Jewish Discourse Research Articles

End-of-Life Decision Making in Orthodox Judaism: The Case of the 1977 Conjoined Twins

In 1977, conjoined twins were born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Lakewood, New Jersey; they were treated at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. Following legal deliberations in the American court system, as well as religious deliberations within the Orthodox Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic communities, the twins were separated by surgeon C. Everett Koop, who later became Surgeon General of the United States. Evaluation of the medical decision making process in the 1977 case illustrates the distinctly legal nature of Orthodox Jewish discourse—a feature that sets it apart from Protestant, Catholic, and secular ethics. This legal character of Orthodoxy had been highlighted a decade earlier, in a report issued by a panel that had been convened to study the different approaches to conjoined twins among Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic authorities. Close examination of that report, and of the circumstances of the 1977 case itself, bring to the fore the legal nature of the Orthodox Jewish procedures determining the medical outcomes of the conjoined twins. The distinctive nature of the Jewish approach is thrown into relief even further by comparison with the differing approaches among Catholic, Protestant, and secular authorities and medical caregivers. Following an elaboration and explication of the report and the 1977 case in which I examine the important contrasts between the adherents to different traditions and legal systems, I explore their broader implications for understanding the cultures of Jewish medicine in an increasingly complex scientific and technological landscape.

“For We ascend in holiness and do not descend.” Jewish ultra-Orthodox women’s agency through their discourse about media

ABSTRACT“Permission” and “prohibition” are key terms in Jewish religious discourse. For generations they have dominated as part of the primarily male, rabbinic discourse in talmudic literature. This paper will show that men no longer hold the monopoly on these terms because contemporary Israeli ultra-Orthodox women include them in their daily conversation in multiple and varied ways. The study examines exposure patterns and perceptions of 42 ultra-Orthodox women toward sectarian and general mass media. In responses to detailed questionnaires, the words “prohibited,” “forbidden” and “a boundary” constantly recur along with a variety of negatives, such as “not permitted,” “not allowed” and “not kosher”.This paper argues that in describing their uses of and perceptions toward mass media, ultra-Orthodox women have adopted terminology borrowed from what was previously a primarily male-dominated conversation. Some might argue that these women are simply working within the bounds of ultra-Orthodox law which they accept as universally applicable; or perhaps that these women are simply reflecting words used by their husbands or rabbis. However, this study argues that their adoption of these terms indicates they are exercising their own agency. With a combined religious and secular education, and work that is primarily outside the house, many of them are the principal breadwinners in their homes. I suggest that this discourse is a part of their highly intelligent navigation of their simultaneous roles as both gatekeepers and change agents.

The Sabbatian Who Devoured His Son: Jacob Emden's Anti-Sabbatian Polemics of Cannibalism

In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagination and became a political weapon that could be effectively aimed against the Other within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of humanity, it is hardly surprising to find similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. This article shows Rabbi Jacob Emden's contribution to this discourse in the eighteenth century, and extends the boundaries of the scholarly discussion beyond establishing Jewish-Christian proximity. Emden's halakhic position on the question “Is it permissible to benefit from the cadaver of a dead gentile?” (She'elat Ya‘aveẓ) connects cannibalism and theological heresy springing from an overly literal reading of the rabbinical canon, as well as ties it to the concept of the seven Noahide laws. For Emden, the consumption of human flesh, literally and particularly metaphorically, distinguishes between the sons of Noah and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. Emden advanced this concept in his polemical writings against the Sabbatian heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.

The Sabbatian Who Devoured His Son: Jacob Emden's Anti-Sabbatian Polemics of Cannibalism

In an era when cannibalism occupied the European imagination and became a political weapon that could be effectively aimed against the Other within or elsewhere, as well as a test case for the concept of humanity, it is hardly surprising to find similar rhetoric in internal Jewish discourse of the early modern era. This article shows Rabbi Jacob Emden's contribution to this discourse in the eighteenth century, and extends the boundaries of the scholarly discussion beyond establishing Jewish-Christian proximity. Emden's halakhic position on the question "Is it permissible to benefit from the cadaver of a dead gentile?" (She'elat Ya'aveẓ) connects cannibalism and theological heresy springing from an overly literal reading of the rabbinical canon, as well as ties it to the concept of the seven Noahide laws. For Emden, the consumption of human flesh, literally and particularly metaphorically, distinguishes between the sons of Noah and heretics, as well as between humanity and savages. Emden advanced this concept in his polemical writings against the Sabbatian heresy in the 1750s, when he became embroiled in controversy with Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz and the Frankists.

Hashishophobia and the Jewish ethnic question in mandatory Palestine and the State of Israel

ABSTRACT By drawing on crime fiction, press commentaries and archival records, this article explores Jewish public discourse about hashish in Mandatory Palestine and the first two decades of the State of Israel. Fearing over-assimilation into the Levant, Jews in interwar Palestine shunned the drug, considering it a form of ‘backwardness’ linked to the realities of living among Arabs in the Middle East. Colonial knowledge about hashish (as well as Orientalist fantasies) validated these fears, appearing to confirm that hashish was an Oriental substance that animated the pathologies inhering in Arab mentalities. This knowledge survived the transition to the Israeli state by responding to new realities: the expulsion and flight of the Arab population and the country’s repopulation by Jews from the Muslim world (Mizrahim). Some of these Jews had used hashish in their countries of origin and brought the habit with them to Israel. Others began to smoke hashish in Israel due to their socio-ethnic marginalization. Although hashish smoking in Israel in the 1950s and much of the 1960s remained limited to a few thousand members of the Mizrahi underclass, it rekindled middle-class fears of Levantinization-cum-Arabicization of the Jewish state. It also assisted in further marginalizing Mizrahim in Israeli society.

“Practical Kabbalah” and the Jewish Tradition of Magic

Abstract This article deals with the Jewish tradition of magic and its relationship with Kabbalah.1 It begins by clarifying internal and external views of magic in Judaism, the place of “Kabbalah” and “kabbalists” in the traditional Jewish discourse of ritual power, and the role of “practical Kabbalah” in Israel’s market of New Age spiritual therapies. The focus is on the mutual relationships between the conceptual and performative foundations of Jewish magic practice and Kabbalah, as well as on Kabbalah’s actual influence on the Jewish tradition of magic.

The Rise of the Sage in Greek and Jewish Antiquity

AbstractThis article explores the emergence of the sage as an exemplar in Greek and Jewish antiquity. Greek philosophical writings and Jewish literary accounts are analysed, the latter including texts written in both Hebrew and Greek. The Greek and Jewish sources are compared in order to highlight (dis)similarities between them. It will be argued that the conception of the sage as an idealized figure and object of emulation originates from the classical Greek world, but it becomes integrated into the Jewish discourse on wisdom and good life in the later Hellenistic period. In spite of this shared element, the portrayals of the sage vary regarding the amount of concreteness and the discursive strategies in which his exemplarity is constructed.

The Apocrypha and the Earliest Christian Movement

Studying the Apocrypha can help Christians understand writings that were available to Jesus and his earliest generations of followers, including those followers who wrote the texts that constitute the New Testament. Jesus, Paul, James, and other New Testament voices exhibit rich rootedness in their contemporary Jewish ethical and theological discourse. Reading these ancient texts can help interpreters today understand Jesus and his early followers within the context of the Second-Temple Judaism of their time, as these texts significantly had an impact on the emerging theology, ethos, and practice of the Christian church in its most formative centuries. The value of these texts has been affirmed by the majority of the world’s Christians across centuries, not only for their historical value but also as devotional literature. These reasons confirm the Reformers’ own opinion that the Apocrypha “are good and useful to read.”

Talking about Antisemitism in France Before and After Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher

This article explores tensions in French Jewish discourses about antisemitism in the post-2000 period. Drawing on commentary from French Jewish intellectuals, national Jewish organizations, and the French Jewish press from the mid-2000s until after the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, I note a complex relationship between change and continuity in discursive characterizations of French antisemitism. While empirical manifestations of antisemitism were notably transformed by the Toulouse attacks of 2012, much French Jewish discourse insisted on continuity from the early 2000s onward. At the same time, Jewish narrative practices shifted rather dramatically. In a political context where Israel was often depicted as part of a history of violent settler colonialism, early 2000s Jewish discourse divorced French antisemitism from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (post)colonial racism in France. After 2012, some Jewish commentators linked Israel to French antisemitism by likening terrorism in Israel with Islamic antisemitism in France. These disjunctures between narratives and empirical violence suggest that the “structures of feeling” behind Jewish reactions to contemporary antisemitism cannot be reduced to empirical questions about safety and security. Social scientists thus need to move beyond an empirical analysis of antisemitism itself and attend to the cultural and affective work Jewish discourses about antisemitism do in any particular moment.

Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism

Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism

Eliah Benamozegh, Franz Rosenzweig and Their Blueprint of a Jewish Theology of Christianity

AbstractIn Jewish philosophy, be it medieval or modern, a comprehensive Jewish theological discourse about Christianity is conspicuously absent. There are, however, two prominent exceptions to this rule in modern Jewish philosophy: The Italian Sephardic Orthodox Rabbi Eliah Benamozegh (1823–1900) and the German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). In both men's thought, Christianity plays a pivotal (and largely positive) role, so much so that their Jewish philosophies would not be the same without Christianity, which has no precedent in Jewish thought. Though Rosenzweig was not aware of his Sephardic predecessor, there are some striking parallels in the two thinker's Jewish theologies of Christianity that have far-reaching interreligious implications. These parallels concern as well the basic paradigm for a positive evaluation of Christianity—the paradigm of the fire (particularist Judaism) and its rays (universal Christianity)—as well as the central flaw both of them attribute to Christianity: a built-in disequilibrium that threatens the success of its legitimate mission. These parallels are all the more striking as two thinkers arrived at their conclusions independently and by different paths: the one (Benamozegh) took recourse to Kabbalah, the other (Rosenzweig) to proto-existentialist philosophy. A comparative study of these two protagonists’ Jewish theologies of Christianity seems thus imperative.An “interreligious epilogue” at the end of the article exposes the contemporary need for a reassessment of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity from a Jewish perspective—especially in light of the deep theological revision that characterizes the approach of the Catholic Church towards Jews and Judaism following “Nostra Aetate”—but at the same time delineates the theological limits of the current Christian-Jewish interreligious endeavor. In this light, the pioneering theology of Christianity in the works of Rosenzweig and Benamozegh might yield some relevant insights.

The Logic of Divine Presence in Romans 3:23

The latter half of Rom 3:23, which the NRSV translates "all … fall short of the glory of God," has perplexed interpreters as far back as Calvin. Biblical scholars today approach the statement from a variety of contextual angles. Undoubtedly the most common way to read 3:23 is as an allusion to the prelapsarian condition of Adam. But another increasingly common approach is to interpret the verse in light of the Greco-Roman concern for honor and shame. In this article, I address some problems with these ways of reading 3:23 and propose an alternate way forward. Specifically, I argue that Rom 3:23 should be understood in light of a set of Greco-Roman conventions about divine presence and especially in light of a Jewish discourse related to the temple. Accordingly, Paul in Rom 3:23 figures the human plight in terms of alienation from God—a condition with cultic and spatial dimensions.

Ritual and Innovation in Biblical and Ancient Jewish Discourse

Ritual and Innovation in Biblical and Ancient Jewish Discourse

Cross-dressing among medieval Ashkenazi Jews

This article deals with explicit permissions for two types of cross-dressing found in the thirteenth-century ethical tract Sefer Chasidim. In order to avoid being sexually assaulted, female Jewish travellers were allowed to disguise themselves as a. Christians, even as nuns, or b. men. This contradicts biblical and rabbinical prohibitions against such practices. These textual passages are discussed, set against the Jewish and Christian medieval discourse on dress and identity, and they are also related to other contemporary source texts that show that the borders between men and women, and Jews and Christians, as distinct and separate groups were at this time being contested. The author concludes that these permissions should not be seen as ways of transcending the boundaries of the group, but rather as part of a discourse that served to strengthen such boundaries.

East sees east: the image of Jews from Islamic countries in the Jewish discourse of interwar Poland

ABSTRACTThis article explores travel pieces on Jews in Islamic countries published in the Jewish press (in Yiddish and Polish) in interwar Poland. It argues that many of the strategies of representation that Polish–Jewish journalists employed to describe the Jews of Islamic countries during this time borrow from the way the Jews of Eastern Europe were perceived. Turning the Western gaze on the Orient served Eastern European Jewish intellectuals as an act of multiple redemption. Finding themselves in between modern and traditional identification, Polish–Jewish journalists decided to ensure their belonging to the world which they saw as civilised by transposing concepts they knew from home.

Between East and West: controversies over the modernization of Hebrew culture in the works of Shaul Abdallah Yosef and Ariel Bension

ABSTRACTA tendency exists in Jewish historiography to associate Jewish modernization and Hebrew renaissance with Europe and Western culture. Europeanization and Westernization are emphasized as the focal points for Jewish cultural transformation. We take a different approach by shedding light on a number of centres where modern Jewish and Hebrew culture was created. This approach allows us to expand the perspective beyond the Eurocentric prism and instead emphasize movement – of people, knowledge, goods and capital – in real or symbolic spaces as key drivers for processes of transformation. We accordingly examine different pathways to the renewal of Hebrew and Jewish cultures at the turn of the twentieth century. We re-asses the research and literary work of Shaul Abdallah Yosef (1849–1906) and Ariel Bension (1880–1933) and their contesting interpretations of the modernization of Hebrew culture. Driven by both real and symbolic return to the “East,” the two formulated different political and cultural models for the modernization of Jewish and Hebrew culture. By doing so they challenged mainstream trends concerning modern European Jewish discourse that prevailed during the nineteenth century in the work of the Wissenschaft des Judentums (science of Judaism) movement, in Europe’s Hebrew Haskalah circles and later on in Palestine/Land of Israel.

Exploring Philemon: Freedom, Brotherhood, and Partnership in the New Society by Roy R. Jeal

Reviewed by: Exploring Philemon: Freedom, Brotherhood, and Partnership in the New Society by Roy R. Jeal Alicia J. Batten roy r. jeal, Exploring Philemon: Freedom, Brotherhood, and Partnership in the New Society (Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity 2; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015). Pp. xxviii + 230. Paper $30.95. Roy R. Jeal has written one of the initial volumes of the Sociorhetorical Exploration Commentaries published in the Rhetoric of Religious Antiquity series. Sociorhetorical interpretation (SRI), which is defined not as a method but as an “interpretive analytic,” specifically engages the multiple “textures” of texts. These textures include inner texture, or the manner in which the text communicates; intertexture, or the ways in which the writing interacts with other texts, cultures, institutions outside of itself, as well as other textures including sacred texture, ideological texture, social and cultural texture, and sensory-aesthetic texture. The commentary also addresses “rhetography,” or the manner in which images and pictures are prompted in the minds of readers or listeners as the various textures of the text interact with one another, as well as “rhetorolects” or “emergent modes of discourse” (p. xxvii) that Christians used to express their faith and the significance of such faith for their lives. There are six major rhetorolects: wisdom, prophetic, apocalyptic, precreation, priestly, and miracle discourse. Fortunately, all of these textures and terms are defined in a glossary at the beginning of the book. Because Paul’s letter to Philemon is brief, J. states that he has the “luxury” (p. xviii) of addressing each verse of the letter multiple times using different lenses. In the introduction [End Page 715] J. indicates that the letter is deeply theological and pastoral. It is an example of the wisdom rhetorolect insofar as it focuses primarily on how early Christians were to live in the context of the ancient Mediterranean world based on their convictions that God is creator and Jesus is Lord and Christ. Christian wisdom rhetorolects developed out of a range of language and ideologies, notably those of the Israelite Scriptures, Jewish discourses, and wider Mediterranean modes of thought (p. 7) as they articulated how believers were to live together in community. Throughout the rest of the introduction J. explains his approach and addresses other issues, including the text of the letter and questions of canonicity, date, and the perennial mystery of what set of circumstances prompted Paul to write this letter in the first place. J. reviews most of the scenarios that have been posited or argued but concludes that one cannot determine exactly what set of events caused Paul to write to Philemon. Nor can we know the precise provenance or where Philemon lived, although J. leans toward Ephesus for the former and Colossae for the latter. Jeal then systematically works through the rhetography of the opening (vv. 1–7), middle (vv. 8–20), and closing (vv. 21–25) of the rhetoric of the letter. He follows the same divisions as he moves through his textural commentary, engaging multiple textures as well as the “rhetorical force as emergent discourse” in each section. Near the closing of the book he discusses his own ideology, as well as some of Paul’s ideologies, the ideology of the gospel, as well as the ideologies of love and faith, of eternity, and of abolitionism. One of the most contentious issues regarding this letter is the nature of what Paul is asking Philemon to do regarding Onesimus. Although J. admits that Paul is not explicit, he concludes, based upon his sociorhetorical analysis that the apostle wishes for Philemon to set Onesimus free. Paul wants Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother in the context of the ekklēsia in which all members were brothers and sisters. This is a new space, a “revolutionary situation where social status is ignored in favor of love and partnership” (p. 162). Therefore, J. thinks that Paul was at least implying that Onesimus should be liberated, even if this did not mean much outside of the church. On this issue, it would be interesting to know how the insights of Mitzi Smith (“Utility, Fraternity, and Reconciliation: Ancient Slavery as a Context for the Return of Onesimus,” in Onesimus Our Brother: Reading Religion, Race...

Jewish Geographies: Jabotinsky and Modernism

Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky's texts of the 1920s offer compelling examples of the tensions endemic to aesthetic modernism and inherent in Jewish nationalist discourse during the interwar period. This essay discusses Jabotinsky's Atlas (1925), his unproduced film script A Galilean Romance (1924–1926), and his anthemic poem "Two Banks Has the Jordan" (1929). While the ideological value of the works examined is self-evident, the artistic features of Jabotinsky's work have received scant attention. This essay reveals Jabotinsky's indebtedness to themes and techniques identified with early European literary modernisms and their associated socio-political contexts. The article concludes that scholars can profitably locate Jabotinsky's creative output of the 1920s within the nexus of early aesthetic modernism and collectivist nationalism.

Paul at the Crossroads of Cultures: Theologizing in the Space Between by Kathy Ehrensperger

Reviewed by: Paul at the Crossroads of Cultures: Theologizing in the Space Between by Kathy Ehrensperger Maria Pascuzzi kathy ehrensperger, Paul at the Crossroads of Cultures: Theologizing in the Space Between (LNTS 456; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013). Pp. xvi + 262. $120. In this study, Kathy Ehrensperger considers Paul in his role as a bilingual and bicultural translator of the gospel to the "nations," E.'s preferred rendering of ethnē. She argues that insights from sociolinguistics, and especially the emergent fields of bilingualism and biculturalism, provide the sharpest lenses through which to examine Paul's theologizing, understood as a form of translating, at the crossroads of Jewish, Greek, Roman, and other cultural and ethnic traditions. The study is arranged in two parts, framed by an introduction (chap. 1) and a conclusion (chap. 8). In chap. 1, E. explains the rationale for her approach, clarifies terminology, discloses her hermeneutical and methodological suppositions, and outlines the scope of her study. The three chapters comprising Part 1 address theoretical issues beginning with E.'s critique of "Hellenism" and "hybridity," both of which prove to be inadequate for analyzing first-century c.e. cultural interaction (chap. 2). There was no fusion of cultures, no subsuming of linguistic and cultural diversity under one unitary culture connoted by "Hellenism." In chap. 3, E. discusses insights from sociolinguistics and bilingual and bicultural studies relevant to the study of Paul, starting with the recognition that language, culture, and identity are inherently linked and form a network of reciprocal exchange. Especially relevant is Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus. E. understands culture, via insights from Shahad Faharian and Floya Anthia, as an ongoing dynamic process of negotiations that depends neither on ethnicity nor on identical locality. The rest of the chapter presents insights from bilingualism research related to biculturalism and ethnic diversity, language and power, and emotions and identity. E.'s final discussion concerns the use of a lingua franca, which is usually mistakenly construed as a sign of enculturation. Ehrensperger's burden in chap. 4 is to substantiate the claim that the Roman Empire at the time of Paul's mission was linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse. The abundance of literary and epigraphic evidence in Greek, however, and the dearth of material evidence for other languages, presents a serious challenge to the thesis. E. works around this by questioning assumptions about the value of literary evidence written by a male elite representing the views of a dominant minority. Additionally, E.'s assumption that post-first century evidence of diverse vernaculars suggests continuity with an earlier period seems reasonable. Of the numerous important insights set out in this chapter, three are particularly relevant to her study of Paul. First, no blended Greco-Roman culture accompanied the emergence of the empire. Second, Jewish literature of the period, judged barbaric by Roman standards, provided a vehicle for countering the dominant imperial discourse. Third, bilingual and bicultural "go-betweens," such as Josephus and Philo, testify to the important role of cultural mediators in Paul's day. [End Page 337] In part 2, E. concentrates on Paul's intercultural theologizing through Scripture and cult. She first situates Paul on the first-century map of diversity (chap. 5). From a Roman perspective, Paul is one of the conquered, uncivilized ethnē. Paul, on the other hand, identifies with his genos ("race"). He is a member of the Jewish people, embedded in Jewish values and culture. This is his habitus. Paul's "us" share this descent and conceptual world. All others are ta ethnē. E. rejects the assumption that Paul used ethnē as part of a universalizing discourse meant to abolish difference. On the contrary, though operating from his own Jewish habitus, Paul was flexible in his intercultural interaction, inviting others, in their diversity, to become Christ-believers. E. concludes this chapter by identifying Paul as a bilingual Jew, embedded in an alternate Jewish discourse that is implicitly anti-imperial. Chapter 6 concerns Israel's scriptural tradition and Paul's appropriation of it in an intercultural context. E. agrees that the LXX reflects the ambivalence of diaspora Jews with regard to enculturation. Though Jews felt compelled to translate their Scriptures into the dominant language, the...

New Psalms for a Paradigm Shift in Judaism

New Psalms for a Paradigm Shift in Judaism