Shofar back issues from June 2008:
Emmanuel Levinas and Jewish thought: translating Hebrew into Greek.(Editors' Introduction)(Editorial)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Akila translated the Torah [into Greek] in the presence of R. Eliezer and R. Joshua, and they applauded him, saying, "Through Grecian grace you are making its beauty known among men." (Sefer Ha'Aggadah, p. 451:455) This special issue of Shofar arose out of the growing ...
"A land that devours its inhabitants": midrashic reading, Emmanuel Levinas, and prophetic exegesis.(Essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... This essay initially cites the ways Levinas has been read to date--in philosophy, feminism, and Jewish Studies--noting the absence of midrashic reading, and especially one identified as akin to literary reading. It next defines midrash as the Rabbis and Jewish Studies scholars describe it ...
"Extreme attention to the Real": Levinas and Religious hermeneutics.(Emmanuel Levinas)
Jun 22, 2008; ... One important area of Levinas's Jewish thought consists in his Talmudic readings. Over the course of many years, he developed an approach to the reading of Talmud that relies, implicitly and explicitly, on various hermeneutical principles. A fundamental characteristic of rabbinic reading, ...
Language and eschatology in the work of Emmanuel Levinas.
Jun 22, 2008; ... This paper discusses the relationship between language and eschatology in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. It will take into consideration the various concepts of eschatology in his work by regarding his philosophical writings as well as his Talmudic interpretations. As I will show, ...
Another, other Abraham: Derrida's figuring of Levinas's Judaism.("Abraham, l'autre"; Jacques Derrida; Emmanual Levinas)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Through a comparison of Derrida's lare essay "Abraham, l'autre" with Gift of Death and Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas this essay illustrates how Derrida in "Abraham, l'autre" extends his efforts to derive a political thinking from Levinas's ethics. At the heart of this political thinking is the ...
Ethics and halakhah in Levinas.
Jun 22, 2008; ... Levinas's conception of ethics has the structure of a phenomenology of Jewish law (halakbah) that privileges the heteronomous command over the rational deliberations of the subject. In this respect Levinas resembles neo-Orthodox Jewish thinkers. However, those who endorse balakbab as a ...
Anti-utopianism revisited.
Jun 22, 2008; ... It is often said that Levinas offers no positive political principles or ideals, stressing rather that an ethics of singularity can only enter the political sphere in the form of critique. There is much to be said for this position--which tends to make Levinas a liberal by default--both ...
"The Eternal Irony of the Community": prophecy, patriotism, and the Dixie Chicks.(Essay)
Jun 22, 2008; ... This essay returns to the Dixie Chicks "incident" in order to reexamine the backlash against them. Their critics claim that patriotism and their contract with country music are at stake; I argue that the backlash is old-fashioned misogyny. My examination considers the concepts of prayer, ...
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. 264 pp. $27.00. There are enough reviews in print to qualify this book as a "classic," i.e., one that everyone quotes and no one reads. Having done my professional duty and actually ...
The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right, by Colin Schindler. London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007. 282 pp. $74.95. Colin Schindler's book, The Triumph of Military Zionism, offers a fascinating, and important, look at the creation of the ...
Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugess: Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said, edited by Nur Masalha. London & New York: Zed Books, 2005. 300 pp. $18.95. Catastrophe Remembered is an anthology that forthrightly presents the Palestinian narrative and ...
Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's foreign policy 1948-1967.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Cross on the Star of David: The Christian World in Israel's Foreign Policy 1948-1967, by Uri Bialer. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. 240 pp. $39.95. In recent years religion has played an increasingly important role in Middle Eastern foreign policy. On the one hand, ...
Shimon Peres: The Biography.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Shimon Peres: The Biography, by Michael Bar-Zohar. New York: Random House, 2007. 554 pp. $29.95. Throughout Shimon Peres's long political career, from his nomination in December 1953 as director general of Israel's defense ministry at the age of 30, through his service as ...
California Dreaming: Ideology, Society and Technology in the Citrus Industry of Palestine, 1890-1939.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... California Dreaming: Ideology, Society and Technology in the Citrus Industry of Palestine, 1890-1939, by Nachum Karlinsky. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. 270 pp. $45.00. In his book California Dreaming, Nachum Karlinsky offers a solid, detailed economic ...
The Honeymoon Is Over: Jonah's Argument With God.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Honeymoon Is Over: Jonah's Argument With God, by T. A. Perry. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. 250 pp. $19.95. Much modern exegesis of the Book of Jonah has been influenced by a Christian reading of the book that dates back at least 1500 years to Jerome. According to this ...
The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David, by Thomas L. Thompson. New York: Basic Books, 2005/London: Jonathan Cape, 2006. 414 pp. $35.00. Thomas L. Thompson's Messiah Myth: The Near Eastern Roots of Jesus and David, is an openly revisionist effort to re-think ...
The Paradox of Anti-Semitism.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Paradox of Anti-Semitism, by Dan Cohn-Sherbok. London: Continuum, 2006. 242 pp. $26.95. Is antisemitism good for Jewishness? Dan Cohn-Sherbok thinks it is. The paradox of antisemitism, he writes, is that "hatred can be a positive force in Jewish history.""Rather than being ...
Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy, by Peter Eli Gordon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 328 pp. $25.95. Peter Eli Gordon, in his provocative and brilliant book, Rosenzweig and Heidegger: Between Judaism and German Philosophy, uses ...
Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Renaissance England's Chief Rabbi: John Selden, by Jason P. Rosenblatt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 314 pp. $99.00. The impact of Greek and Latin scholarship upon English Renaissance culture continues to be examined intensely, but apart from studies of the King ...
Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany, edited by Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. Studies in Central European Histories volume 37. 572 pp. $196.00. This volume is a guide to a relatively neglected subfield. ...
Judisches Munchen: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Judisches Munchen: Vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, edited by Richard Bauer and Michael Brenner. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006. 287 pp. [euro]19.90. In 1866, in the presence of Chancellor Bismarck and various Berlin notables, the massive Oranienburger StraBe synagogue was ...
Almost Englishmen: Baghdadi Jews in British Burma.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Almost Englishmen: Baghdadi Jews in British Burma, by Ruth Fredman Cernea, Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2007. 173 pp. $24.95. The widely scattered Baghdadi Jews of the Far East in the 19th century constitute an interesting case of a vigorous Jewish society. The Baghdadi Far ...
The Mellah of Marrakesh, Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco's Red City.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Mellah of Marrakesh, Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco's Red City, by Emily Gottreich. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. 201 pp. $24.95. This admirably researched and written volume is a landmark in the growing historiography and ethnography of Moroccan Jewry in ...
Turning the Kaleidoscope: Perspectives on European Jewry.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Turning the Kaleidoscope: Perspectives on European Jewry, edited by Sandra Lustig and Ian Leveson. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2006. 239 pp. $80.00. It is a commonly held assumption among Jews in Israel and in the United States that European Jewry ceased to exist after ...
Jews and Gentiles in Early America: 1654-1800.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Jews and Gentiles in Early America: 1654-1800, by William Pencak. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005. 321 pp. $29.95. Jews and Gentiles in Early America fills an important gap in the scholarship on American Jewish history and the history of early America. It offers a ...
The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, by Eric L. Goldstein. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 307 pp. $29.95. In his interesting and important book, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, Eric Goldstein grapples with the ...
You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture, edited by Vincent Brook. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006. 337 pp. $24.95. In 1993 Samuel C. Heilman, the chair of Jewish Studies at Queen's College of the City University of New York, pointed ...
Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South, by Peter M. Ascoli. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. 453 pp. $35.00. Peter M. Ascoli's wonderful new book about the life and legacy of Julius Rosenwald ...
Barney Ross, Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Barney Ross, by Douglas Century. New York: Schocken Books, 2006. 216 pp. $19.95. Harry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano, by Alan Scott Haft, with forewords by John Radzilowski and Mike Silver. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2006. 172 pp. $22.50. ...
Marc Chagall.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Marc Chagall, by Jonathan Wilson. New York: Nextbook/Schocken, 2007. 238 pp. $19.95. This text is no hagiographic study. To the contrary, it seeks to be revisionist if not provocative but is entirely derivative, as the author admits (p. 223), from the labors of Benjamin Harshav ...
Intimations of Difference: Dvora Baron in the Modern Hebrew Renaissance.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... Intimations of Difference: Dvora Baron in the Modern Hebrew Renaissance, by Sheila E. Jelen. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007. 240 pp. $24.95. Dvora Baron may not have been the first Hebrew woman prose fiction writer, as critics often present her, but as the only woman ...
In Lieu of Memory: Contemporary Jewish Writing in France.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... In Lieu of Memory Contemporary Jewish Writing in France, by Thomas Nolden. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006. 254 pp. $29.95. In light of the splintering of perspectives and populations that characterize contemporary Jewish writing in France, American scholar and ...
The Era of the Witness.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... The Era of the Witness, by Annette Wieviorka, trans. from French by Jared Stark. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. 168 pp. $19.95. When Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub published Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History in 1992, they claimed ...
This Has Happened: An Italian Family in Auschwitz.(Book review)
Jun 22, 2008; ... This Has Happened: An Italian family in Auschwitz, by Piera Sonnino, translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 218 pp. $21.95. Ann Goldstein's translation of Questo e stato (This Has Happened) by Piera Sonnino arrives on the American literary scene as a ...
Book Notes.(Bibliography)
Jun 22, 2008 ... American Jewish Life The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. 296 pp. $65.00 (c); $24.95 (p). ISBN 978-0-253-34902-6 (c); 978-0-253-21927-5 (p). Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz ...