Tag Archives: Ashkenaz

A Painful Question re: Rabbis & Racism & Judaism & Israel

Posted on May 1, 2019 by

You can read here about the remarks by Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, the head of the Bnei David academy in Eli, and Rabbi Giora Redler, also at Bnei David, about enslaving Arabs and in support of racism and Hitler. I’ll start … Continue reading →

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(Poland) Kahal & Kabbalah (Ashkenaz)

Posted on April 3, 2019 by

Salo Baron makes a brief appearance in Gershon Hundert’s excellent historical study, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity. Following Baron’s lead, Hundert’s thesis runs against the lachrymose versions of Jewish historiography as regards “the ghetto.” … Continue reading →

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(Leviticus 11) Kashrus (Hertz Pentateuch)

Posted on March 31, 2019 by

The discussion about the dietary laws in the Hertz Pentateuch commentary has a few interesting things about it. There is the sociological assertion that kashrut has proved historically to be “an important factor in the preservation of the Jewish race.” … Continue reading →

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(Uneven Interdependent) Lay & Rabbinic Authority (Jacob Katz)

Posted on March 27, 2019 by

An important point of history for Jewish philosophers interested in law, Halakha, and rabbinic authority, who pine for times when Jewish culture was corporate in character, and also for scholars of religion who have bought into the post-secular mantra that … Continue reading →

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(Hasidism) A Political Community? A Religious Community?

Posted on March 26, 2019 by

Thinking about the importance of politics and the figure of community in Spinoza and Mendelssohn, and thinking out loud about Hasidism. Asking you the reader if you think the various groups of hasidim forming around the baalei-shem in the 18th … Continue reading →

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(Doubts) Ashkenaz & Philosophy

Posted on March 25, 2019 by

Continuing to go out on a limb and meant to pick up a challenge posed by colleague-friends about the need for Modern Jewish Studies and Jewish Philosophy and Thought to take into account the life and thought world of Eastern … Continue reading →

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(Dribs & Drabs) Canon & Translation (Ashkenaz)

Posted on March 24, 2019 by

Scholars in the field call upon Jewish Studies and Jewish Philosophy and Thought to pay attention to the thought world of Eastern European Jews, what I have been calling Ashkenaz, and they complain about the ignorance of their colleagues who … Continue reading →

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Questions about Ashkenaz & Gender

Posted on March 22, 2019 by

Responding to colleague-friend-comrades calling for more serious look at East European Jewish history and culture, and with my own stakes in religion, here is another thought about what I’d like to call Ashkenaz. I’m also responding to colleague-friend-comrades Laura Levitt … Continue reading →

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An Open Question Re: Eastern Europe and Contemporary Jewish Thought and Philosophy (Ashkenaz)

Posted on March 19, 2019 by

Looking for help from modern Jewish Studies and Jewish philosophy and thought people: I’m trying to think thru challenges posted by Eliyahu Stern and Shaul Magid that we need to take into account the thought-worlds of East European Jews into … Continue reading →

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Anti-Lachrymose Jewish History = A Lachrymose Theological & Reactionary Object (Salo Baron)

Posted on December 26, 2018 by

Jewish Studies and the study of Jewish History in America begin to show their age. The older they get the weirder they look in retrospect.  Told as an origin story, one of the great founding moments of the discipline in … Continue reading →

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