New Article: Golan & Stadler, The Dual Use of the Internet by Chabad

Golan, Oren, and Nurit Stadler. “Building the Sacred Community Online: The Dual Use of the Internet by Chabad.” Media, Culture & Society (early view; online first).

 
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0163443715615415
 
Abstract

Religious communities have ongoing concerns about Internet use, as it intensifies the clash between tradition and modernity, a clash often found in traditionally inclined societies. Nevertheless, as websites become more useful and widely accessible, religious and communal stakeholders have continuously worked at building and promoting them. This study focuses on Chabad, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox movement, and follows webmasters of three key websites to uncover how they distribute religious knowledge over the Internet. Through an ethnographic approach that included interviews with over 30 webmasters, discussions with key informants, and observations of the websites themselves, the study uncovered webmaster’s strategies to foster solidarity within their community, on one hand, while also proselytizing their outlook on Judaism, on the other. Hence, the study sheds light on how a fundamentalist society has strengthened its association with new media, thus facilitating negotiation between modernity and religious piety.

 

 

 

New Book: Campbell, Digital Judaism

Campbell, Heidi A., ed. Digital Judaism: Jewish Negotiations with Digital Media and Culture. New York: Routledge, 2015.

 

9780415736244

In this volume, contributors consider the ways that Jewish communities and users of new media negotiate their uses of digital technologies in light of issues related to religious identity, community and authority. Digital Judaism presents a broad analysis of how and why various Jewish groups negotiate with digital culture in particular ways, situating such observations within a wider discourse of how Jewish groups throughout history have utilized communication technologies to maintain their Jewish identities across time and space. Chapters address issues related to the negotiation of authority between online users and offline religious leaders and institutions not only within ultra-Orthodox communities, but also within the broader Jewish religious culture, taking into account how Jewish engagement with media in Israel and the diaspora raises a number of important issues related to Jewish community and identity. Featuring recent scholarship by leading and emerging scholars of Judaism and media, Digital Judaism is an invaluable resource for researchers in new media, religion and digital culture.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

  • 1. Introduction: Studying Jewish Engagement with Digital Media and Culture Heidi A. Campbell
  • 1. Ethnography and social movement studies
  • 2. The Jewish Communication Tradition and its Encounters with (the) New Media Menahem Blondheim
  • 3. Appropriation & Innovation: Pop-up Communities: Facebook, Grassroots Jews and Offline Post-Denominational Judaism Nathan Abrams
  • 4. Yoatzot Halacha: Ruling the Internet, One Question at a Time Michal Raucher
  • 5. Sanctifying the Internet: Aish HaTorah’s use of the Internet for Digital Outreach Heidi A. Campbell and Wendi Bellar
  • 6. Jewish Games for Learning: Renewing Heritage Traditions in the Digital Age Owen Gottlieb
  • 7. Communicating Identity through Religious Internet Memes on “Tweeting Orthodoxies” Facebook Page Aya Yadlin-Segal
  • 8. Resistance & Reconstruction: Legitimation of New Media and Community Building amongst Jewish Denominations in the USA Oren Golan
  • 9. On Pomegranates and Etrogs: Internet Filters as Practices of Media Ambivalence among National Religious Jews in Israel Michele Rosenthal and Rivki Ribak
  • 10. Pashkevilim in Campaigns Against New Media: What Can Pashkevillim Accomplish that Newspapers Cannot? Hananel Rosenburg and Tsuriel Rashi
  • 11. The Israeli Rabbi and the Internet Yoel Cohen

Contributors
Index

 

HEIDI A. CAMPBELL is Associate Professor of Communication at Texas A&M University and Director of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies. She is author of Exploring Religious Community Online (2005) and When Religion Meets New Media (2010) and editor of Digital Religion: Understanding Religious Practice in New Media World (2013).

 

New Book: Novak, Zionism and Judaism

Novak, David. Zionism and Judaism. A New Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

 

novak

Why should anyone be a Zionist, a supporter of a Jewish state in the land of Israel? Why should there be a Jewish state in the land of Israel? This book seeks to provide a philosophical answer to these questions. Although a Zionist need not be Jewish, nonetheless this book argues that Zionism is only a coherent political stance when it is intelligently rooted in Judaism, especially in the classical Jewish doctrine of God’s election of the people of Israel and the commandment to them to settle the land of Israel. The religious Zionism advocated here is contrasted with secular versions of Zionism that take Zionism to be a replacement of Judaism. It is also contrasted with versions of religious Zionism that ascribe messianic significance to the State of Israel, or which see the main task of religious Zionism to be the establishment of an Israeli theocracy.

 

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. Why Zionism?
  • 2. Was Spinoza the first Zionist?
  • 3. Secular Zionism: political or cultural?
  • 4. Should Israel be a theocracy?
  • 5. Why the Jews and why the land of Israel?
  • 6. Can the state of Israel be both Jewish and democratic?
  • 7. What could be the status of non-Jews in a Jewish state?
  • 8. What is the connection between the Holocaust and the state of Israel?

 

DAVID NOVAK holds the J. Richard and Dorothy Shiff Chair in Jewish Studies as Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is President of the Union for Traditional Judaism, and Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Novak also serves as a Consulting Scholar for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and as a Project Scholar for the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University.

 

Reviews: Ben-Porat, Between State and Synagogue

Ben-Porat, Guy. Between State and Synagogue: The Secularization of Contemporary Israel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

 

BenPoratSecularization

Reviews

    • Lassen, Amos. “The Times They Are A-Changing.” Reviews by Amos Lassen, April 7, 2013.
    • Tabory, Ephraim. “Review.” Middle East Journal 67.4 (2013): 646-7.
    • Omer, Atalia. “Review.” American Journal of Sociology 119.5 (2014): 1518-1520.
    • Sorek, Tamir. “Review.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46.2 (2015): 421-2.
    • Weiss, Shayna. “Review.” Journal of Church and State 57.3 (2015): 565-7.
    • Hollander, Philip. “Judaism in Israel.” VCU Menorah Review 82 (Winter/Spring 2015).

 

 

 

New Book: Raviv, Falafel Nation

Raviv, Yael. Falafel Nation. Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel, Studies of Jews in Society. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

falafel-nation

 

When people discuss food in Israel, their debates ask politically charged questions: Who has the right to falafel? Whose hummus is better? But Yael Raviv’s Falafel Nation moves beyond the simply territorial to divulge the role food plays in the Jewish nation. She ponders the power struggles, moral dilemmas, and religious and ideological affiliations of the different ethnic groups that make up the “Jewish State” and how they relate to the gastronomy of the region. How do we interpret the recent upsurge in the Israeli culinary scene—the transition from ideological asceticism to the current deluge of fine restaurants, gourmet stores, and related publications and media?

Focusing on the period between the 1905 immigration wave and the Six-Day War in 1967, Raviv explores foodways from the field, factory, market, and kitchen to the table. She incorporates the role of women, ethnic groups, and different generations into the story of Zionism and offers new assertions from a secular-foodie perspective on the relationship between Jewish religion and Jewish nationalism. A study of the changes in food practices and in attitudes toward food and cooking, Falafel Nation explains how the change in the relationship between Israelis and their food mirrors the search for a definition of modern Jewish nationalism.

Yael Raviv is the director of the Umami food and art festival in New York City. She has a PhD in performance studies from New York University and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at NYU. Her work has appeared in Women and Performance, Gastronomica, and elsewhere.

New Book: Green, Organ Transplantation (in Hebrew)

Green, Yossi. Organ Transplantation. Legislation, Ruling and Practice. Tel Aviv: Resing, 2015 (in Hebrew).

 

organtransplant

 

 

After three decades of discussions and disputes in the Knesset and the general public, two laws passed in 2008: the organ transplantation law (2008), and the respiratory brain death law (2008). Both of these laws are supposed to regulate the procedures for organ transplantation, to overcome the ongoing shortage of organs for transplantation and at the same time prevent the development of negative phenomena which are contrary to the values ​​of the State of Israel.

This book focuses on the legal aspect of organ transplant procedure in Israel. It serves as an annotated and clear summary of the legal approach, relevant not only to jurists and lawyers, but also to an audience of “consumers” – i.e. organ donors and their families and patients awaiting transplant surgery and their families. The author analyzes the law and its provisions by each section to allow anyone interested to become familiar with the intricacies of its implications. In addition, each section is supplemented with cumulative legal knowledge, as well as remarks and reservations concerning the feasibility of the law in the future. Moreover, alongside a practical analysis, the author presents a broad picture of the substantive issues, allowing the reader to examine all the considerations taken into account before the legislator formulated the final version of the law.

The subjects discussed in the book include: the prohibition on organ trade, the feasibility of altruistic organ donation, the status of the National Transplant Center and its functions, the power of the assessment committees responsible for the permit of organ donation, the procedures for taking organs from the living and the dead, including the legal validity of that Adi cards and the “in my heart” cards. The priority procedure for patients awaiting a transplant is also examined from a critical standpoint.

New Article: Leon | ‘Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process

Leon, Nissim. “Rabbi ‘Ovadia Yosef, the Shas Party, and the Arab-Israeli Peace Process.” Middle East Journal 69.3 (2015): 379-95.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3751/69.3.13
https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_middle_east_journal/v069/69.3.leon.html

 

Abstract

One of the prominent religious parties in Israel, intimately involved in political decision-making, has been the Shas party, led by the late Rabbi ‘Ovadia Yosef. This article examines four components of Rabbi Yosef’s political stance: (1) his view of Jewish religious law as a factor that moderates the force of changes of seemingly historical and revolutionary significance; (2) his opposition to radical messianism; (3) his desire to adopt independent positions; and (4) his role in the development of a Mizrahi, ultra-Orthodox stream of Zionism.

 

New Article: Blecher-Prigat, Same-Sex Relationships and Israeli Law

Blecher-Prigat, Ayelet. “Same-Sex Relationships and Israeli Law.” In Same-Sex Relationships and Israeli Law (ed. Macarena Sáez; Dordrecht and New York: Springer, 2015), 131-61.

 

URL: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9774-0_6

 

Abstract

Marriage and divorce in Israel is regulated by religious laws. Same-sex marriage, therefore, has no formal place in Israel. The legal system, however, has shown flexibility mainly through Supreme Court decisions recognizing obligations and benefits to same-sex couples. The lack of a religion in Israel that would accept same-sex marriage, and the lack of a secular marriage to fill the void of religious marriage systems has not meant a total invisibility of same-sex couples. On the contrary, in addition to Supreme Court decisions expressly granting rights to same-sex couples, foreign same-sex marriage can be registered as valid marriages performed abroad. More importantly, same-sex parenting has become a possibility through progressive decisions of Israeli courts.

Lecture: Sinai, Jewish Law in Israel (Manchester, May 14, 2015)

 

IsraelStudiesResearchSeminarpng

Jewish Law in Israel: Law, Religion and State

Prof. Yuval Sinai (Visiting Professor of Law, Yale University) 

4pm Thu 14 May, in A113 Samuel Alexander Building.
Abstract
This talk will explore the way Judaism, as a religion and culture, and its legal tradition – the halakhah – is incorporated into the secular legal system of the state of Israel and, more broadly, the role of Judaism and Jewish values in Israel. The origins of Jewish law are thousands of years in the past, but whereas most other ancient legal systems are no longer relevant today, Jewish law continues to have great vitality and ability to adapt to the given time and place, and as such it is highly relevant even in the solution of contemporary legal problems. This is manifest in the application of Jewish law in the legal system of the modern State of Israel. Israel’s constitutional system is based on two tenets: (1) that the state is Jewish and (2) that the state is democratic. It is this commitment to the creation of a synthesis between particularistic (Jewish) and universalistic (democratic) values that has proved to be the major constitutional challenge faced by Israel since its foundation. Reaching such a synthesis is especially problematic given that approximately 20% of Israel’s citizenry consists of non-Jews, primarily Muslims, Christians, and Druzes. Even within the Jewish population itself, the exact meaning of Israel as a Jewish state has been highly contested. Not only do opinions differ as to whether Jews are citizens of a nation, members of a people, participants in a culture, or co-religionists, but even within the latter there are widely divergent beliefs and degrees of practice. This paper will consider the challenges facing the application of Jewish law in the modern state of Israel while attempting to illuminate deserving legal models that incorporate the Jewish tradition and multicultural society of Israel today.

Professor Yuval Sinai is a Schusterman Visiting Professor of Law at Yale, and Senior Research Scholar of Law at Yale University Law School; Associate Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Application of Jewish Law, Netanya College Law School, and teaches Jewish law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Bar Ilan Law Schools (Israel); formerly Visiting Professor at McGill University, Canada (2007-2008). His research interests are Jewish law, comparative law, Law and Religion. He has published two books, namely, The Judge and the Judicial Process In Jewish Law (Hebrew University of Jerusalem Press, 2009) (Heb): Applications of Jewish Law in the Israeli Courts (The Israel Bar-Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 2009) (Heb.), and over 25 articles in these areas.

Podcast: Stav and Farber on Marriage and Conversion in Israel

As part of its ongoing series on “Jewish Ideals & Current Dilemmas in Contemporary Zionism,” the Tikvah Overseas Seminars hosted two of Israel’s leading rabbinic activists, David Stav and Seth Farber to discuss recent legislation regarding marriage and conversion in Israel.

 

 

They have worked together to promote bills that will allow greater numbers of municipal rabbis to register couples for marriage and perform conversions under the auspices of Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. While heralded by some as an opportunity to prevent intermarriage by increasing the number of Israelis recognized as Jews, these initiatives have been criticized by others as further entrenchment of the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over marriage and conversion. Their conversation highlights disagreements regarding civil marriage in Israel, conversion standards, and the ability of Jewish law to evolve. More broadly, their positions reflect different approaches toward reducing the tensions between the Jewish and democratic characters of the State of Israel.

The event was recorded on February 6, 2015. It is also available as a podcast via iTunes or Stitcher.

 

New Article: Brody, The Dispute over the 2010 Safed Ban on Selling Land to Israeli Arabs

Brody, Shlomo M. “When Political Ideology Meets Jewish Law: The Dispute over the 2010 Safed Ban on Selling Land to Israeli Arabs.” En Route, Journal of the Aspen Center for Social Values (March 2015): 18-21.

 

URL: http://www.theaspencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/March-2015.pdf (pages 18-21 on PDF file)

 

Excerpt

More fundamental critiques, with which I identify, came from other segments of the religious Zionist camp. Rabbi Hayim Druckman, head of Yeshivot Bnei Akiva, contended that one may prohibit real estate deals with “enemies of the state.” Yet it remains unacceptable to issue a blanket prohibition against all Gentiles, including many loyal citizens, such as college students, IDF veterans, and health care providers.

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein of Yeshivat Har Etzion launched a more trenchant critique, contending that the Safed rabbis had greatly oversimplifed Jewish law. It remains unquestionable, he noted, that there is a halakhic basis for prohibiting the sale of land to Gentiles within Israel. Yet, as we saw, a few figures limited the prohibition to the seven Canaanite nations, while many other scholars applied different dispensations to the rule, including a strong albeit not exclusive tradition – originating with the medieval school of the Tosafists – that severely narrowed this and similar laws. ese points and others were made years earlier by Rabbi Hayim David HaLevi in sweeping essays that presented a Jewish legal stance in tune with democratic values (Aseh Lekha Rav 4:1, 8:68, 9:30).

In short, genuine political problems may exist in various parts of the country. But the solutions lie in education and political wisdom, not in overreaching legal statements that distort – and disgrace – Jewish law and its adherents.

 

Workshop: 1. Bedouin History 2. Brot on Jewish Collaborators with the Nazis (Taub NYU, April 9, 2015)

4/9/15 – Taub Center Graduate Workshop

10am – 2pm

The Taub Center organizes regular workshops for graduate students and faculty in the field of Israel Studies at NYU and other universities in the tri-state area. The regional workshops are an opportunity for students and faculty to present and discuss their respective areas of research.  The workshops also serve as an important forum for networking and strengthening the field of Israel Studies.

2nd Floor Library,
53 Washington Square South

Coffee is served from 10 – 10:30am, and a kosher lunch served at noon.

http://hebrewjudaic.as.nyu.edu/object/taub.graduateworkshops

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SESSION WILL BE HELD ON THURSDAY 4/9/15

10:30am
Ahmad Amara
New York University

The Husseini’s Bribe and the Pre-Beersheba Bedouin History: Re-Reading Bedoiun Fighting

Ahmad Amara, is a Palestinian Human rights lawyer. Amara received his BA and Master’s degrees in Law from Tel Aviv University, and earned a second Master’s degree in International Human Rights Law from Essex University in the United Kingdom. His research focused on International humanitarian law and the law of occupation, in addition to land and housing rights. In 2005, Amara co-founded Karama (Arabic for “Dignity”), a human rights organization located in Nazareth, where he served as a Senior Staff Attorney. Before beginning his doctoral work, Amara served for three years as a global advocacy fellow and clinical instructor in the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. His research and advocacy projects in Harvard focused, among other areas, on historical land rights for the Bedouin Arabs of the Negev; land confiscation in East Jerusalem, Housing rights in Israel and Jordan and the rights of domestic migrant workers rights in Jordan. Amara’s current research focuses is on the legal history of late Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine with regard to property rights and legal advocacy.

12:30pm
Rivka Brot
Tel Aviv University

The Law is Jewish Law and the Accounting is Jewish Accounting: Trying Jewish Collaborators in the State of Israel

Rivka Brot is currently a doctoral candidate at the Zvi Meitar, Center for Advanced Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University. Her dissertation titled: “Between Community and the State: Trials against Jewish Collaborators with the Nazis,” combines law and history, seeks to explore the law as an arena for constructing or re-constructing community during a time of transition. The research involves two different social and legal settings: the Jewish Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany in the wake of World War II, which had their own communal legal system, and the State of Israel in its first decades of independence, which constituted a state-based legal system. Rivka has published several articles in Hebrew and English, relating to socio-legal aspects of the phenomenon of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis, both in Jewish Displaced Persons camps in Germany and in Israel.

RSVP here.

New Book: Fuchs, Israeli Feminist Scholarship

Fuchs, Esther, ed. Israeli Feminist Scholarship. Gender, Zionism, and Difference. Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2014.

Israeli Feminist Scholarship-cover

More than a dozen scholars give voice to cutting-edge postcolonial trends (from ecofeminism to gender identity in family life) that question traditional approaches to Zionism while highlighting nationalism as the core issue of Israeli feminist scholarship today.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction. Israeli Feminist Scholarship: Gender, Zionism, and Difference

Esther Fuchs

Chapter One. The Evolution of Critical Paradigms in Israeli Feminist Scholarship: A Theoretical Model

Esther Fuchs

Chapter Two. Politicizing Masculinities: Shahada and Haganah

Sheila H. Katz

Chapter Three. The Double or Multiple Image of the New Hebrew Woman

Margalit Shilo

Chapter Four. The Heroism of Hannah Senesz: An Exercise in Creating Collective National Memory in the State of Israel

Judith T. Baumel

Chapter Five. The Feminisation of Stigma in the Relationship Between Israelis and Shoah Survivors

Ronit Lentin

Chapter Six. Gendering Military Service in the Israel Defense Forces

Dafna N. Izraeli

Chapter Seven. The Halachic Trap: Marriage and Family Life

Ruth Halperin-Kaddari

Chapter Eight. Motherhood as a National Mission: The Construction of Womanhood in the Legal Discourse in Israel

Nitza Berkovitch

Chapter Nine. No Home at Home: Women’s Fiction vs. Zionist Practice

Yaffah Berlovitz

Chapter Ten. Wasteland Revisited: An Ecofeminist Strategy

Hannah Naveh

Chapter Eleven. Tensions in Israeli Feminism: The Mizrahi-Ashkenazi Rift

Henriette Dahan-Kalev

Chapter Twelve. Scholarship, Identity, and Power: Mizrahi Women in Israel

Pnina Motzafi-Haller

Chapter Thirteen. Reexamining Femicide: Breaking the Silence and Crossing “Scientific” Borders

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Chapter Fourteen. The Construction of Lesbianism as Nonissue in Israel

Erella Shadmi

Chapter Fifteen. From Gender to Genders: Feminists Read Women’s Locations in Israeli Society

Hanna Herzog

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Index

 

Purchase from publisher: https://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/fucisr

New Article: Taragin-Zeller, Modesty among Female Ultra-Orthodox Teenagers in Israel

Taragin-Zeller, Lea. “Modesty for Heaven’s Sake: Authority and Creativity among Female Ultra-Orthodox Teenagers in Israel.” Nashim 26 (2014): 75-96.

 

URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/nashim/v026/26.taragin-zeller.html

 

Abstract

The ethnographic research that I conducted at a Bais Yaakov seminary in Jerusalem demonstrates how ultra-Orthodox female teachers and their teenage pupils structure an ideology of modesty through the reinterpretation of canonical texts on modesty. In this study, I show that modesty is a creative sphere informed by two trends: the adoption of modern patterns of behavior, and religious innovation. The exegesis these women give to the texts upon which they base their practice redefines the field of modesty in two primary ways: (1) It transforms modesty from a rigid halachic dictate into a dynamic feminine “mission” that is connected to the sphere of virtues; and (2) it replaces the socio-masculine discourse upon which this observance is based with a divine imperative. This phenomenon bears witness to a shift in the types of authority that these ultra-Orthodox teenage girls are willing to accept, since the only justification they accept for their modesty practices is that of personal devotion to God.

ToC: Israel Studies Review 28,2 (2013)

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Rethinking the Family in Israel

pp. vii-xii(6)
Authors: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie; Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Articles: The Transformation of Intimacies

pp. 1-17(17)
Author: Engelberg, Ari

Articles: Families in Transition

pp. 83-101(19)
Author: Rutlinger-Reiner, Reina

Articles: The Boundaries of Family Life

pp. 140-156(17)
Author: Lustenberger, Sibylle

Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

pp. 210-227(18)
Author: Fogiel-Bijaoui, Sylvie

Articles: Articles: Legal Discourse, Private Life

pp. 247-263(17)
Author: Mazeh, Yoav

pp. 300-313(14)
Author: Kreiczer-Levy, Shelly

Book Reviews

pp. 314-324(11)