Judaism articles from March 1993

Judaism archives from March 1993

French-Jewish assimilation reassessed: a review of the recent literature.
March 22, 1993... experienced assimilation. Research remains to be done, however. One area that certainly demands further investigation concerns the political behavior of French Jewry. True, the role of the AIU has recently been reexamined,(28) and Jewish...

The etymology of Totafot.
March 22, 1993... FOR MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES, THE Hebrews lived in the region of the Nile Delta, first as invited guests of the Pharaoh and, later, as slaves. During that time, the Hebrew and the Egyptian languages borrowed words from each other. More than three...

Jacob at Bethel and Penuel: the polarity of Divine encounter.
March 22, 1993... OF THE BIBLICAL PATRIARCHS, JACOB IS the most enigmatic. Possessing neither the awesome faith of an Abraham nor the stoic equanimity of an Isaac, Jacob is, nevertheless, chosen to be the bearer of Divine blessing and the eponymic father of...

Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas: a midrash or thought-experiment. (modernJewish Philosophers Franz Rosenzweig and Emmanuel Levinas)
March 22, 1993... THERE IS MUCH EXCITEMENT AT THIS TIME in response to the challenging, but tremendously potent work of the Lithuanian-born modern Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas. While he has had a European audience for many decades, it is only in the last...

"Raisins and almonds" - Goldfaden's glory. (Yiddish lullaby; Abraham Goldfaden)
March 22, 1993... In 1979 a moving tribute was paid to Molly Picon, one of the great Jewish-American entertainers, on her eightieth birthday. An emotional highpoint was the audience's singing along with the song, "Rozhinkes mit Mandlen," a folk-based theatre song...

Aaron: changing perceptions.
March 22, 1993... AS WE STUDY THE VARIOUS CHARACTERS IN the Bible, we tend to feel that we understand them. Each has a personality of his or her own. Some seem to stay the same in the brief stories told about them; others, more extensively portrayed, may develop...

Hezekiah's boil. (biblical anecdote)
March 22, 1993... "|KING~ HEZEKIAH BECAME MORTALLY ILL" (2 Kings 20:1). |And he thought:~ "In the prime of life I must pass away... day and night you torment me; I am racked with pain till the morning. All my bones are broken... I twitter... I moan... My eyes...

Job, or the suffering of God.
March 22, 1993... THE BOOK OF THE BIBLE THAT IS MOST concerned with the nature of faith and the anxieties that it engenders, is Job. In direct contradiction to the conclusion of the Pharisee, R. Yannai, that "we cannot understand the flourishing of the wicked, nor...

Jewish studies and Jewish identity: some implications of secularizing Torah. (A Success Story)
March 22, 1993... A Success Story OVER THE COURSE OF THE LAST TWENTY OR thirty years, one of the dreams of modern Jewry has apparently been realized: Jewish culture has become a recognized and accepted part of the general university curriculum. Of course, the...

American values and Jewish tradition: synthesis or conflict. (A Review Essay)
March 22, 1993... MAX WEBER, IN HIS FAMOUS ESSAY, "Science as a Vocation,"pointed out that scholarship cannot be totally "free of presuppositions." There are personal commitments and histories, values and ideals, that all researchers possess. They engage and guide...

Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy. (Book Reviews)
March 22, 1993... MARVIN FOX's study of Maimonides is important and useful in a number of different ways. It is valuable, first, as a contribution to the debate in Maimonides scholarship on the methodological problem of interpretation -- of how to read a highly...

Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity. (Book Reviews)
March 22, 1993... IN A VOLUME THAT I published in 1973 I suggested that Orthodox Judaism, until the past decade, exerted little effort in the area of ideology or theology; it concentrated its efforts on Halakhah, Jewish law... Orthodox thinkers are finally...