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The definitive study of the once-important Jewish communities of Devon and Cornwall, providing an in-depth study of the demography and economic activity as well as the political, cultural, religious and social life of South-Western Jewry.
"Since the 1980s, relationships between secular and religious Israelis have gone from bad to worse. What was formerly a politics of accommodation, one whose main objective was the avoidance of strife through "arrangements" and compromises, has become a winner-take-all, zero-sum game. The conflict is not over who gets what. Rather, it is a conflict over the very character of the polity, a struggle to define Israel's collective character. In Israel and the Politics of Jewish Identity Asher Cohen and Bernard Susser show how this transformation has been caused by structural changes in Israel's public sphere. Surveying many different levels of public life, they explore the change of Israel's politics from a dominant-party system to a balanced two-camp system. They trace the rise of the Haredi parties and the growing consonance of religiosity with right-wing politics." -- Book jacket.
The Jewish settlements in disputed territories are among the most contentious issues in Israeli and international politics. This book delves into the ideological and rabbinic discourses of the religious Zionists who founded the settlement movement and lead it to this day. Based on Hebrew primary sources seldom available to scholars and the public, Moshe Hellinger, Isaac Hershkowitz, and Bernard Susser provide an authoritative history of the settlement project. They examine the first attempts at settling in the 1970s, the evacuation of Sinai in the 1980s, the Oslo Accords and assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, and the withdrawal from Gaza and the reaction of radical settler groups in the 2000s. The authors question why the evacuation of settlements led to largely theatrical opposition, without mass violence or civil war. They show that for religious Zionists, a "theological-normative balance" undermined their will to resist aggressively because of a deep veneration for the state as the sacred vehicle of redemption.
The nature of Jewish identity and the controversies surrounding who can and cannot be described as a Jew are the focus of this collected work. Contributions range widely across time and geographical context, revealing interesting historical patterns.
This essential resource offers guidance for educators to expand the teaching repertoire on a range of issues in modern Jewish history, culture, religion, and Society.
"Addresses the obsession with material production by proposing "rituals of inoperativity" such as Sabbath-keeping, vigils, and fiestas to "change our understanding of what it means to be human.""--
This book explores the emergence of the fundamental political concepts of medieval Jewish thought, arguing that alongside the well known theocratic elements of the Bible there exists a vital tradition that conceives of politics as a necessary and legitimate domain of worldly activity that preceded religious law in the ordering of society. Since the Enlightenment, the separation of religion and state has been a central theme in Western political history and thought, a separation that upholds the freedom of conscience of the individual. In medieval political thought, however, the doctrine of the separation of religion and state played a much different role. On the one hand, it served to mainta...
A myth exists that Jews can embrace the cultural components of Judaism without appreciating the legal aspects of the Jewish tradition. This myth suggests that law and culture are independent of one another. In reality, however, much of Jewish culture has a basis in Jewish law. Similarly, Jewish law produces Jewish culture. A cultural analysis paradigm provides a useful way of understanding the Jewish tradition as the product of both legal precepts and cultural elements. This paradigm sees law and culture as inextricably intertwined and historically specific. This perspective also emphasizes the human element of law's composition and the role of existing power dynamics in shaping Jewish law. ...
This book explores the often controversial topic of how religion ought to relate to American public life. The sixteen distinguished contributors, both Jewish and Christian, reflect on the topic out of their own disciplines-which include social ethics, political theory, philosophy, law, history, theology, and sociology.