The Mediterranean Jewish Diaspora of Late Antiquity

No known literary sources survive from Jews living in the Mediterranean diaspora from the early fourth to the end of the sixth century. Mining the writings of non-Jews (primarily Christians), late Roman laws, the physical remains of a few synagogues, donor inscriptions, and numerous epitaphs, this chapter sketches aspects of their lives, including geographic distribution, economics, participation in ancient civic life, communal organizations, communication between Jewish populations, and their possible homogeneity or diversity. It also examines the pressures exerted on Jews to convert to Christianity, including the destruction of synagogues and exclusions from public offices and elite professions, and considers both the efficacy of such pressures and possible Jewish responses.

The Twilight of the Two-State Solution in Israel-Palestine: Shared Sovereignty and Nonterritorial Autonomy as the New Dawn

This article analyzes the international consensus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that there should be a two state solution and finds it unworkable on several counts. The conflict has no territorial solution: high population density makes partition impossible without leaving unwanted pockets of one people in the territory of the other; it is not possible for any Israeli government to dismantle settlements in the West Bank without causing a civil war; and in such a small and overcrowded territory, it is not feasible to have monocultural nation-states when the population is now evenly divided between the two conflicting national communities that reside in overlapping areas. Demographic forecasts show in the short term, a decrease in the proportion of Israeli Jews and an increase in the proportion of Palestinians. In the face of this stalemate, the article recalls the 90-year-old proposal by enlightened Jewish personalities to create a binational state under the modality of national-cultural autonomy. Furthermore, and paradoxically, in a reversal of the situation 90 years ago, Palestinian Israeli citizens are slowly creating a bottom-up series of autonomous communal organizations that provide self-government without territorial control, a model for nonterritorial autonomy in a manner that reminds of the earlier proposals of the Jewish personalities. The article concludes that this could potentially be a way out of this stalled and protracted conflict. A plurinational state in Israel-Palestine based on the model of National Cultural Autonomy with shared sovereignty and collective rights for all communities.

Leo Lowenthal and the Jewish Renaissance

This chapter traces Leo Lowenthal's early intellectual life through a series of passionate engagements with traditional and modernist Jewish thought that continued to find expression in his work at the Institute for Social Research and, after 1933, in the United States. As a student in his twenties, Lowenthal was part of the community of young Jewish intellectuals surrounding Rabbi Nehemiah Anton Nobel, an adherent of German philosophy and Orthodox Judaism. He was committed to the Weimar Jewish Renaissance, active in Jewish communal organizations, and joined the psychoanalytic group around Erich Fromm and Frieda Reichmann, an observant Jew whose sanatorium served kosher meals and observed Jewish holidays. The chapter then identifies the traces of Jewish identity in Lowenthal's reading of such traces in the life of Heinrich Heine. Ultimately, Lowenthal's Jewish visibility reflects both on Jewish sources in critical theory and the contributions of critical theory to the evolution of Jewishness.

Propiedad y territorio como (diferentes) bienes comunes. El caso de las tierras de comunidades en la costa norte peruana/Property and territory as (different) common property. Community lands on the northern coast of Peru

El artículo aborda el problema de la tierra comunal desde la perspectiva de los bienes comunes en los cambiantes y nuevos contextos contemporáneos. A través del análisis de dos comunidades del norte del Perú, muestra los cambios en los contenidos de los bienes comunes como en las organizaciones comunales que los gobiernan. Se desarrolla primero el proceso de formación de la propiedad comunal como bien colectivo, construido en el proceso de defensa de la tierra frente a las haciendas, analizando luego la problemática de la comunidad de Catacaos, sometida a presiones de titulación de tierras agrícolas y de vivienda, obligando a la comunidad a ensayar mecanismos de gobierno territorial. El caso de Sechura ilustra los procesos que se desencadenan cuando la comunidad recibe una renta por la tierra comunal, por derechos de uso del suelo para actividades extractivas, generando un nuevo bien colectivo que es motivo de disputa en el marco del desarrollo de reivindicaciones y defensa territorial que no pasa por la comunidad. Tratamos de mostrar que los cambios en los bienes comunes (hacia la titulación, la rentabilización o la territorialización) desencadenan crisis en las dirigencias comunales que pasan de lógicas de gobierno a lógicas de gobernanza de la tierra. Además, al involucrar otros actores en la disposición sobre los bienes comunes, éstos pueden ser considerados como semi-comunes o semi-públicos.AbstractThis article addresses the problem of communal land from the perspective of common goods in the changing and new contemporary contexts. Through the analysis of two communities in northern Peru, shows the changes in the contents of the common goods as in the communal organizations that govern them. The process of formation of communal property is first developed as a collective good, built in the process of defending the land against the haciendas. Then the case of community of Catacaos, shows how the pressures of titling agricultural land and housing land, are forcing the community to test territorial governance mechanisms. The case of Sechura illustrates the processes that are triggered when the community receives a rent for communal land, for land use rights for extractive activities. That generating a new collective good disputed and a development of claims and defense the territory without the community. We try to show how changes in common goods (towards titling, profitability or territorialization) trigger crises in communal leaderships that go from logics of government to logics of land governance. In addition, by involving other actors in the provision on common goods, these goods can be considered as semi-common or semi-public.

"Islam" as the national identity for the formation of Pakistan: the political thought of Muhammad Iqbal and Abu'l 'Ala Mawdudi

In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) devised for the first time the creation of a separate state for the Indian Muslims, for whom, according to him, the main formative force through History had been Islam. Although predicated upon secular ideologies, the Pakistan movement was able to mobilize the masses only by appealing to Islam. Nationalism became dependent on Islam and, as a result, politicized the faith. A number of Muslim religious and communal organizations pointed to the importance of promoting Muslim nationalism, political consciousness and communal interests. As the creation of Pakistan became more and more likely, Abu'l 'Ala Mawdudi (1903-1979) increased his attacks on the Muslim League, objecting to the idea of Muslim nationalism because it would exclude Islam from India. The increasingly communal character of the Indian politics of the time, and the appeal made to religious symbols in the formulation of new political alliances and programmes by various Muslim groups as well as Muslim League leaders, created a climate in which Mawdudi's theological discourse found understanding and relevance. This paper, using especially the political thought of Muhammad Iqbal and Abu'l 'Ala Mawdudi, analyses how Islam was used to justify a separate state for the Indian Muslims, and the impacts on and challengesto the political process and its evolution, at the same time that it concludes that "Islam", as a political symbol, can have many forms according to the ideas previously held by those who use it.