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Jewish Culture and Creativity honors the wide-ranging scholarship of Prof. Michael Fishbane with contributions of his students on subjects that cover the gamut of Jewish studies, from biblical and rabbinic literature to medieval and modern Jewish culture, and concluding with case studies of the creative application of Prof. Fishbane’s thought and theology in contemporary Jewish life. The innovative scholarship represented in this volume offers critical new perspectives from antiquity to contemporary Judaism and will serve as a stimulus for new directions in and beyond the field of Jewish studies.

Israel is a “Jewish state.” What is the meaning of this and how does it align with the democratic nature of the country? These are the questions at the core of a contentious debate that has been raging since the establishment of the state. This volume includes 75 essays on the question of Jewish — Israeli identity, by some of today’s best thinkers — Jews and non-Jews, from Israel and around the world. Its pages include dreams and nightmares, poetic visions and rational analyses, harsh critiques and songs of praise. This collection is a first-of-its-kind nexus of thought on nationality, religion, politics, culture, society, environment, economics, and security. It is essential reading for any future discussion of Israeli identity.

This book is the first greater attempt to construct a dialogical theology from a Jewish point of view. It contributes to an emerging new theology that promotes the interrelatedness of religions in which encounter, openness, hospitality and permanent learning are central. The monograph is about the self and the other, inner and outer, own and strange; about borders and crossing borders, and about the sublime activities of passing and translating. Meir analyses and critically discusses the writings of great contemporary Jewish dialogical thinkers and argues that the values of interreligious theology are moored in their thoughts. In his view interreligious dialogue supposes attentive listening, humility, a critical attitude towards oneself and others, a good amount of self-relativism and humor. It is about proximity, dialogical reading, engagement and interconnectedness.

This volume deals with the significance of the avant-garde(s) for modern Jewish culture and the impact of the Jewish tradition on the artistic production of the avant-garde, be they reinterpretations of literary, artistic, philosophical or theological texts/traditions, or novel theoretical openings linked to elements from Judaism or Jewish culture, thought, or history.

The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In this book, Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidism's most vexing questions: how did a religious movement known for its radical views about immanence, revelation, and the imperative to serve God with joy simultaneously produce strict adherence to the structures and obligations of Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse argues that the exceptionality of Hasidism lies not in whether its leaders broke or upheld rabbinic norms, but in the movement's vivid attempt to rethink the purpose of Jewish ritual and practice. Rather than focusing on the commandments as law, he turns to the methods and vocabulary of ritual studies as a more productive way to reckon with the contradictions and tensions of this religious movement as well as its remarkable intellectual vitality. Mayse examines the full range of Hasidic texts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from homilies and theological treatises to hagiography, letters, and legal writings, reading them together with contemporary theories of ritual. Arguing against the notion that spiritual integrity requires unshackling oneself from tradition, Laws of the Spirit is a sweeping attempt to rethink the meaning and significance of religious practice in early Hasidism.

This collection features essays by leading scholars on the philosophical, theological, poetic and cultural aspects of lament, touching on the textual traditions of lament in Judaism, from Biblical, rabbinic and medieval iterations to contemporary Yemenite oral lamentations. The volume also includes four texts on lament by Gershom Scholem, translated here for the first time into English, as well as essays interpreting Scholem`s challenging work.

This book demonstrates how the Russian thought and literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries influenced Jewish thought and Hebrew literature. Through a comparative analysis of an extensive corpus of writings by renowned Russian and Jewish thinkers, the book reveals how ideas regarding the need for a national awakening penetrated from Russian to Jewish thought. The Jewish thinkers who embraced these notions adapted them to the reality and experience of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe. Likewise, portrayals of an individual’s quest for the authentic and just God in Russian literary works gained purchase in ideological Hebrew literature, where the hero searches for a true path to achieve spiritual, social, and national well-being for the Jewish people. Absorption of ideological influences is a universal phenomenon that is instrumental to progress and cultural development, and it is accepted in Jewish culture as well.

This volume of essays takes as its point of departure Martin Buber`s principle of dialogue, which he applied as a comprehensive hermeneutic method for the study of various cultural phenomena. The volume critically evaluates the methodological purchase to be gained by the introduction of Buber`s conception of dialogue in political theory, psychology and psychiatry, and religious studies.

Centers on the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, aiming to understand this important thinker on his own terms. To read Levinas in a Levinasian way means to understand this important thinker on his own terms, thinking \"ethics as first philosophy,\" without reducing his role to that of a contributor to some other discourse, such as phenomenology, deconstruction, or religious traditions other than his own. This volume offers a variety of interventions into how the priority of the ethical-as formulated by Emmanuel Levinas and seconded by Richard A. Cohen, one of his preeminent interpreters-reorients philosophy to its own questioning-indeed, to its very sense of itself as meaningful. In the decades since Levinas first emerged as a profound and critical voice, many have used his thought to illuminate a broad range of philosophical questions. Often this has occurred in ways that have deemphasized or altered what is arguably Levinas's most radical gesture: reframing philosophy, indeed reframing the meaning of meaning, via an ethical turn. To this end, the essays in this volume, drawing especially on Cohen's reading of Levinas, offer insights into how appropriations and assessments of his philosophy might become more in line with the urgency and full meaning of his notion of the ethical. Whether discussing ethics, aesthetics, politics, or Jewish thought, when taken together, they enhance our comprehension of ethics and Levinas's philosophy of responsibility.

This paper seeks to explain the greater appeal of Jewish naturalistic theologies given our greater appreciation today of the ecological vulnerability of our world. By examining the theological writings of two prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers—Hans Jonas and Arthur Green. The paper demonstrates that their espousal of naturalistic yet theistic worldview in their interpretations and reconstructions of Jewish tradition shares significant affinities and promotes an ethical attitude toward the environment. First, I show that Jonas and Green reject reductive forms of naturalism and embrace a nonreductive or “expansive” style of naturalism. Then, I argue that their theologies intend to stimulate a sense of responsibility toward all creation by envisioning humans as partners of a non-omnipotent God. I conclude by noting the metaphysical, epistemological, and moral promises of theistic naturalism to Jewish environmental ethics.