How Hebrew were the Hebrew Christians?

This article demonstrates how Hebrew Christians – or Jews who converted to Christianity but retained Jewish identity – resonated with the claims of the Zionist movement in its first decades, particularly with regard to its notion of Hebrew identity. In their espousal of Zionist ideals and their attempts to join Zionist efforts, Hebrew Christian notions of Hebrewness reflected the multivalence of Hebrew identity in the Zionist movement itself, and particularly the understanding of Hebrewness as racial, ethnic, and cultural. The influence of the Zionist movement upon Hebrew Christians was especially evident in Hebrew Christian attempts to form their own institutions. These organizations promoted Jewish national culture dissociated from Judaism, expressed assertive and even aggressive motivations (what I term “Muscle Hebrew Christianity”), and recognized the ineluctability of anti-Semitism regardless of Jewish religious beliefs. Examining the somewhat obscure movement of Hebrew Christianity can ultimately help us to better understand the ways Zionism was interpreted in its formative stages, especially in light of its own divisions and various emphases.     

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.     

Engaging with the unknown: How Judaism enabled Freud's psychological discoveries

A large literature has formed around the question of how Freud's Jewishness and/or Judaism influenced his psychological discoveries and development of psychoanalytic theory and methods. The article organizes the literature into several core theses but brings new clarity and insight by applying two essential criteria to demonstrate an impact of Judaism on Freud's thinking: direct content and historical timing. First, there should be evidence that Freud incorporated actual content from Jewish sources, and second, this incorporation must have occurred during the most crucial period of Freud's early discovery, conceptualization, and development of psychoanalysis, roughly 1893–1910. Thus, for example, Bakan's well-known theory that Freud studied Kabbala is completely negated by the absence of any evidence in the required time period. Part I reviews the literature on the influence of Freud's ethnic/cultural Jewish identity. Part II introduces the Judaic sacred literature, explores Freud's education in Judaism and Hebrew, and presents evidence that Freud had the motive, means, and resources to discover and draw from the “Dream Segment” of the Talmud—along with the traditional Judaic methods and techniques of textual exegesis. Freud then applied these same Judaic word-centered interpretive methods—used for revealing an invisible God—to revealing an invisible Unconscious in four successive books in 1900, 1901, and 1905.     

Emmanuel Levinas and the New Science of Judaism

This article addresses Emmanuel Levinas's re‐conceptualization of Jewish identity by examining his response to a question he himself poses: “In which sense do we need a Jewish science?” First, I attend to Levinas's critique of modern science of Judaism, particularly as it was understood in the critical approaches of the nineteenth‐century school of thought, Wissenschaft des Judentums. Next, I detail Levinas's own constructive proposal that would, in his words, “enlarge the science of Judaism.” He retrieved classical textual sources that modern Judaism had neglected, while at the same time he enlarged Judaism's relevance beyond a historical community by turning to phenomenology as a rigorous science. Finally, I conclude with some reflections on the broader implications of this new science of Judaism for Jewish ethics and identity in a post‐war period.     

When Joseph met Zuleika – the theo-political underpinning of Joseph in Shlonsky's early poetry and its critique of the halutz ethos

Rabbinic, kabbalist and hasidic traditions perceive Joseph as an emblem of righteousness, a guardian of the Covenant, a symbol of Sefirat Yesod and a divine representation of the earthly zaddik. In various sources, Joseph's struggle with Zuleika, Potiphar's wife, is elevated to a mythological struggle of the righteous with the forces of evil, manifested as a seductive, demonic woman. Zuleika casts her net to capture Joseph and break the divine union of God and “Knesset Israel.” Avraham Shlonsky's account of the charged relationships between Joseph and Zuleika is a metaphor and a prism for his critical view of the Zionist-halutz ideology and its concepts of body, masculinity and sexuality. Reading Shlonsky's early poetry collected in the book titled Bagalgal (In the Wheel, 1927) while applying hermeneutical methods taken from the field of Jewish thought brings the array of references and allusions to Jewish traditional texts to the surface. These references range from the Bible through the Talmud and Midrash to Hasidism. This method yields two important contributions; first, it highlights the unique contribution of Shlonsky's poetry. Second, the reconstruction of the theo-political elements of Shlonsky's early poetry deepens our understanding of the theological undercurrents of what is considered “secular Zionist culture” and demonstrates the unique role of the modern Hebrew poet as a secular prophet of the Jewish national revival.     

FORWARD,TO THE EAST: NAPTHALI HERZ IMBER'S PERCEPTION OF KABBALAH

Naphtali Herz Imber is famous as the author of the Jewish national anthem, “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”). He is also quite well known for his non-conformism, vagabond lifestyle, and excessive drinking. However, his interest in the occult and Kabbalah are much less known. Imber wrote several articles on Jewish mysticism, translated some kabbalistic texts, and published the first journal on Kabbalah—Uriel: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Cabbalistic Science (of which only one issue appeared). Although much scholarly literature has been devoted to Imber and his famous poem, his interest in the occult and Jewish mysticism has not been investigated. This article will discuss Imber's encounter with late-nineteenth-century esotericism, specifically the doctrines of Laurence and Alice Oliphant and the Theosophical Society. It presents Imber's notions concerning Jewish mysticism and examines the impact that the Theosophical Society and the Oliphants' principles had on his perception of Kabbalah. Finally, it discusses the connection between Imber's Zionism and his interest in Kabbalah and shows that his perception of Jewish mysticism, which was greatly influenced by Western esoteric ideas, was shaped in the framework of fin de siècle Orientalism and Jewish nationalism. Imber's positive evaluation of Jewish mysticism and its nationalistic interpretation anticipates the position of later Zionist scholars of Jewish mysticism, whose vision of Kabbalah and Hasidism largely shaped the way Jewish mysticism is perceived and studied today.     

Brith Shalom��s uniqueness reconsidered: Hans Kohn and autonomist Zionism

Most studies dealing with Kohn (1891?C1971), a central Zionist figure in Prague, emphasize his resistance to the idea of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine and his consequent binationalism as indications of an exceptional position with respect to the contemporary Zionist mainstream. This representation is embedded in one of the fundamental conventions of Zionist historiography that the movement was intended exclusively to create a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. This convention, however, is the outcome of the misleading, teleological tendency to observe pre-1948 Zionist history through the retrospective lens of the establishment of the State of Israel. In fact, pre-state sources show that Kohn??s binationalism was not exceptional. Kohn, the radical members of ??Brith Shalom,?? and even the Zionist mainstream shared a basic outlook regarding Palestine??s future political complexion, which I call autonomist Zionism and which rested on an autonomist interpretation of national self-determination. Statehood in Palestine was envisaged within a confederational political framework embracing both a Jewish and an Arab autonomous entity. A common governing body would deal with civil and territorial matters, but would refrain from intervening in purely national-cultural matters that would be the exclusive perview of the respective autonomous authorities.     

The evolution of a concept: The relationship between state and religion in the thought of Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1919–1940

Jabotinsky’s ideological evolution underwent a considerable shift, caused by both internal Zionist concerns and external political processes throughout the 1930s. His assessment of Judaism was no exception, yet at the same time one cannot ignore the consistency of his earlier evaluation of Judaism. The usual interpretation, based on a presumption of Jabotinsky’s maintenance of a secular world view in his private life while adhering to the idea of a greater role for traditional Judaism in public, oversimplifies the complexity of his approach. One has to bear in mind that Jabotinsky’s opinions cannot be identified with those of Menahem Begin, despite Begin’s aspiration to present Jabotinsky as his teacher. While the usual designation of Jabotinsky as an extremist might serve the purposes of both the Zionist left and right, an academic discourse should not ignore certain similarities of Jabotinsky’s opinions to mainstream Zionist thought. His newly discovered emphasis on the “sublime notions” embodied in religion was an attempt to counterbalance the ideological influence of the radical Revisionist Zionist trends with which he came to be associated by the mid‐1930s.     

Eastern Jews vs. Western Jews: the Ahad Ha’am–Herzl dispute and its cultural and social implications

The conflict between Herzl and Ahad Ha’am encapsulated the cultural divide that separated the two, as well as it reflected the political and ideological rift separating East from West. The Eastern block wished Zionism to maintain strong ties to a sense of Jewish continuity (if not necessarily to traditional Jewish practice). The Western one was more cosmopolitan and assimilationist in its bent. From the first Zionist Congress onward, Ahad Ha’am assumed the role of Herzl’s chief opponent. At first, he was a voice crying in the wilderness, but within seven years, he headed a united front whose members sought to remove Herzl or at least force him into a minority. The point of no return was reached in a clash known as the “Alteneuland Affair,” whose personal side was as strong as its other aspects, if not more so. For after this episode concluded with this defeat and Herzl’s victory, Ahad Ha’am bowed out of all active Zionist political life.     

Perpetuating Stereotypes: A Study of Gender,Family, and Religious Life in Jewish Children's Books

This paper examines award‐winning Jewish children's literature as a medium to explore how religiosity gets constructed differently for men and women. We analyze three decades of winners of the Sydney Taylor Jewish Book Award, a prestigious annual award given by the Association of Jewish Libraries to an outstanding Jewish children's book. We demonstrate how these award‐winning books produce and perpetuate gendered religious stereotypes that associate men with agency and women with communion. We also show how these books construct images of a “domestic Judaism” for women and a “public Judaism” for men and how women have been symbolically annihilated from the titles and central character roles in these books. Drawing on Cecilia Ridgeway's ( 2011 ) gender‐framing perspective, we argue that the gender stereotypes evident in these books matter to society because they produce and enforce gender inequalities in religiousness.     

Wild tribes and ancient Semites: Israelite-Indian identification and the American West

Rabbi Henry Cohen of Galveston, Texas, carefully preserved a 1916 pamphlet that claimed a common history for ‘Wild Tribes’ of Indians and Jews of antiquity. Why would a Jewish author tie the customs of ‘uncivilised’ tribes to his own religion, and why might it capture Cohen's attention? This article suggests that the ‘Indian-Israelite’ identification appealed to acculturated Jews like Cohen as part of a wider embrace of a vision of manhood that at once held ties to Jewishness and American identity. That is, identification with the American West and frontier emphasised the harmony between Jewishness, a particular type of enlightened Judaism, and Americanisation. A brief survey of three movements – the relatively small-scale Galveston Movement, Jewish agricultural communities and the larger, more diverse Zionist movement – then demonstrates how the gendered and nationalist ideologies of Henry Cohen and other acculturated Jews like him aligned with their imagined constructions of Indians.     

Can a rabbi marry someone of another religion? Debates of the American Reform movement whether intermarried rabbis can lead Reform congregations

Traditionally, rabbis were expected to marry women who were devoted to Judaism. The convention was a logical one. As a symbolic exemplar of Judaism, everything a rabbi does should reflect his commitment to the Jewish religion. Instead, over the course of the modern period, non-Orthodox denominations have deviated from many traditional positions. This has included the Reform movement’s allowance that rabbis can determine whether they will officiate at interfaith marriage ceremonies. However, while many Reform rabbis have conducted such ceremonies, they were nevertheless expected to have married within the faith themselves. Recently, some rabbis have begun advocating for Reform rabbis to marry gentiles who have not converted to Judaism. The Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, the academic institution serving the Reform movement of North America, which has campuses in the United States and Israel, went through a process of discussion, debate, evaluation, and decision making. At the end of this process, the decision was made to retain the policy of prohibiting intermarried students from matriculating or graduating. This article outlines the development as well as the resolution of the current controversy.     

Nathan Birnbaum and Tuvia Horowitz: Friendship and the Origins of an Orthodox Ideologue

Nathan Birnbaum, early Zionist, Yiddishist and later general secretary of the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael, is a perplexing figure to modern Jewish historiography. While the trajectory of his early career as a Zionist and his leadership in the first Conference for the Yiddish Language have been well charted, his later years have been largely overlooked. In the years leading up to and during the First World War, Birnbaum turned his back on the secular political groups which had defined his public persona, and became a ba'al teshuva, a penitent returnee to Orthodox Judaism. Essential to his turn to Orthodoxy, and to his very quick arrival and success in the Orthodox political world, was his relationship with a young rabbi from Eastern Hungary, Tuvia Horowitz. Horowitz, the nephew of the Viznitser Rebbe, sought out Birnbaum upon receiving rumors of his teshuva while a refugee in Vienna, and the relationship between the two men quickly grew to a warm collegiality. Detailed in the extensive correspondence which spanned the rest of Birnbaum's life, their friendship sheds light on Birnbaum's intellectual transformation, as well as the central role played by Horowitz in Birnbaum's emergence as an Orthodox leader.     

SELMA THE JEWISH SEER: FEMALE PROPHECY AND BOURGEOIS RELIGION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY

This article discusses the importance of spiritualism and mysticism for nineteenth-century German Jews though the lens of a book about a Jewish female clairvoyant in 1830s Berlin. In 1838, Morris Wiener published Selma, die jüdische Seherin, a widely read story about his sister's miraculous healing and prophetic visions after being treated by a physician specializing in Mesmerism. This article proposes that we consider Selma's unusual story as an expression of nineteenth-century German Jews' experiences of bourgeois religion. In their attempt to prove that their religion was compatible with modern life, many German Jews sought to show not only how rational their religion was, as scholars have long emphasized, they also sought to demonstrate how spiritual Jews could be and to suggest that Judaism, like Protestantism and Catholicism, could engender multiple forms of mystical religiosity.     

THE BLANK PAGE (FROM LAST TALES)

This essay explores the representation of the modern Jewish city in Palestine, envisioned in two fin-de-siècle futuristic tales: Theodor Herzl's Altneuland (1902) and Violet Guttenberg's A Modern Exodus (1904). Focusing on the northern port city of Haifa, transformed by the Jews from a poor Oriental town into a thriving Europeanized metropolis, both novelists employ the city's spatial, cultural, and human features to present radically different views concerning the national Jewish rejuvenation: for Herzl, it becomes a utopian triumph; for Guttenberg, a deplorable failure. Notwithstanding their different assessments of the Zionist vision, both authors share certain anti-Semitic assumptions about the nature of “the Jew” (greedy, intolerant, vulgar), which are inscribed into the urban space. Herzl's ideal Haifa is designed precisely to reform the diaspora Jew by introducing such modern urban measures that would render these detestable Jewish traits obsolete. Guttenberg's disordered city, in comparison, reflects an inability to alter the Jewish character: no wonder that London, not Haifa, becomes the final destination of her “Modern Exodus.”     

Judaism and the Contingency of Religious Law in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

For Kant’s moral universalism, contingent religious law is legitimate only when it serves as a means of fulfilling the moral law. Though Kant uses traditional theological resources to account for the possibility of “statutory ecclesiastical law” in historical religions, he denies this possibility to Jewish law. Something like Kant’s logic appears in the work of some of his intellectual successors who continue to define Christianity in terms of its moral superiority to Judaism while attempting to excise remaining “Jewish” elements from it. A more adequate account of the Hebrew Bible, Judaism, and the origins of Christianity exposes deficiencies in Kant’s universalizing logic which seems to deny any intrinsic value to historical religions. A possible alternative may lie in a modified account of the relationship between the moral law and religious law, perhaps nourished by Jewish thought, including the rabbinic tradition of the Noachide commandments.     

"This Still Remarkable Book": Franz Joseph Molitor's Judaeo-Christian Synthesis

This essay explores a variety of elements of Russian literature and culture that permeate all of the ideational and formal aspects of Gnessin's Sideways. Subject matter, narrative techniques, imagery and intertextual references, as well as the linguistic make‐up, all reverberate with significant influences of Russian literature that are contemporaneous with the Hebrew era of Revival. This essay is an analysis of the diverse Russian literary scene and an examination of the blending of the broader European literary and intellectual trends with Russian‐Jewish sensibilities. The essay inquires into the precarious mentality of the acculturated Russian Jewry at the turn of the century and examines the small‐town Russian‐Jewish intelligentsia, embodied in the character of Nachum Hagzar. Understanding of the methods of Gnessin's incorporation of Russian linguistic and literary models, as well as of his desire to make modem Hebrew literature comparable to contemporary European “high” culture, allows a new reading of Sideways. When viewed in the context of Russian literature, Nachum Hagzar acquires a new richness and vitality. He is a person with a complex inner world who possesses an intricate combination of qualities informed not only by his socio‐historical circumstances, but also by the tension between the Russian and Jewish components of his psychological identity. Gnessin problematizes and negotiates this tension, highlighting the protagonist's existential dilemma and making Hagzar an archetype for the whole generation of provincial Jewish intellectuals.     

Science as a Paradigm for Halakhic Thought: an Introduction to the Theology of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

In the 20th century there was a single individual whose personality provided the inspiration for, and whose writings defined the parameters of, what came to be known as Modern Orthodox Judaism. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903?–?1993) served as the Rosh Yeshiva (Senior Talmudic Scholar) of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and Professor of Philosophy at Yeshiva University for almost 50 years. He was widely acknowledged, by all segments of the Jewish community, as the outstanding Talmudic scholar of his generation. At the same time, concern for the interface of tradition with modernity was central and pivotal to Soloveitchik's thought. In spite of his profound impact on American Orthodox Judaism, Soloveitchik's work is relatively unknown outside of this community. This article explores the implications of Soloveitchik's work for epistemology and methodology within the “science and religion” dialogue.     

Inching towards wholeness: C.G. Jung and his relationship to Judaism

The evolution of Jung's relationship with Judaism is interpreted as reflecting aspects of the individuation journey over the course of a long life. The progress and limitations of his public positions and personal relationships are explored through his published work and correspondence. Perspectives from relational psychoanalysis and Jewish philosophy are used to amplify Jung's understanding of Jewish, and specifically Kabbalistic, text and image. Dimensions of the author's own journey toward greater acceptance of his own Jewish soul is also considered, along with the wider contemporary relevance of these themes.     

WRITING THE LAND: LANGUAGE AND TERRITORY IN MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE

This essay examines one of the greatest ambitions of the Hebrew cultural revival––the creation of a modern and distinct Hebrew national culture by rewinding history and reconnecting the indeterminate Jewish subject to a determinate Hebrew soil. The essay looks at three writers from three distinct periods in the last century, S. Yizhar, Amos Oz and Orly Castel-Bloom, whose works are deeply concerned with this connection between man and land, and who demonstrate that concern through a particular use of language. The essay shows how each of these writers uses the Hebrew language to comment on these relations in the last 50 or so years and tell us something about the state of Israeli Hebrew culture in the so-called post-national age. The article looks at Yizhar's careful creation of a language-land bond, at the way Amos Oz warns against the excesses of these bonds, and at Orly Castel-Bloom's critical attempt to undermine these bonds half a century after they have been created.