bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Concept of the ThreeKetarim:Its Place in Jewish Political Thought and Its Implications for a Study of Jewish Constitutional History
Authors: Cohen Stuart A.
Published: October 2009

Jewish political traditions, it has been argued, constitute an integral facet of Jewish civilization in its entirety. They reflect a constant — albeit often implicit — understanding that the validity of Jewish teaching can best find expression in a political setting. They also embody Judaism's commitment to the establishment of the perfect polity. As implemented through the process of covenant (brit), and as buttressed by the attribute of loving-kindness (ḥesed), political traditions in effect comprise the vehicles whereby the Congregation of Israel attempts to transpose the kingdom of heaven (malkhut shamayim —“the good commonwealth”) to earth.
Metaphor and Metonymy in Agnon'sA Guest for the Night
Authors: Sokoloff Naomi B.
Published: October 2009

Roman Jakobson's now classic distinction between metaphor and metonymy defines two primary modes of linguistic thought: on the one hand relations of similarity and dissimilarity, and on the other relations of contiguity or, we might say, dependence and independence. Though they find their most condensed expression in the tropes metaphor and metonymy, these same principles govern phonemic, lexical, and phraseological levels of language, and they operate as well in larger segments of discourse. A piece of fiction or poetry, for example, may develop along lines of association by likeness or through links of sequence and consequence.
Rabbinical Status and Religious Authority in Imperial Germany: The German Rabbinical Association
Authors: Poppel Stephen M.
Published: October 2009

The old political adage that every people gets the leaders it deserves may be recast in a broader, more positive, and ultimately truer sense to state that every society seeks (though it does not necessarily find) the kind of leadership that best embodies its values and aspirations. Thus much can be learned about a society by examining the relative standing of competing claimants for its leadership. This is particularly so in the wake of great transitions, when such standing may be expected to reflect specific intention, rather than the social inertia that predominates in calmer times.
The Origins of the Matrilineal Principle in Rabbinic Law
Authors: Cohen Shaye J. D.
Published: October 2009

According to rabbinic law, from the second century to the present, the offspring of a gentile mother and a Jewish father is a gentile, while the offspring of a Jewish mother and a gentile father is a Jew (albeit, according to the Mishnah, amamzer, a Jew of impaired status). Each of these two rulings has its own history, as I shall show below, but it is convenient to group them together under the general heading of the “matrilineal principle.” Anthropologists and sociologists use the termmatrilinealto describe societies in which kinship is determined through the females and not the males. Such societies once existed in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and can still be found in parts of Africa, India, and Polynesia. Although rabbinic society and family law have not yet been studied in the light of modern anthropological and sociological theories, it seems clear that the kinship patterns which characterize matrilineal societies are thoroughly foreign to rabbinic society. With only a few exceptions, rabbinic family law is patrilineal. Status, kinship, and succession are determined through the father. (“The family of the father is considered family, the family of the mother is not considered family,” B.Bava Batra109b.) Why, then, did the rabbis adopt a matrilineal principle for the determination of the status of the offspring of mixed marriages?
The Poetics of Composition of the Hebrew Short Story in the Haskalah Period
Authors: Mazor Yair
Published: October 2009

The main goal of this paper is to determine and describe the poetics of composition of the Hebrew short story in the Enlightenment (Haskalah) period. (The Haskalah was a major literary movement in Hebrew literature, mainly in Germany, Austria, and Russia, from 1780 to 1870. This movement evolved in three distinct phases: neoclassic, romantic, and realistic.) The narrative of the Haskalah period has received considerable attention from many critics and researchers, beginning with the first critics of Hebrew literature (such as Kovner, Brainin, Paperna, and Lilienblum), through critics of the early twentieth century (such as Feitelson, Robinson, Zitron, Zinberg, Frischmann, Slouschz, Shapira, Klausner, and Lachower), up to contemporary critics (Patterson, Weinfeld, Wersses, Shaked, Miron, Feingold, and others).
Three Typological Themes in Early Jewish Messianism: Messiah Son of Joseph, Rabbinic Calculations, and the Figure of Armilus
Authors: Berger David
Published: October 2009

The messianic dream owes its roots to biblical prophecy and its rich development to generations of sensitive and creative exegetes anxiously awaiting redemption. Scripture itself is less than generous in providing detailed information about the end of days, so ungenerous, in fact, that some modern scholars have expressed skepticism about the very appearance of a messianic figure in the biblical text. While this skepticism is excessive, it reflects a reality which troubled the ancients no less than the moderns and left room for the diversity and complexity that mark the messianic idea by late antiquity.
The Hebrew Paraphrase of Saadiah Gaon'sKitĀb al-AmĀnĀt wa'l-I'tiqĀdĀt
Authors: Kiener Ronald C.
Published: October 2009

Saadiah Gaon (882–942) was a prolific and pioneering teacher, sage, and communal leader who pursued his wide-ranging studies with a singleminded commitment. His was the first Rabbanite translation of the Hebrew Bible into Arabic; his was one of the first Hebrew dictionaries; hisSiddurmarked one of the first attempts to regularize the liturgy. HisKitāb al-Amānāt wa l-I'tiqādā(Book of Beliefs and Opinions)was the first major work of medieval Jewish philosophy. Written during his renowned forced retirement in the year 932 C.E., theKitāb al-Amānātrepresents the beginning of a long and noble tradition of Judeo-Arabic philosophy.
New Light on the Jews of Mozarabic Toledo
Authors: Roth Norman
Published: October 2009

Medieval Spain represents a unique phenomenon in the history of Jewish civilization. Not only did the Jews live longer in Spain than in any other land in their history (indeed, almost as long as they occupied their homeland in the land of Israel from Abraham to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.), but the Jewish population of medieval Spain was greater than that of all other lands combined, and the rich achievements of Jewish culture there were unequaled elsewhere. Of all the cities in Spain which served as major centers of Jewish life and culture, Toledo perhaps stands out as the most important. Studies dealing with Jewish life in Spain have recognized this, and the long-awaited appearance of a recent two-volume work in Spanish devoted to the Jews of Toledo has helped focus attention once again on the vast archival material available.
Intercity Relations in Roman Palestine: The Case of Sepphoris and Tiberias
Authors: Miller Stuart S
Published: October 2009

Sepphoris and Tiberias were the most important administrative and rabbinic centers of Roman Galilee. The two cities had much in common: both were associated with Herod Antipas, who rebuilt Sepphoris sometime after a futile revolt in 4 B.C.E. and still later founded Tiberias; both had jurisdiction over the bank and archives of Galilee at various times during the first century; both had pro-Roman factions in the First Revolt, though that of Sepphoris was more influential; both maintained Hellenistic institutions and minted coins; both were connected by the major road built by Hadrian from Acco to the Sea of Galilee;5 both would eventually become home to the Sanhedrin and the patriarchal house; both maintained communities ofpriests associated with a particularmishmar(priestly course), and finally, both attracted many prominenttannaim and amoraimwho establishednoted academies.
Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example
Authors: Soloveitchik Haym
Published: October 2009

If law is conceived of, as religious law must be, as a revelation of the divine will, then any attempt to align that will with human wants, any attempt to have reality control rather than to be itself controlled by the divine norm, is an act of blasphemy and is inconceivable to a God-fearing man. As the Middle Ages was an age of faith among Jews no less than among Christians and Muslims, the unalignability, the “nonadaptability”if you wish, of religious law is a premise which must underlie all our investigations and understanding of the history of Halakhah in the Middle Ages. Yet the contention of this paper is that at times the very intensity of religious conviction and observance can be conducive to a radical transformation of religious law, and that the very depth of religious attachment can play a supportive role in deflecting the divine norm from the path of its immanent development, and bring it into line with the needs and practices of the time.
The Beginnings of Modern Hebrew Literature: Perspectives On “Modernity”
Authors: Band Arnold J.
Published: October 2009

The traditional opening statements in the debate concerning the beginnings of modern Hebrew literature usually assume the form of claims or accusations of paternity. Claims–if the child is legitimate; accusations–if it is not. I wish to avoid the paternity issue because, as I shall argue, it is essentially groundless and precludes consideration of other perspectives. My strategy shall therefore be an oblique attack from an unexpected quarter using traditional camouflage, I begin with a prooftext.
“Kill Your Ordinary Common Sense and Maybe You'll Begin to Understand”: Aharon Appelfeld and the Holocaust
Authors: Jacobson David C.
Published: October 2009

When Aharon Appelfeld emigrated in his early teens to the Land of Israel on the eve of the establishment of the state, he and other Holocaust survivors his age felt ashamed of their experiences of suffering in the war, which seemed to them to be so meaningless and insignificant in comparison to the constructive tasks of nation building that had been undertaken by the yishuv.
Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry
Authors: Horowitz Elliott
Published: October 2009

Although religious history has traditionally concerned itself with the transcendent dimension in human life, and social history with the mundane, the latter approach can also be used to illuminate the ways in which religion works itself out on the social plane. In fact, it might be argued that inquiries of this sort should occupy a prominent place on the agenda of any social and religious history of the Jews. Among historians of theAnnalesschool, for whom the study of material life was long considered the backbone of historical inquiry, there has been a discernible move in recent years toward the study of religious life, especially in its popular forms. Whereas, for example, previous volumes in the valuable Johns Hopkins series of “Selections from theAnnales” were devoted to such topics as food and drink in history, the one published in 1982 was entitled, significantly,Ritual, Religion and the Sacred.
Prolegomenon to the Study of Jewish-Christianities in Rabbinic Literature
Authors: Visotzky Burton L.
Published: October 2009

They just don't fit very neatly; they never did. Ever since it became clear that the law-free mission to the gentiles would create a church and not a synagogue, Jewish-Christianity has been an uncomfortable reality with which to deal. The “Synagogue” didn't like it. The “Church Catholic” didn't like it. And modern scholarship, far less ready to accept the vagaries of a religion that resembles but cannot be made to fit known varieties of religion, seems to like it even less. Jewish-Christians seemed to want to hang on to an anachronism, a mission that should have failed already in Paul's lifetime.
By Way of Truth: Aspects of Naḥmanides' Kabbalistic Hermeneutic
Authors: Wolfson Elliot R.
Published: October 2009

Perhaps no one figure is more responsible for the legitimization of kabbalah as an authentic esoteric tradition of Judaism than Moses ben Nahman (1194–1270). Although from the beginnings of its literary history kabbalah was associated with men of rabbinic standing, such as R. Abraham ben David of Posquieres, no one before Nahmanides had attained a reputation for excellence in halakhic and mystical matters and had written extensively in both domains. Nahmanides' involvement with kabbalah, especially in the context of a commentary on the Torah written for the layman, as the author plainly states in his introduction, surely lent a stamp of approval to the whole enterprise. R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon in hisBaddei ha-'Aron u-Migdal Hananelgave the following characterization of Nahmanides' kabbalistic literary activity:

The great rabbi, Moses ben Naḥman, may his memory be for a blessing, wrote his book [i.e., the commentary on the Torah] and a book [on] Job. He alluded to hidden matters in every place () to arouse [people's awareness] as is appropriate and according to what he received. However, he concealed his words to a high degree, for it is written, “Honey and milk are under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4: 11).
Anthropology and the Study of Traditional Jewish Societies
Authors: Goldberg Harvey E.
Published: October 2009

The analytic tools of anthropology originally were fashioned on smallscale tribal groups that possessed no written traditions. After World War II, as anthropologists became involved in the study of complex societies in different “developing areas,” the discipline began to relate its findings to the concerns of other fields. Simultaneously, scholars from other social and humanist disciplines, who previously had assumed that anthropologists focused only on “primitives,” began to incorporate anthropological methods and concepts into their tool kits. As part of these general trends, there were anthropologists who turned to the study of Jewish society and culture. One natural expression of this trend has been the study of contemporary Jewish communities. There are now dozens of studies of Jewish life from one or another anthropological perspective, most of them dealing mainly with Jews in the United States of Ashkenazi background or with communities in Israel whose origins were in the Middle East. A very different trend is found in the analysis of classic texts, notably the Bible but with some attention being given to rabbinic literature, using structuralism and related methodologies. At first initiated by anthropologists who were not themselves specialists in the biblical period, these approaches have now been adopted by some students of ancient Judaism, who combine them with the more standard methods used in research on biblical and rabbinic texts.
Tamar, a Symbol of Life: The “Killer Wife” Superstition in the Bible and Jewish Tradition
Authors: Friedman Mordechai A.
Published: October 2009

The “killer wife” superstition, by which we mean the belief that the husbands of certain women are doomed to die, is examined here as it appears in Jewish sources from the Bible to Maimonides. The many pertinent developments in post-talmudic-midrashic sources require a separate study. For this period we confine our discussion to Maimonides, the most significant medieval spokesman on the subject. Our topic is a popular theme in folklore. Here our primary interest is in how the religion of Israel reacted to the superstition, both conceptually and practically.
The Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources: A Philosophical Analysis of the Halakhic Sources
Authors: Sokol Moshe
Published: October 2009

What is Jewish ethics? Is there a distinct academic discipline under the rubric of “Jewish studies” or “Jewish philosophy” which can properly be called “Jewish ethics”? The answer to these two related questions is more elusive than one might think. Indeed, it has recently been argued that there really is no such thing as Jewish ethics at all. On the one hand, if a principle of action is truly ethical, then it must be universal, and if it is universal, it cannot be distinctively Jewish. On the other hand, if Jewish ethics is really halakhah in disguise, as so many writers in the field of medical ethics, for example, seem to believe, then why bother with the disguise if one can get the real thing?
The Covenant of the Prophets: Muslim Texts, Jewish Subtexts
Authors: Lassner Jacob
Published: October 2009

For several years I have been trying to analyze Muslim historical thinking and the manner in which it affected perceptions of the Jewish past a past which Muslims fully appropriated as part of their own historical experiences and world-view. Put somewhat differently, I have been trying to understand the process by which a heritage common to both monotheistic faiths could and did become a bone of contention as well as a basis of mutual understanding. This linkage between Muslim self-reflection and the creation of a larger monotheist historiography is crucial to the formation of Muslim attitudes toward “the other,” the polemical discourse against Jews and Judaism, and, more generally, Muslim-Jewish relations throughout the Middle Ages. The present study is culled from a project on Muslim uses of the Jewish past.
Divine Legislation as “Ceremonial Script”: Mendelssohn on the Commandments
Authors: Eisen Arnold
Published: October 2009

My aim in this essay is to analyze a section of Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem largely ignored by previous readers. The treatise has generally been recognized as epochal in the history of modern Judaism, and Altmann, Guttmann, Rawidowicz, and Rotenstreich have therefore focused quite understandably on that which made it so: the novel political theory set forth in part 1, or the controversial assertion near the start of part 2 that Judaism “knows of no revealed religion” in the common sense of that term, its uniqueness consisting only in the “divine legislation” revealed to the Jews at Sinai. Only Heinemann has made a serious attempt to unravel Mendels sohn's tortuous explanation of the “divine legislation” as “a kind of living script,” and his often excellent account is marred by explicit Orthodox apologetic and utter reverence for Mendelssohn, both of which prevent him from seeing just how radical a theory of the commandments Jerusalem sets forth.3 Mendelssohn coyly terms most of the section devoted to this theory a “digression.“ Altmann notes charitably that it contains not only “some flights of speculation” but “the least substantiated of all [the] theories Mendelssohn ever advanced.”
“Who Shall Say Who Belongs?”: Jews Between City and State in Prussian Cologne, 1815–1828
Authors: Magnus Shulamit S.
Published: October 2009

The struggle for Jewish emancipation in Germany is commonly understood as a battle for civic equality at the state level. But an important chapter in the history of emancipation took place in the conflict between German states and localities over Jewish rights. Jurisdictional battles over Jewish status may seem quintessentially medieval, recalling the strife between competing levels of the feudal hierarchy for control of the Jews and the revenue they generated.Yet similar struggles persisted well into the nineteenth century in several German states, such as Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirt-temberg, where central governments were weak and localities exercised significant degrees of self-rule.
Talmudic Portrayals of Relationships Between Rabbis: Amoraic or Pseudepigraphic?
Authors: Kalmin Richard
Published: October 2009

In both halachic and aggadic contexts the Talmud frequently supplies information about the relationships between sages. Sages interact with each other, or comment on each other's erudition, piety, personality, and the like. From what sources does the Talmud derive this information? From sources contemporary with the sages involved, or from sources of a much later time?

Some of the talmudic information is attributed to named authorities, some of it is presented anonymously. Are the attributed statements pseudepigraphic or authentic? Are there substantive distinctions between the attributed and the anonymous statements? Are the anonymous statements amoraic or post-amoraic?
A Kabbalistic Perspective on Gender-Specific Commandments: on the Interplay of Symbols and Society
Authors: Fishman Talya
Published: October 2009

Unlike other symbol systems, whose precise influence on cultural mores is hard to pinpoint, Kabbalah's impact on mainstream Jewish culturecanbe traced, at least in the realm of practice, for this mystical theology and symbol system is rooted in law and expressed through ritual behavior.
Purim, Liminality, And Communitas
Authors: Rubenstein Jeffrey
Published: October 2009

“Fever is no sickness and Purim is no holiday.” So runs a surprisingly self-reflective proverb concerning the festival of Purim, the strangest Jewish holiday. Ostensibly the celebration of the triumph of the Jews over the wicked Haman described in the Book of Esther, at a popular level something much larger and far more complex is going on. Folk customs throughout history have always transcended the celebration of the triumph of Mordecai and Esther. Elaborate pageants, grotesque masks, drunken revelry, noisemaking, buffoonery, burning of effigies, costume parades, feasts with special delicacies, and every manner of carousing and merrymaking have characterized Purim since rabbinic times. A diverse body of Purim literature has accumulated, including drinking songs, short stories, parodies, and intricate plays.
Tithe as Gift: The Biblical Institution in Light of Mauss's Prestation Theory
Authors: Herman Menahem
Published: October 2009

This study presents a new interpretation of tithe references in Scripture. It departs from the conventional view that the tithe is merely a tax levied on the people. Rather it sees the tithe as a partnership or compact with God in which tangible goods are exchanged for intangible ones. Taking the Pentateuch in its entirety as our contextreveals the tithe to bepart of a pattern of reciprocities in which goods are exchanged for divine acceptance, protection, and blessing.
Sacrilegious Imagery in Yehuda Amichai's Poetry
Authors: Milman Yoseph
Published: October 2009

… They do it together for a length of time

To make up for it all.

All the things their fathers dreamed of doing

They do to each other,

From behind a lot, like beasts in the field.
Notions of Gentile Impurity in Ancient Judaism
Authors: Klawans Jonathan
Published: October 2009

This study investigates the history and nature of Gentile impurity in ancient Judaism. It is deceptively simple to assume that Gentiles, who did not observe purity laws, would have been considered ritually impure as a matter of course. Indeed, a number of scholars maintain this position. In fact, however, the situation is a bit more complex. Ancient Jewish sources reflect two conflicting tensions. On the one hand, both biblical and rabbinic law(considered Gentiles to be exempt from the laws of ritual purity. On the other hand, Gentiles ate impure foods, came into regular contact with impure substances, and–what is worse–committed idolatry and defiling sexual acts. Ultimately, some rabbinic sources do state that Gentiles are, in fact, ritually impure (e.g., T. Zabim 2:1). The goal of this paper is to analyze, distinguish, and trace the history of these tensions and developments in ancient Judaism.
“A Different Kind of Hell”: Orality, Multilingualism, and American Yiddish in the Translation of Sholem Aleichem's Mister Boym in Klozet
Authors: Wishnia Kenneth
Published: October 2009

I wish to address two basic questions that are confronted in the translation of “immigrant” or “border” literature:1 (1) What is the translator to do with a multilingual source text? And (2) How should one approach a literary transcription of a text that is already a literary transcription of an oral culture, without betraying that culture?
Dybbuk and Maggid: Two Cultural Patterned of Altered Consciousness in Judaism
Authors: Bilu Yoram
Published: October 2009

For many years scholars of Judaism were reluctant to employ the analytic tools distilled in anthropology for studying Jewish culture. One reason for this reluctance was that the classical ethnographic field, consisting of a small-scale tribal society with no written tradition, did not appear pertinent to the study of the text-informed “great tradition“ of Judaism. In addition, the notion of comparative research implicit in most anthropological studies appeared dubious to many scholars of Judaism, who were alarmed by the sweeping, methodologically unfounded comparisons evident in the treatment of biblical material by such precursors of modern anthropology as Robertson Smith and Frazer.1 This methodological consideration was augmented by an emotional unwillingness to equate the “primitive’ religious systems of “savage’ societies with concepts and rituals pertaining to the oldest monotheistic religion.
From Theosophy to Midrash: Lurianic Exegesis and the Garden of Eden
Authors: Magid Shaul
Published: October 2009

Until now, the academic study of Lurianic kabbala has largely pursued three roads of inquiry. The first, following Scholem, has been the study of Lurianic kabbala as a mystical and eschatological response to the historical events of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, an event viewed as the root of the mystical heresy of Shabbtai Tzvi. The second pathway has been the scholarly analysis of Lurianic teaching as the most extreme example of kabbalistic theosophy, surpassing both the Zohar and Cordoverean Kabbala in its intricate and complex delineation of the cosmic world. The third approach has addressed the unusually complicated task of deciphering, categorizing, and pointing out the voluminous manuscripts of Luria's students, a literary oeuvre which is as diverse as it is complex. While all of these are important and contribute to the overall understanding of what is the most influential kabbalistic doctrine since the Zohar, I would like to approach the Lurianic material from a different perspective.
Abraham Miguel Cardoso's Messianism: A Reappraisal
Authors: Rosenstock Bruce
Published: October 2009

Abraham Miguel Cardoso was born to a crypto-Jewish family living in Rio Seco, Spain, in the year 1626. He left Spain with with his older brother Isaac in 1648. Abraham Cardoso has usually been discussed within the larger context of the Sabbatian movement, which he served as one of its major theoreticians. Until his death in 1706, Cardoso found himself almost constantly under attack by the rabbinical authorities in the cities where he tried to settle with his family, although he sometimes found local non-Jewish authorities who would offer him protection. He served for some time as the personal physician to the bey of Tripoli and later to the local potentate in Tunis. In the last decades of his life, after the death of Sabbatai Zebi, he engaged in bitter debates with other leading Sabbatians about the divinity of the Messiah. Cardoso rejected wholeheartedly what he saw as their adoption of a Christian messialogy. Gershom Scholem's analysis of Cardoso's theology as Gnostic has remained fundamentally unchallenged. Scholem saw in Cardoso's thinking the crystallization of what he believed was the latent antinomian Gnosticism within Kabbalah and especially within the later strata of theZohar, and he pointed to Cardoso's likely acquaintance with Gnostic ideas, filtered through the Church Fathers (read during theological studies in Spain), as the most significant factor in precipitating this crystallization (see expecially Scholem 1980, pp. 333–334; Scholem 1971a, pp. 65–74; Scholem 1971c, pp. 104–107).
The First Jews from Aleppo in Manchester: New Documentary Evidence
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: October 2009

Professor Meir Benayahu's collection of documents includes a contractual agreement between some Jewish merchants in Aleppo and a hakham by the name of Yeshaya Attia. In it, Attia undertakes to go to the city of Manchester in England to serve as the spiritual leader of a colony of Aleppine merchants there. The document is very important because it enables us to fix, with a high degree of probability, the date of the founding of the Aleppine community in Manchester, the first of many communities of Jews from Aleppo in the West. The document also sheds light on the reasons why Jews emigrated from Aleppo to Manchester and the way in which they organized into a community in their new home. This article traces the background of Jewish emigration from Aleppo to Manchester and the model that the mother community of Aleppine Jewry adopted in dealing with communities made up of emigrants from Aleppo.
“Into Life”??! Franz Rosenzweig and the Figure of Death
Authors: Braiterman Zachary
Published: October 2009

At the end of his short treatiseUnderstanding the Sick and the Healthy, Franz Rosenzweig predicated the restoration of what he called healthy consciousness upon the recognition of death7apos;s sovereignty. “[One] must direct [one's] life to no other goal but death,” he wrote. “A healthy man has the strength to continue towards the grave. The sick man invokes death and lets himself be carried away in mortal fear.” Rosenzweig juxtaposed the Grim Reaper with weary life. The healthy understanding knows that death will dash life to the ground. Yet it takes comfort from knowing that death will accept it with open arms. In the end, eloquent life falls silent as the eternally taciturn one speaks, “Do you finally recognize me? I am your brother.”In his notes to the English translation, Nahum Glatzer remarks with shock, “This concluding chapter–on death–stands in a striking contrast to the final passage of The Star of Redemption.” As if to offset our text's more mordant tone, Glatzer then quotes verbatim the seemingly life-affirming paragraphs that conclude Rosenzweig's magnum opus. Glatzer is not the only commentator to emphasize the importance of life in Rosenzweig's system. Indeed, Else-Rahel Freund notes that The Star of Redemption begins with the phrase “from death” and concludes with the words “into life.”
“Do the Dead Know?” The Representation of Death in the Bavli
Authors: Cohen Aryeh
Published: October 2009

Death, the space of death, the moment when one as mourner or passerby comes into the orbit of the dead, engaging the face of the dead, is one of the defining moments of the human experience. Understanding the cultural construction of that space promises to shed light on some of the central questions of the culture.
Haim Gouri and “The Jewish People Who Have Been Severely Injured”
Authors: Shoham Reuven
Published: October 2009

The poet Haim Gouri is a central figure among the artists of the generation of the War of Independence and one of the first Israeli poets and novelists to express experience of the Holocaust. Gouri, who was bom in Tel Aviv in 1922, was sent to Europe in 1947 to smuggle Jewish Holocaust survivors into Palestine. Subsequently, he served in the Palmach and fought in the battles in the Negev in 1948. He attests that his encounter with the survivors of the Nazi camps changed his life, and that the experience became an obsessive theme throughout his work. This article focuses on two complementary subjects: (1) Gouri's perception of Jewish history and the effect of his encounter with Holocaust survivors in the formulation of his autobiography; (2) the concrete shaping of the experience of this encounter in his first three books of poetry, Pirhey esh, 'Ad 'alot ha-shahar, and Shirey hotam,1 and in his autobiographical novel Ha-haqira, sippuro shel Re 'u 'el?
Meat-Eating and Jewish Identity: Ritualization of the Priestly “Torah of Beast and Fowl” (Lev 11:46) in Rabbinic Judaism and Medieval Kabbalah
Authors: Brumberg-Kraus Jonathan
Published: October 2009

In a fascinating chapter dealing with the “nature of eating” inShulhan shel Arba, a short thirteenth-century manual on rabbinic eating rituals, R. Bahya b. Asher suggests that Torah scholars alone are fit to eat meat, based on the following passage from the Talmud: “it is forbidden for an ignoramus [am ha-aretz] to eat meat, as it is written, ‘This is the torah of beast and fowl’ (Lev 11:46); for all who engage in Torah, it is permitted to eat the flesh of beast and fowl. This passage raises many questions, especially for a vegetarian! First, why would an intellectual or spiritual elite use meat-eating as a way to distinguish itself from the masses? The field of comparative religions offers many counter-examples to this tendency: the vegetarian diet of the Hindu Brahmin caste, of Buddhist priests and nuns, the ancient Pythagoreans, the Neoplatonist regimen advocated by Porphyry inOn Abstinence, or even contemporary eco-theologians, animal rights activists, and feminist vegetarians like Carol Adams.
The Exegetical Craft of theZohar:Toward an Appreciation
Authors: Segal Eliezer
Published: October 2009

As a consequence of the specialization that thrives in current humanistic studies, it is not surprising that scholarship has tended to classify the literary creations of the past into fixed compartments. In the study of medieval Judaism, it is particularly common to follow the traditional division of disciplines into philosophy, Kabbalah, and rabbinism—a categorization that was indeed promoted by the medievals themselves. Following this way of thinking, the study of Rashi's biblical commentaries would be assigned to one class of scholars devoted to the study of rabbinic Judaism; Maimonides'Guide of the Perplexedto experts in Jewish philosophy; and theZoharto yet a third group consisting of specialists in Jewish mysticism.
Threats to biological diversity caused bycoca/cocaine deforestation in Peru
Authors: Young Kenneth R.
Published: October 2009

Indirect sources were used to characterize the nature and magnitude of threats to the native plants and forest ecosystems caused by the cultivation and control ofcoca, the precursor to cocaine, in the Huallaga valley of Peru, whence the majority of the world's cocaine originates. Deforestation is concentrated between 500 and 2000 m in the tropical premontane forest belt. Recent listing of Peru's seed plants permitted a quantification of plant species known from the department of San Martin between 500–2000 m and thus at risk due to forest degradation. This flora consists of 169 plant families, almost 900 genera, and about 2600 species. Fifteen percent of the species are restricted in distribution to Peru, while 6% are known only from San Martin. An additional 778 species, including 46 narrow endemics, are known from vegetation types found below 500 m. More than 223 000 ha of land were found to be in ‘hill agriculture’, consisting predominantly ofcocafields and this suggests that the total impact ofcoca/cocaine deforestation is greatly under-estimated by using simply the area ofcocaunder cultivation. Degraded tropical pre-montane forest may amount to as much as 1 000 000 ha in all of Peru.
Natural and human-induced disturbance of seagrasses
Authors: Short Frederick T. , Wyllie-Echeverria Sandy
Published: October 2009

Many natural and human-induced events create disturbances in seagrasses throughout the world, but quantifying losses of habitat is only beginning. Over the last decade, 90000 ha of seagrass loss have been documented although the actual area lost is certainly greater. Seagrasses, an assemblage of marine flowering plant species, are valuable structural and functional components of coastal ecosystems and are currently experiencing worldwide decline. This group of plants is known to support a complex trophic food web and a detritus-based food chain, as well as to provide sediment and nutrient filtration, sediment stabilization, and breeding and nursery areas for finfish and shellfish.

We define disturbance, natural or human-induced, as any event that measurably alters resources available to seagrasses so that a plant response is induced that results in degradation or loss. Applying this definition, we find a common thread in many seemingly unrelated seagrass investigations. We review reports of seagrass loss from both published and ‘grey’ literature and evaluate the types of disturbances that have caused seagrass decline and disappearance. Almost certainly more seagrass has been lost globally than has been documented or even observed, but the lack of comprehensive monitoring and seagrass. mapping makes an assessment of true loss of this resource impossible to determine.

Natural disturbances that are most commonly responsible for seagrass loss include hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, and grazing by herbivores. Human activities most affecting seagrasses are those which alter water quality or clarity: nutrient and sediment loading from runoff and sewage disposal, dredging and filling, pollution, upland development, and certain fishing practices. Seagrasses depend on an adequate degree of water clarity to sustain productivity in their submerged environment. Although natural events have been responsible for both large-scale and local losses of seagrass habitat, our evaluation suggests that human population expansion is now the most serious cause of seagrass habitat loss, and specifically that increasing anthropogenic inputs to the coastal oceans are primarily responsible for the world-wide decline in seagrasses.
The effect of the reunification of Germany on the water chemistry and ecology of selected rivers
Authors: Adams Michael S. , Kausch Hartmut , Gaumert Thomas , Krüger Karl-Ernst
Published: October 2009

We review several studies and provide new data previously unpublished to show that there has been a substantial decline in pollution of German riverine waters since the beginning of German political reunification in 1989. This reduction is notable in the Elbe, which originates in eastern Germany and the Czech Republic. Pollutants such as many of the chlorinated hydrocarbons have fallen substantially in concentration, while others such as arsenic have declined only slightly. Total nitrogen has declined by only a small amount, but ammonium has fallen substantially, while nitrates have increased. Nitrification is no longer a significant drain on oxygen in the tidal stretch of the Elbe, but decomposition of algae from the middle Elbe is now a greater problem in the lower Elbe. The river-bed sediments of the middle Elbe have a higher species diversity. Fisheries are improving, and concentrations of pollutants in fish such as eel and bream have declined significantly. The river Werra has also improved in quality due to reduction in salt loadings from earlier potash mining.
Environmental refugees: a review
Authors: Ramlogan Rajendra
Published: October 2009

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of ‘environmental refugees’. The emergence of refugees within the framework of international law and policy is examined briefly so as to provide insight into the juridical difficulties environmental refugees can expect to confront. The literature on environmental refugees is steadily growing and the very definition of who qualifies as an environmental refugee has undergone great changes. The evolving nature of the definition and its increasing complexity is reviewed; the result being that environmental refugees can now be placed into several well-defined groupings, each with its own idiosyncratic characteristics. These increasingly distinctive groups of refugees can have as debilitating consequences as other types for receiving societies. The nature of this threat must be looked at fully in order to emphasize the urgent need to arrive at appropriate solutions. Finding solutions to a new crisis is not a simple task as many people fiercely oppose recognition of environmental refugees. Yet, failure to act may prove detrimental to human well-being as the emerging evidence points to a state of affairs that may haunt humankind in the twenty-first century.
Hydroelectric dams in Brazilian Amazonia: response to Rosa, Schaeffer & dos Santos
Authors: Fearnside Philip M.
Published: October 2009

In a critique of my paper on ‘greenhouse’ gas (GHG) emissions from Amazonian reservoirs (Fearnside 1995), Rosa et al. (1996) suggest that I have reached overly pessimistic conclusions because the reservoirs on which my calculations are based are unrepresentative and because methods based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) global warming potentials (GWPs) are unfair for comparing hydroelectric and fossil fuel options. I rush to defend my analysis.
Government involvement in environmental technology development: a critical analysis
Authors: Norman Marc E.
Published: October 2009

This paper analyzes the justifications for governmental involvement in the development and commercialization of environmental technologies. To do so, a list of ‘generic’ rationales for government R&D involvement is extracted from various literature sources. Each rationale is discussed theoretically, and then analyzed in terms of its possible application to the environmental field. The intended contribution of the paper is to provide a theoretical background concerning the proper role of government in the development of environmental technologies. By determining the circumstances under which government involvement is justified, the groundwork is laid for the development of appropriate governmental policies.

The paper argues that there are several salient features of the environmental field which may justify governmental involvement. The increasingly high degree of environmental regulation has already caused indirect market failures that hinder private R&D efforts. Potential technologies to counter environmental externalities represent public goods which have social benefits for which there are no incentives in the private market. Uncertainty due both to our lack of understanding of the complexities of the natural environment and to shifting environmental regulations and policies may cause a risk aversion in the private sector against developing technologies. Imperfect public knowledge concerning environmental issues leads to less than optimal demand for new environmental technologies. All of these features generate market distortions which cause private R&D to deviate from what is socially optimal. As a result, governmental involvement in environmental technology development may well be warranted.
Management of forest resources by women: a case study from the Olokemeji Forest Reserve area, southwestern Nigeria
Authors: Gbadegesin Adeniyi
Published: October 2009

The environmental impact of the Nigerian economic Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) on the livelihood of the rural dwellers has been little studied. A study was conducted amongst 10 villages in the Olokemeji area of Oyo State, Nigeria using standardized interviews of 200 household heads.

The oil boom of the 1970s in Nigeria drove many male heads of households in the study area to the cities, but the collapse of the urban unskilled labour market in the 1980s brought men back to the villages. However, by 1990, renewed dominance of female-headed households in the study area has followed further male emigration. Changing roles of women in managing the forest environment are indicated over the three time periods and I argue that female-headed households attempt to conserve and improve the state of the environment more than their male counterparts. This is achieved through the cultivation of less nutrient-demanding crops such as cassava and yam, and using environmentally-friendly farming systems such as terracing and taungya.
Forest fragmentation and biodiversity: the case for intermediate-sized conservation areas
Authors: Zuidema Pieter A. , Sayer Jeffrey A. , Dijkman Wim
Published: October 2009

Understanding the effects of forest fragmentation on biodiversity is essential for successful and efficient forest conservation. Four factors may cause loss of biodiversity in forest fragments: the effect of non-random sampling of the original forest, reduced forest size, isolation and edge effects. A review of 58 papers on effects of forest fragmentation reveals that general conclusions from fragmentation research are biased due to a focus on birds, on size-effects rather than isolation, and on species presence rather than population sizes. Perhaps the most important finding is that current knowledge on fragmentation effects is based mainly on studies in small fragments (<10 ha). These are dominated by edge effects, can not contain viable populations for many species and are rarely the focus of conservation programmes. Studies of small fragments can not be extrapolated to larger-sized, protected areas, and do not necessarily support the case for needing extremely large, protected areas. Conservation of medium-sized, strategically-located areas may be a more efficient option for biodiversity conservation, given financial, social and logistic limitations. More research is needed on forest fragments that arc representative of the sizes of real-world protected areas (i.e. >10 000–100 000 ha) and should focus on the biological and human-induced processes which determine species persistence.
A review of plastics recycling in the USA with policy recommendations
Authors: Hadjilambrinos Constantine
Published: October 2009

Plastics are the fastest-growing component of municipal solid waste in the USA, and over the past decade there has been increasing public demand for plastics recycling. However, the necessity to separate the various plastic resins to make their recycling possible, combined with the low cost of virgin resins, make this technically difficult and expensive.

Most sorting of plastic waste is done manually, and this method has been constrained to the diversion of only one or two types of plastics, because human sorters are incapable of distinguishing different plastics. A number of technologies are being developed in order to address this problem. Use of these technologies requires considerable capital investment and this makes many of them economically unfeasible at present. The federal, state, and local governments in the USA have continued to explore demand-side policy measures in an effort to promote market formation and operation. Where they have been successful, in the establishment of markets for recycled polyethylene terepthalate (PET), and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) resins, demand has outpaced supply, highlighting the need to find more effective methods to sort and divert different plastic resins. Even with these supply shortages, and with prices for virgin PET and HDPE at historic highs, however, most plastics recycling remains only marginally profitable. This demonstrates the need for continued policy support for the still-developing plastics recycling industry and recycled-plastics market.

An analysis of the factors driving the recycling of PET, HDPE and polypropylene indicates that, as long as manual sorting is used, it would make sense for supply- and demand-side policies to focus on the recycling of particular plastic products that are easy to recognize, rather than resins that are not. Appropriate policies can help make specific products easily recognizable sources of specific resins. Such policies, implemented in conjunction with measures designed to facilitate capital investments and promote the establishment and operation of markets for all resins, are necessary to increase significantly the recycling of plastic waste above present levels.