This interdisciplinary work is premised on a holistic account of the historical, philosophical, neuroscientific, and sociocultural aspects of memory that yields a novel theory: the primary human drive is not to “power” or “pleasure” but to significance and memorability. Above all, we want to be cosmically important and remembered.

“The church is not the Old Israel, even though the Old Israel looked beyond itself; the church is the Israel of God, the ‘remnant chosen by grace.’ ”.

Ben-Israel and Vaidman have raised objections to my arguments that there are cases where a quantum mechanical weak value can be said not to represent the system to which it pertains. They are correct in pointing out that some of my conclusions were too general. However, for weak values of projection operators my conclusions still stand.

The destruction of the Egyptian army in the Book of Exodus is the primary story of salvation for Israel; God is the chief combatant in this story. "Yahweh is a warrior!" So goes the victory hymn in Exodus 15:3 after the annihilation of the enemy by Yahweh, marking the importance held by this show of divine power. This unleashing of divine power and its militaristic imagery has long caught the attention of scholars as starkly nationalistic. Thomas B. Dozeman furthers (...) this study by addressing the theological problem of divine power in the Exodus story and, by extension, the Judeo-Christian attempt to deify nationalism by calling its wars holy. He interprets Exodus as liturgy, the Day of Yahweh, celebrating God's defeat of Pharaoh and the ultimate ascendancy of Israelite authority. This liturgy, though, did not remain static, but changed as the national experience of exile changed the practice of Israelite worship. An isolated event evolved into an extended account of salvation history, in which the life of faith becomes a wilderness march to the promised land. Dozeman traces how revisionary embellishments in the plot structure and characters of the Exodus story reflected the new understanding of divine power. By combining literary and historical interpretation this study offers the first serious inquiry into the idea of divine power, and makes a major contribution to resurgent research on the Pentateuch as a whole. No scholar concerned with biblical historiography and its justification of holy wars can afford to ignore this book. (shrink)

The article engages with feminist care theories and practices of community building in the context of armed conflict. Based on an ethnographic study of the security concerns of Israeli citizens living in the Gaza Envelope and their positions regarding the siege on Gaza, we find that in this region, vernacular security is closely linked with care, social reproduction and communitarianism. Communitarian ethics is intertwined with separatist, state-centred discourses on national ‘trauma and resilience’. In this context, Jewish-Israeli women care for their (...) own communities as a way to ensure survival and civilian resilience. They generally disengage from moral dilemmas concerning the suffering of Palestinians. On a deeper level, the practice of security as care combines the hegemonic Israeli security paradigm of women’s soldierhood with an institutional and cultural obsession with trauma-oriented activities. Showing strong ethno-nationalist identifications, these women tend to overlook and even support the state’s violent siege on Gaza, which is seen as a zero-sum game. We conclude that the gendered dimensions of communitarian ethics in Israel are relevant for understanding the limitations and challenges of contemporary cosmopolitan feminism and a global politics of care. (shrink)

Philosophy and the scientific revolution / Daniel Garber -- Old history and introductory teaching in early modern philosophy : a response to Daniel Garber / Lisa Downing -- Meaning and metaphysics / Susan Neiman -- Evil and wonder in early modern philosophy : a response to Susan Neiman / Mark Larrimore -- The forgetting of gender / Nancy Tuana -- The forgetting of gender and the new histories of philosophy : a response to Nancy Tuana / Eileen O’Neill -- The (...) idea of early modern philosophy / Knud Haakonssen -- Response to Knud Haakonssen / Jeffrey Edwards -- Arguments over obligation : teaching time and place in moral philosophy / Ian Hunter -- Response to Ian Hunter / T.J. Hochstrasser -- Teaching the history of moral philosophy / J.B. Schneewind -- Historicism, moral judgment, and the good life : a response to J.B. Schneewind / Jennifer A. Herdt -- Integrating history of philosophy with history of science after Kant / Michael Friedman -- Response to Michael Friedman / Juliet Floyd -- Thought versus history : reflections on a French problem / Denis Kambouchner -- Response to Denis Kambouchner / Bé́atrice Longuenesse -- Teaching the history of philosophy in 19th-century Germany / Ulrich Johannes Schneider -- Response to Ulrich Johannes Schneider / Karl Ameriks -- Comment : philosophy in practice / Lorraine Daston -- A note from inside the teapot / Anthony Grafton -- Philosophy, history of philosophy, and L’histoire de l’esprit humain : a historiographical question and problem for philosophers / Jonathan Israel -- History and/or philosophy / Donald R. Kelly -- Historians look at the new histories of philosophy : roundtable discussion. (shrink)

The author brings to the study of the two concepts of "religious" and "secular" the same intellectual honesty and analytical rigor that we met in his early work Pacifism: An Historical and Sociological Study. This is a "book of demolition" which attempts to eliminate the term "secularization" from the vocabulary of sociology due to the simple-minded fashion in which the word has been applied to describe the decline of religious faith in the present day. He tries to show that the (...) term is not monolithic and cannot be used legitimately merely to support some ideological perspective. It is rooted in various ideologies of utopianism and betrays many elements which were derived from Christianity. Certain identities of structure which he calls "an ontological privileged strata" are present--Israel as the Chosen People, Intelligentsia, Proletariat-who think of themselves as "seers" who bear the truth on behalf of the world. He mentions such examples as scientific messianism and Marxist messianism which have tried to translate the monism of nature into the monism of society so as to collapse certain dialectical opposites in Judaism and Christianity--e.g., God and Man, Heaven and Earth, Church and State--and to convert certain undefensible metaphysical views into technical issues which can be subjected to the strategies spun out by rational planning. Having pointed out the complementary relationship between the "religious" and the "secular," Martin proceeds to examine so-called secularization in music, theology, and sociology. In conclusion, Martin indicates that the application of these two concepts can be made only if the institutional setting and historical background is kept firmly in view, and he shows convincingly that it is not "a simple convergent process consequent on industrialism and the scientific and technological revolution."--J. B. L. (shrink)

Jewish law has a history stretching from the early period to the modern State of Israel, encompassing the Talmud, Geonic and later codifications, the Spanish Golden Age, medieval and modern responsa, the Holocaust and modern reforms. Fifteen distinct periods are separately studied in this volume, each one by a leading specialist, and the emphasis throughout is on the development of the institutions and sources of the law.

In the past 3 years, three landmark laws relating to bioethics have been passed in the Israeli parliament. These are the Terminally Ill Patient Law (in 2005) and the Organ Donation Law and the Brain Death/Respiratory Law (in 2008). To reach consensus on these difficult issues in a multicultural society such as Israel was not an easy undertaking. Using learning from previous failed attempts, compromise, dialogue and work done in the absence of hysteria and publicity were crucial to the (...) process. In all three laws, compromises were obtained between the secular and religious factions, from which an acceptable law was developed. The Israeli experience is a model of a country working to synthesise an ancient tradition with the complexities of modern life and could serve as an example for other countries struggling with similar issues. (shrink)

The purpose of this article was to highlight the importance of tradition criticism as a significant aspect of the exegetical study of any Old Testament text. Different traditions existed in ancient Israel, and the Chronicler emphasised or underemphasised some of these in 1 Chronicles 21. The above-mentioned practices highlight the theology and ideology that the Chronicler wanted to promote. The Chronicler emphasised certain traditions and underemphasised others in such a way that both the theology and ideology of the Jerusalem (...) Temple stood out. The Jerusalem Temple represented the Chronicler’s theology and his image of God – which was that Yahweh is only to be worshipped in the Jerusalem Temple, that he has chosen the site as the place for worship and that he is dwelling there. The findings of this research caution against reading and understanding a text outside its unique historical context. This is because the Old Testament does not have a central theme or one theology.Contribution: This article contributes to the focus in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies with regard to the notion ‘historical thought’, covering textual and hermeneutical studies as expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures. The hermeneutical method of tradition criticism is applied in this article, forming part of the scope of this journal to embrace critical textual readings. (shrink)

Singing is central in African life and among the many reasons provided is that traditionally it is believed that people who can sing have a very special connection with the spiritual world. Songs are celebratory and could convey the message of joy and happiness in context of freedom, culture, love, gospel, etc. and could convey joy and happiness that is unique and beautiful. However, the songs can equally be dangerous. Music has the potential and possibility to carry messages of oppression, (...) suppression, exclusion, abuse, rape, crime, xenophobia, among others. In this article, the author uses the hymn in Hosanna Hymn Book titled ‘Jehova Modimo wa Iseraele/Jehovah God of Israel’ to argue that what seems to be innocent and neutral carried the message (by and through education) and acceptance of colonisation. The transmission and reception thereof become dangerous for the unsuspecting colonised. The article deals with the history of colonialism relating to ‘Christian’ literature or hymns that carry with them a systematic theology aimed at oppressing others. The author does a minimum exegesis to express the worldview and language and content of the Hymn.Contribution: This study contributes to an ongoing liberation discourse and Hymn 11 is used as an example of oppressive language and negative transmission (through education). (shrink)

The main theme of the article is the tension between the obligation to preserve life, and the value of timely death. This tension is resolved by distinguishing between precipitating death, which is prohibited, and merely removing an impediment to it, which is permitted. In contemporary Jewish law, a distinction is made between therapy, which may be discontinued, and life-support, which must be maintained until the establishment of death. Another theme is that of “soft” patient autonomy, and its role in dealing (...) with the dying in both traditional Jewish law and Israel’s Terminal Patient Law, 2005. Preventing suffering in relation to a dying person, and praying for his or her death are also discussed in the article. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 139-147 [Access article in PDF] A Mahayana Theology of Salvation History John P. Keenan Middlebury College Salvation history is a Western theological strategy based on biblical ideas about how God acts in history to bring about the salvation/deliverance of God's people. It begins with the scriptural accounts of creation as the inception of God's plan. It moves to describe Israel's deliverance from slavery in (...) Egypt and goes on to depict the guidance the Lord Yahweh provides for his people throughout their journeys and despite their trials and reverses.Israel may be idealized in scripture as God's domain, sovereign among the nations, but in fact it was a small country sandwiched between the two superpowers of the day—Egypt and Assyria (or Babylon), and subject to the rise and fall of those empires. 1 The New Testament goes on to describe God's plan in sending his son Jesus to effect salvation and unite all people in him (Eph. 1:1-16). The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus comprise the central drama, in which we all are invited to participate. The author of Luke/Acts gives an account of how God moves through the teachings and the life and death of Jesus to establish his Church and how that Church evolves from a small and marginal community to enter and permeate the very heart of the Empire at Rome. The story continues in postscriptural Christian history, from Constantine's vision at Milvian Bridge to the Christianization of Europe, and further to the missionary endeavors to convert all peoples to the path of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, Liberation theology is heir to these notions, insisting that conversion means not simply becoming Christian, but the furtherance of justice and peace among all peoples, even non-Christians.A Mahayana reading of this schema is not at first glance very promising. Mahayana knows nothing of God, much less of God acting in history. Nor, indeed, of history itself as a purposeful unfolding of events. Indian thought is known for its ahistoricity. No histories were produced in ancient India at all. No Herodotus, no Thucydides. The first Buddhist histories were written not in India but in Tibet, some thousand years after the birth of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Indian traditions in their focus on the eternal truth (sanatana dharma) turned away from the concrete flow of events and from any recording of their progression. [End Page 139]The task before us is challenging. To tackle it best, I will divide this essay into three parts, and thus attempt to argue for a Mahayana reading of salvation history. The first part will treat Mahayana philosophy and argue that despite its Indian lack of historical consciousness, it does possess the tools for writing history. Its teaching that all events are empty (sunyata) is coterminous with its teaching that all events arise in dependence upon a host of causes and conditions (pratitya-samutpada). In a word, emptiness itself entails a radical insight into the contingent and conventional historicity of events (dharmas). Beyond this, since all events are seen as empty of any abiding core essence, Mahayana deconstructs the very idea of an eternal world truth over and apart from the everyday world of events. It proclaims, rather, that to an awakened person, all is "worldly convention-only" (samvrti-matra). 2 This focus on the radical conventionality of events can serve, I would argue, as a needed corrective to a literalistic reading of salvation history. Looked at from this perspective, the story of the New Testament writers can perhaps become more apparent—how they are writing of God's design, purpose, and plan in order to counter the regnant patterns of Greek and Roman arrogance, and to substitute insight into the mystery of our being and of our being here.The second part of this article will address the Western doctrine of salvation history, focusing on the New Testament, particularly Pauline theology as expressed in one passage from Ephesians about how salvation is attained through Jesus as the unfolding plan of God's purpose... (shrink)

This article is the first in a series in which I propose to draw on the emergent and poly/trans disciplinary field of Food Studies in order to pursue questions of national identity, political struggle, cultural resistance and psychological survival in Palestine. There are several perspectives from which this connection between food and territoriality may be theorised. At first instance, for the purposes of this paper, I ask whether it is appropriate to draw on the cultural property paradigm in order to (...) spotlight the possibilities and significance of claiming their cuisine as the intangible cultural heritage of Palestinians. This essay is a rhetorical cry for the repatriation and rehabilitation of regional specialties. The need to acknowledge, safeguard and celebrate Palestinian culture, its distinctive genius and the abundance and refinement of its traditions is part of the struggle for meaningful political change. The Palestinian ethnographic research included in this paper was conducted in collaboration with Bait al Karama, a local NGO founded and run entirely by women, for local women. My methodology is rooted in the relationship between activism and academia. (shrink)

This massive volume is a collection of essays on the concept of God in ancient cultures, the Christian tradition, and a selected number of contemporary thinkers, philosophers and otherwise. It also contains a series of studies on specific problems concerning the relationship between God, man, and the world. Among the ancient religious beliefs discussed in the volume, those have been selected by the editor which play a more important role on the contemporary scene, as far as the knowledge of God (...) is concerned. Thus a prominent place is assigned to Asiatic religions, such as Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism, even though the actual influence of some of them has diminished considerably in recent years because of open antireligious policies by the governments of certain countries and a growing secularistic mentality among the people of certain others. The concept of God among the native Africans and in Islam, one of the largest religious bodies in the world, is the subject of two distinct essays, while Judaism is featured in two articles dealing with God in the Biblical-Rabbinic tradition and God in the witness of Israel's election, respectively. (shrink)

Israel in the Persian Period: The Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.E. By Erhard S. Gerstenberger, translated by Siegfried S. Schatzmann. Biblical Encyclopedia, vol. 8. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. Pp. xviii + 575. $65.95.

The Emergence of Israel in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuries B.C.E. By Volkmar Fritz, translated by James W. Barker. Biblical Encyclopedia, vol. 2. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011. Pp. xviii + 268. $32.95.

A collection of essays by a group of international scholars from Israel, England, the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and Argentina testify to the humane influence of Baumgardt. There is little that unites the subject matter of these essays and only one deals explicitly with the thought of Baumgardt. A bibliography of Baumgardt's writings is included.—R. J. B.

We report here on recent developments in Israel on the issue of sex selection for nonmedical reasons by preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Sex selection for medical reasons is generally viewed as uncontroversial and legal in European and American law. Its use for nonmedical reasons is generally illegal in European countries. In the United States, it is not illegal, although in the opinion of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, it is problematic. This position is undergoing reconsideration, (...) albeit in a limited way. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

Twenty essays based on papers delivered at the International Symposium on the Varieties of Marxism held at the VanLeer Jerusalem Foundation 16-19 June 1974 and dedicated to the memory of George Lichtheim, an eminent historian of Marxism. The overall message is that, far from being a monolithic, crystal clear explanation of the universe, Marxism continues to be a multi-faceted ideology with diverse expressions in diverse cultures, spawning a wide spectrum of "official" prophets, each sincerely convinced that he or she is (...) correct and all others are wrong. Kamenka in his contribution, while somewhat too easily chiding Marx for being too absolute in his prescriptive ethics, suggests that the varieties of Marxism stem from "ambiguities and tensions at the very heart of Marx’s thought," and that it "speaks to us, like Christianity, with many voices and in accents that are at best suggestive and at worst deliberately seductive rather than precise". Eight of the articles, including that of Kamenka, can be described as being theoretical, concerned about clarification of such questions as the methodology of Marx, the place of Engels in Marxism, Marxian Ethics, Totality in Lukacs and Adorno, Sartrean Marxism, the transformation of the concept of practice from Kant via Marx to Lukacs, and the reawakened interest in the "Asiatic Mode of Production" as a stage in the evolution towards Socialism. Ten articles discuss the manifestations of Marxism in Western Europe, Russia, Italy, Zionism, the Arab world, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Latin America, and the radical student movements of the 1960s in the United States, France, and Israel. Two other articles examine the differences and reasons for differences with Marx expressed by two major commentators, Trotsky and Mao. (shrink)

In 2008, Samantha Newbery, then a PhD student, discovered a hitherto confidential document: ‘Confidential: UK Eyes Only. Annex A: Intelligence gained from interrogations in Northern Ireland’ (DEFE 13/958, The National Archives (TNA)). It details the British Army’s notorious interrogations of IRA suspects that led to the eventual banning of the ‘five techniques’ that violated the UK’s international treaty obligation prohibiting the use of torture and ‘inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’. Having decided that the document – Intelligence gained from should (...) be put in the public domain, she invited me, along with the eminent lawyer, Philippe Sands and Brian Stuart, a former Secretary to the British Joint Intelligence Committee, to contribute commentaries. I concluded that even if the document was accurate in both what it stated and in what it left out, that use of the ‘five techniques’ (tantamount to torture) was unjustified, since the normalisation and institutionalisation of torture is far worse than failing to obtain the information thus gained. Whether or not this joint paper will make a difference to UK policy concerning the use of torture remains an open question; whether or not it should is not. This piece is an example of how my book on torture, deliberately written for a public readership, has made it possible for me to make interventions in practical policy, or at least to attempt to, whether in occasional writing for eg The Chartist and the web-based Open Democracy, or directly for activist groups, eg my ‘Ethical Opinion’ for Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Report: Holding Health to Ransom: GSS Interrogation and Extortion of Palestinian Patients at Erez Crossing (2008). (shrink)