Bulletin: Religion in Israel

Books

• Benjamin Brown and Nissim Leon, eds. The Gdoilim: Leaders who Shaped the Israeli Haredi Jewry (in Hebrew)
• Shai Feraro and James R. Lewis, eds. Contemporary Alternative Spiritualities in Israel
• Yaacov Yadgar, Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism

Articles

• Nadia Beider, Religious Practices and Beliefs among Religious Stayers and Religious Switchers in Israeli Judaism
• Arye Edrei, Judaism, Jewish Law, and the Jewish State in Israel
• Yulia Egorova, Lost Tribe Communities, Israel, and Notions of Jewishness
• Shai Feraro, Canaanite Reconstructionism Among Contemporary Israeli Pagans

Report

• Leonard Saxe et al, Under the Chuppah: Rabbinic Officiation and Intermarriage

Event

• Yuval Jobani, Women of the Wall: Negotiating Religion in the Public Sphere, NYU, April 6, 2017

 

 

Lecture: Calderon, From Secular Judaism to Jewish Renewal in Israel

Thurs., November 19th

PUBLIC LECTURE From Secular Judaism to Jewish Renewal in Israel – A Personal Story and Public Point of View Ruth Calderon Talmudic Scholar, Founder of ALMA Home for Hebrew Culture, Former Member of Knesset (2013-2015), Shalom Hartman Faculty Member   5:30 PM Reception, 6 PM Lecture Warren Room, 295 Boalt Hall   RSVP Here

New Article: Katzin, a Jewish Education Teachers’ Training Program for Outstanding Students

Katzin, Ori. “Teaching Approaches of Beginning Teachers for Jewish Studies in Israeli Mamlachti Schools: A Case Study of a Jewish Education Teachers’ Training Program for Outstanding Students.” Journal of Jewish Education 81.3 (2015): 285-311.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15244113.2015.1065633

 

Abstract

This article presents findings from a longitudinal qualitative study that examined teaching approaches of neophyte teachers in Israel during their 4-year exclusive teachers’ training program for teaching Jewish subjects and first two years of teaching. The program wanted to promote change in secular pupils’ attitudes toward Jewish subjects. We found a high incidence of teaching using positivistic approaches of knowledge transmission and the teachers adopted a particular teaching approach early into their training program that they continue to employ. Can teaching oriented in the transmission of central cultural value knowledge, with pupils as passive receptacles, create a meaningful encounter?

 

 

New Article: Benyamini and Hotam, An Outline for Critical Theology from an Israeli/Jewish Perspective

Benyamini, Itzhak and Yotam Hotam. “An Outline for Critical Theology. From an Israeli/Jewish Perspective.” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 14.2 (2015): 333-39.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725886.2014.997485

 

Abstract

In recent years, critical thought and theological discourse have been challenging each other, as they share mutual themes alongside contesting motivations. Against this broad background, this outline presents a possible formula for “critical theology,” which negotiates between the critical and the theological fields of inquiry. Stemming from the contemporary Israeli framework of religion, society and political imagination, the formula points to the difference between the call to critically navigate in the theological field of meanings, and the call to faithfully adopt its message; between the call “to the call” of theology, and the call “by means of” theology. By doing so, the outline aims to present theology as the original realm of non-religious, perhaps even un-religious, critique, and not as its adversary, while nonetheless maintaining “the religious” as such. Critical theology, we suggest, from our Israeli/Jewish perspective, is a social and political challenge of our time in which religion and religiosity have returned to the forefront of the social, political and cultural world.

 

Dissertation: Amihay, The Imagetext Turn in the Hebrew Novel

Amihay, Ofra. Migrating Images: The Imagetext Turn in the Hebrew Novel. New York University, 2014.

 

URL: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1518939613

 

Abstract

This dissertation examines the effect of twentieth-century “new media” models on literature, in the form of the late twentieth-century wave of literary works in which visual images play a central poetic role. Demarcating this body of works as an independent cultural turn, I label this “the imagetext turn” thus following two groundbreaking terms coined by W. J. T. Mitchell, “the pictorial turn” and “imagetext.” Based on philosophical discussions regarding the egalitarianism behind text and image hybrids (Benjamin, Rancière, Mitchell), and theories of the democratic nature of the novel (Auerbach, Lukács, Bakhtin) and photography (Sontag, Barthes, Azoulay), I focus on the marriage of novels and photographs. The case study for this exploration is three contemporary Israeli novelists: Yoel Hoffmann, Ronit Matalon, and Michal Govrin. Following a survey of the approach towards the visual image in Modern Hebrew literature, I identify their works as comprising the “imagetext turn” in Hebrew literature while marking their importance within a general literary development, primarily through a comparison to W. G. Sebald’s novels. My study of Hoffmann analyzes the web of Others in his novels through the photographic mechanism of the negative, suggesting the juxtaposition of text and photographs in How Do You Do Dolores echoes the Other behind text, place, and language in all his work. In my analysis of Matalon I discuss the double role photographs play in Matalon’s pursuit of postcolonial ideas in The One Facing Us, operating both as “portable roots” and as “poetic immigrants,” thus offering a subversive reading of reality that undermines nostalgia. Finally I show how through an intricate combination of narrative and visual images Govrin creates in Snapshots a literary representation of both the ideals and the blind spots of the 1990s left-wing movement of secular return to Jewish sources in Israel.

Subject: Comparative literature; Middle Eastern literature; Judaic studies

Classification: 0295: Comparative literature; 0315: Middle Eastern literature; 0751: Judaic studies

Identifier / keyword: Language, literature and linguistics, Social sciences, Hebrew literature, Govrin, Michal, Photography, Matalon, Ronit, Sebald, W. G., Hoffmann, Yoel

Number of pages: 308

Publication year: 2014

Degree date: 2014

School code: 0146

Source: DAI-A 75/07(E), Jan 2015

Place of publication: Ann Arbor

Country of publication: United States

ISBN: 9781303805424

Advisor: Feldman, Yael

Committee member: Hirsch, Marianne; Mann, Barbara E.; Engel, David; Kaplan, Marion

University/institution: New York University

Department: Hebrew and Judaic Studies

University location: United States — New York

Degree: Ph.D.

Source type: Dissertations & Theses

Language: English

Document type: Dissertation/Thesis

Dissertation/thesis number: 3614848

ProQuest document ID: 1518939613