Jewish Thought Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY ON JEWISH PHILOSOPHY MUSA BIN MAIMON (MODEL)

Arab culture influenced Jewish intellectual life in all its aspects. It affected Hebrew literature, Arabic grammar, modern Hebrew poetry and modern Hebrew prose, but the most influential was in the field of Jewish philosophical thought. Islamic Spain was influenced by various philosophical and religious fields, and Islamic thought began to be evident in Jewish philosophical thought. A number of thinkers appeared in Spain, among them: Ibn Asra, Ibn Arabi, and Ibn Rushd, and they were credited with mixing philosophy with religion. The works of Ibn Rushd and Maimonides are the ideal picture of the so-called Arab-Hebrew thought. In the eleventh century, Jewish philosophy entered a new phase influenced by Islamic philosophical literature and Islamic ideas. Maimonides is considered one of the most important Jewish thinkers. He was famous in medicine, philosophy and astronomy and was influenced by Islamic civilization and Islamic thought. Maimonides composed many books in Arabic but wrote them in Hebrew letters. Search objective: Show the impact of Arab culture on the Hebrew culture in the era of Andalusia or in the Middle Ages. Research Structure An introduction that talks about Arab culture in general, the body of the research: The impact of Arab culture on Jewish culture, the conclusion of the research..

Kabbalah and the Founding of America: The Early Influence of Jewish Thought in the New World by Brian Ogren (review)

Kabbalah and the Founding of America: The Early Influence of Jewish Thought in the New World by Brian Ogren (review)

Four Jewish Visions of the Garden of Eden

What was life like for Adam and Eve before they sinned? What was their sin? What was this mysterious Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? The views on these questions of four major Jewish thinkers: Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), Moses Nahmanides (1194–1270), Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), and Solomon Maimon (1753–1800), are discussed and contrasted. For Maimonides, the Garden of Eden was the Garden of Pure Reason, and sin consisted in the abandonment of Reason. For Nahmanides, like Augustine, the Garden of Eden story is about the human beings’ attainment of free choice with all its grave problems. Criticizing Maimonides and Nahmanides, Mendelssohn followed Plato and Judah Halevi, arguing that the Garden of Eden story is about maintaining a harmony between intellect and desire. Maimon agreed with Maimonides that the Garden of Eden was the Garden of Pure Reason, but, following Kant, he argued contra Maimonides that the moral rules are rational and a priori. All four thinkers held that the Garden of Eden was a paradigmatic place of tolerance—either because rational people do not harm others, or because desireless people have no desire to harm others, or because well-balanced people have noble virtues. In an Excursus, Maimon’s “Merry Masquerade Ball” is interpreted.

The Writings

The Writings Christopher T. Begg, Richard A. Taylor, Fred W. Guyette, and Mathias Winckler 973. [Gregory the Great: Moral Reflections on the Book of Job] Gregory the Great (tr. Brian Kearns, OCSO), Moral Reflections on the Book of Job, Vol. 6, Books 28–35 (Cistercian Studies 261; Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2022). Pp. 574. $59.95. ISBN 978-0-87907-261-2 (vol. 6). With this volume, the sixth in a series, the five previous installments of which appeared during the course of the years 2014–2019, K. brings to conclusion a truly monumental scholarly project: his "one-man" English translation of Gregory the Great's multifaceted and long-influential Moralia in Job (which in the Latin critical edition comes to a total of 1,880 pages!). This final volume covers Books 28–35 of Gregory's opus, which themselves treat Job 38:1–42:17. As he did for the preceding volumes in the series, Mark DelCogliano provides an introduction to the portion of Gregory's work featured in this volume. The volume concludes with K.'s afterword, which offers reflections on his extended engagement with Gregory and his oeuvre and a comprehensive Scripture index for all six volumes. Given its dimensions, one might venture the relatively safe prediction that K.'s rendering is not likely to be superseded for the foreseeable future among English-language readers. In any case, it represents a welcome resource for anyone interested in Gregory and the interpretive history of the Book of Job.—C.T.B. 974. [The Sequence of Psalms 33–34–35] Edwin Rodrigues, Psalm of Praise for the Rescue of the Throat: Concatenation and lectio continua of Pss 33–34–35 (ÖBS 54; Berlin/Bern/Brussels/New York/Oxford/Warsaw/Vienna: Peter Lang, 2022). Pp. 459. $93.95. ISBN 978-3-631-86374-9. R.'s monograph, the published version of his 2021 dissertation done at the Sankt Georgen Hochschule, Frankfurt, Germany, under the direction of Dieter Böhler, S.J., picks up on a prevailing interest of contemporary Psalms scholarship, i.e., the "concatenation," at the micro and macro levels, of individual psalms, the reasons behind their linkage and the joint message that emerges from their being arranged as they are. More specifically, R. focuses on the sequence of the three psalms, 33–34–35, to each of which he devotes an extensive chapter that addresses, e.g, the given psalm's text, structure, genre, and vocabulary. These three psalms represent different genres: Psalm 33 is a sapiential hymn, Psalm 34 a thanksgiving song, and Psalm 35 an individual lament. Nevertheless, the three psalms share a number of terms in common as well as a common overarching theme, i.e., Yhwh's rescue of those in distress (the term "throat" in R.'s title is his rendering of the term npš, "life," which recurs in each composition). These commonalities help to explain why a compiler chose to group the three psalms in the sequence in which we now find them, thereby constituting a psalmic "triad" within Book 1 of the Psalter (Psalms 1–41), which, taken as a whole, presents a multifaceted "praise" (thlh) of Yhwh as the rescuer of individuals and the people as a whole.—C.T.B. 975. [Ecclesiastes] John Goldingay, Ecclesiastes (The Bible in God's World; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021). Pp. xvi + 321. $55. ISBN 978-1-7252-7316-0. The Bible in God's World Commentary series seeks "to provide clear interpretation of biblical texts for students, scholars, preachers, and pastors." G.'s commentary on Ecclesiastes accomplishes this goal in admirable fashion. A brief introduction of thirty-two pages summarizes the historical background of Ecclesiastes, treats the composition and [End Page 350] authorship of the book, its text, theology, and contemporary relevance, and provides an outline of the book. G. attributes authorship of the book to an unknown Jewish thinker (male or female) of the Second Temple period, perhaps around 200 b.c.e. On matters of textual criticism, G. seldom departs from the MT. His translation of the Hebrew text can be characterized as literal and word-for-word, "so that someone who does...

Untangling Long-Term Enmeshed Suffering Emotions: A Study of Lurianic Kabbalah and Gestalt Therapy

This paper explores the interplay between Jewish Lurianic Kabbalah and Gestalt Therapy, focusing on enmeshment of emotions of the client. The paper proposes a method to unmesh enmeshed emotions using principles of Lurianic Kabbalah applied to Gestalt Therapy. The study delves into the history and concepts of Lurianic Kabbalah, emphasising the significance of its key elements: tzimtzum (God's self-limitation), shevirah (breaking of vessels), and tikkun (mending of flaws), highlighting the roots of Gestalt Therapy in Jewish thinkers and its compatibility with mythic and mystical traditions. Through a proposed therapeutic model, the paper illustrates the application of Lurianic Kabbalah in Gestalt Therapy sessions. The model comprises five stages of withdrawal, destruction, repair, gratitude, and celebration. By applying Kabbalah's transformative principles mirroring creation, destruction, and repair, clients gained fresh perspectives and identities. A quantitative study involving 49 non-clinical participants was conducted to study four variables, depression, anxiety, stress, and hopelessness, using DASS-21 and BHS. Results from pre-and-post testing, by employing Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test at p value of <0.01, revealed significant emotional state reductions of all variables with 0.000 significance values, endorsing the effectiveness of the approach in facilitating well-being and psychological healing. The study underscores the potential of this integration, contributing to the crossroads of mysticism and psychotherapy. Further research is needed to explore its broader applicability.

Usury in Medieval Jewish Thought

Usury in Medieval Jewish Thought

Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought. Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera

Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer, Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought. Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides, and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera

Wkład ks. Konstantego Michalskiego do skarbca kultury europejskiej

Rev. Konstanty Michalski, CM, (1879-1947), a philosopher, Thomist, professor and rector of the Jagiellonian University as well as an active member of the Historical-Philosophical Department of the Polish Academy of Learning; he was chairman of the Commission of the History of Philosophy in Poland and Vice-Director of the Department. In 1924, he initiated the Catholic Scientific Institute in Kraków. He experienced the horrors of the concentration camp in Sachsenhausen near Berlin. Michalski’s academic achievements in the field of the history of medieval thought include three thematic groups: Polish philosophy, Western philosophy and philosophical-theological thought of Dante Alighieri. While investigating the 14th century philosophical trends and problems of Scholasticism, Michalski concluded that the dynamics of mediaeval thought was strictly related to the reception of Aristotle’s works and their Arabic and Greek commentators. Together with Aleksander Birkenmajer he put forward a project of a critical edition of the Latin translations of Aristotle’s works, Latin translations of the Arabic and Jewish thinkers as well as the best medieval commentaries on the works of the Stagirite and independent philosophical treatises. On behalf of the Polish Academy of Learning Michalski presented a project of the editorial series Corpus philosophorum medii aevii to the Union Académique Internationale (International Union of Academies) in Brussels in 1928. The Union accepted the proposal of the two medievalists from Kraków in 1930. Michalski gave great impetus to Aristotelian studies, which made medievalists continue their work until today. Corpus philosophorum medii aevii is the most significant and greatest contribution to research on mediaeval thought, continued by scientific centres in Poland and abroad. Michalski reached the conclusion that only getting familiar with the main Western trends would allow him to fathom the doctrinal currents of Polish medieval philosophy. From 1920, he stopped investigating Polish Scholasticism and began seeking its sources in the main trends of Western philosophy of the 14 century. He was not so much interested in schools and systems as in the issues discussed in the 14th century, their formulations and proposed solutions. Michalski was the first Polish scholar who raised research on the history of philosophy to a European level by investigating the sources and carrying out independent studies on fields that had been little known or examined. At the same time, he was the first Polish scholar who explored the main trends in the 14th century philosophy in France and England, contributing to European science to a considerable extent. His achievements are permanent and notable. He studied from the historical-critical perspective over 360 philosophical texts in Polish, English, French, German and Italian libraries. He showed numerous parallels, analogies and similarities in problem-doctrinal areas between medieval philosophy on the one hand and modern and contemporary philosophy on the other. The outcome of his research activities has been included permanently in fundamental textbooks for medieval philosophy. However, his research was not limited to perceiving the main late medieval philosophical currents that dominated teaching at the universities in Oxford, Paris and Kraków. He also studied the texts of ancient and medieval philosophers, especially Saint Thomas Aquinas, at the same time referring to contemporary thought. Problems of contemporary philosophy inspired him to research the Middle Ages. The ideas of Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, Roman Ingarden or Jan Łukasiewicz paved the way for him to make discoveries in the14th century philosophy.

Bauman: A Biography

Bauman: A Biography

From Midrash to Dialogue

AbstractThis article argues for the utility of teaching midrash when introducing Judaism in interreligious education programmes, based on the author's experiences with the interreligious course at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey. Midrash illuminates many aspects of Jewish meaning‐making and provides students with multiple entry points based on their learning styles. It has also long played an important role in Jewish encounters with other religious communities. And it continues to frame how contemporary Jewish thinkers connect classical Jewish sources to modern challenges. The dialogical nature of midrash creates opportunities for the students and the instructor to seek mutual understanding, generating the potential for successful dialogue encounters outside the classroom. After reflecting on how the return to in‐person learning has expanded these possibilities, the author poses several questions for further inquiry.

King Lear “After” Auschwitz: Shakespeare, Appropriation and Theatres of Catastrophe in Post-War British Drama. By Richard Ashby

Richard Ashby’s King Lear “After” Auschwitz takes flight from Adorno’s famous dictum that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric.”1 Adorno’s call for an aesthetics founded on contradiction rather than harmonization speaks directly to the dissonances of King Lear, and Adorno’s turn to Beckett in search of a dramaturgy tuned to catastrophe dovetails with the Lear-Beckett rapprochement that defines so much postwar theater. Ashby uses Adorno’s aesthetic and cultural writings to organize a project enriched by many other thinkers who were interred or displaced by the Holocaust, including Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, and Walter Benjamin, and the cover of the book displays a sketch of Poor Tom in his hovel by the Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka, who was deemed a degenerate by the Nazis. Nonetheless, this is not an inquiry into the meanings of King Lear for Jewish thinkers or other victims, survivors, and direct witnesses of the camps. Instead, Ashby, like Adorno, uses the phrase “after Auschwitz” to diagnose postwar consumerism, the automatism of mass culture, and the rise of the administrative and biopolitical state. This metonymizing of Auschwitz allows Ashby to take up a subject rather different from Shakespeare and the Holocaust per se: namely, appropriations of King Lear by postwar British playwrights, who addressed historical and existential traumas that unfolded after the camps had been emptied, such as the pain of exile and social alienation (David Rudkin’s 1984 Will’s Way), the genocide in Bosnia (Sarah Kane’s 1995 Blasted), and the devastations of industrialism and climate change (Forced Entertainment’s 2016 Table Top Shakespeare, Dennis Kelly’s 2010 The Gods Weep). The result is a powerful study of Shakespearean appropriation that deftly maneuvers among critical, textual, philosophical, and performance materials in order to craft definitive readings of major works of modern British drama and establish the unique thematic and formal affordances of King Lear as equipment for confronting catastrophe.

Approaching God Aesthetically in Modern Jewish Thought

AbstractDrawing on the writings of the twentieth‐century rabbi‐philosopher Joseph Soloveitchik (1903‐93), and in particular his observations on the nature and value of the aesthetic, this article sketches one element of a larger project that will explore an aesthetic approach to God and religion. The claim here is that bringing Soloveitchik into dialogue with Friedrich Nietzsche, and in particular Nietzsche’s claims in The Birth of Tragedy regarding how the world and existence can only be justified as “aesthetic phenomena,” can act as a springboard for constructing a picture whereby: (1) the experience of the halakhic life can play a life‐affirming role for its more sophisticated practitioners, parallel to that played by aesthetic phenomena in Nietzsche’s thought; (2) it is the aesthetic element of halakhic practice that explains how it can do this; and (3) these aesthetic elements of halakhic practice enable its practitioners, in varying ways, to experience halakhah as mediating a relationship with a God who cannot be comprehended propositionally.

" The origins of the neo-conservative political thought between Straussie and Trotskyism and its implications for the Arab region"

The origins of the political thought of the neo-conservative movement stem from non-American European references, and non-Christian Jewish theological beliefs, especially the ideas of Leo Strauss, the German Jewish thinker, and Leo Trotsky, the Russian Jewish thinker who formulated the idea of ​​the neo-conservative movement with this conclusion that drew its horizons to the world, especially the Middle East from In order to achieve the greatness of the American Empire, its hegemony and its sovereignty over the whole world, and because the theological references of the movement are of Jewish fundamentalism (Strauss and Trotsky), this opened the door of ideological affiliation to the movement in front of the Jews of America and Europe. And then, in a geopolitical way, it affected the Middle East, where securing the existence of (the Zionist entity) / “the State of Israel” required that intervention in the affairs of the countries of the Arab region as neighbors of the Zionist entity, and demanded a just solution to the Palestinian issue, and this influence is one of the most prominent pillars and foundations of the political thought of the neo-conservative movement In the USA and the world.
 It seems that the influence of the revolutionary Trotskyite philosophy is more evident in neo-conservative thought than the influence of Straussian philosophy, although this reference was not explicitly declared in the literature of American political thought or political thought critical of neo-conservative thought, which is what we perceive in this study as new, especially if We looked at the origins of the Zionist movement in its infancy with "Leo Pinsker", "Theodor Herzl", "Vladimir-Raif Jabotinsky" who write down the most socialist whose heirs from the Zionists benefited from the exploitation and employment of Trotsky's socialist ideas to a greater extent than Strauss, and they presented the socialist system over the liberal in formulating the idea Zionism

Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought: Moses Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, written by Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer

Metaphor and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Thought: Moses Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera, written by Dianna Lynn Roberts-Zauderer

Eliezer Schweid’s Scholarly and Philosophical Exploration of Theological Responses to the Holocaust

Abstract Eliezer Schweid, one of the most important contemporary scholars of Jewish thought, devoted two volumes to analyzing theological responses to the Holocaust. Wrestling until Daybreak (1990) covered a diverse range of non-Orthodox Jewish thinkers, and Between Destruction and Redemption (1994) examined ultra-Orthodox Holocaust theology. This article will examine how scholarship, philosophy, and theology are intertwined in these two volumes.

Defining Death

AbstractDefining death as irreversible cardio-circulatory arrest connects death with ability to resuscitate, raises ethical issues about heart-transplants, and tells us rather when death occurs than what it is. I consider whether death is ceasing to exist, whether immortality is natural for human beings, and whether spatio-temporal continuity is necessary for being the same person. That immortality is natural is alien to Jewish thinking in the Bible, where the idea of existence after death developed only with that of God's transcendent existence. Plato's definition of death as the separate existence of soul and body is grounded on his analysis of intelligence. Christian philosophers now accept that intelligence evolved out of sentience and sentience out of inanimate matter; so they may prefer the Jewish view that existence after death is a gift from God dependent on faith; Aquinas perhaps thought faith stands to natural intelligence much as natural intelligence stands to sentience.

Kabbalah and the Founding of America: The Early Influence of Jewish Thought in the New World. By Brian Ogren. New York: New York University Press, 2021. xi + 315 pp. $35.00 cloth.

Kabbalah and the Founding of America: The Early Influence of Jewish Thought in the New World. By Brian Ogren. New York: New York University Press, 2021. xi + 315 pp. $35.00 cloth.

Holiness, in Particular: A Proposal for Understanding Qedushah

AbstractBeginning from an intriguing essay by the mid‐twentieth century Jewish thinker Leon Roth, I offer here an account of what “holiness” might mean for Jews by moving between readings of specifically Jewish texts and a series of general desiderata for any account of holiness. My proposal involves attending closely to but also moving away from the particulars of God’s world. Holiness consists in this process, not in any of the particulars themselves. I suggest that the point of Jewish law is to engage us in such a process.

Freud’s Moses and Fromm’s Freud: Erich Fromm’s silence on Freud’s Moses – a silence of negation or a silence of consent?

ABSTRACT In 1939 Sigmund Freud published his latest book, Moses and Monotheism, which is his most unusual and problematic work. In Moses Freud offers four groundbreaking claims in regard to the biblical story: [a] Moses was an Egyptian [b] The origin of monotheism is not Judaism [c] Moses was murdered by the Jews [d] The murder sparked a constant sense of unconscious guilt, which eventually contributed to the rational and ethical development of Jewish monotheism. As is well known, Freud’s Moses received extremely negative reviews from Jewish thinkers. The social psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, who wrote extensively on Freud as well as on Judaism and the biblical narrative, did not explicitly express his position on Freud’s latest work. This paper offers explanations for Fromm’s roaring silence on Freud’s Moses.

Abraham ibn Daud’un İbn Hazm’ın Nesih ve Tahrif Eleştirisine Karşı Tevrat Savunusu

Abraham ibn Daud (ö. 1180) İspanyalı önde gelen Yahudi âlimlerdendir. Onun yaşadığı dönemde İspanya toprakları Murabıtlar, Muvahhidler ve Hıristiyan krallıklar arasında savaşlara sahne olmuştur. İbn Daud, Müslümanlar ve Hıristiyanlar tarafından Yahudiliğe yöneltilen eleştirilere karşı Yahudiliği savunmuştur. İbn Daud, ayrıca Karaî Yahudilerin Rabbani Yahudilere yönelik eleştirilerine de cevap vermiştir. İbn Daud, Yahudiliği savunmak üzere biri inanca dair diğeri de Rabbani geleneğin otantikliğine dair iki temel eser yazmıştır. Bunlardan biri Arapça kaleme aldığı el-ʿAḳīdetu’r-Rāfiʿa, diğeri de İbranice Sefer ha-Kabala’dır. Sefer ha-Kabala, Karaîlerin eleştirilerine karşı Rabbani Yahudiliğin Musa’dan itibaren kesintisiz bir şekilde geldiğini ispatlamaya gayret eden bir eserdir. İlk Aristocu Yahudi düşünür olarak bilinen İbn Daud, başyapıtı olan el-ʿAḳīdetu’r-Rāfiʿa adlı eserinde ise Aristo felsefesi ışığında Yahudi inancının üstünlüğünü göstermeye çalışmakta, aynı zamanda Müslümanların nesih ve tahrif iddialarına cevap vermektedir. Elinizdeki makalede, İbn Daud’un nesih ve tahrifle ilgili cevapları incelenecektir. Bunu yaparken İbn Daud’un muhtemel kaynakları ve istifade ettiği eserler de tespit edilmeye çalışılacaktır. Diğer taraftan İbn Daud’un nesih ve tahrif iddialarını hangi Müslüman âlimin eserleri üzerinden okuduğuna dair soru da bu makalede cevaplandırılmaya çalışılacaktır.