scholarly journals Abram the One from Beyond-the-River, and King Chedorlaomer of Elam (Genesis 14): Persia and the Formation of Judaean Ethnic Identity in a Late Patriarchal Narrative

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 632
Author(s):  
Gard Granerød
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Ethnic Community ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Redaction Criticism ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Methods ◽  
Patriarchal Narratives

The perception of Persia in Judaean/Jewish texts from antiquity contributed to the construction of a Judaean/Jewish identity. Genesis 14 gives an example of this; in it, Abra(ha)m wages war with a coalition headed by King Chedorlaomer of Elam. The article argues that Genesis 14 is one of the latest additions to the patriarchal narratives (Genesis 12–36), composed in the Persian or early Hellenistic period. It was conceived and used as an ethnic identity-forming story. The characters in the narrative represented groups and nations in the neighbourhood of the province of Judah. Abra(ha)m was perceived as the ancestor of the Judaeans and the inhabitants of the province Beyond-the-River. The King of Elam represented the Persian Empire. The article uses redaction criticism to argue that Genesis 14 is among the latest additions to the patriarchal narrative in the late Persian or Hellenistic period. Moreover, it uses a combination of philological and historical methods to argue that the description of Abra(ha)m as hāʿibrî (traditionally translated “the Hebrew,” Gen 14: 13) characterises him as a person from the region Eber-nāri (Beyond-the-River). The article uses similar methods to argue that the names of people and places in Genesis 14 referred to political entities in and around Judah. Eventually, the article uses Anthony D. Smith’s theory of ethnic community and elements from postcolonial theory as “reading lenses” and a framework for analysing Genesis 14. Reading this way underscores that Genesis 14 originated and worked as an ethnic identity-forming story.

Raanan Rein, Fútbol, Jews and the Making of Argentina, trans. Marsha Grenzeback. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 166 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
American Jews ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

This chapter reviews the books Fútbol, Jews and the Making of Argentina (2014), by Raanan Rein, translated by Marsha Grenzeback, and Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (2014), edited by Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin. Rein’s book deals with the “making” of Argentina through football (soccer), while Muscling in on New Worlds focuses on the “making” of the Americas (mainly the one America, called the United States) through sports. Muscling in on New Worlds is a collection of essays that seeks to advance the common theme of sport as “an avenue by which Jews threaded the needle of asserting a Jewish identity.” Topics include Jews as boxers, Jews and football, Jews and yoga, Orthodox Jewish athletes, and American Jews and baseball. There are also essays about the cinematic and literary representations of Jews in sports.

scholarly journals Mysticism and/in the Old Testament: Methodological orientation and a textual example

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Lombaard
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Specific Aspect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Mission History ◽  
The One ◽  
Interpretative Framework

This contribution is the second in a series on methodology and Biblical Spirituality. In the first article, ‘Biblical spirituality and interdisciplinarity: The discipline at cross-methodological intersection’, the matter was explored in relationship to the broader academic discipline of Spirituality. In this contribution, the focus is narrowed to the more specific aspect of mysticism within Spirituality Studies. It is not rare for Old Testament texts to be understood in relationship to mystical contexts. One the one hand, when Old Testament texts are interpreted from a mystical perspective, the methods with which such interpretations are studied are familiar. The same holds true, on the other hand, if texts in the Old Testament, dating from the Hellenistic period, are identified as mystic. However, African mission history has taught us that the Western interpretative framework, based on ancient Greek philosophical suppositions (most directly the concepts rendered by Plato and Aristotle) and rhetorical orientations, is so strong that it transposes that which it encounters in other cultures into its terms, thus rendering the initial cultural understandings inaccessible. This is precisely the case too with Old Testament texts dating from pre-Hellenistic times, identified as mystic. What are the methodological parameters required to understand such texts on their own terms? In fact, is such an understanding even possible?

scholarly journals Jewish fish (ΙΧΘΥΣ) in post-supersessionist water: Messianic Judaism within a post-supersessionistic paradigm

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Willitts
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
New Testament ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Messianic Judaism ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

This article defines, explains and argues for the necessity of a post-supersessionistic hermeneutical posture towards the New Testament. The post-supersessionistic reading of the New Testament takes the Jewish nature of the apostolic documents seriously, and has as its goal the correction of the sin of supersessionism. While supersessionism theologically is repudiated in most corners of the contemporary church through official church documents, the practise of reading the New Testament continues to exhibit supersessionistic tendencies and outcomes. The consequence of this predominant reading of the New Testament is the continued exclusion of Jewish ethnic identity in the church. In light of the growing recognition of multiculturalism and contextualisation on the one hand, and the recent presence of a movement within the body of Messiah of Jewish believers in Jesus on the other, the church’s established approach to reading Scripture that leads to the elimination of ethnic identity must be repudiated alongside its post-supersessionist doctrinal statements. This article defines terms, explains consequences and argues for a renewed perspective on the New Testament as an ethnic document; such a perspective will promote the church’s cultivation of real embodied ethnic particularity rather than either a pseudo-interculturalism or the eraser full ethnicity.

The End of Exile: Jewish Identity and Its Diasporic Poetics

PMLA ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maeera Y. Shreiber
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Edward Said ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Inclusive Language ◽  
English Bilingual

What is the location of Jewish identity? Cultural studies has provoked reexaminations of many long-standing tropes of ethnic and religious identity, including that of exile. Such inquiries have potentially explosive consequences for the already vexed notion of Jewish identity, especially in the context of an American experience. This essay means to trouble the relation between Jewish identity and the problematic marker of exile, within the contexts of cultural and postcolonial theory, drawing on the work of Jewish and non-Jewish thinkers, including Alain Finkielkraut, Daniel Boyarín, and Edward Said. This analysis allows for a sustained consideration of a diasporic poetics—an alternative aesthetic model for imagining community and the attendant terms of belonging. The experimental Yiddish-English bilingual verse of the contemporary poet Irena Klepfisz serves as a paradigmatic example of such a vision that challenges the familiar opposition between home and exile. Yiddish, a notoriously inclusive language and a by-product of the Diaspora, is central to her inquiries into the relation between individual and collective identities and into the role gender plays in the construction of such entities.

Methodology versus theory: historical approaches and the problematic field of the humanities in postmodernism

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetiana Vlasova ◽  
◽  
Olha Vlasova ◽  
Larysa Martseniuk
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Studies ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Components ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Historical Methods

Among the diverse methodological approaches that are currently represented in the postmodern studies, the one, which dominates nowadays, is the statement that there cannot be any methodology in postmodernism per se otherwise it would be a “relapse” into constructing one more “universalizing method”. Evidently, this assertion is stipulated by the highly pluralized context of the postmodern “normalization of change”, the transformations of the socio- cultural order in accordance with the postparadigmatic shift of the theory. Postmodern researchers both implicitly and explicitly state that the only way to “manage” the increasing pluralism and diversity is unmasking prior modernist ideas and ideals in the individual and general meanings of the human experience. On the other hand, the postmodern methodological “openness” encourages academic ambivalence, which results in the denial of the universal notions and absolute moral values. With the apparent postmodernist accent on the interdisciplinary approaches, the “scientific conditions” have become even more complicated: nowadays philosophy, history, theology, gender studies, arts are being connected with biology, genetics, cybernetics, economics, etc. As one of the main components of the postmodern intertextual analysis the historical method is vividly represented both in the western feminist theory and in the eastern post-colonial criticism, poetics of fiction and cultural studies. All mentioned above, appearing in the pluralized modes, occasion the turn into considering interdisciplinary techniques more scrupulously. The objective of this research is to reconstruct conceptually the comparative-historical methodology in the theoretical field of the postmodern humanities with the focus on the specific character of the interpretation of history in the cultural texts. The main thesis of the research reflects the reconstruction of the historical methods as an important systematic and meaning-conscious component in postmodern theoretical studies. The research proves that nowadays historical approaches are significant and valid because they locate certain techniques into the contemporary scholarly work in order to properly utilize the sources and pieces of evidence in writing “history”. The value of the comparative-historical method is also based on the fact that it proposes some models and patterns in dealing with the analysis of the particular theory in interdisciplinary studies. The historical narrative with its objective to tell the “truth” cannot be reflected according to some simple schemes, without taking into account the “hardcore” role of the context in the hermeneutic reading of history. Though there is a view that historiography is located “between” modernity and postmodernity, the articulated point of view is that postmodernism, being a theoretical cluster of historical disruption and “brokenness”, in fact, cannot reject the tradition of historicism in the humanitarian studies.

How Shabbat Cholent Became a Secular Hungarian Favorite

2020 ◽  
pp. 235-250
Author(s):  
Katalin Franciska Rac
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Ashkenazi Jewish ◽  
One Pot ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The One

Cholent is just one variation of the one-pot dish Jews all over the world consume on the weekly holiday of Sabbath. Hence, it is considered a culinary signifier of Ashkenazi Jewish identity. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, cholent became incorporated into Hungarian cuisine; in the eyes of Christian Hungarians, it ceased to be a Jewish dish. This chapter highlights that in modern Hungary, shared ingredients and cooking techniques shaped the cuisines of the Jewish minority and the Christian majority equally. Subsequently, a shared culinary repertoire evolved, exemplified by cholent. The culinary dynamic that produced the “Hungarian cholent” mirrors the broader process of Jewish integration in modern Hungary.

Thinking the Postcolonial Contemporary

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Jini Kim Watson ◽  
Gary Wilder
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Attention ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Introductory Essay ◽  
The One

To invoke the “postcolonial contemporary” is simultaneously to offer a proposition and to raise a question. It is an invitation to recognize and reflect upon the emphatically postcolonial character of the contemporary conjuncture as well as to inquire into whether postcolonial criticism can adequately grasp it. This introductory essay explores, on the one hand, how new historical situations require different analytic frameworks and, on the other, that grasping the political present requires close attention to historical continuities, repetitions, and reactivations. Neither simply for nor against postcolonialism, the volume seeks to cut across this false alternative. Our aim is to think with postcolonial theory about political contemporaneity.

‘Jewish Musicians are the Crowning Achievements of Foreign Nations’

2020 ◽  
pp. 309-320
Author(s):  
Julia Riegel
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Singing Voice ◽  
Interwar Poland ◽  
The One ◽  
Jewish Composers

This chapter discusses the treatment of the Jewish identity of various composers by the Yiddish folklorist and music critic, Menachem Kipnis. It describes Kipnis as a small, energetic man with a soft but beautiful singing voice and considered one of the most popular Jewish folklorists of interwar Poland. It also looks into Kipnis' book World-Famous Jewish Musicians, a collection of biographies of nineteenth-century composers with a Jewish background. The chapter examines the contradictions and idiosyncrasies of World-Famous Jewish Musicians compared with Kipnis's other works. It seeks to understand the balance Kipnis struck between praise for Jewish composers and quasi-nationalist emphasis on their Jewishness on the one hand, and his work as a folklorist in Poland, collecting songs from traditional, Yiddish-speaking Jews on the other.

Kriterien der ethnischen Identität

1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Harald Haarmann
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Problem Area ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Individual Features ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

SUMMARY Criteria for Ethnic Identity Despite numerous publications on theoretical and methodological issues regarding ethnic identity (ethnicity), many methodological problems relative to this topic remain insufficiently clarified. This article deals particularly with the problems involved in establishing and evaluating criteria of ethnic identity. The author assigns the complex of problems regarding ethnic identity significant status within a theory of the ecology of language. Specific points covered in methodological issues involving the formation of concepts and application of terminology involve: 1. problems of the weighting of distinctive features; 2. problems in the mutual boundary-marking between ethnic groups (i.e., problems of ethnic borders); 3. problems in the changeability of ethnic identity; 4. problems in the correlation of language and ethnicity; 5. problems of the polarity of subjective and objective features of ethnicity; 6. problems of multiple identities and the role of ethnic identity; 7. problems in the historical dimension of ethnic identity; 8. problems in the linking of groups within language communities of the same national identity. In international sociological and sociolinguistic research, unanimity of opinion exists only on the fact that ethnic identity cannot be characterized by a single feature but rather by a series of individual features (the accumulation of features). The priorities to be attached to the individual features are in large measure disputed. The author proceeds from the assumption that ethnic identities in real life are formed through a stronger or weaker dominance of individual features; they should be characterized accordingly. An unacceptable a priori evaluation or weighting of features is thus avoided. In the specific context of a long-term research program on the smaller language communities and ethnic languages of Europe, the author particularly examines the role of language in ethnicity. Contrary to most previous contributions to discussions of this problem area, the author distinguishes between the general linguistic affiliation as a characteristic of ethnic identity on the one hand (cf. the relationship in point 4) and the criterion of language-oriented group formations (cf. relationship in point 8). The problem area of the principle of language community is illustrated using the example of the Transcarpathian Gypsies in the Ukraine. RESUMO Kriterioj de la etna idento Malgraŭ multaj ĝisnunaj eldonajoj pri la etna idento (etneco), multaj metodaj pro-blemoj rilataj al tiu temaro restas nesufice klarigitaj. La jena artikolo aparte traktas la problemaron de la starigo kaj elvalorigo de kriterioj de la etna idento. La autoro al-jugas al la problemaro pri la etna idento gravan rangon interne de teorio pri la lingva ekologio. Apartaj punktoj, traktitaj en metodaraj demandoj, rilataj al la formado de konceptoj kaj la apliko de terminaro, estas: 1. problemaro pri la elvalorigo de karakteraj trajtoj; 2. problemaro de la reciproka limigo inter etnaj grupoj (t.e. problemoj pri etnaj limoj); 3. problemaro pri la šanĝebleco de la etna idento; 4. problemaro pri la rilato inter lingvo kaj etneco; 5. problemaro pri la polusigo de subjektivaj kaj objektivaj trajtoj de etneco; 6. problemaro de pluroblaj identoj kaj la rolo de etna idento; 7. problemaro ce la historia dimensio de la etna idento; 8. problemaro de la formiĝo de grupoj interne de lingvaj komunumoj de la sama nacia idento. En la internacia sociologia kaj socilingvistika esplorado, unuanimeco de opinio ekzistas nur pri la fakto, ke ne eblas karakterizi la etnan identon nur per unusola trajto, sed, male, per aro da opaj trajtoj (la kuniĝo de trajtoj). Oni grandparte disputas pri la prioritato, kiun oni aljuĝu al la opaj trajtoj. La autoro progresas ek de la asumo, ke la etnaj identoj en la vera vivo estas formitaj per, jen pli forta, jen pli malforta, rego de opaj trajtoj; oni karakterizu ilin lau tio. Tiel, oni evitas neakceptindan aprioran elvalorigon au elpezigon de trajtoj. En la aparta kunteksto de longdaura esplorprogramo pri la pli malgrandaj lingvaj komunumoj kaj etnaj lingvoj de Europo, la autoro aparte pristudas la rolon de la lingvo ce la etneco. Kontraue al la plejmultaj ĝisnunaj kontribuoj al diskutoj pri tiu problemaro, la autoro distingas inter la ĝenerala lingva aparteno kiel trajto de la etna idento unuflanke (komparu la rilton ce punkto 4) kaj la kriterion de la formigo de grupoj surbaze de lingvo (komparu la rilaton ce punkto 8). La problemaro de la prin-cipo de la lingva komunumo estas ilustrita per la ekzemplo de la transkarpataj ciganoj en Ukrajnio.

Ethnicity of Turkic Central Asia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Finke
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Shared Culture ◽  
Patrilineal Descent ◽  
Mongol Empire ◽  
The One

Ethnic identity is a fuzzy concept for several reasons. On the one hand, the very question of what is an ethnic group is not an easy one to answer. On the other hand, once this is established for a specific case, it is yet another task to define who belongs to it, and who does not, and how stable such assignments actually are. This is as true for Central Asia as for any other place in the world, and the fact that, for earlier periods of history, the records—both native ones and others—use a great variety of terms for human populations, does not make it any easier. Thus, it is largely unclear, which of the tribal groups or early statehoods correspond to a contemporary understanding of ethnicity. Anthropological scholarship on Central Asia has, by contrast, stressed the rather vague and floating categories that people in the region used to define themselves and others. According to this view, the creation of ethnic groups was largely a product of more or less artificial engineering during Soviet times. Before, local communities and extended kin groups, regularly reshuffled and redefined in history, were of much greater importance for people’s identification and alliances than language or assumed genetic ties. While there is some truth in that, the picture is more complex. Particularly among the Turkic-speaking groups in the region, a steady process of consolidation set in following the decline of the Mongol Empire, resulting in the emergence of contemporary ethnic groups out of earlier configurations. The underlying concepts of attachment and self-understanding vary, however, and can be distinguished in two different modes, roughly corresponding to the divide between nomadic and sedentary groups. Among the former, the idea of patrilineal descent, or a genealogical model, is at the bottom of internal divisions as well as external demarcation; in the oases, the prime criteria are proximity and shared culture, or a territorial model of ethnic identity. Kazaks and Uzbeks respectively represent examples of these two models. Processes of ethnic demarcation have, however, been greatly accelerated during the Soviet period and its aftermath. Today, a hasty search for national identities can be observed across the region; while following lines of Soviet ethnicity concepts, these identities fundamentally change their understanding as well as inter-ethnic and majority-minority relations. This is still a very open and dynamic process leading to new (inter-)ethnic constellations and political power relations.

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