Aligning with lives of faith

The philosophical and theological discussion regarding religious faith has primarily concerned itself with the abstract issues of what faith is, whether it can be rationally held, and how an agent can acquire, sustain, or deepen faith. The issue of how we should orient ourselves to the faith of others and the role such orientation might play in the religious life hasn’t been much discussed. It is this topic that I propose to address in this essay. I do so by considering a little-known nineteenth-century saint of the Eastern Orthodox church, St. Jacob of Alaska, exploring the ways in which the liturgy calls for its participants to engage with St. Jacob’s life of faith. I develop and defend the claim that it calls for the religiously committed to align their lives with the lives of exemplars such as St. Jacob.     

The Struggle for a Blessing. Reflections on Genesis 32:24–31

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” Then sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Gen. 32:24–31, NRSV)     

Another look at the ‘learned Tracts published long since’

Abstract

Recent scholarship has largely ignored Henry Jacob’s contribution to Richard Hooker’s early reputation. This article demonstrates that Jacob not only read Hooker but also used the latter’s ideas for rhetorical purposes in order to gain polemical advantage over his conformist opponents. This study draws on overlooked references to Hooker in three Jacob writings (1604–09). A dissenter believing that the Hampton Court Conference had failed to implement adequate reform, Jacob approached Hooker’s conformist text from a critical vantage point. Since Hooker was clearly a source of learning and inspiration for Jacob’s conformist opponents, Jacob understood Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie as a threat to his campaign for further reform. Thus, while Jacob had little appreciation for Hooker’s ecclesiology and conformity, he nonetheless used the Lawes rhetorically to gain polemical advantage over admirers of Hooker. Evidence from Jacob’s works also indicates that Hooker had a posthumous reputation for irenicism. Moreover, Jacob’s polemics would indicate that Hooker’s Lawes has been underappreciated by those who study the ecclesiastical debates in the early years of King James I’s reign.     

Is Scripture the Origin of Halakhah? – Jacob Neusner The Talmud: Law,Theology, Narrative: A Sourcebook – Jacob Neusner Theology of Normative Judaism: A Source Book – Jacob Neusner The Vitality of Rabbinic Imagination: The Mishnah against the Bible and Qumran – Jacob Neusner

Book reviewed: Is Scripture the Origin of Halakhah? , Jacob Neusner, University Press of America 2005 (0‐7618‐3117‐7), xiv + 217 pp., pb $34.00 The Talmud: Law, Theology, Narrative: A Sourcebook , Jacob Neusner, University Press of America 2005 (0‐7618‐3115‐0), xxxiv + 251 pp., pb $39.00 Theology of Normative Judaism: A Source Book , Jacob Neusner, University Press of America 2005 (0‐7618‐3116‐9), vi + 156 pp., pb $26.00 The Vitality of Rabbinic Imagination: The Mishnah against the Bible and Qumran , Jacob Neusner, University Press of America 2005 (0‐7618‐3118‐5), xxxiv + 226 pp., pb $35.00     

Boundedness and legitimacy in public planning

This article has two objectives: (1) to map some of the structural limitations to scientific or rational public planning; and (2) to explore the implications of this for a reconceptualization of the legitimacy of public planning. It is argued that some of the limitations to planning are inherent to the planning process in the sense that they cannot be fully mitigated through the refinement of procedures. They come to represent sources of “basic boundedness” that have to be addressed through a radical reinterpretation of the policy process itself. He is currently engaged in a project on systems risks and insurance issues associated with nuclear disasters. The author is especially indebted to Professor Aant Elzinga and Merle Jacob at Gothenburg University for input on this article.     

Improv and the Angel: Disability Dance,Embodied Ethics,and Jewish Biblical Narrative

Disability dance lays claim to the provocative possibilities of the disabled body, raising profound questions about the politics of art, affect, and embodiment. For scholars of religion, disability dance is a powerful—and as yet unrecognized—site for probing the sacrality and ethics enacted in disability culture. This article brings the biblical tale of Jacob and the angel into conversation with a contemporary performance, “The Way You Look (at me) Tonight,” an intimate duet between choreographer and performer Jess Curtis and Clare Cunningham, an internationally acclaimed dancer who explores the artistry of lived disability experience. Using dance as a hermeneutic invitation to draw out ethical insights into risk, consent, and intimacy, I offer a disability‐sensitive reading of Genesis 32—reading the angel as a body whose presence attests to the brilliant shock of disability difference and probing the psychic and somatic transformation that unfolds when Jacob comes into kinesthetic contact with disability and the sacred.     

The Worldview of Memory Lane

This article is a response to Jacob Belzen’s Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion, Principles, Approaches and Applications (New York: Springer, 2010) from a cross-cultural pastoral perspective and identifies seven issues where the book and cross-cultural pastoral thinking impact each other: definition, research methodology, object of research, flexibility of research, the relationship between cultural and cross-cultural psychology, culture, and private religious experience. Below I will view Belzen’s book through the prism of my primary concerns as a Dutch academic trained in cross-cultural pastoral care and counseling who pastors in a diverse and fluid cultural context.     

The Ethics of Price Gouging

An analysis of the contemporary moral debate over price gouging can advance multiple readings of the challenging biblical episode which depicts Jacob's purchase of the birthright. Ethical considerations, such as the maximization of welfare, preservation of choice, and promotion of virtue are evaluated and then applied to the biblical text recounting the sale of Esau's birthright. Did Jacob act ethically in his purchase of ravenous Esau's birthright, or did he seize a propitious opportunity to exploit Esau's predicament? Is Esau responsible for spurning his birthright, or was he misled as he claims Jacob had “supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he has taken away my blessing” (Genesis 27:36)? An ethical analysis of Jacob's and Esau's intentions and actions in the transaction uncovers the Bible's position on the sale and on the larger moral debate.     

There is no interest in precious stones in a vegetable market: the life and sermons of Rabbi Jacob Gordon of Toronto

A preliminary examination of Rabbi Jacob Gordon’s sermons within their biographical, communal, religious, historical, social, and cultural contexts, offers insight into the challenges Jewish immigrants faced in early twentieth century Toronto—as this Orthodox immigrant rabbi perceived them. These sermons provide details and perspectives, and they particularly illuminate doings within Toronto’s Orthodox-immigrant Jewish community. Gordon’s East-European background did not hold him back from remolding his style, as well as the content of his sermons, fully aware as he was of the need to modify his sermonic approach to respond to the novelties of Toronto’s immigrant world. Gordon’s sermons may also be compared to those of other North American contemporaries, again signaling the unique aspects of the Canadian Jewish religious experience at a critical moment. I am grateful to those who assisted in clarifying certain details and issues, as well as offered comments and criticism on early versions of this article: Michael Brown, Marilyn Budd, Richelle Budd Caplan, Avraham A. Greenbaum, Richard Menkis, Ira Robinson, Marc Saperstein, and Mordechai Zalkin. Valuable archival sources are located at the Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives, Montreal (CJC), and at the Ontario Jewish Archives (OJA), both of which I thank for their permission to cite documents in their possession, and I am especially indebted to Donna Bernardo-Ceriz and Janice Rosen for their assistance. Three technical notes are in order: 1) Books, articles or other sources in Hebrew or Yiddish which include an English title are cited in English, and those which do not have an English title were transliterated; 2) All the right pages in Gordon’s book are numbered and all the left pages are marked by Hebrew letters, both sequentially. The Hebrew letters and numbers are identical to the facing English ones. Therefore, whenever referring to the Hebrew letter pagination, I added HP—Hebrew pagination—in brackets; 3) The names of the following archival files in the Jacob Gordon Papers collection, CJC, are abbreviated as indicated in the brackets: Articles File (AF); Correspondence File (CF); and Press Clippings File (PCF).     

BOOK REVIEWS

This paper explores R. Jacob Emden's surprising quest for the knowledge of alchemy. This important eighteenth-century rabbinic leader searched for ancient books in the library of Göttingen University, sought living experts and read original alchemical works in German. His sustained interest in alchemy reflects an historical phenomenon far deeper than his personal curiosity. By delving into his forgotten 1736 Igeret bikoret, comparing it to his other writings, and then contextualizing it within contemporary European medical discourse, I wish to use the quarrel between competing medical world views, so typical of the early modern era, to understand R. Jacob Emden's alternative, esoteric path to modernity and the specific ties it reveals between theology, law and medical practice.     

The materialist mentality revisited

My thanks to Jacob Joshua Ross for his helpful advice, and to an anonymous reviewer for detailed and useful comments on an earlier version of this essay.     

The gift of the world: A note on political theology

This paper reads Carl Schmitt and the responses to Schmitt by his interlocutors and critics such as Erik Peterson, Jacob Taubes, Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida in order to argue that the concept of political theology cannot be exhausted in the sense of the term determined by Carl Schmitt. Taking up to analyse Schmitt's politico-theological appropriation of Søren Kierkegaard and reading Kierkegaard in the light of Jacob Taubes and Jacques Derrida anew, the paper hints at the possibility of reading Kierkegaard more radically than Schmittean reading. Such radical possibility of Kierkegaard for us would lie, not so much in the legitimisation of the profane order of the world-historical politics in the name of a theological foundation, but more radically in the delegitimation of any earthly sovereignty as such. Such radical possibility, passing through a deconstruction of sovereignty, must open itself to a new eschatology or a new messianic thought of justice that defers and differs the execution of judgement by any earthly power, opening thereby to the gift of the world in the spacing that separates the political from the theological.     

Fool-proof proofs of God?

Summary Two claims have been explored, the first, that fool-proof proofs of the sort that there could be if there were a God like the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are not to be expected, on good religious grounds (a claim I found wanting); and second, that there cannot be philosophical proofs of God which work beyond reasonable doubt.The argument that there cannot be philosophical proofs beyond a reasonable doubt is supported by an examination of some of the fundamental issues in the traditional discussions of proofs for God's existence, and by claims about the relativity of methodological rules to world-views which, I maintain, the traditional discussions indicate. I do not claim to have proved that relativity, only to have illustrated the claim that it is there.It is my further opinion, but I do not claim really to have proved it, that the failure of religious excuses for the lack of public demon strations constitutes a good reason for concluding that there is no God of the sort described as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; hence that if there is a God, it must be the God of the philosophers. However I admit that there might be sufficient hidden reasons which would offer persuasive excuses for the God of the ordinary believer.Lastly, I have made some comments about what I think is the more valuable way to view the proofs for God. Such an interpretation does justice to the otherwise baffling and continual philosophical disagreements better than rival theories. It is time we take these disagreements with utmost seriousness, and one can hardly do that while treating basic metaphysical arguments as fool-proof proofs.Readers of the literature on proofs will recognize many of the historical and current discussions on which comment is being made. To provide sources for all the comments would be not only cumbersome but impossible because they are found in so many different places and are not the property of any one in particular.     

Zabarella on Prime Matter and Extension

Philosophia - In his discussion of prime matter in De rebus naturalibus, Jacob Zabarella (1533–1589) defends the position that prime matter is extended. However, it is less clear how he...     

The logic of hatred and its social and historical expressions: From the great witch-hunt to terror and present-day djihadism

Continental Philosophy Review - In two important books, the French philosopher Jacob Rogozinski analyses the logic of hatred underlying the great witch-hunt at the beginning of modern times, the...     

Mixed models,random utilities,and the triangle inequality

A new probabilistic binary choice model, which we call the mixed model is proposed. This model is used to give an interpretation of probabilistic choice behavior in terms of complete and partial orders. The model is used as a guide to disprove Jacob Marschak's conjecture that the binary random utility model is equivalent to the triangle inequality. Another result is presented concerning the relation between moderate stochastic transitivity and the triangle inequality.     

Safety and Unknowability

Philosophia - In a recent paper Jacob Ross presents two ingenious objections against the safety theory of knowledge: one against the claim that safe true belief is necessary for knowledge, the...     

Metaphorical Extension in Instances of Artistic and Scientific Creativity

The Psychological Record - In his book Science and Human Values, Jacob Bronowski (1956) argues that the act of creation is fundamentally the same in both the sciences and the arts. They differ not...     

Simple statistical methods for scalogram analysis

Simple statistical methods are developed to test whether coefficients of reproducibility, of homogeneity, or of consistency differ significantly from what can be expected if responses to different items are statistically independent. Simple methods are also developed for estimating the variance of coefficients of reproducibility when it is not assumed that responses to different items are independent. These estimates are used to test whether a coefficient differs significantly from any prescribed value, and also to obtain confidence intervals for these coefficients. The rationale for the measurement of reproducibility is also discussed.This research was carried out at the Statistical Research Center, University of Chicago, under sponsorship of the Statistics Branch, Office of Naval Research, and of the Social Science Research Committee, University of Chicago. Reproduction in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose of the United States Government. The author is indebted to Jacob Gewirtz for some very helpful comments.This paper is dedicated to Professor Jacob Marschak on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, July 23, 1958.     

Reviews

Pierre Jacob, What Minds Can Do: Intentionality in a Non-Intentional World
J.J.C. Smart and J.J. Haldane, Atheism and Theism
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut (eds), Why We are Not Nietzscheans
Thomas Nagel, The Last Word