Judaism articles from September 1996

Judaism archives from September 1996

The symbolism of the sukka, part 2.
September 22, 1996... In "The Symbolism of the Sukka," published in the Fall 1994 issue of JUDAISM, I discussed one dimension of this theme: the sukka as a symbol of the "clouds of glory."(1) According to the dominant rabbinic tradition seven "sukkot of clouds of...

Dan Pagis and the poetry of displacement.
September 22, 1996... It is a curious fact that the three leading Hebrew poets of the generation that began to publish shortly after the founding of the State of Israel were all born in German-speaking Europe-Dan Pagis in Bukovina, Yehuda Amichai in Bavaria, and...

Technology and responsibility: reflections on Genesis 1-3.
September 22, 1996... Should the emancipation and secularization of the modern age, which began with a turning-away, not necessarily from God, but from a god who was the Father of men in heaven, end with an even more fateful repudiation of an Earth who was the Mother...

Mortality. (poem)
September 22, 1996... We don't think we're waiting for the end, but the end is waiting. The mind cultivates its flaws like an oyster. You and I are not like the effortless ones who are there already. Not anything like them. When the circuit breaks we grope for...

Midrash, bible, and women's voices.
September 22, 1996... The storytelling aspect of midrash - charming or exasperating, stolidly obtuse or wonderfully insightful - is what we are concerned with here. In the vast compilation of Bible commentary known as midrash, much of it embedded in Talmud, only...

Saints and fanatics: the problematic connection between religion and spirituality.
September 22, 1996... 1. Religion Produces Both Saints and Fanatics In my research on the history of Christian anti-Semitism, I came across some who seem to have been both. The best known example is St. John Chrysostom, the great preacher of Byzantine Christianity,...

Sarah and Isaac. (poem)
September 22, 1996... The rabbis when they write about the story of Isaac and his father Abraham often forget Sarah, the mother. When they do remember they wonder if she knew God's request, if she knew and let them go anyway. But, no, I am certain she couldn't have...

Generations. (poem)
September 22, 1996... Daughter of pogroms my grandmother was wary of strangers. She never forgot the nearness of the enemy Even while intent on discussing potato brandy with the Ukrainian peasant and his thick boots. My mother inherited a little of the ghetto She...

Nationalism, the Jews, and art history.
September 22, 1996... 1. Introduction: Vienna 1980 Anti-Semitic art historians, we assume, need not write anti-Semitic art history. Granted, Orientalism, of which anti-Semitism is a subcategory, has been convincingly exposed in many disciplines.(1) Yet we trust...

Jewish knowing: monism and its ramifications.
September 22, 1996... Though it may no longer be fashionable to invoke the platonic concept of a dualistic body/soul anthropology, one of its basic assumptions - that the rational element of human beings is in some way distinct and separable from at least most of the...

Tzedakah and fundraising: a nineteenth-century response.
September 22, 1996... The advent of the modern world in western and central Europe presented serious challenges to traditional Jewish patterns of communal structure and practice. With the rise of the modern nation-state during the nineteenth century, the traditional...

Lone Wolf: A Biography of Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky, 2 vols.
September 22, 1996... Reviewed by RAFAEL MEDOFF "Everybody is wrong, you alone are right?" This daunting question was hurled at the militant Zionist leader Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky throughout his career, by challengers who demanded that he bow to public opinion....

Rachel.
September 22, 1996... Reviewed by ANDREW SCHEIN One of the difficulties of the Bible for the modern reader is the apparent androcentrism of the text. In response to this difficulty, recent studies, including Phyllis Trible's God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, have...