Songs to syntax: the linguistics of birdsong

Unlike our primate cousins, many species of bird share with humans a capacity for vocal learning, a crucial factor in speech acquisition. There are striking behavioural, neural and genetic similarities between auditory-vocal learning in birds and human infants. Recently, the linguistic parallels between birdsong and spoken language have begun to be investigated. Although both birdsong and human language are hierarchically organized according to particular syntactic constraints, birdsong structure is best characterized as 'phonological syntax', resembling aspects of human sound structure. Crucially, birdsong lacks semantics and words. Formal language and linguistic analysis remains essential for the proper characterization of birdsong as a model system for human speech and language, and for the study of the brain and cognition evolution.     

Toward a Lutheran Response to Christian Zionism1

Abstract : The following article discusses the Christian Zionist movement, and emphasizes the danger it poses to facilitating peace in the Middle East. The author argues that it is a political movement built on a particular theological system, that of premillenial dispensationalism. This particular system also is discussed in detail, including its origins and its contemporary manifestations. The article concludes with some suggestions for how a Lutheran theological perspective might constructively engage Christian Zionism in the service of promoting a vision of hope for the future.     

An American Carl Schmitt: Lee Harris on the Nature and Purpose of Enemies

Book reviewed:
Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History , Lee Harris, Free Press 2004 (0-7432-5749-9), pp. 232, Hb $26     

Breathing Together: Reply to Harris and Shaw

These two very different but complementary discussions address two different “registers” of my thinking in my paper on patients who “live in airless intrapsychic worlds.” Harris is most interested in the meta-theoretical and historical contexts and frames of my theory and clinical approach, viewing my contribution as an example of various broad trends in contemporary relational psychoanalytic thought. Shaw, by contrast, engages with my particular insights and clinical/theoretical framework for understanding and working with patients whose struggles very much resemble and overlap with the struggles of the adult children of “traumatically narcissistic” parents, which his seminal work has focused on. In my Replies I voice my appreciation of each of their unique perspectives on my ideas, and engage with each of them regarding certain differences in our theoretical and clinical sensibilities.     

1890s Zionism reconsidered: Joseph Marco Baruch

Some years before the 1896 appearance of Theodore Herzl Der Judenstaat, Joseph Marco Baruch (Istanbul, 1872–Florence, 1899) articulated his own brand of Zionism. His life and work provide alternative Jewish geographies for the study of Zionism that complicate established categories, such as the cultural/East and political/West, a binary that also posits Jewish identity and political action as disjoined spheres. Neither premise applies to the work of Joseph Marco Baruch. Conceptually, his social vision juxtaposed realpolitik and a national-historical Jewish identity, and his activism was well received in European and Mediterranean circles. As in all similar movements, Zionism was shaped by power struggles between leaders and ideologues; biographical contrasts between Theodore Herzl and Joseph Marco Baruch draw attention to personal privilege and its role in influencing the institutional course of Zionism at a critical historical juncture. The case of Joseph Marco Baruch invites discussion of the early 1890s as an important, but overlooked, period in the development of political Zionism.Paula Daccarett: I would like to thank the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry and Brandeis University GTR grants for the funds that allowed me to undertake research at the Central Zionist Archives, the Machon Ben Zvi, Hebrew University and the Machon Jabotinsky. Special appreciation is in order for Prof. Eugene Sheppard and Sylvia Fuks Fried at the Tauber Institute for their warmth and encouragement of this project. They, alongside Prof. Benjamin Ravid, provided feedback and editorial magic on earlier drafts. Prof. Tony Michels and Prof. Kenneth Stow offered unflagging assistance and support that pulled me out of numerous dead ends on final drafts. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article and the attendants at the 2003 WJSA Conference for valuable input.     

Linkage of Oedipal Dangers and Mastery to Theodor Herzl's Zionism

This paper demonstrates that Herzl's development of political Zionism was largely a reflection of his improved mastery of Oedipal dangers. Before his Zionism, he had been a total assimilationist. This was manifested in the nature of his disdainful attitude towards the Jewish masses and in idealization of selected non-Jews, as well as in his conflicted Jewish identity. In his thirties, various external events undermined the assimilationist approach; other events, plus ego maturation, allowed a more effective mastery of Oedipal dangers. Thus, he was able to react more appropriately and creatively to intensifying anti-Semitism by developing Zionism that reflected increased honor, manliness, and reconciliation.     

Korean Christian Zionism: A Sociological Study of Mission

From the perspective of the sociology of missions, this study explores the Korean Christian Zionists' mission work after 9/11. The current Pentecostal success in South Korea has spurred the nation to send more missionaries abroad than any other country except the United States. As America has been losing the trust of the world since 9/11, some evangelical fundamentalists argue that Korea should take over the initiative of world mission from the United States. The Jerusalem Jesus March in 2004 and the South Korean hostage crisis in Afghanistan in 2007 have served to admonish Korean churches to hastily reconsider coercing their missionaries to proselytize in dangerous areas such as Islamic lands. This study unfolds issues such as “spiritual subjectivism” and “Korea‐centrism”, illustrated by the Jesus March incident and the Afghan controversy, and suggests that the expansionism of Korean Pentecostal/evangelical missionaries taken up with the idea of “global spiritual conquest” is a manifestation of “Korean Christian Zionism”.     

Biblical criticism and cultural Zionism prior to the first world war*

This essay examines the initial stages of the relationship between Jewish nationalism and modern biblical criticism. Its point of departure is Ahad Ha’am, the founder of cultural Zionism, who kept his distance from biblical criticism, and proceeds with Joseph Klausner, Ahad Ha’am’s successor as the editor of Ha-shiloah, who moved in the opposite direction by incorporating biblical criticism into his own writing and teaching. After examining the opposition to Klausner, the essay turns to the work of Ben-Zion Mossinson, who introduced the results of biblical criticism into the teaching of the Bible in the modern schools of the Yishuv. This initiative generated controversy and broad opposition, especially in the European Hebrew press. Shortly before World War I, and in this controversy’s immediate aftermath, Joseph Klausner, then in Palestine, published a small pamphlet in Hebrew making the case for biblical criticism. At about the same time, in Russia, Max Soloveitchik made a similar argument in a book of his own. Neither of these two works had resounding significance, but each testifies to the growing self-confidence of the exponents of cultural Zionist in promoting modern biblical criticism in the Jewish school. *Research for this easy was completed with generous support from a 2003 Harry Starr Fellowship in Jewish Studies at Harvard University.