TO CATCH THE SKY — THE JEWISH IDENTITY OF ISRAELIS

In the winter of 2000, Israel’s Channel 2 television presented the series To Catch the Sky. This series allows us to learn about the changes in the viewers’ — and especially the secular viewers’ — attitudes to the phenomenon of teshuvah. Studying the intentions of the programme’s creators, the narrative format, the mode of character design and, especially, the reception, reveals that To Catch the Sky is not only a family story, but, like many other Israeli dramas, also a dramatic document that faithfully represents the changes that have intensified among secular Israeli Jews in recent years. It is possible that the sadness expressed by many secular Israeli viewers at the separation of the parents at the end of the series is, perhaps unconsciously, an expression of grief over their weakening ties with Judaism.     

Approaching Shared Heroes: Cultural Transfer and Transnational Jewish History

This special issue of Jewish History is devoted to shared heroes in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It explores diverse images of heroes that are shared by at least two of these religious traditions by comparing each figure’s origin, inventions, and reinventions within varying cultural contexts in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern period and by highlighting the cross-cultural significance of their counterstories and entangled histories. The construction and deconstruction, interpretation and reception of these heroic figures and their sociocultural roles over time and space bear witness to the encounters of Jews and Judaism with neighboring cultures. The approaches to our subject presented in this collection illuminate how the long-established rubric of “the hero” benefits from a cross-cultural approach. In turn, empirical data culled from the cross-cultural study of heroes demonstrate the inner workings of cultural transfer and, we believe, contribute an original perspective to the field of transnational history, which focuses on cultural entanglement.     

Seeking remission: Jewish conversion in the Crown of Aragon,c.1378–1391

Despite the expansion of research on the subject of Jewish apostates in Iberia, or conversos as they are more commonly known, we still know distressingly little about the history of Jews converted to Christianity prior to the riots of 1391. Focusing on the royal registers of King Pere III (Pedro IV of Aragon, 1336–1387) and his son Joan I (1387–1396), this article explores the issue of Jewish apostasy in the Crown of Aragon between 1378 and 1391. While Jewish conversion to Christianity is often described as the result of Christian violence, a closer look at Jewish apostates shows that reasons for conversion varied greatly in the late fourteenth-century Crown of Aragon. Jews sought conversion not only as a way out of economic and legal troubles but also in exchange for specific rewards from the king. Conversion led to much conflict between Jews and conversos and records suggest that the period experienced a rise in conversions. Yet rather than being the product of Christian harassment, which is entirely absent from the records, conversion may have been one of the few avenues left for marginal Jews to weather the declining economic conditions of the late fourteenth century.     

“The Religion We Plant in Their Hearts”: A Critical Exploration of the Religiosity of a German Jewish Family at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

The long-standing historiographical consensus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German Jews suggests that they were largely “beyond Judaism.” Most historians concur that German Jews abandoned a particularistic faith and the restricted social life of the autonomous community in exchange for cultural tropes of the dominant bourgeois culture as they strove to integrate into the surrounding society. While most German Jews no longer practiced the Judaism of their fathers or their fathers’ fathers, this did not necessarily mean that religion or belief had become irrelevant. In this essay I explore, through a close reading of a set of diaries, the religiosity of one Jewish family—that of William and Clara Stern and their three children, Hilde, Günther, and Eva. In the process, I seek both to address a gap in the research and to contribute to an ongoing discussion in the historiography regarding modern Judaism. While religiosity among German Jews had increasingly become a matter of individual, and not collective, action and choice, I argue that Jews of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries still engaged in a quest for meaning for themselves and future generations specifically as Jews. The religious worldview and education that Clara Stern aimed to impart to her children reflect precisely this search for personal religious meaning and exemplify the individual nature of early twentieth-century German Jewish religiosity.     

Questions of times: Conflicting time scales in historical perspective

The idea of ``Jewish' time highlights many problems related to the conflict between Judaism and Christianity. This paper focuses on two points: the reckoning of the Jewish era and the interpretation of the notion of time in the Bible. Jewish time pulsates to a rhythm of temporal markers which also divide it into secular and religious time. This division, however, this dual register of temporality, also enables Jews to alternate a ``Jewish' register with a ``universal' one. Traditional Jewish sources indicate that the principle of determining the date by calculating from the creation of the world (anno mundi) appeared during the period of the Second Temple. The question of elapsed time, deduced from different readings of the Biblical text, launched Jews and Christians on parallel lines of time. The history of the genesis of the notion of time asserts that the circular representation of temporality, sometimes called indigenous to ancient societies, was replaced by a representation that was vertical, then linear. These stages served as a scale for measuring the progress and evolution of societies. The Christian notion was supposed to characterize European time as an ``infinite line' along which events are placed, in contrast to Israelite time, identifiable through its contents, and in which time is ``full' and concrete, with no room for (re)ordering or arranging its episodes. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Individuation and Attachment in Israel and Thailand: Secular Versus Religious Jews and Buddhists

Two of the most important constructs in social, developmental, and clinical psychology are attachment and individuation. This study examined the impact of degree and type of religion on them by comparing the results of religious-national type (Israeli Jewish vs. Thai Buddhist) and degree of religiosity (religious vs. secular) on four subscales of the Individuation-Attachment Questionnaire: Need for Individuation, Fear of Individuation, Need for Attachment, and Fear of Attachment. Four groups of participants were compared: 61 religious Israeli Jews, 71 secular Israeli Jews, 17 religious Thai Buddhists, and 20 secular Thai Buddhists. Significant differences were found on all subscales, with religious Thai Buddhists lowest on all four of them. The secular Thais were highest in Fear of Individuation and Attachment and Need for Individuation. The religious Israeli Jews were highest in Need for Attachment. Because these concepts are sometimes difficult to distinguish, correlations were calculated to determine whether and which concepts were confabulated by each group, shedding further light on their views of interpersonal distance. These results were analyzed through examination of the differing worldviews and observances of Judaism and Buddhism with regard to individuation and attachment. Striking differences were found in the comparative narratives, leading to differential schemata for individuation and attachment, for both religious and secular subsamples within each religious-national community. These religious-national milieus were found to influence attitudes and behaviors toward one's ideal concept of interpersonal distance, specifically with regard to the constructs of individuation and attachment. Attachment is highly valued in Judaism, whereas detached compassion is the goal of Buddhistic teaching.     

Understanding religious behavior

The attached (to mother) fetus-infant finds his religious expression in Buddhism. The attached (to group) juvenile finds his religious expression in Judaism and other tribalisms. The attached (to spouse) adult finds his religious expression in agnosticism and secularism. Attached phases are placid and of progressively decreasing emotional intensity. The three detaching phases are hurtful and hence soteriological, and are also of progressively decreasing emotional intensity. The toddler-young child finds his religious expression in Christianity, the adolescent in atheism and/or Marxism, and the aged, sick or dying plucks at any religious or secular aid.He has written numerous papers on aspects of child care, medical history, interrelations between medicine and religion, and between Judaism and Christianity.     

MODERN ORTHODOXY’S ANCIENT PAST

The movement known as Modern Orthodox Judaism is often distinguished from “ultra-Orthodoxy” (or Haredi Judaism) in terms of openness. While adherents of the latter form of Judaism typically live together in isolated communities and seek to seal themselves off from secular books and learning (and, in our own age, such potentially malign influences as television, movies, and the internet), Modern Orthodox Jews are generally characterized by a more open attitude toward such things, and toward outsiders and outside ideas in general. The present article seeks to argue that the tendencies represented by these two movements are in fact dyed in the wool—that, from the very beginning, Judaism has endorsed and incorporated both isolationism and openness. This contention is illustrated with examples from the Hebrew Bible itself as well as from the extensive literature of the Second Temple period.     

Christians,Muslims, Jews,and their religions

Depending on the context, Christians, Muslims and Jews have constructed their own religion, perceived the religions of others, and articulated relations between religions in different ways. This paper examines the rise in history of the three communities, which came to identify themselves through their religions and have been highly sensitive to differences. It indicates common features and parallels of which adherents may have been more or less conscious. The central question in such research is what persons and groups mean in particular situations when they call themselves Christian, Muslim or Jewish. The variety of personal and group identities in the three religious communities has been concealed partly by religious leaderships concerned with the survival of their flocks, and partly by the use of the general concepts of Christianity, Islam and Judaism with which believers have been called to identify. These concepts have shut people into separate religious pigeonholes and could thus be used to support ethnic, social and other rivalries. This pigeonholing has also confronted more spiritually‐oriented people with problems of social identity, religious belonging and spiritual authenticity.     

Faith versus practice: different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews and Protestants

Jewish tradition is focused much more on religious practice than on religious belief, whereas various denominations of Christianity focus about equally on religious practice and on faith. We explored whether this difference in dogma affects how Jews and Protestants judge religiosity. In Study 1, we showed that Jews and Protestants rated practice equally important in being religious, while Protestants rated belief more important than did Jews. In Study 2, Jewish participants' self‐rated religiosity was predicted by their extent of practice but not knowledge of Judaism or religious beliefs. In contrast, in Study 3, Protestants' self‐rated religiosity was predicted both by their extent of practice and belief, but not knowledge. In all, the results show that Jews and Protestants view the importance of practice in being religious similarly, but that belief is more important for Protestants. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Avoiding Charges of Legalism and Antinomianism in Jewish-Christian Dialogue

This article sets forth a theological approach to Jewish-Christian dialogue on the issue of law, which is often thought to be beyond the grasp of that dialogue because Judaism and Christianity are supposed to be in diametrical opposition here. Christians must recognize that for Jews, law is not in opposition to grace as a substitute for faith but, rather, law is the faithful response to grace in the covenant. Christians cannot be antinomians without simultaneously rejecting the very authority of God to command any faithful response. The issue between Judaism and Christianity is which law, Jewish or Christian, best enables a human being to be in the fullest possible relationship with God in the yet unredeemed world. On many points, though, Jewish and Christian law will overlap, thus reveal some essential commonalities.     

Multiple Judaisms and mosaic selves: an ethnographic exploration of liberal American Jews

Debates about religion and secularism have called attention to the multiplicities of religions and secularisms that exist in modern societies. In this article, I draw on an ethnographic study of prayer, healing and identity among liberal American Jews, to demonstrate that studying Judaism as a religion obscures our understanding of multiply situated and continually evolving Jewish selves. These selves are best viewed as mosaics integrating diverse elements from Jewish religion, culture, ethnicity, history and peoplehood, as well as modern secular society. This Judaism is the product of individual agency and also embedded in communal frameworks, generated through a reflexive process of bricolage and an active engagement with multiple sources of authority, including imagined ones. It does not fit comfortably within existing analytical categories of religion and secularism, demonstrating that these categories, based on European Protestantism, are only partially appropriate to the study of modern Jewish life.     

Conversion and Attachment Insecurity Among Orthodox Jews

Radical conversion, which entails a sweeping transformation of existing meaning systems, is often precipitated by emotional distress. Nevertheless, although many individuals turn toward religion when distressed, few undertake total and radical conversions. Previous research suggests that insecurely attached individuals—who resemble James's disillusioned, doubting, and divided sick souls—may be particularly prone to radical conversions. Thus, the present research examined insecure parental attachment history and convert status among 122 Orthodox and 31 non-Orthodox Jews, hypothesizing that converts to and from Orthodox Judaism, who undertake an all-encompassing transformation of beliefs, behaviors, values, and life's purpose, would report greater insecurity in parental attachment history than nonconverts. Results indicate that converts report greater maternal and paternal insecurity, as compared to both nonconverts and those with intra-Orthodox religious change. Thus, further research examining insecure attachment, and associated religious stressors and doubts, may uncover some of the individual differences underlying radical conversions.     

A Clash of Civilizations? Preferences for Religious Political Leaders in 86 Nations

Huntington claimed that today's major conflicts are most likely to erupt between religiously defined “civilizations,” in particular between Christianity and Islam. Using World Values Surveys from 86 nations, we examine differences between Christians and Muslims in preferences for religious political leaders. The results suggest a marked difference between Muslims and Christians in their attitudes toward religious politicians, with Muslims more favorable by 20 points out of 100. Devoutness, education, degree of government corruption, and status as a formerly Communist state account for the difference. Little support is found for the clash‐of‐civilizations hypothesis. Instead, we find that a clash of individual beliefs—between the devout and the secular—along with enduring differences between the more developed and less developed world explains the difference between Islam and Christianity with regards to preferences for religious political leaders.     

论犹太人的尚异性

尚异是犹太人的特性。它蕴藏在犹太教的基本信仰和教义里,体现在犹太人的生活方式、思维方式以及历史和现实中。犹太人在各个领域的杰出成就与其尚异特性有密切联系,同时,其悲惨遭遇也在一定程度上与之有关。犹太人求异、尚异的目的在于使犹太教区别于异教,并借以使犹太人区别于异族。犹太人之所以尚异,并能特立独行于世,在理论上源于圣经里自由、平等的价值,最终源于与众不同的唯一神信仰。揭示犹太人的尚异特性对于普遍具有尚同意识的中国人有着特别重要的意义。     

Communication,Punishment, and Virtue

This essay suggests that while Antony Duff's model of criminal punishment as secular penance is pregnant with possibilities for theological reception and reflection, it proceeds by way of a number of separations that are brought into question by the penitential traditions of Christianity. The first three of these—between justice and mercy, censure and invitation, and state and victim, constrain the true communicative character of his account of punishment. The second set of oppositions, between sacrament and virtue, interior character and external action, and formal and moral reconciliation, subject the model of state punishment as secular penance to problematic liberal and libertarian constraints. A postsecular analogy, outlining a theology of the invitational nature of divine judgment, and drawing on Thomas Aquinas's account of penance as both sacrament and virtue, is proposed.     

Medicine as Enlightenment cure: Benedetto Frizzi, physician to eighteenth-century Italian Jewish society

This article examines modern Jewish doctors and the Enlightenment in action through its analysis of Dr. Benedetto Frizzi (1756–1844) as an Enlightenment Jewish physician and public intellectual in Habsburg northern Italy. Frizzi sought to spread the new Enlightenment gospel of polizia medica—public health policy or social medicine—that he learned from its pioneering exponent, Dr. Johann Peter Frank, his teacher at the University of Pavia. Frizzi dispensed Enlightenment medicine for the benefit of the state and society in general, as well as Jewish society and culture in particular, for he saw himself as both public health crusader and doctor-priest ministering to his own people. His commitments to Enlightenment science and rationalism led him to criticize Jewish social practices harshly even as he creatively reinterpreted classic Jewish texts; accordingly, Frizzi was regarded in some quarters as subversive, while in others as an apologetic defender of Jews and Judaism. Situating Frizzi within the traditions of Jewish as well as European Enlightenment physicians, this article raises broader questions about religion and secularism in the modern discourse of medicalized Judaism.     

The modern country house as a Jewish form: a proposition

ABSTRACT

Although the vast majority of modern country houses built or refurbished in the long nineteenth century were owned by non-Jews, Jews owned some of the most magnificent. Thus, these dwellings pose the same question that historians have raised about other aspects of diasporic Jewish practices: Was there anything particularly “Jewish,” about country houses owned by Jews? In this essay I propose a hypothesis – that Jewish country houses were the ideal-type of the modern country house. On the one hand, super-elite Jews took their capital, both cultural and real, their family networks, and their long experience interpreting and navigating the often-hostile worlds in which they found themselves and created country houses that were the model of the genre. On the other hand, I argue that Judaism itself mattered as much as the social and economic positioning of Jews produced by discrimination. Uniquely Jewish conceptualizations, and practices, of home, of time, and of space rendered Jews particularly comfortable with the complex interweaving of public and private intrinsic to the country house.     

犹太教在当代北美的表现

犹太教的本质体现为对上帝的信仰和对其律法的遵从。由于对上帝的信仰只是被视为是犹太教的前提,犹太教一向不注重对上帝本质的论述,因此,对其律法的遵从便成为犹太教事实上的主体。在日常生活中是否践行律法是犹太教有别于其他一神信仰的主要标准,也是判断一个犹太人是否守教的主要标准。当今北美犹太人在践行犹太律法中表现出的"多样性"突出体现了犹太教这一"自由"解读律法以及在自身内容上添加新思维的传统。了解犹太教在当代北美的新表现有助于认识犹太教在当代的发展趋势。     

After the Shoah: Continuity and change in the postwar Jewish community of the Netherlands

The Dutch Jewish community is part of Western European Jewry and as such is part of what Bernard Wasserstein describes as the vanishing Diaspora. The community is one of Europe's smallest and it was also the Western European Jewish community most heavily damaged by the Shoah; it lost 75% of its population. It is surprising that the community still exists. It has gone through many changes, most notably in the 1960s. Progressive Judaism and the Lubavitcher Habad movement have made considerable inroads in the religious community, but the population has become largely secular, and new secular Jewish networks have been established. Dutch Jews have redefined their identity, shifting from “Dutchmen of the Israelite religion” to “Jews” or “people with a Jewish background,” belonging to a social and cultural minority. A small population exchange has taken place between Israel and the Netherlands. The brief baby boom after the Shoah and the newly formed networks outside the religious framework have revitalized the community. But most Jews in the Netherlands are married to non-Jews, and in spite of unique efforts to integrate the Israelis into the community, the future seems uncertain. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.