Observant Jews Research Articles

Stanley Nattel.

Stanley Nattel.

Religious and Heritage Education in Israel in an Era of Secularism

Israel as a unique country composed of a religiously heterogeneous society of native-born Israelis whose parents arrived in the country before the declaration of Israel as an independent state in 1948 and immigrant Jews coming from countries spread throughout the world, mainly from the early 1960s until the present time, as well as Arab Moslem, Arab Christian, and Druze citizens born in the country. The Jewish population consists of secularized Jews who are almost totally estranged from the Jewish religion; traditional Jews who identify with the Jewish religion; religious modern orthodox observant Jews who share common societal goals with members of secular and religious Jewish society; and religious ultra-orthodox observant Jews who are rigid in their faith and oppose absorption and assimilation into general society. The Israeli Arab population comprises Moslems who are generally more religious than Israeli Jews, but are less religious and more flexible in their religious beliefs than Moslems living in many other countries in the Middle East. Christians who identify with their religion; and a moderately religious Druze community. Because of the heterogeneity of Israeli society, mandatory religious and heritage education presents each sector with a unique curriculum that serves the particular needs considered vital for each sector be they secular, traditional, or religious. In order to offset the differences in religious and heritage education and to enhance common social values and social cohesion in Israeli society, citizenship education, coupled with religious and heritage education, is compulsory for all population sectors.

“Our Temples Are Deserted”: The Jewish Sabbath Observance Movement in New York, 1879–1930

Jews arrived in America in the nineteenth century already less committed to Orthodoxy than they had been in previous generations. The Haskalah , or Jewish enlightenment, the spread of Socialism, and the rise of Zionism all had an impact on Sabbath observance. Additionally, America’s economic and cultural institutions, such as the six-day work week, made it extremely difficult for observant Jews to abstain from work on a Saturday. The Sabbath observance movement arose as a response to the low level of synagogue attendance, the decline in the number of families gathering for a Sabbath meal on Friday night, and Jewish men working and women shopping on Saturdays. Beginning in the 1870s, a series of Sabbath observance organizations were created, seeking to get Jewish employers to close their businesses and Jewish workers not to work on Saturdays. Key to their efforts was the establishment of employment bureaus to match Sabbath-observant employers with workers who were Sabbath-observant. Their success was quite limited. One after another the various Sabbath observance organizations failed for several reasons, including inadequate financial resources and a lack of enduring organizational strength, but mostly because of the emergence of the five-day work week and because the Jewish community was not committed to Sabbath observance.

Antisemitic Acts and Attitudes in Contemporary France: The Effects on French Jews

Threats and violence from radicalized Islamists have led to heightened security measures for Jewish organizations in France. French soldiers are protecting Jewish schools, kindergartens, community centers, and other Jewish institutions. In addition to terrorism, there are a number of other factors that have led to increased antisemitism in France. This article discusses data on antisemitic incidents and surveys on antisemitic attitudes in France. While there is a clear rise in antisemitic incidents, the trend in antisemitic attitudes is less clear. Levels of antisemitic attitudes are particularly high among Muslims, the far-right, and also the far-left, but not necessarily among the general French population. However, the rise of antisemitism has hit observant Jews more than non-observant Jews and it has led to changes in behavior, including in the display of religious signs and avoidance of places of worship. Many French Jews today question their future in France.

Playacting: A D'Var Torah on Parshat Hukkat

Some historians have argued that one of the great theological innovations of the early Rabbis was to understand much of halakha as a form of spiritual discipline rather than a reflection of cosmic metaphysical reality. This view of halakhic nominalism has powerfully influenced at least major strains of the Jewish legal imagination writ large. And one possible upshot of that sort of approach is to understand the observant Jewish life as, in some sense, a form of But understanding halakhic observance as playacting does not reduce the responsibility of halakhically-committed Jews, it only deepens it. For observant Jews to admit that they are acting in a play is no excuse for them to be sloppy actors. For the Rabbis also insisted that Jews have a duty to follow the script, to be authentic and convincing actors in the drama of Jewish religious life. They need to be actors, but darn serious actors. This short talk further explores the metaphor of playacting. It distinguishes the ritual script and the moral script and emphasizes the importance of navigating their complex relationship. It also widens the lens to a brief discussion of the larger script of human life. In that context, the playacting metaphor must be read to accommodate the divine gift of human free will. In a certain sense, God is the author, or director, or stage manager, or critic, of a single-performance live show, with little in the way of rehearsal and no retakes. It can go well. And it can also go badly. As C.S. Lewis put it, Of course God knew what would happen if [human beings] used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk.

The Earth is the Eternal’s and the Fullness Thereof: Jewish Food Culture and the Blessings before Eating

Jews are famous for their food. Jewish cookbooks are selling, and Jewish (non-) kosher delis and diners are visited by observant and nonobservant Jews alike, as well as by interested or outright en...

From Ritual to Protest: Sukkot in the Garden of Hope

In 2010 and 2011, as civil demonstrations erupted around the world, the observance of Sukkot, the annual Jewish holiday that commemorates the Israelites' biblical journey through the Sinai Desert to the Promised Land, came to embody the contemporary struggle for social and economic justice. During this weeklong autumn festival, observant Jews traditionally build and inhabit temporary outdoor ritual structures called sukkot , which translates from Hebrew to booth or tabernacle. This practice creates a unique opportunity for creative expression through the construction, decoration, and interpretation of the sukkah (singular of sukkot ) and for social interaction through the holiday's customary rite of hospitality. Ethnographic research conducted from 2010 to 2011 in Shchunat Hatikva (Neighborhood of Hope), a working-class, multiethnic neighborhood in south Tel Aviv, Israel, uncovers the purpose and variety of Sukkot observance in a community struggling with economic constraint and social neglect. Addressing the history of the holiday and its practice in south Tel Aviv in the fall of 2011, as housing and Occupy demonstrations took root across the country and the world, this study bridges the fields of vernacular architecture and folklore studies. Challenging the holiday's symbolic promise of shelter, the search for house and home among Israel's disadvantaged and migrant populations reframes the narrative and observance of Sukkot with both reaffirming and subversive expressions of sukkah construction and use.

Ways of Infinity

Abstract The paper discusses analogies between the way in which infinity is understood and dealt with in mathematics and in Jewish tradition. It begins with recalling the classical debate about infinity in the field of the foundations of mathematics. Reading an important paper by A. Robinson, we come to the conclusion that mathematicians work “as if” infinite totalities existed. They do so by following the rules of their formalized discourse which, at least if it refers to anything at all, also refers to such totalities. The paper describes how, according to Jewish tradition, infinity is also not theological: instead of thinking that they own some infinite being or relate to it, observant Jews follow Jewish law. The analogy is then extended to what is called ‘epistemological infinity’. The paper shows that both in mathematics and in Judaism, we get some epistemological experience of infinity, as far as both Talmudic knowledge and contemporary mathematical encyclopedia are experienced as inexhaustible sources of new thoughts, structures, ideas, developments.

Chaim Potok: Confronting Modernity through the Lens of Tradition

Chaim Potok: Confronting Modernity through the Lens of Tradition

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ. By DANIEL BOYARIN. Foreword by JACK MILES

G race , humour, and accessibility mark this book. Jack Miles in his foreword notes its challenge to readers who think of Christology as a new Christian phenomenon. Boyarin argues, by contrast, for a Jewish Jesus who kept the laws of diet and purity, but was also seen by some of his Jewish contemporaries to fit pre-Christian Jewish expectation of a divine yet also suffering messiah. ‘The job description—Required: one Christ, will be divine, will be called Son of Man, will be sovereign and savior of the Jews and the world—was there already’ (p.73); ‘the idea of Jesus as divine-human Messiah goes back … to Jesus himself, and even before that’ (p.7). Assessments of pre-Christian expectation on these lines hardly form a majority position in critical scholarship, but sponsors of broadly similar views have included J. A. Emerton, J. C. O’Neill, J. J. Collins, and Joel Marcus. In antiquity and the Middle Ages related views marked Christian apologetic exposition of the Old Testament and rabbinic literature. The piquancy of this book lies in endorsement of a view of this kind by an heir of Jewish tradition and a rabbinic scholar, who presents Jesus himself as a fully observant Jew with a mastery of halakhah. ‘Jesus kept kosher’, to quote the title of chapter 3—but it was not, as in older apologetic for Judaism and in some ‘liberal Protestant’ histories, through a paganizing Christian error that Jesus was called divine. This Christology of divine status is here presented as one trend of authentically Jewish thinking, pursued within the intermingling rather than separation of Christians and Jews which Boyarin emphasized for the whole period down to the fourth century in his Border Lines (2004). He is close to M. Idel’s book Ben: Sonship and Jewish Mysticism (2007) in willingness to view Christian doctrinal developments within the long-term context of a manifold Jewish mysticism. The argument of The Jewish Gospels , however, is based firmly on earlier rather than later mystical and apocalyptic texts.

The Candle of Distinction: A Cultural Biography of the Havdalah Light

This case study explores how a general lighting device transformed into a distinctive Jewish ritual object, the Havdalah candle. In late antiquity, the ubiquitous oil lamp served for the fire-light blessing during the end-of-Sabbath Havdalah ritual but in the fourth century, a sage added a torch, avukah, aggrandizing the ceremonial light. Jews showed little concern for the lighting utensil until the late Middle Ages, when a variety of contemporary torch-candles employed in Church ritual and among Christian aristocracy inspired new rabbinic interpretations of the term avukah. Ashkenazi Jews favored a costly Gothic-style implement with intertwined tapers, which particularly suited the words of the ancient Havdalah blessing. This became a distinctively Ashkenazi Jewish ritual object in the sixteenth century, after Christians abandoned the old-fashioned style of torch-candle. Following the drop in cost of wax, and massive Jewish migrations in modern times, all observant Jews adopted the Ashkenazi intertwined candle.

Power of the Spoken Word

Power of the Spoken Word Gus Palmer (bio) According to Walter Ong, in the overwhelming number of spoken languages in the world, possibly tens of thousands, only around 106 have ever been committed to writing to a degree sufficient to have produced literature, and most have never been written at all.1 Of the some three thousand languages spoken that exist today in the world, as few as seventy-eight have a literature. There is yet no way to calculate how many languages have disappeared before writing occurred among those speakers. There are hundreds of languages spoken today that have no writing. Languages are essentially oral in nature worldwide and may perhaps remain that way always. Many language scholars believe the Greek alphabet was invented after the Phoenician alphabetic system around the eighth century bce.2 Before it was written, the Bible was itself an oral recitation.3 William Schniedewind, the Kershaw Chair of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at ucla, explores when and why the ancient Israelite accounts—once conveyed only orally—came to be written down and attain the status of scripture. There was a cultural shift that occurred in ancient Palestine that democratized the written word and allowed it to gain religious authority in the book we now call “the Bible.” The textualization of ancient Israelite society marked one of the great turning points in human history, namely, the movement from an oral culture toward a written culture.4 Even today, facets of the oral nature of the Bible, or Torah, occur in the sacred readings in religious services. This is in keeping with the reading being vocalized from the reading podium, or bima, to the congregation, who respond at appropriate times. The haftarah (prophetic writings) is read aloud by both bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah [End Page 512] young men and women as a public demonstration of having reached adulthood and joining the adult Jewish community. The vocalized renderings allow the congregation to hear the prophetic reading aloud. It is an engagement of vocalized scriptural readings and an important benchmark in the life of observant Jewish young men and women that is celebrated at two strategic levels: the sacred reading of the selected text aloud and the responsive nature of the congregation. The scriptural reading aloud is a mutual meeting between the reader and his or her listeners. It is a combination of orality and literacy in a dynamic and meaningful way based on historical practice to modern times. Another religious observance in which Jews invoke meaning is the retelling of the exodus of the Hebrew people from Egypt during Passover, when observant Jews reconnect themselves to their humanity, to God, and to the world at large. This occurs during the Passover seder meal when reading the story of the Exodus from the haggadah. The haggadah, meaning “order,” is the text participants at the seder employ to recount the events of the Exodus. The haggadah includes the Exodus story itself, ritual prayers, songs, and the blessings that accompany consumption of the leavened bread, or matzah. The story of the Exodus, in order to manifest itself securely in the minds of Jews, brings together the telling of the events surrounding Jewish history leading up to and after the Exodus. The ancient story attempts to transcend time and distance. The participatory nature within the seder and ritual readings assures the continuation of the people for all time. That is the main theme of the Passover observance. There are many similar religious observances by people the world over. The Passover seder is just one example of how the merging of the spoken word and texts brings about an interplay of the two in a meaningful way. There has always been a combination of speech and written texts not only in religious observances and rituals but also in other communicative situations and settings. It is, however, possible that when writing is applied to otherwise unwritten narratives, something is more or less lost of the original text.5 One obvious aspect is the absence of the participatory nature between speakers and the audience. Since oral production requires listeners, this naturally facilitates the active engagement between two important entities without which no communication...

Women of the Wall: A Normative Analysis of the Place of Religion in the Public Sphere

The place of religion in the public sphere is a controversial issue, and scholarly opinions differ, from insisting on a public sphere that reflects the religion of the majority, to those who insist on it being religion-free. Using the method of inquiry of contextual political theory, we examine the struggle of the Women of Wall (WoW) to pray collectively at the Western Wall. Their struggle began in 1988, and by 2013 includes many Courts decision, social struggles, public committees, and the involvement of many politicians and organizations, both in Israel and the USA. As this struggle takes place at the holiest place for observant Jews, it raises questions beyond its geographical location. The article describes three main normative approaches to state–religion relations (privatization, evenhandedness, and ‘dominant culture view'—DCV), examines them, and attempts to consider their application to the WoW case. Our conclusion points to the advantages of the privatization model, the permissibility of the evenhanded model and points to major shortcomings of the DCV.

Scrivere la vita di una donna nel XVII secolo

In this paper, I wish to highlight some of the main characteristics of the autobiographic writing by Glikl Hamel (1645-1724), a German Jewess who wrote her memories. She knows she is doing something that no woman has done before in Yiddish literature. She carefully mingles several literary genres, mixing stories with practical suggestions, proverbs, aphorism, parables, and elements of the so called Muser-literatur, books of moral behavior and instructions on how to be an observant Jew. The author was forty-five years old when she began to write, and her maturity is clearly present in the text, where she presents herself as well aware of what she wants to write, why and how. Glikl often relates about historical events. In particular here two examples are given, one about the relation with some Christian merchants, and the second about the impact of the news on Shabbetay Zevi, the false messiah, on her community.

Wright's Paul and the Cloud of (Other) Witnesses

With appreciation for Wright's admirable achievement, this article takes its starting point from a "word cloud" of Paul and the Faithfulness of God in order to illustrate this work's emphases as well as possible lacunae. Relative silence envelops questions such as (1) Paul's biography and its theological or mimetic value, including Luke's Paul in Acts; (2) criticisms of Wright's customarily straightforward equation of Paul's preferred term Christ with Messiah; (3) the hermeneutical implications for this project of any "deutero-Pauline" or indeed strictly "pseudonymous" authorship; (4) the place of observant Jews in "all Israel." Wright's is a Paul of soteriological logos rather than of "Christomimetic" ethos, of suffering or of sacrifice. But these are queries for constructive engagement with what is now the most complete account of its kind in existence.

Wright's Paul and the Cloud of (Other) Witnesses

With appreciation for Wright's admirable achievement, this article takes its starting point from a "word cloud" of Paul and the Faithfulness of God in order to illustrate this work's emphases as well as possible lacunae. Relative silence envelops questions such as (1) Paul's biography and its theological or mimetic value, including Luke's Paul in Acts; (2) criticisms of Wright's customarily straightforward equation of Paul's preferred term Christ with Messiah; (3) the hermeneutical implications for this project of any "deutero-Pauline" or indeed strictly "pseudonymous" authorship; (4) the place of observant Jews in "all Israel." Wright's is a Paul of soteriological logos rather than of "Christomimetic" ethos, of suffering or of sacrifice. But these are queries for constructive engagement with what is now the most complete account of its kind in existence.

Religious Observance and Well-Being among Israeli Jewish Adults: Findings from the Israel Social Survey

This study reports on analyses of Jewish respondents (N = 6,056) from the 2009 Israel Social Survey. Multivariable methods were used to investigate whether religiously observant Jews have greater physical and psychological well-being. After adjustment for age and other sociodemographic correlates of religion and well-being and for a measure of Israeli Jewish religious identity (i.e., secular, traditional, religious, ultra-Orthodox), two findings stand out. First, greater Jewish religious observance is significantly associated with higher scores on indicators of self-rated health, functional health, and life satisfaction. Second, there is a gradient-like trend such that greater religiousness and life satisfaction are observed as one moves “rightward” across religious identity categories. These findings withstand adjustment for effects of all covariates, including Israeli nativity and Jewish religious identity.

Reimagining Judaism

Reimagining Judaism

Amici Curiae Brief of Robert P. George, Sherif Girgis, and Ryan T. Anderson in Support of Hollingsworth and Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group Addressing the Merits and Supporting Reversal

At stake in these cases is not who is and is not eligible to marry but what marriage is. Today’s debates offer rival answers to that question, two substantive marriage definitions. This Court’s task is not to judge the desirability of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) and California Proposition 8’s definition, but only to decide whether citizens and legislators may embody in law the belief in marriage as a conjugal union, as they have historically done.There are excellent reasons from philosophy and social science to think that marriage is a conjugal relationship — the type of union that only a man and woman can form — rather than just the sort of emotional union that any two (or more) adults can form. And recognizing marriage as such serves important public interests.Indeed, the most important free community, on which all others depend, is the marriage-based family. But to thrive, it requires a supporting framework of understandings and expectations. A main purpose of marriage law in any society is to promote such a culture. Sound marriage policy therefore serves the common good (especially the institutions of civil society) and helps keep government limited.Redefining civil marriage can cause corresponding social harms. It weakens the rational foundation (and hence social practice) of the stabilizing marital norms on which social order depends: norms such as permanence, exclusivity, monogamy. Conferring benefits on same-sex relationships itself does not do this, but redefining marriage in the public mind does. And undermining the norms of marriage will in turn damage the many cultural and political goods that draw the law into the marriage business. We list them in summary form here.Real marital fulfillment. To form a true marriage, one must freely choose it, which requires at least a rough idea of what it actually is. Redefining marriage will harm people (especially future generations) by distorting their idea of what marriage is. It will teach that marriage is essentially about emotional fulfillment, without any inherent connections to bodily union or procreation and family life. As people internalize this view, their ability to realize genuine marital union will diminish.Child and spousal well-being. Marriage tends to make spouses healthier, happier and wealthier. And it is marriage itself — conjugal marriage — that does this, especially through its distinctive norms of permanence, exclusivity and orientation to family life. As the state’s redefinition of marriage makes these norms harder to understand, cherish, justify and live by, spouses will benefit less from the advantages of stability.Moreover, if marriage is redefined, no civil institution will reinforce the notion that men and women tend to bring different gifts to child-rearing. In all these ways, redefinition will lower the pressures and incentives for men and women to stay with their spouses and children, or for couples to marry before conceiving. This would harm children’s development as children do best when raised by their married biological mother and father. The welfare and correctional state will have to expand to fill the developmental vacuum.Leading LGBT scholars and activists increasingly agree that redefining marriage would undermine its norms.Religious liberty. If marriage understood as the union of man and woman comes to be seen as irrational (“bigotry”), freedom to express and live by this idea will be eroded. Individuals and institutions who espouse the conjugal view have been denied government licenses, or educational and professional opportunities, for living by (or even publicizing) their views. The consequences for observant Christians, Jews, Muslims and others are clear.Moreover, none of these harms is caused by recognizing infertile (opposite-sex) marriages, which cohere with the conjugal view. And finally, enshrining this view of marriage in law is fully consistent with this Court’s ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.Because there are good reasons for citizens and lawmakers to conclude that marriage is a union of man and woman — even before considering the harms that redefinition might bring — this Court should uphold DOMA and Proposition 8 as constitutional exercises of policy-making power by Congress and the citizens of California, respectively.

Community Reparations to Transform Community Desolation

Community Reparations to Transform Community Desolation