and Free Mason, co-founder of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. In many respects, Astruc’s relationship to Judaism is not far from the tensions within liberal Protestantism at the same moment. The way he is debated upon at that period, which prevented him from obtaining a position in the French rabbinate, is described here through the analysis of the strong reactions aroused by him in the conservative and orthodox circles of French Judaism. These movements hint at the hardships Reform encountered as it struggled for recognition in France.

The Virginal Conception and Its Meanings

AbstractIn Jeffrey Archer's The Gospel According to Judas, Judas dismisses the virginal conception of Jesus as no more than another example of ‘Greek myths that tell of gods in heaven who produce offspring following a union with women of this earth’. To attribute such a view to a first-century Jew like Judas seems strange, since the earliest evidence shows Jewish critics of the Christian movement rejecting the virginal conception as a case of illegitimacy. In any case such Greek myths do not provide plausible sources for the two Gospel accounts of the virginal conception. Yet such merely historical debate is insufficient. One should press on to illustrate the religious significance and theological importance of the virginal conception within the whole story of Jesus: for instance, the role of this conception in revealing the Trinity at work for human salvation.

Between God and Gibson: German Mystical and Romantic Sources of The Passion of the Christ

For Suzanne Stahl Mel Gibson's film of last twelve hours in life of Jesus was visible crest of a sea change. Viewed by record audiences between Ash Wednesday and Easter, 2004; screened a year later by numerous Christian churches and groups, as if a new Easter rite had been instituted; declared emblematic for Red States in 2004 presidential race: The Passion of Christ marks receding tide of liberal secular society and rising tide of a new conservative religiosity. But rising tides can also conceal invisible currents. Those whose information about film came from its credits-virtually all who saw it in decisive period of its reception-were not informed that Gibson's representation of Passion drew heavily on a tradition that extends to 19th-century German Romanticism and earlier mystical and visionary sources revived by Romantics. Gibson's Passion is known to have borrowed a great deal from translation of a book published under name of a 19th-century German nun,1 Anna Katharina Emmerich (1774-1824): The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (DP), Das bittere Leiden unsers Herrn Jesu Christi in its original title (Br 26). Much less widely known is fact that German Romantic Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) was author of writing attributed to her. Germanists and church historians have long been aware that Das bittere Leiden resulted from what Kenneth L. Woodward characterized mMaking Saints as the conscious elaborations of an overwrought Romantic poet (389). In a society increasingly preoccupied with safeguarding intellectual property, Gibson's use of Emmerich-Brentano is anomalous. If one who benefits knowingly but tacitly from false attribution is all more culpable for having been reticent, a filmmaker who acknowledges his source in an interview but fails to credit it in releasing his film to its mass audience can be said to have knowingly reaped benefits of plagiarism. The benefits drew compound interest. Borrowing heavily on what amounts to a Romantic forgery, Gibson's reticence about his source enhanced aura of his production by encouraging an unsuspecting public to form an exaggerated notion of biblical authenticity of The Passion of Christ. Much of debate over film has been based on false premises. Early critical reactions took Gibson to task for incorporating an offending scriptural passage, Matthew 27:25, a curse pronounced by Jews on themselves in demanding blood of Christ. This created misleading impression that critics were censoring Bible. Even if alleged anti-Semitism of film draws upon New Testament and on traditional Catholic representations of Passion, discussion might have been more to point if only public had known that film was based on the conscious elaborations of an overwrought Romantic poet. Gibson adapted a literary work that deviates from and embroiders Bible to idiom of violent action film. For sake of disclosure, I should acknowledge my personal response to film. Before seeing it, I sympathized with Gibson's artistic and religious prerogatives. Though a secularist, I regarded his Christian and Jewish critics as a self-appointed censorship board. But rejection is not censorship. Viewed on its own merits, The Passion of Christ struck me as sanctimonious exploitation, dishonest to core. With its Latin and Aramaic dialog, film cultivates a deceptive appearance of biblical authenticity. It capitalizes on much that is questionable in Christian Passion veneration, as well as on arguably anti-Semitic elements in New Testament. Still, biblical or traditional sources are less troublesome than their absorption in public sphere. The Passion of Christ is problematic because it refashions sacred in image of a profane medium. Its unlabeled mix of ingredients hastens erosion of a public secularism that serves, among other purposes, to protect religious themselves. …

Mel Gibson's Passion: the film, the controversy, and its implications

Introduction unprecedented biblical-cinematic debate on the merits and demerits of Mel Gibson's controversial Jesus movie, Passion of the Christ, began long before its release nationwide in 2000-plus theaters on Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2004. A combined group of Christian and Jewish scholars convened by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations and the leadership of the Anti-Defamation League met in Spring 2003 to evaluate the film's biblical accuracy in conformity with the Catholic Bishops' Guidelines on Passion Plays.(1) Their judgment was two thumbs down in both categories, and they offered corrections to balance history and scripture and strong suggestions to purge the anti-Judaism motif in the script. Though Gibson and his film company, Icon, were knowledgeable and initially supported this ecumenical review, they rejected vehemently the scholars' advisory, threatened lawsuits, and informed the media that the script was stolen and outdated.(2) rest is commentary. Gibson's Passion has produced in its wake a flurry of opinion pieces, syndicated columns, and cover stories in major newspapers (e.g., Forward, LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Village Voice), Catholic and Jewish Journals (e.g., America, Commonweal, Commentary, New Republic, New Yorker, and Tikkun), newsmagazines (e.g., Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair), movie reviews, and study guides(3) on how to make sense of the willful death of the suffering savior of the Christian faith. first response made it abundantly clear: the film has shocked and divided Christians and Jews, between and among themselves, in how to view and review the traditional Jesus of the Gospels. On one side there are Jewish literati Frank Rich, Charles Krauthammer, and Leon Wieseltier, who opined that the films cinematic exaggeration is intoxicated by blood, bloodthirstiness, and blood libel(4); religiously observant and politically conservative Jewish radio talk-show hosts, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who see Jewish criticism as a mistake and misrepresenting Gibson's conscientious attempt to portray a non-antisemitic Jewish Messiah and his sympathetic Jewish followers; and Jews and Christians who express a deep concern that Gibson's dark portrayal of Temple leaders and the Jewish crowd renders asunder the good work done in Jewish-Catholic-Protestant dialogue since Vatican Council II. On the other side, there are Pentecostals and other evangelical Christians rediscovering a centralist Reformation theology that a suffering savior crowned with thorns, caused by our sins, is willed by God. What traditionalist Catholics never lost, born-again Christians are discovering, and both streams are returning to scriptural basics: a bloodied Christ on the cross is necessary for the salvation of mankind.(5) Mel Gibson focuses on the Passion, not the life or resurrection of Christ. By doing so, he leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story familiar to Christians, and consequently he adds non-biblical gruesome details foreign to the Gospels. Case in point, the mean-spirited visions of the 18th-century Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich detailing the arrest and flagellation of Jesus eked out by shouts from a crowd of bloodthirsty Jews. Her problematic diaries, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,(6) added to other distressing historical and linguistic inaccuracies, make a sham of Gibson's claim that he was striving for historical accuracy.(7) Nonetheless, countless Catholic and Protestant church leaders maintain the oft-quoted but disputed papal review: It is as it was. …

Leni Riefenstahl's Gypsy Question Revisited: The Gypsy Extras In Tiefland

Leni Riefenstahl (1902–2003) made very few films: four documentaries during the Third Reich—three on the annual Nazi party rallies, commissioned by Hitler, and the fourth on the 1936 Olympic games,...

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Mary—The Bold Women in Ephrem the Syrian's HymnDe Nativitate 9

Ephrem the Syrian's hymn De Nativitate 9 is translated and its structure and the presence and function of various literary tropes in it are discussed. It is concluded that the most important polarities in the hymn are those between Christ's divinity and his humanity, between fear and love, between impurity and holiness, and between symbol and truth. It is argued that the purpose of the hymn was to instil awe for the wonder of Christ's birth from a woman, but also to encourage Christians in fourth century Syria to emulate the bold dedication of women like Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth to Christ alone, and to provide answers to Jewish criticism and ridicule of the virgin birth of Christ.

German Literature, Jewish Critics (review)

Reviewed by: German Literature, Jewish Critics Mark H. Gelber Stephen D. Dowden and Meike G. Werner, eds. German Literature, Jewish Critics. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2002. Pp. xxxiv + 321. This volume contains the lectures, responses, panel discussions, and audience participation from a symposium held in 1997 at Brandeis University. Five years is a long time to wait for a conference volume, and thus the possible impact of and reaction to the proceedings may be vitiated to a degree. There are of course numerous possible reasons for such delays, as anyone familiar with publishing conference proceedings will attest. None, however, is stipulated by the editors in this case. The editors, who did not contribute papers of their own, nevertheless write a fine introduction, and their presentations of the responses and discussions, as well as their inclusion of a fair amount of very useful annotated information throughout, are highly appreciated. The conference did not really focus on the subject of this book's title, German literature and Jewish critics. That topic is extraordinarily extensive, spanning centuries and continents, languages and cultures. A possible point of departure for such an ambitious conference or volume would be Moritz Goldstein's well-known polemic of 1912, "Deutsch-Jüdischer Parnass," in which he claimed that whereas Jews already dominated and had a monopoly of sorts in German cultural life, in the press and in the theater especially, they were also on the verge of taking over German literary studies as well. The volume under review instead centers on the careers, identities, and writings of exile scholars who had a major impact on the development of German studies in the United States (and, to a lesser degree, Great Britain and elsewhere). Hinrich Seeba names many of them in his introductory lecture: Erich von Kahler, Leo Spitzer, Marianne Thalmann, Franz Mautner, Heinz Politzer, Walter Naumann, Erich Heller, Walter Sokel, Peter Heller, Hans Eichner, Egon Schwarz, Harry Zohn, Dorrit Cohn, Richard Alewyn, Wolfgang Paulsen, Oskar Seidlin, Hans M. Wolff, Henry Remak, Guy Stern. He lists these Jewish scholars but also includes non-Jewish exiles, for example, Karl Vietor, Bernhard Blume, and Victor Lange. The presentations of Egon Schwarz and Walter Sokel, as well as their participation in the discussions, give the volume a certain autobiographical authenticity, since the voices of this generation, which are being debated, also express themselves. This appears to me to be one [End Page 763] of the strengths but also one of the weaknesses of the volume, as I will explain. There are also presentations on scholars who fall outside of the purview of the American academy, for example, Barbara Hahn's paper on Margarete Susman, Bertha Badt-Strauss, and Hannah Arendt; Gesa Dane's talk on Käte Hamburger; Willi Goetschel's presentation on Hermann Levin Goldschmidt; and Ritchie Robertson's contribution on J. P. Stern, Siegbert Prawer, and George Steiner. The last contribution in the volume is Peter Demetz's nuanced and witty after-dinner talk on Marcel Reich-Reinicki. Although Demetz, who arrived in the United States after the war, cannot fairly be included with the exile scholars, he shares a good amount with them. His highly self-conscious participation in the discussions and his reluctance to dabble in generalities adds measurably to the proceedings, which suffer some because of a marked tendency to generalizations. At least one presentation is not related to this general topic of exile: Christoph Koenig's lecture on Ludwig Geiger. That lecture, which raises numerous difficult issues in the Jewish relationship to German culture, as does Amir Eshel's response to it, would fit better in a conference or volume truly devoted to "German literature, Jewish critics." In general, the presentations combine biographical and autobiographical material with cultural criticism of the academic profession in the field of German studies, and the volume provides many interesting insights and perspectives on the development of German studies in the United States over the last sixty years, underscoring especially the extent that the exile generation participated in the transformation of Germanistik in the United States to German studies and cultural studies. Light is also shed on the emergence of comparative literature as...

Islam and Dhimmitude

Islam and Dhimmitude is an attempt to confute the concept of “protectedminority” (under which Islamic civilization established what was, up to itstime, the most successful model of pluralistic society) with the worst aberrationsfrom that model. The subtitle “Where Civilizations Collide” indicateshow the author expects her polemic to serve the current wave of neoimperialism.The book seeks to recruit Christians in support of the Zionistproject by explaining away Christian expressions of appreciation ofMuslim tolerance as a false consciousness inspired by a self-hatred she calls dhimmitude, meaning a state of mind that acquiesces, even promotes,the victim’s own subjugation.The book’s first half is devoted to proposing a paradigm in whichQur’anic verses in favor of human rights are ignored, official acts to thebenefit of dhimmis are brushed off as machinations to breed resentmentbetween dhimmi groups, and injustices against Muslims are figments of theimagination invented to whitewash the Islamic master plan for subjugatingthe non-Islamic world into a state of dhimmitude. The second half workswithin this paradigm to vilify Christian anti-Zionists (including Europeansas well as Arabs) as dhimmi pawns of Muslim oppressors. (Curiously, shedoes not attempt to dismiss Jewish critics of Israel in the same manner.) ...

Центрально-европейский этнонационализм и сионистский бинационализм

SUMMARY: Yfaat Weis’s article seeks to historicize the concept of bi-nationalism in Zionism and locate its heritage and tradition within Central European perceptions of space. This is done through a close examination of the “Brit Shalom” organization, which was a principal advocate of bi-nationalism in Palestine in the 1920s. Weis argues that it is the liberal Jewish criticism of the illiberal turn to ethno-nationalist practices in Central Europe (rather than the liberal spirit of Central Europe) that gave rise to a synthesis in the spirit of conciliatory Zionism. To prove this, the author breaks down “Central European heritage” into its diverse geopolitical and cultural components, by focusing on two of the key “Brit Shalom” figures – Hans Kohn and Arthur Ruppin. In the case of the former, Weis also recovers the Central European and Zionist “heritage” of his famous typology of nationalism. She concludes that for Hans Kohn, the national escalation between Czechs and Germans that he had experienced in his youth from a minority position constituted a negative example, from which he hoped to save Zionism by means of a bi-national structure. Ruppin’s starting point in supporting bi-nationalism was different. He chose the experience of the Posen border area, which he had experienced out of identification with the Prussian position, as a model to be copied in Palestine. The article’s deconstruction of a monolithic “Central European heritage” supports the validity of the contextualized approach and the general view that Western nationalism was no more able to accommodate ethnic diversity than the Eastern one.

Trostgründe: Cultural Nationalism and Historical Legitimation in Nineteenth-Century German Literary Histories

Hinrich C. Seeba is professor of German at the University of California,Berkeley. His most recent work appeared in A Companion to the Works of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, edited by Thomas A. Kovach (2002);Beiträge zur Kleist-Forschung (2002); and German Literature,Jewish Critics: The Brandeis Symposium, edited by Stephen D. Dowden and Meike G. Werner (2002).

On different differences, or, reopening the canon of worms

When the profession of literary criticism moved in the direction of interrogating racial, classed and gendered difference in the early 1980s, it significantly omitted the category of Jewishness. But to add Jewishness – considered not as an essence but as a problematic – into the critical mix is not only to correct for this omission. It is also to make critical and theoretical interventions thicker. I gave as an example the so-called canon controversy, one which becomes more complex when the construction of the new critical literary canon by figures like Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot becomes enriched by a discussion of their relation to the fascinating, yet abjected, figure of the Jew. And I turn to the examples of Jewish critics like Auerbach and Spitzer not only for a guide to discussions about the nature of the European literary tradition in the past, but also to current efforts to rethink its place in the globalizing literary world of the present and future.

Ingres Chez Les Fauves

The Bain turc, more than any other Ingres work, escaped the claims of normative art history and spoke to a radical aesthetic community intent on framing a new art. This essay on the reception of Ingres's figure painting reads responses to the Bain turc at the small Ingres retrospective the Society of the Salon d'Automne organized in 1905, and in 1907 when his Grande Odalisque was challenged by the elevation of Manet's Olympia to the Louvre.Three communities laid claim to Ingres at this time. Scholars like Lapauze and Momméja ratified the Bain turc for the museum community and for its owner, the Prince de Broglie. The Fauvist avant garde had other goals in arranging the retrospective. It is argued that the Bain turc, and the two dozen pencil studies exhibited with it, changed the visual orientation of artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Vallotton.The third group, standing between the artists and official gate‐keepers, were the critics. Some claimed Ingres for classicism and the French Tradition (albeit one skewed by an octagenarian's sexual longing). Left and Jewish critics close to the Salon rejected the academic authority figure, proclaiming the value of his nudes, line drawing and distorting arabesque. The debate crystallized when Olympia was hung opposite the Grande Baigneuse. Matisse and Apollinaire judged the Manet to be passé, and soon afterwards the pro‐Cubist writers Rivière and Lhote saw in the Grande Baigneuse the model for a revolution in the concept of drawing.

Lessing's 'Nathan the Wise' and the Critics: 1779-1991

The contemporary reception - Lessing criticism before 1779, reviews of Nathan the Wise, theatrical responses, after Lessing's death Friedrich Schlegel and Friedrich Schiller - Schlegel, Schiller the 19th century - the historical school, positivism, geistesgeschichte 1879 and 1881 Lessing and the Jews - Jewish critics, anti-Semitic criticism from Empire to Republic - Franz Mehring, the First World War, before Hitler's seizure of power 1933-1945 - National Socialist criticism, the Volksfront after 1945 - reconciliation with the past, form, function, language, and theology, utopia, the bourgeois element, Lessing and Brecht, the East German criticism, Lessing and the consequences, where to go from here.

PHILIP ROTH, FRANZ KAFKA, AND JEWISH WRITING

What does it mean to be a Jewish writer, but to write in the tradition of Franz Kafka rather than that of normative Judaism? This is a question that finally and fully emerges from the work of Philip Roth with the completion of Zuckerman Bound. Early in his career Roth is accused of being a self hating Jewish writer for his less-than-flattering depictions of Jews. In Zuckerman Bound Roth uses Franz Kafka to position himself on an alternate branch of Jewish writing, a branch that cannot simply be judged on whether it is good or bad for the Jews. The young Philip Roth was not able to formulate the question of Jewish writing to his own advantage. Though he took great pains in lecturing his Jewish critics concerning his goals as a writer,1 he implicitly accepted their definition of Jewish writing. This definition states that the Jewish writer begins with a desire to say something about Jews. The writing in turn can then be judged as to whether what is being said is good or bad for the Jewish people. If the writing is good for the Jews, the writer is a noble Jewish writer; if the writing is bad for the Jews, the writer is a self-hating (even antisemitic) Jewish writer. Roth argues that he is concerned with writing about people; if some of these happen to be Jewish, their Jewishness is part of the story and is not to be generalized to concern the entire Jewish people. He thus says of 'Epstein' (one of the stories in Goodbye, Columbus): 'I write a story of a man who is adulterous to reveal the condition of such a man. If the adulterous man is a Jew, then I am revealing the condition of an adulterous man who is a Jew' (RM 152). Roth writes stories not because he is Jewish but because he is an artist who expresses himself in words. Putting the matter bluntly, Roth concludes (in 1963 at age 30): 'I am not a Jewish writer; I am a writer who is a Jew.'2 And yet, as Philip Roth's career progresses, not only does 'Jewish' seem to be an apposite description of his fiction, but Roth demands that he be respected as a Jewish writer. In a review of Zuckerman Bound Harold Bloom can therefore write:

Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism, 1942-1948.

Preface 1. Zionism and Its Reform Jewish Critics in America Before World War II 2. The Rebellion of the Dissident Reform Rabbis 3. The Formation of the American Council for Judaism 4. The Councils' Wartime Anti-Zionist Campaign 5. Between War and Peace 6. The Search for Compromise in Palestine 7. The Emergence of Israel Epilogue and Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliographical Note Index

Why Be a Nebbish? A Response to Marshall Grossman

The version of Jewish history implicit in Marshall Grossman's article would have it that the Jewish people, between the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (70 A.D.) and the establishment of the state of Israel (1948), were continuously, monolithically, and indiscriminately reduced to the status of the nebbish. It is in relation to this historical degradation that Zionism defends its own ideology of salvation through identity, strength, and homeland, and is able to condemn its and the Israeli government's Jewish critics for threatening the unity of the Jewish people. In Israel, where I was raised and lived until 1976, we were taught year in and year out that the two thousand years of Jewish Diaspora life was a virtual eternity of destitution, homelesness, and exclusion. Our educators aimed to convince us that Jews living in the Diaspora were a culturally static pariah people without dignity, able to live only by plying the unseemly trades of middlemen, innkeepers, tax collectors, shmate (junk) dealers, and the like; they were doing nothing besides praying three times a day, so that upon the arrival of the Messiah, they would be counted among those who will return to Zion live, dead or resurrected. The lesson, which remains one taught throughout Israeli culture, is that Messianic aspiration and the unyielding adherence to their God were the principle reasons for their persecution and the emergence of anti-semitism throughout the ages. The Jews as despised, degraded, and abject: the allegory of Diaspora is only completed with the metaphorical reconciliation of world Jewry in the reality of the Jewish state of Israel; through the purging of centuries of negativity and passivity, uncompromising aggression against those who would deny Israel its exclusivity and its will to power, its right to name its enemies, and its claim that it alone has an interest in national security that is moral as well as practical. This history and its allegory is intended to highlight the immanent significance of the Zionist revolution and to insure that it be a per

Medieval Jewish Criticism of the Doctrine of Original Sin

With the passage of time the notion of original sin became a matter of increasing concern for medieval Jewish critics of Christianity. The foundation of this criticism was laid by the earlier polemical writers, specifically those of the period from the second half of the twelfth through the early fourteenth centuries. The later authors, from the late fourteenth through the mid-seventeenth centuries, incorporated practically all of the arguments raised by their predecessors and added new criticism reflecting their greater familiarity with Christian beliefs and literature. The earlier polemicists, while approaching their task from a rational, “common sense” perspective, relied heavily on Hebrew biblical and, to a lesser degree, New Testament passages. The later writers reflected a greater intellectual independence of scriptural sources. Because the earlier works are generally structured as running commentaries of scriptural texts relevant to Christianity, their treatment of original sin, and other Christian doctrines for that matter, tends to be unfocused.3 The issues that are raised emerge piecemeal as the salient biblical passages are interpreted. The later works tend to be built on discussions of concepts. Consequently, a number of arguments are coalesced into coherent analyses. Such structural differences are the results of different patterns of inquiry. The earlier textually oriented critiques are, on the whole, products of the Franco-German polemical writers.

From Vilna to Vaudeville: Minikes and Among the Indians (1895)

Recently the Yiddish theatre has been the object of considerable study, translation and revival; yet the world of Yiddish vaudeville remains virtually untouched. This is odd, considering that what we would now call vaudeville skits and playlets were among the very first products of the Yiddish stage (1870s), while similar material is still being presented to Yiddish-speaking audiences today. It is almost a truism to state that the rise of the Jewish-American comedian in the 1950s and 1960s was rooted in the low humor of the Borscht belt, but few have shown any interest in tracing the genealogy further back. One of the reasons for this neglect has been the scorn with which Jewish theatre critics, historians and activists view all ethnic entertainment not directed towards creating an “art” theatre. An even more important impediment is the almost total lack of surviving printed or manuscript versions of early Yiddish vaudeville.