Tag Archives: cosmopolitanism

Jewish Art and The World of Diaspora Culture (Skies of Parchment/Seas of Ink)

Marc Michael Epstein’s edited Skies of Parchment/Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts is a recent addition to the Jewish art scholarship. It’s bold approach is to treat the subject topically, as opposed to chronologically or geographically. This gets you a big … Continue reading

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(Conference Program) Rethinking Exile, Centre and Diaspora in Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge University, May 2-4, 2016)

Rethinking Exile, Centre and Diaspora in Modern Jewish Culture Cambridge University, May 2-4, 2016 Over the course of multiple centuries prior to the modern era, Jewish culture was shaped in various ways by the concept of ‘exile’ and by the … Continue reading

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Intersections (Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Israeli)

Nicolas Kristof in this  week’s New York Times, which you can read here, writes about a teenager escaping ISIS controlled territory. The unexpected shout-out to an Israeli NGO offering assistance to refugees landing in Lesbos makes a strong point about … Continue reading

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Poisons, Hemorrhoids, Cohabitation (Maimonides)

Worldly and cosmopolitan, this is not the Maimonides I read in graduate school. His short medical writings were translated into English by Fred Rosner for the Maimonides Research Institute in Haifa back in the mid 1980s. For undoubtedly puerile reasons, … Continue reading

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Jewish Theology & World Religions (Narrow Diaspora & The Visual Image)

A neat and path breaking volume edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein and Eugene Korn, Jewish Theology and World Religions is a first of its kind attempt to bring Jewish thought and culture into conversation with trends relating to globalization. Looking with … Continue reading

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Cosmopolitanism (Confucius)

Confucius said, “By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice (habit), they get to be wide apart.” 「性相近也,習相遠也。」The English is Legge’s translation. I’m told that a more literal translation reads: “By nature men are close to each other, by practice(habit) they are far from … Continue reading

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(Objects, Dwelling, World) Greeks & Jews  (The Epistle to Diognetus)

In the Epistle to Diognetus, both Greeks and Jews are arbitrary. The Greeks arbitrarily select, turn and shape some material object into a holy object worthy of veneration. The Jews are right to think “they adore the God of all … Continue reading

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Jewish Philosophy in China

Sponsored by The Center for Judaic and Inter-Religious Studies at Shandong University, the “Translation Series of Classics of the Jewish Culture” speaks to director and editor-in-chief Professor Fu Youde’s interest in Jewish philosophy and thought and how that interest shapes his understanding … Continue reading

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Schlemiel & Society (Rahel Varnhagen Unhappy Jewess)

Finishing up preparations for a talk on Mendelssohn, I turned to Hannah Arendt’s Rahel Varnhagen: Life of a Jewish Woman). I think it was Lilliana Weissberg who pointed out the original subtitle was Life of A Jewess, but I may … Continue reading

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(American) Judaism (In the World) (New York Times)

In this post, the tags come together: American Judaism, cosmopolitanism, literature, tourism. Is this unique to the United States, at least to New York, where Jews and Judaism have a very public profile, a profile represented with some frequency in … Continue reading

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