Orthodox violence: “Critique of Violence” and Walter Benjamin's Jewish political theology

This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far more problematic than has hitherto been assumed, and poses a serious challenge, which has not been fully examined in its historical context. Second, this essay claims that the subversive elements that many have supposedly found in Benjamin's text and the attempts to link these elements to messianic traditions are also unconvincing. Third, the paper contextualizes Benjamin's thought within the framework of the Jewish political–theological debate of the period. It contends that Benjamin's theory of law and justice should be understood not as a revolutionary, anti-republican text, as has been generally accepted, but as a secularized conservative orthodox one. In doing so, it seeks to shed light not only on Benjamin's early thinking and its influences, but also on the neglected element of Jewish orthodoxy within the broader topic of political theology.     

A Chronicle of Failure Foretold: The UK,Israel and Arms Sales to Argentina in the Era of the Falklands War

In spite of fierce British protests, Israel supplied Argentina with arms both during the Falklands war and with greater intensity after the fighting. While the weapons sales were vital for Israel's economy and its arms industry, recently declassified papers suggest that the Begin government viewed the arms supplies to Argentina as a bargaining chip to exert pressure on Britain to halt its own sale of weapons to Israel's Arab adversaries and to end London's arms embargo against the Jewish State. Britain's restrictions on arms sales had long cast a shadow over Anglo-Israeli ties, and Israeli resentment towards Britain was exacerbated by anger over London's strong condemnation of Israel's invasion of Lebanon and its leading involvement in the EEC Venice Declaration of June 1980 which recognized Palestinian self-determination and a role for the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Israelis also perceived the arms supplies as a means to influence the junta in its treatment of Argentina's Jews. Yet, there was actually a rise in the level of anti-Semitism in Argentina during the period in question. At the same time, Britain's approach in attempting to dissuade its allies from selling arms to Argentina was riddled with inconsistencies and ultimately misconceived.     

Between the General and the Particular: Reminiscences of Plato's Timaeus in Piotr Rawicz's Le sang du ciel

Piotr Rawicz's novel Le sang du ciel depicts a Jewish protagonist, Boris, who manages to escape the Nazi genocide and, as a result, doubts his own legitimacy to bear witness to the other Jews' fate during that period. His difficult relationships with the Jewish community find expression in an intertextual construction, founded on the ontocosmology developed in Plato's Timaeus. Boris uses—and sometimes perverts—Plato's world vision both to measure his own inauthenticity and to define new ways of creating a state of "fusion" with the "beings" surrounding him. Another technique to overcome Boris's inability to testify is the use of a frame narrative, which, moreover, sheds new light on the protagonist's identity as a witness.     

Creative Thinking and Emotion in Human Social Life: The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms

Abstract

There is debate whether The Merchant of Venice is an anti-Semitic play. However, in this debate there has been insufficient attention paid to Shylock's relationship with Tubal. In his criticisms of Shylock, Tubal represents the larger Jewish community. This criticism shows that, in Shakespeare's view, Jewish self-understanding of what it means to be a good Jew is incompatible with the character of Shylock.     

Exile at home: A matter of being out of place

This article employs Hannah Arendt's theorizing about assimilation to consider how sovereign citizens of a nation state might nevertheless experience a sense of exile. It builds on Aziza Khazzoom's notion of a ‘chain of Orientalism’ to suggest that the assimilation of Europe's Jews to Enlightenment ideals has had ongoing repercussions among Jews in the modern state of Israel. The article focuses on what it means to be Jewish in terms of religious observance, and who feels at home in the Jewish state. Employing vignettes from recent ethnographic fieldwork, it raises questions about the modern nation state's capacity to create conditions in which its own ‘people’ can flourish. In this case, Israel has claimed to make it possible for the Jews to flourish, in Arendt's terms, ‘as Jews’, but it is far from clear what ‘as Jews’ would, could or should mean. This leads the author to suggest that Israel has a Jewish problem.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

The care of women's health and beauty: an experience shared by medieval Jewish and Christian women

In this article I intend to elucidate the extent to which medieval western Jewish and Christian women shared customs, knowledge and practices regarding health care, a sphere which has been historically considered as part of women's daily domestic tasks. My study aims to identify female agency in medical care, as well as women's interaction across religious lines, by analysing elusive sources, such as medical literature on women's health care, and by collating the information they provide with data obtained from other textual and visual records. By searching specific evidence of the dialogues that must have occurred between Christian and Jewish women in transmitting their knowledge and experiences, I put forward the idea (developed from earlier work by Montserrat Cabré i Pairet) that medical texts with no clear attribution can be used as sources to reconstruct women's authoritative knowledge.     

A TEXTILE WEB

The 1830s has been singled out as the decade in which the Swedish consumer market really started to expand. In the same period, cotton textile production expanded in the Gothenburg area. A small group of immigrant Jewish families played an important role in this development. The impact of Jewish merchants on the growth of the consumer goods market is consistent with international research. Their entrepreneurial activities and renewal of textile production and trade have been emphasized. This has, however, not been paid much attention to in the Swedish research. This article discusses what impact the Jewish immigrants had on the increase of the textile market in Gothenburg and its surroundings. Through a couple of case studies and examples, we want to elucidate the significance of Jewish textile production and trade: Jewish calico printers started up mass production of fashionable fabrics in the 1820s. Furthermore, Jewish merchants spread their goods to customers in the countryside in cooperation with Swedish pedlars. The authors also discuss different reasons why the Jews played such a significant role during this particular period: The role of the legislation, the Jewish textile tradition, access to capital, networks, effective distribution, a growing consumer demand, and the geographical context.     

Socio‐spatial mix and inter‐ethnic attitudes: Jewish newcomers and Arab‐Jewish issues in the Galilee

Urban and regional planners tend to recommend spatial mix of socially diverse populations as an appropriate strategy to achieve social equity and improve inter‐group relations. However, the actual impact of such a mix on social relations in general, and inter‐ethnic attitudes in particular, has been subject to on‐going, yet inconclusive, debates among social scientists. This paper adds to the study of these issues by examining the inter‐ethnic attitudes of residents in Jewish ‘new settlements’ (elsewhere termed ‘community settlements’, or ‘mitzpim'), which were established some 15 years ago among the Arab villages of Israel's central Galilee region. We found that despite certain strands of ethnocentrism, most Jewish settlers hold significantly more moderate views on Arab‐Jewish issues than: (a) the general (non‐Galilee) Jewish public in Israel; and (b) the region's Arab population. The influence of the socio‐spatial mix on the moderation of hostile attitudes, at least among the Jews, is analyzed and explained by comparing our data with the findings of previous research on the topic. On the basis of that comparison we conclude that the Arab — Jewish mix in the Galilee, along with socio‐economic characteristics of the Jewish population and the existence of a ‘penetrating group phenomenon’, have combined to moderate Jewish attitudes in the study region. Planners are called upon to use this knowledge.     

Between nation and land in Zionist teaching of Jewish history, 1920–1954

The article discusses the representation of Jewish history in the Zionist school system of the Yishuv and the early State of Israel (1920–1954). In the Yishuv period the history curriculum was centered on “shifting Jewish centers” in the spirit of historian Simon Dubnow, an approach that also integrated Jewish and non-Jewish history. From the 1930s, Ben Zion Dinur and the Teachers' Council of the Keren Kayemet le-Yisrael (Jewish National Fund) attempted to make the Land of Israel the central axis uniting Jewish history, a focus that downplayed non-Jewish history. Because of the opposition to this approach within the education system, this change, which Dinur regarded as essential for the integration of the new immigrants from the Muslim countries into Israeli society, was implemented only after he was appointed minister of education in the early 1950s.     

Excavations in Chinese Turkestan: A review

Concern about the quantity and quality of its labour force has been one of the major factors in bringing about a reversal of Singapore's population policy from anti‐natal to pro‐natal. In addition, the new policy has sought to enhance the quality of the workforce by offering incentives to encourage larger families amongst the more educated Singaporeans. After five years, responses have been muted, partly because of a growing sense of resentment amongst the younger adults towards interference in what are regarded as family decisions.     

One problem involved in translating to meaning: An example of acknowledging time and tradition

Abstract

The translation to meaning of Psalm 82 changed through time and tradition. The polytheistic world of the author of the poem was not the accepted context for understanding the psalm when it was considered as part of the Bible. Jewish and Christian readings of the same text have traditionally been quite different. Examples of various understandings of the psalm from the author's to the Reformation's are presented to demonstrate that the official meaning of the biblical text actually has been different according to the tradition in which it has been read.     

THE PHILONIC DISTINCTION: GERMAN ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY OF JEWISH THOUGHT

Leon Roth's famous question “Is there a Jewish philosophy?” has been the subject of an ongoing controversial debate. This paper argues that the concept of a Jewish philosophy—in the sense of an allegedly continuous philosophical tradition stretching from antiquity to early modernity—was created by German Enlightenment historians of philosophy. Under competing models of historiography, Enlightenment philosophy construed a continuous tradition of Jewish thought, a philosophia haebraeorum perennis, establishing a controversially discussed order of discourse and a specific politics of historiography. Within this historiography, historical and systematical paradigms, values, and patterns kept shifting continuously, opening up perspectives for different, even contradictory accounts of what Jewish philosophy was (and is). With Hegel and his successors, this specific discourse came to a close. Hegel attacks “Jewish thought” as a form of metaphysics of substance—a critique countered by several thinkers who can be referred to as “Jewish Hegelians” (E. Fackenheim). The Jewish Hegelians fully accepted, however, Hegel's account of the “Philonic distinction”: the difference between substance and subject within the conception of the one. This calls attention to the idea that not only the role of the “mosaic distinction” (J. Assmann), the distinction between true and false in religion, should be examined more closely, but also the consequences of the “Philonic distinction” between identity and difference in monotheistic concepts of deity.     

Laurence Oliphant: Financial Sources for his Activities in Palestine in the 1880s

Abstract

Laurence Oliphant's interest in the development of Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine preceded his interest in the plight of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. While his intensive involvement in these matters is well known, especially in modern Israel, the fact that the funds for his largesse were contributed by the Christadelphian Brotherhood has not previously been published. The present article brings to light material from the archives of this sect, and thus, too, the motivation behind these efforts.     

Polanyi's Magnum Opus? Assessing the Application of the Counter-Movement in International Political Economy

The concept of the ‘counter-movement’ has had a significant impact within studies in International Political Economy (IPE). In the light of the credit crisis and the growth of growing resentment to the notion of the free market, the idea of the counter-movement has been utilised to understand social reaction to neoliberalism. This article argues that whilst the counter-movement has been used in unique and innovated ways, Karl Polanyi himself used the term largely to refer to a specific period in nineteenth-century British history. This article argues that whilst the counter-movement remains interesting, its application remains open to scrutiny. It questions whether the concept was indeed central to Polanyian economic thought and how much can be given to it in today's contemporary era of neoliberalism. It also suggests that by focusing merely on the counter-movement, Polanyian accounts within IPE are in danger of ignoring much of his wider critique of market economics.     

The patrol officers and Tom Kabu

In 1946, Tom Kabu returned to the Gulf of Papua determined to reinvent the communities of the Purari Delta. A man of quiet determination, in the first few years he and his followers resisted the assistance of the Australian Administration in Papua and New Guinea. Kabu's popularity in the villages of the Purari, coupled with his independent stance, caused resentment within the local expatriate community. The field staff working for the Department of District Services and Native Affairs especially felt threatened by Kabu's influence and sought to regain government control by opposing his ventures. Through the study of patrol reports written by these officers, this paper seeks to examine the reasons for this resentment and the methods employed by the officers to crush Kabu's company.     

“The good Dr. Lippe” and Herzl in Basel, 1897: A translation and analysis of the Zionist Congress's opening speech

Dr. Karpel Lippe of Jassy, who gave the opening speech at the first Zionist Congress, has been largely ignored in histories of Zionism. This article introduces an English translation of his speech. Lippe helped to legitimate “Congress-Zionism” by connecting it to earlier forms of Jewish activism. His address exposes tensions arising from the Basel meeting, including Ottoman suspicion, relations with the Orthodox, and conflicts over organizational priorities. Insisting upon his and his country's priority in the movement's history, Lippe's oration suggests an alternative perspective on early Zionism and raises broader questions for the historiography of nationalism.     

"Have I Got a Monster for You!": Some Thoughts on the Golem,The X-Files and the Jewish Horror Movie

The figure of the golem, the Jewish "mud man," has persisted not only in folklore, but in popular culture as well; not only in Jewish tradition, but in Gentile too; it has inspired not only horror writers, but also scientists, who see in this legend a metaphor for humanity's quest for the creation of life. One particular variation of this story is the focus of this paper: in February 1997, Fox Television's highly acclaimed weekly television show The X-Files told the story of the golem, but with certain new features added. These additions annoyed a number of fans, and they expressed their concerns on the Internet newsgroup, alt.tv.x-files. Not all of the problems identified by these tuned-in vernacular theorists were errors, I think; instead, they point to a number of issues concerning the nature of "monstrosity" and "horror." In this case, those issues are framed within a Jewish context. This paper will begin with a brief overview of the legend of the golem, which, like most folk legends, exists in multiple forms. I hope to demonstrate that The X-Files episode should be regarded as one further variant of this legend. I also outline the objections many of the show's fans had to that particular episode, specifically the variance between The X-Files version and Jewish tradition. Finally, I will say why I feel these "errors" are not mistakes, but perhaps operate to define the monstrous within Jewish culture. "Go ahead … make my mitzvah!" (Dennis Terrell, on alt.tv.x-files)     

‘A Wagner for the Jews’: Moses Pergament,Richard Wagner and anti-Semitism in Swedish cultural life in the interwar period

This article deals with the Finnish-Swedish, Jewish composer and author Moses Pergament and his relationship with Wagner's theories, anti-Semitism in particular, and their influence on the development of modern Swedish classical music during the interwar period. The author emphasizes the importance of recognizing that Pergament's reaction to Wagner's cultural theories was part and parcel of his struggle for assimilation. The basis of Pergament's interpretation of Wagner was the notion that it is possible to separate life and belief: the anti-Semitism and enthusiastic lechery were part of Wagner's life, to which it was not necessary to attach much importance. The beliefs, on the other hand, were there to be analysed. Furthermore, an explicit and public critique of Wagner's anti-Semitism was inconsistent with an attempt to gain a foothold in Swedish cultural life. As Wagner's anti-Semitism was well known but was deemed either acceptable or irrelevant, paying attention to it was by definition proof of a Jewish identification. To be accepted as a Swedish music critic, Pergament had to follow the unwritten rules of the game, amongst them the requirement not to exhibit his ‘Jewishness’ openly. The actions of certain members of Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare (FST, the Association of Swedish Composers) indicate that Pergament's work was not thought to indicate a Swedish identification. On the contrary, his reviews were seen as a threat to ‘Swedish music’, and with implicit references to Wagner this was attributed to Pergament's supposed lack of feeling for the ‘spirit of the Swedish people’.     

Empires ancient and modern: strength,modernity and power in imperial ideology from the Liberal period to Fascism

This article examines the image of Empire developed in public discourse in Italy during the late Liberal period and Fascism by placing it in the context of representations of the British Empire, with which Italian imperial ambitions were compared. There is a continuity in seeing the British Empire as the expression of industrial and commercial modernity and its resultant strength, but what in the Liberal period was seen as an unparalleled superiority became under Fascism a supremacy acquired in a particular period but now exhibiting signs of decline, which Fascism should contest and surpass. Admiration of the British was mixed with disparagement: key figures expressed a competitive resentment towards Britain and its dominant international position, seeing it as the epitome of ‘modern’ imperial power against which Fascism was destined to be measured. In the 1930s signs of the British Empire's decline were sought, developing the idea in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that British domination would also rise and fall, and announcing the replacement of the ‘British order’, founded on commercial modernity and the strength of money and capital, by Fascism's new civilisation, with its authentic heritage of imperial romanità. This competitiveness towards Britain, which historiography has principally seen as a component of foreign policy (as was clear over Ethiopia), has additional significance when seen as an element of political culture that relates to the concept of the State. The autonomy and strength of the State were an important feature of Fascism's self-representation and of its legal culture, and in this light the possession of an empire came to be seen as an essential aspect of statehood and power.