The inheritance of Unitatis Redintegratio: critical questions for Anglicans

Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogues have failed to gain practical traction over the past 50 years, and relations between the two groups may well have gone backwards, despite the important opening provided by Unitatis Redintegratio. This article offers an overview of some of the demographic and political reasons for the failure of dialogical ‘reception’, as well as offering some alternative paths forward, based on elements within the decree itself, especially as underlined by Pope John Paul II.     

Rights and rites: Women's roles in liberal religious movements in Israel

A study of the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel indicates that the question of women's rights in these Jewish denominations is essentially dormant. This is in contrast with the lively discussion of the role of women in American Jewish life. The demand for greater roles in the synagogue may be affected by the general societal orientation toward women's rights. In the Israeli case, there is no stimulant from a general movement for women's rights to lead to such demands among religious adherents.The field work upon which this study is based was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Public Health Service (Grant Number IR03 MH124072-01A1). Gratitude is also expressed to the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and to Bar Ilan University for fellowships during the study period. The author is also grateful to Bernard Lazerwitz, Michael Harrison, David Glanz, J. Alan Winter, and an anonymous reviewer of this journal for their comments to a draft of this article.     

Progress and tradition in medieval Ashkenaz

Intellectual historians have identified differing attitudes toward the notion of progress among the churchmen of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in western Europe. The present study aims to trace the views of rabbinic figures in medieval Ashkenaz during this period. Tosafists such as Isaiah di Trani, Samson of Sens, and Asher b. Yehiel felt that subsequent teachers and decisors could progress beyond the formulations and rulings of their predecessors, while Rashi and Rashbam believed that progress within the post-Talmudic period, at least with respect to legal rulings, was virtually impossible. At the same time, there was a consensus that the spirituality of earlier generations was greater, and that certain prerogatives in ritual matters which were accepted in the earlier period were no longer valid. As in the Christian world, those who were partisans of progress were criticized by others for their stance. Within the Sefardic orbit, Maimonides was virtually alone in his view that the ``decline of the generations' was not an inexorable process. Those Tosafists who agreed with this position were his nearest contemporary allies. The application of dialectic by the Tosafists to justify existing Ashkenazic practices that appeared to be contrary to Talmudic law parallels the activities of canon lawyers, as do their efforts to deal with new technologies. Even the more conservative group of Ashkenazic rabbinic thinkers looked upon the idea of newness itself quite favorably. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Courtyards,Balconies and Roofs

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Jews were conspicuous in Iraqi civic life and initially played a prominent role in building the new state, including the further development of the commercial, postal and judicial system, thus entering the state bourgeoisie of civil servants that was being formed in those early years. This study will focus on the interplay of tradition (and Jewish orthopraxy) with Jewish modernities: the latter are reflected both in the biographical circumstances of family members, and features of life inside a Jewish house in the Christian quarter of Baghdad. This study records Baghdadi Jewish domestic modernization, along with the retention of traditional architectural features, and the ways in which these processes were expressed spatially in this single Jewish household.     

Avoidance Behavior Following Terror Event Exposure: Effects of Perceived Life Threat and Jewish Religious Coping

The current research was designed to examine associations of perceived life threat (PLT) and religious coping with the development of avoidance behavior following terror event exposure. Based upon the terror management theory (TMT), we hypothesized that religious coping, through its effect on religious beliefs as a meaning system, would moderate the impact of threat, as expressed in PLT, on an individual's reaction to terror event exposure, as manifested in avoidance behavior. Participants were 591 Israeli Jewish students who were vicariously or directly exposed to a terror event in the past. We report a significant interaction between PLT and negative religious coping. PLT was positively associated with avoidance behavior but this relationship was more profound among persons who reported high negative religious coping. Secular students reported higher rates of avoidance behavior and negative religious coping and were more likely than religious students to report intrapersonal religious conflict. Our findings suggest that terror event exposure is associated with an elevated sense of threat, which is, at least in part, associated with a weakening of prior religious beliefs.