Adoption in Judaism

Abstract : This article examines of the place of adoption in Jewish thought and law. Adoption is undocumented in the Hebrew Bible, but some verses suggest—or have been said to describe—realities similar to adoption. Beginning with a discussion of the immutability of the relationships in the biological family, this article discusses the merits of caring for orphans and the special halakhic situations that arise for a Jewish family that pursues a civil adoption. The article concludes with a discussion of adoption as a metaphor for a convert's relationship with the ancestors of the Jewish people.     

EMBODIED COGNITION IN CLASSICAL RABBINIC LITERATURE

Challenging earlier cognitivist approaches, recent theories of embodied cognition argue that the human mind and its functions are best understood as intimately bound up with the human body and its physiological dimensions. Some scholars have suggested that such theories, in departing from some core assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition, display significant similarities to certain non‐Western traditions of thought, such as Buddhism. This essay extends such parallels to the Jewish tradition and argues that, in particular, classical rabbinic thought presents a profoundly nondualistic account of the body–soul relation in its connection to cognition, action, and embodiment. Classical rabbinic texts therefore model the possibility of engaging with ‘Western’ conceptions such as God and the soul, while doing so in a manner that resonates strongly with many aspects of contemporary scientific theories. Thus, beyond their value as historical documents, insight into the texts and concepts of classical rabbinic Judaism can contribute to the further development of new theories of intellect and cognition.     

Assigning Integration: A Framework for Intellectual,Personal, and Professional Development in Seminary Courses

This article explores assignments as a core teaching practice essential to integrating the cognitive, personal, and professional identities of seminary students. These core practices emerge in seminary curricula where there is a strong focus on the teaching of canonical texts and a goal of achieving textual mastery. We propose that carefully chosen and constructive assignments achieve the kind of integration necessary for building content knowledge and the professional, spiritual, and religious identities of our students. While the difference between the educational goals of clergy‐training in a seminary and training graduate students in the academy can be sharp, we argue here for ways to make that contrast both productive and generative.     

Justice,Wealth, Taxes

A story of rabbinic poverty relief serves as the fulcrum of this presentation of a rabbinic perspective on wealth and taxes. The rabbinic move, from biblical to Mishnaic law, places the obligation of poverty relief on the city and suggests that the institutions of the polis are the only way to achieve justice on this scale. However, the city must be aware of the individual Other in making policy. In essence the story suggests that when policies ignore the face of an individual stranger, they do not fulfill the demands of justice. This is the rabbinic attempt at threading the needle by walking in the tension between the obsessive asymmetry of the obligation towards the other person and the need for a larger more equitable system of justice which must (by definition) include others.     

Madness and Prophecy: Dreams,Texts, and the Power of Rabbinic Interpretation

To the rabbis, dreams were a serious theological challenge. While in the Hebrew Bible dreams could be prophetic and therefore a source of authority, rabbinic authority was based on textual interpretation rather than direct revelation. This article examines one rabbinic strategy for responding to this challenge: the Talmudic dream ritual of Berakhot 55b. Through this ritual the rabbis place the dreamer in the position of a supplicant. Dreaming becomes like an illness or curse rather than a revelation. Instead of telling the dream, the dreamer prays for its healing. This article argues that this ritual itself is a form of interpretation, both of the dreamer’s dream and of the biblical texts about dreaming, in which the biblical idea of revelation through dreams is retained but the dream itself is stripped of any specific prophetic meaning. Through the performative speech of this ritual the dreamer places the dangerous dream under the power of rabbinic authority.