Speaking of Politics (or Not)

Here is a reminder to those of us who are suffering from PTDCS (Post Traumatic Democratic Convention Syndrome) or from PTRCS (Pre Traumatic Republican Convention Syndrome) – heal yourselves, find your center, breath in-breath out, and check out some political journals & magazines lying flat on their back covers in our reading room, waiting to be read:

Commentary (July-August 2008), with articles about Venezuela, Iran, Iraq, and, of course, America.

B’nai B’rith Magazine (Summer 2008), on Jewish geography, Israel and the Diaspora, and campus Anti-Semitism.

Congress Monthly (March-April 2008), a special issue for Israel’s 60th anniversary, telling the story of American Jewish volunteers in 1948.

The Near East Report published out of Washington by AIPAC, with updates about American policies regarding Israel.

Moment (July-August 2008), on Jewish politics, culture, religion.

Tikkun, on politics, spirituality, culture aimed at repairing & transforming the world.

Israel Horizons (Summer 2008), with an article entitled “Advising the Next President on Mideast Diplomacy.”

Contemporary Jewry, Crosscurrents and Azure offer more academic perspectives on Jewish political & religious life.

And of course, weekly newspapers such as Forward (NY), The Jewish Journal (LA), Ha’Artez (Tel Aviv), that offer current news and commentaries on the state of the Jewish people all around the world.

Finally, for those of you who had enough politics for a while, two fascinating articles about Jewish books:

Stealing Wisdom: a Story of Books (and Book Thieves) from Immanuel of Rome’s Mahbarot, by Ann Brenner, in Prooftexts ( 28:1, Winter 2008)

The First Jewish Books and the History of Jewish Reading, by David Stern, in The Jewish Quarterly Review ( 98:2, Spring 2008)

Enjoy Labor Day Weekend, and Shabbat Shalom
yaffa

New Exhibit: Gershom Scholem and Messianism in Jewish Thought

Gershom Scholem
Gerhard (Gershom) Scholem (1897-1982) was the preeminent modern scholar of Jewish mysticism. Martin Buber once remarked about him, “all of us have students, schools, but only Gershom Scholem has created a whole academic discipline!” His contribution lay in five distinct yet connected areas: the research and analysis of kabbalistic literature spanning from late antiquity to the twentieth century; the phenomenology of mystical religion; Jewish historiography; Zionism, and the spiritual and political condition of contemporary Judaism and Jewish civilization. He published over 40 volumes and close to 700 articles almost all of which are listed in the Scholem Bibliography published in 1977. He trained at least three generations of scholars of Kabbala many of whom still teach in Israel and the Diaspora.

The MESSIAH משיח Idea in Jewish Thought
MESSIAH, an anglicization of the Latin Messias, which is borrowed from the Greek Messiaj, an adaptation of the Aramaic meshiha (Aram. aHyQm), a translation of the Hebrew (ha-melekh) ha-mashi'ah (Heb. HyQFh [KlFh]), "the Anointed [King]"; a charismatically endowed descendant of David who the Jews of the Roman period believed would be raised up by God to break the yoke of the heathen and to reign over a restored kingdom of Israel to which all the Jews of the Exile would return. This is a strictly postbiblical concept. Even Haggai and Zechariah, who expected the Davidic kingdom to be renewed with a specific individual, Zerubbabel, at its head, thought of him only as a feature of the new age, not as the author or even agent of its establishment. One can, therefore, only speak of the biblical pre-history of messianism. It may be summarized as follows:
Stage I. At the height of David's power there appears the doctrine that the Lord had chosen David and his descendants to reign over Israel to the end of time (II Sam. 7; 23:1–3, 5) and had also given him dominion over alien peoples (II Sam. 22:44–51=Ps. 18:44–51; Ps. 2). David is here, as Saul was before him (I Sam. 24:6; 26:9; II Sam. 1:14, 16), and as he expects descendants of his to be after him, the Lord's anointed in the sense that he was anointed as a sign of consecration to the Lord not, of course, in the sense of "the Messiah" described at the beginning of this article. Because anointing is an act of consecration, Deutero-Isaiah speaks of Cyrus as the Lord's "anointed" in the purely derived sense of a non-Israelite-king chosen by the Lord for a great destiny and a great mission (Isa. 45:1). Thus "Stage I" of the prehistory of messianism is the doctrine that David's present position of power will endure throughout his lifetime and be inherited by an endless chain of succeeding links in his dynasty.
Stage II began with the collapse of David's empire after the death of Solomon. There arose the doctrine, or hope, that the House of David would again reign over Israel as well as Judah and again exercise dominion over neighboring nations.
Stage III. Isaiah's shifting of the emphasis from the perpetuity of the dynasty to the qualities of the future king: the foundation of his throne will be justice, he will be distinguished by his zeal for justice, and, finally, he will be charismatically endowed for sensing the rights and wrongs of a case and for executing justice. The "Immanuel prophecy" in Isaiah is completely irrelevant, so far as one can see and the echoes of ancient Canaanite-Ugaritic mythology that have been "discovered" there are as dubious as those in the figure of the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7. Without "stage III" in its biblical prehistory, the development of the postbiblical idea of "the Messiah" would not have been possible.
[Harold Louis Ginsberg] (EJ)

I’m Back on the Saddle Again!

Here’s the deal: while I thought that it was oh, so cool to abandon the blog in favor of Facebook’s charming shtiks, the growing heap of new arrivals piling up on my desk and every other useable surface in my office corresponded with the growing suspicion that I jumped ship too soon. Let’s face it (pun intended) – Facebook is great for snippets, cute applications, and free storage for shared photo albums. What it isn’t good for is delivering - to a well defined consumer group (you, not my “friends”) - regular highlights of our most recent acquisitions.
Who else can I tell about our steadily growing collection of Jewish/Israeli art: exhibit catalogs, monographs, portfolios – (courtesy of the late Rabbi William Kramer’s art library, via the Skirball Cultural Center)?
Where else will you find non-committal book reviews, gleaned from superficial glances at tables of content, title pages, and colorful covers?
How else will you be directed to my absolutely subjective picks-of-the week articles from recently received journals & magazines?
What else do I need to do to get a piece of your very-divided attention span, and, “literally”, force your gaze towards the Land of our Ancestors and its incredible print output?
Four Questions, and it isn’t even close to Passover! And here are this week’s answers (all in Hebrew):

Sephardica and Mizrahi Jewish studies:

Between Intrigues and Revolution: the Appointment & Dismissal of Chief Rabbis in Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo, 1744-1914, by Yaron Harel (Ben-Zvi Institute, 2007)

You Were Born Zionists: the Sephardim in Eretz Israel in Zionism and the Hebrew Revival During the Ottoman Empire, by Yizhak Bezalel (Ben-Zvi Institute, 2007)

Blanka Flor (White Flower): Un Viage en los Kaminos de la Romansa (A journey on the routes of Romance poetry), by Avner Perez (Sefarad & Ben Gurion University, 2007)

Hebrew Literature & Cultural Studies:

Women Authors Write for Children: Postcolonial and Feminist Readings in Hebrew Children’s Literature, by Dana Keren-Yaar (Resling, 2007)

Guards in Israeli Prose, by Yosef Oren (Yahad, 2008)

Weighty Questions, by Arnold Band (Kinneret, Zmora –Bitan, Dvir, 2007)

Silences: Silence in Culture and Interpersonal Relations, edited by Michal Ephrat (Resling, 2007)

Do You Know the Land Where the Lemon Blooms: Human Engineering and Landscape Conceptualization in Hebrew Literature, by Yigal Schwartz (Kinneret, Zmora –Bitan, Dvir, 2007)

The Lexicon of Life: Israeli Sociolects & Jargon, by Ruvik Rosenthal (Keter, 2007)

Pink Life: GLBT Youth, by Guy Shilo (Resling, 2007)

Israeli Thoughts, by Menahem Brinker (Karmel 2007)

Religion Defies Its Creators, by Yaron Yadan (Gvanim, 2007)



Hasidism:

Gog and Magog, by Martin Buber (Yediot, Aharonot, 2007)

A Bibliography of Hasidic Literature, by Yoav Elstein (Bar Ilan University, 2007?)

Sefer Hasidim: A Lost Anti-Hasidic Polemic, by Uriel Gellman (Merkaz Dinur & Merkaz Shazar, 2007)


Bible & Responsa:

Shai le-Sara Japhet: Studies in the Bible, its Exegesis and its Language (Bialik Institute, 2007)

The Prophetic Halakhah: Rabbi A.I.H. Kook’s Philosophy of Halakhah, by Avinoam Rosenak (Magnes Press, 2007)

Malki Bakodesh Responsa, by Hayyim Hirschensohn (Shalom Hartman Institute, 2006)


I am running out of steam, and I hope you run to the catalog and our new books display & check one of these books out. Don’t bother to look for The Lexicon of Life – I checked it out so I can catch up with my Israeli friends…but I will bring it back, soon!