bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The School Ghetto in France
Authors: Bouganim Ami
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the school ghetto in France. The Jewish school in France was never conceived or planned; it just created itself behind the backs of community institutions. The first modern Jewish institution in the country with a pedagogical vocation, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, was founded in 1860 and decided against opening schools in France. However, in the middle of the 1990s it was finally decided to create a new school in France. But the new institution, the Établissement Georges Leven, was fraught with many problems. During this period, the students in Pavillons-sous-Bois continued to attend classes in unhealthy conditions. The chapter shows how the history of Jewish schools in France is a reflection of what happened with the Pavillons-sous-Bois school.
The Impact of Community on Curriculum Decision-Making in a North American Jewish Day School
Authors: Kohn Eli
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents the first tentative results of a qualitative study of a curriculum development process undertaken with the Herzliah High School in Montreal. This is the largest community Jewish day school in that city, with two campuses in different locations. The results are tentative because the project is continuing, allowing for further refinement and enhancement of the curriculum and materials produced. The research focuses on the ‘partnership model’ of curriculum development in which administrators, teachers, parents, students, and curriculum experts create curriculum in a collaborative forum. The chapter examines how decisions are reached in this process, focusing on two central questions. The first considers who ultimately makes the decisions among those involved in the kind of partnership model described here. The chapter then turns to the impact of ‘the community’ in the curriculum decision-making process.
Ideological Commitment in the Supervision of Jewish Studies Teachers
Authors: Muszkat-Barkan Michal , Shkedi Asher
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers ideological commitment in the supervision of Jewish studies. In this context, the community is a fundamental element of any educational process. Educational processes are motivated by ideological views that relate to a certain community. In teacher supervision, the ideologies of teachers and supervisors, and their respective communal loyalties, find expression. The chapter recounts a study that set out to define the communities represented by the partners in the supervisory process, to characterize the nature of individals' commitments to these communities, and to identify the influence of those commitments on the supervision of Jewish studies teachers in Israel. The ensuing discussion of the ideological aspects of supervision conferences may enrich understanding of the processes of professional development undergone by teachers, and also enhance in-service teacher supervision.
Schooling for Change in the Religious World
Authors: Sztokman Elana Maryles
Published: February 2021

This chapter argues that schools shape communities as much as communities shape schools. It is part of an ethnographic case study of a state religious junior high school, the Levy Girls' Religious School, in Israel. The study is based on three years of qualitative research at the school, from 1999 to 2002, during a period in which it was undergoing an experiment in social and ethnic transformation. The research as a whole includes dozens of interviews with students, staff, parents, and other interested parties, as well as observations of all aspects of school life, including classes, meetings, field trips, assemblies, and countless daily interactions in corridors, courtyards, and corners of the school. This chapter focuses on the school's principal, Dr Sylvia Cohen, and is based on ten open-ended interviews and dozens of observations during the course of the research.
Home-Made Jewish Culture at the Intersection of Family Life and School
Authors: Pomson Alex , Schnoor Randal F.
Published: February 2021

This chapter calls into question two commonplace assumptions that undergird the work of those who study and develop ‘school–community connections’. The first assumption is that there is a generally unidirectional sequence of cause and effect (from home to school) in the relationships between communities/parents and schools. The second is that the primary outcomes of these relationships have greater significance for children than for parents. At the same time, the chapter suggests that these outcomes confirm an emerging strand of thought within the study of contemporary Jewry. This emphasizes the fluidity of adult Jewish identities, even — if not especially — among those who may not have previously been deeply engaged with aspects of Jewish life.
Teaching Leadership through Town Meeting
Authors: Dewey Jay
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses leadership training in Schechter Regional High School. In 2003, the school opened with the specific aims of developing individual accomplishment, Jewish commitment, and community leadership. Co-heads of school were appointed, one from Jewish education, the other from an independent, non-sectarian school. Both were particularly interested in developing leaders with strong collaborative skills. The leadership team, known as the LT, consisting of the two co-heads, posited that leadership opportunities would come to Schechter Regional graduates even if the school did nothing to promote this; society looks towards well-educated adults to fill its many leadership needs. The real challenge was to develop effective and ethical leaders capable of meeting these needs. Thus Schechter Regional became a leadership lab with Town Meeting at the centre.
Jewish Schools, Jewish Communities
Authors: Pomson Alex
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter discusses the growing social significance of Jewish day-school education within the context of the Jewish community. It looks more broadly at the developments within a relationship between school and community. Such questions provided the context and motivation for an international conference held in June 2006 at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University, organized with the support of the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. This event was convened with the specific intention of encouraging researchers to think in new ways about the sociological functions of Jewish day schools. The chapter discusses the particulars of this conference as well as the research into the inner life of Jewish schools.
Introduction
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter discusses how two propositions from which every mainstream Jew in the last millennium would have instantly recoiled have become legitimate options within Orthodox Judaism. First, a specific descendant of King David may be identified with certainty as the Messiah even though he died in an unredeemed world. Second, the messianic faith of Judaism allows for the following scenario: God will finally send the true Messiah to embark upon his redemptive mission. The true Messiah's redemptive mission, publicly proclaimed and vigorously pursued, will be interrupted by death and burial and then consummated through a Second Coming. While the vast majority of Jews instinctively recognize the alienness of these propositions, and the Rabbinical Council of America has declared that there is no place for such a doctrine in Judaism, contemporary Orthodox Jewry effectively legitimates these beliefs. A large segment of a highly significant Orthodox movement called Lubavitch, or Chabad, hasidism affirms that the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was laid to rest in 1994 without leaving a successor, did everything subsumed under proposition 2 and will soon return to complete the redemption in his capacity as the Messiah. This book is an account of this historic mutation of Judaism.
From Heroism to Heterodoxy: The Crisis of a Movement and the Danger to a Faith
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter traces the history of hasidism, which was born in eighteenth-century Poland with the teachings of Rabbi Israel Ba'al Shem Tov. The movement spread through eastern Europe and became the dominant form of Judaism in much of the heartland of nineteenth-century Jewry. Opponents (mitnagedim or ‘misnagdim’) did not entirely abandon the cause, but opposition waned in the face of new social and religious realities. First, it became very difficult to delegitimate a movement that commanded the allegiance of so many observant Jews. Second, the radicalism of early hasidism diminished as it was transformed from a movement of rebellion against the Jewish communal establishment into an established order of its own. Finally, the spread of the Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah, to eastern Europe posed so serious a threat that hasidim and misnagdim, for all their profound differences, came to see themselves as allies in a struggle to preserve their common culture, educational systems, and fundamental beliefs against the onslaught of scepticism, secularism, and acculturation working to undermine the very foundations of traditional Jewish society. The Chabad movement, now also known as Lubavitch from the town where the group's leaders resided from 1813 to 1915, played a significant role in that resistance.
Aborted Initiatives and Sustained Attacks
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates the reactions to the author's article on Lubavitch, or Chabad, messianism. Reaction to the article was swift, widespread, and varied. A leading Orthodox commentator and communal figure called Jewish Action to say that this was the most important piece they had ever published. The late Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg, head of Yeshiva Ner Israel of Baltimore, told a member of the editorial board that publishing it was an act of great merit. Nevertheless, despite the article's careful focus on the messianist group, Chabad solidarity prevailed, and the Orthodox Union (OU) was accused of having authorized an attack on Lubavitch as a whole. The non-messianists were taking care of the matter internally, and external criticism would only complicate their task. A columnist for the Algemeiner Journal suggested that the OU might have published the article because it saw itself as ‘the potential economic beneficiary of the hit that David Berger suggests the rest of the Orthodox community deliver to Lubavitch’.
The Council of Torah Sages
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the author's attempts to reach the Council of Torah Sages. In the world of Modern Orthodoxy exemplified by the Rabbinical Council of America, the author has friends, acquaintances, former students, and a modicum of standing, so that the author could accomplish something from within. The leaders of Traditionalist Orthodoxy, marked by greater insularity and profound reservations about higher secular education, are far less accessible to the author. Committed to the authority of da'at torah, or ‘the opinion of the Torah’, the Traditionalist Orthodox Agudath Israel has set up a group of distinguished rabbis (gedolim) empowered to decide issues of both Jewish law and public policy. This Council of Torah Sages (Moetzes Gedolei Hatorah) and its equivalent bodies in Israel hold a position of unparalleled influence in a major segment of Orthodoxy, and the leading authorities in that community command great respect among Modern Orthodox Jews as well. The author sent the rabbis copies of the exchange in Jewish Action, the author's letter to the RCA, and two additional letters commenting on the RCA resolution and the controversy over Rabbi Soloveichik's statements. In the absence of any response, the author had no way of assessing the reaction.
On False Messianism, Idolatry, and Lubavitch
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes how, in the autumn of 1995, the author published an article in Jewish Action, the journal of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which decried the silence of rabbinic leaders about the declaration on the part of many Lubavitch hasidim that the late Rebbe is the Messiah. This silence, the author argued, combined with the treatment of messianists as Orthodox Jews in good standing, fundamentally transforms Judaism, betrays the messianic faith of the ancestors, and grants Christian missionaries victory with respect to a key issue in the millennial debate between Judaism and Christianity. At its annual convention in June of 1996, the Rabbinical Council of America responded to this challenge with a declaration that ‘there is not and never has been a place in Judaism for the belief that Messiah son of David will begin his messianic career only to experience death, burial, and resurrection before completing it’. In the aftermath of both the article and the RCA resolution, defenders of Lubavitch presented sources which allegedly demonstrate the acceptability of this patently un-Jewish doctrine. They argued that Lubavitch hasidim, unlike Christians, observe Jewish law and do not regard their Messiah as the Deity.
Debating Avodah Zarah
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the debate on avodah zarah. Within days of the appearance of the author's article, Ha'aretz published a brief response entitled ‘Al tige'u bimeshiḥai’ (literally, ‘Do Not Touch My Anointed Ones’) by Rabbi Gedalyah Axelrod, one of the signatories of the ruling requiring belief in the Rebbe's messiahship and the head of a rabbinic court in Haifa. He described the quotations about the Rebbe's divinity as ‘anomalous comments which should not have been made’, arguing that ‘these exceptions are being taken care of by Chabad rabbis everywhere by means of education and guidance’. Meanwhile, Rabbi Butman's article presents an indication that the problem of avodah zarah in Lubavitch is not confined to the tiny number of hasidim who use a liturgical formula calling the Rebbe God. It reflects a theology that is widespread and deeply rooted in the very heart of the messianist camp, and to some degree even beyond.
Explaining the Inexplicable
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides some tentative explanations for Chabad messianism. One of these explanations is the ideal of unity and the avoidance of communal strife. Every practising Jew has heard countless sermons about the imperative to love one's neighbour, particularly one's Jewish neighbour. While rhetoric about this value cuts across all Orthodox—and Jewish—lines, it is especially compelling for Modern Orthodox Jews who maintain cordial, even formal relations with other denominations and pride themselves on embracing an ideal of tolerance. No Orthodox Jew believes that everyone committed to the Jewish community has the right to serve as an Orthodox rabbi because of the value of unity. The appeal to this principle is relevant only after one has concluded that Lubavitch messianism is essentially within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Since this is precisely what is at issue, the argument begs the question. The chapter then considers the explanations concerning orthopraxy, the balkanization of Orthodoxy, and Orthodox interdependence.
What Must Be Done?
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter proposes some solutions to the fundamental transformation of Judaism. The most important principle is that no messianist should be treated as an Orthodox rabbi or functionary in good standing. No messianist should serve as a communal or synagogue rabbi, or appointed as Jewish Studies principal or teacher in an Orthodox yeshiva. In addition, messianist institutions, no matter how many ‘good things’ they do, must be excluded from the Orthodox community. If the messianic faith of Judaism is to survive intact, these guidelines must be followed even in difficult cases. The chapter then turns to more detailed issues of Jewish ritual law. The messianist belief in itself, with its abolition of Judaism's criteria for identifying the Messiah, is seen by some as heresy.
Sa’adyah the Linguist
Authors: Brody Robert
Published: February 2021

This chapter recounts how Sa'adyah Gaon was drawn to the study of Hebrew from his earliest youth. It describes Hebrew linguistics as an ancillary discipline to biblical exegesis that sought to plumb the linguistic depths of a particular sacred corpus. It also highlights the relationship of the biblical exegesis to the Holy Tongue that remained essentially passive, while the writing of poetry required an active knowledge of the appropriate language. The chapter emphasizes the important role Hebrew linguistics and writing poetry play in Palestine-centred Jewish culture of Sa'adyah's upbringing. It cites the Masoretes and liturgical poets that had devoted considerable energies to linguistic study before Sa'adyah's time.
Genre
Authors: Jones Tanya
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses genre as a categorization of films that have standard conventions. It explains how Genres of film can go in and out of fashion or become reignited because of the success of one particular film at the box office. It also talks about the financial motivation behind genres that dominate a particular period of cinema scheduling, such as the dominance of superhero films like The Batman and Spider-Man franchises. The chapter mentions Guillermo Del Toro's interest in the fantasy and horror genres and his three favourite actors: Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing, who are recognized for their horror film credentials. It describes Pan's Labyrinth as a film in which visual elements are designed specifically to engage, shock, and provoke.
Messages and Values
Authors: Jones Tanya
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the questions on what a film is 'about' and provides an analysis of messages and values within a film text as a process of considering its constituent elements. It explains how a film may profess to be 'about' an idea or event, as well as invariably discuss other issues. It also points out the importance of keeping messages and values open to both a film's potentially shifting focus and to one's own response to it. The chapter offers one interpretation of the messages and values of Pan's Labyrinth. It discusses the oppression represented in Pan's Labyrinth that can be ideological, emotional, and psychological.
Conclusion
Authors: Walden Victoria Grace
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter explains that Hammer Films is a true icon of cinema, not only in Britain, but internationally. While the great 'family' studio of the past has gone, Hammer CEO Simon Oakes states that he and his team 'have a family growing here, that's just starting', and there are clearly thematic repetitions across the twenty-first century oeuvre. However, while the old films stuck to very particular conventions, eventually to the point of unoriginality for the sake of profit, Oakes's team have produced a series of individually distinct films, aside from their generic similarity. These new Hammer horrors may not yet have attained the same cult status, and they are clearly products of the contemporary globalised industry, but this certainly does not make them lesser films, and in The Woman in Black (2012) the company scored a bona fide international hit. With much larger budgets, Hammer is now able to indulge in more sophisticated projects.
Fact Sheet for Talk to Her
Authors: Hughes Emily
Published: February 2021

Director & Screenplay:

Pedro Almodóvar

Executive Producer:

Augustín Almodóvar

Associate Producer:

Michel Ruben

Music:

Alberto Iglesias

Cinematography:

Javier Aguirresarobe

Editing:

José Salcedo

Release date:

Spain 15th March 2002

UK 23rd August 2002

USA 25th December 2002

Lead actors:

Benigno (Javier Cámara), Marco (Darío Grandinetti), Alicia (Leonor Watling), and Lydia (Rosario Flores)...
Physicality and The Body
Authors: Hughes Emily
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the significance of male physicality in Pedro Almodóvar's films. Whilst Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002) does not celebrate or objectify the bodies of its central male protagonists so brazenly, before the guitar sequence there is a seemingly out of place shot of a beautiful male body. Cynthia Freeland suggests that the purpose of the shot is 'to conjure up emotions of sensuous pleasure and exploration of bodily rhythms'. The physicality of female actors is also important within Talk to Her. Both Alicia and Lydia use their bodies for professions which require skill and athleticism. The film explores different types of male and female bodies. As such, the body is seen as an important motif within the film. The unconscious body is represented in different ways: as a landscape, as a doll, as a corpse, as a fairy tale princess.
Themes
Authors: Hughes Emily
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the key themes within Pedro Almodóvar's Talk to Her (2002). These include loneliness, communication, suicide, faith, and age. Throughout the film, different modes of communication are explored, such as non-verbal and physical communication, miscommunication and misunderstanding, gossip, trash talking, storytelling, monologue, physiognomy, using music to communicate feelings, and the importance of what is left unsaid. All three suicides in the film can be interpreted as forms of communication. Meanwhile, on first viewing of the film, age seems like a fairly irrelevant theme; however, when one re-watches and analyses scenes again, age becomes more of a problematic issue, made even more apparent when one considers the casting choices. Other themes in the film include the refusal to accept gender stereotypes or gender as a social construct, the body, and voyeurism.
Textual Analysis
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter speculates on the approach when the romanticized notions about vampires are removed as shown in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In. The chapter analyses the miserable and lonely existence of a child who is stuck forever in a 12-year-old body and has to walk around killing other people and drinking their blood to live. It also talks about the acknowledgement of Let the Right One In as a modern classic and in a class of its own that is distinct from other contemporary vampire and horror movies. The chapter mentions Philip French in The Observer who described Let the Right One In as a major addition to the vampire genre. It also reviews several new twists on the old traditions and elements of coming-of-age stories, childhood fantasy, and serial-killer movies seen in Let the Right One In.
Sex and the Vampire
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter recounts vampires who have originally struck fear into the hearts of East European peasants as the ghastly walking cadavers of Carpathian myth. The chapter mentions Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee's vampire character, which violated the throats of their female victims in a form of supernatural rape, but by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was women who were calling the shots. It also talks about female characters who reach out to their ravisher vampires and have relationships with them instead of screaming, getting bitten and turned into passive playthings. The chapter describes Dracula, played by Gary Oldman, who is no implacably evil villain, but a romantic anti-hero drawn towards Mina because of her resemblance to his long-lost love. It mentions female vampires in films that have long carried connotations of lesbianism.
The Vampire’s Lifestyle
Authors: Billson Anne
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses traditional vampires that live in large cob-webbed castles or crumbling stately mansions or sometimes dabble in real estate or property development, such as in the film The Satanic Rites of Dracula in 1973. The chapter points out how vampires are generally depicted as wealthy individuals who rarely have to worry about income or housing. It also considers the Twilight movies, where the Cullen 'family' resides not in a castle or old dark house but an airy modern Frank Lloyd Wright-esque home. The chapter reviews the character Eli in Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, who contents herself with a bog-standard flat on a Swedish housing estate where she customizes the bathroom to turn it into a light-tight nest. It explores Eli and Håkan's flat that bears all the hallmarks of an environment where the occupants have lost interest in the superficial trappings of life.
Interpreting Fight Club
Authors: Ramey Mark
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a theoretical interpretation of Fight Club (1999). The interpretation of a film text invariably relies on the application of theory. Theory acts as a set of spectacles: looking at the world through its lenses sharpens focus, magnifies detail, and clarifies understanding. Studying Fight Club has already referenced a number of possible theoretical positions, such as postmodernism and feminism. The chapter explores these and other interpretive positions in depth. These include auteur theory; moral panics and media effects theory; political theory; psychoanalytic theory; gender identity and gender relations; postmodernism; and Nietzsche and nihilism. Gender remains the most critically appraised aspect of Fight Club. The film clearly can be read as an exploration of male identity in crisis. Meanwhile, some feminist critics find the film misogynistic and others see it as a homoerotic text.
Narrative in SAW
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the narrative in SAW (2004). The SAW films are especially respected for their narrative ingenuity. The sequential structure of the first film, with its fractured flashbacks and shuffled order, provides a non-linear disorder that mimics the confusion felt by the protagonists. The sequels have continued this tradition, by attempting to expand not only the mythology of the franchise, but the plot of the original film, developing story points and adding detail in ways that allows one to view the first film in new and different ways. In this way, the first film has been given a cinematic immortality. It is possible to re-watch the original film with fresh eyes and insider information, creating a different viewing experience with each new showing.
Game Over?
Authors: Poole Benjamin
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on the declining interest in the SAW franchise. Just as audiences grew weary of torture porn's antecedent, the Rape and Revenge cycle, the subgenre that SAW spearheaded has dropped drastically out of fashion. What of the originators of the franchise, James Wan and Leigh Whannell? Despite the success and influence of their first film, they, somehow, do not benefit from the same brand-name recognition that their torture-porn contemporaries enjoy, despite their being film-makers whose achievements do not rival SAW's in terms of box-office impact. What is apparent is that, until 2011, the director and writer of the original SAW, although retaining an executive producer title on the sequels, have never quite achieved the commercial or critical success that they enjoyed with their initial collaboration. However, through Alliance Films and Stage 6 Films, early 2011 saw the pair release Insidious.
Introduction
Authors: Forshaw Barry
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how Thomas Harris's novels Red Dragon (published 1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988) represented a double whammy that permanently reconfigured the crime fiction genre (and, as a by-product, the entire field of horror fiction). Harris has long since gone beyond being merely a topflight writer: he is now a brand, and his sanguinary serial killer novels are the defining works of the genre. The subsequent successful films of the books performed a concomitant shift in popular crime/horror cinema. Jonathan Demme's film, in particular, inaugurated a change in thriller cinema. The real success of the movie lies in the casting of Jodie Foster, impeccably incarnating the out-of-her-depth Clarice Starling, and Anthony Hopkins, masterly as the urbane Hannibal Lecter. Above all, the film (like the novel) is intelligent, a sharp contrast to most contemporary Hollywood fare.
After the Silence
Authors: Forshaw Barry
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001). Both the colour palette and the tone of the new film were different from its predecessor, with a greater emphasis on primary colours and atmospheric chiaroscuro effects, and the material's black humour more accentuated. In keeping with the director's expertise in the realm of the epic, Hannibal was placed within a much more geographically sprawling canvas, with a great deal of the film shot in a beautifully evoked Florence, the city in which Hannibal Lecter is masquerading as the expert in Renaissance art, ‘Dr Fell’. Ridley Scott's assumption of the directorial reins proved highly successful and the film enjoyed immense popularity, breaking several box office records as it wittily opened on Valentine's Day of 2001. If the talented Julianne Moore was able to do less with the character of Clarice Starling than her predecessor, this was perhaps due to the extra level of confidence the FBI agent has acquired by this stage of her life. Professional though the actress's work was throughout, neither she nor her director could produce the kind of touching verisimilitude that was Jodie Foster's stock-in-trade in the first film. The chapter then looks at the prequels: Brett Ratner's Red Dragon (2002) and Peter Webber's Hannibal Rising (2007).
Poetic Fatalism
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates Guru Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper Flowers, 1959). A hymn to the golden age of the studio system, actor/director Guru Dutt's greatest achievement was dismissed on its initial release. One of the first Indian films to be shot in cinemascope, the melancholic story of an alcoholic film-maker (Guru Dutt) and the actress he discovers (Waheeda Rehman) makes for a poetic critique of the film-making process. The chapter focuses on the director's status as one of Indian cinema's pre-eminent auteurs, thematic dimensions, and ground-breaking technical aspects. It also looks at the role of lyricist Kaifi Azmi, gender representations, and the unmistakable brand of poetic fatalism that has come to define much of Dutt's cinema.
Angry Young Men
Authors: Ahmed Omar
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses how, unlike Hollywood, which has seen the rise of high-concept cinema overshadow the power a film star once possessed at the box office, Indian cinema, especially mainstream Hindi films, continues to underline the significance of film stars and views them as paramount to the development and marketing of most feature films. The angry-young-man persona of Indian cinema's biggest film star, Amitabh Bachchan, forged in an era of widespread political disillusionment, found its greatest expression in the 1975 super-hit Deewaar (The Wall), directed by Yash Chopra. The chapter moves away from Indian art cinema to the attractions of the mainstream film Deewaar. It engages with a range of key areas, such as the wider political context of the 1975 Indian Emergency and the angry young man as a sociopolitical symbol. It also looks at representations encompassing matriarchy, religion and poverty; Amitabh Bachchan's star image; and the lasting legacy of Deewaar for today's cinema.
Prologue: What was Silent Cinema?
Authors: Withall Keith
Published: February 2021

This prologue provides an overview of silent cinema. Our sense of cinema as a site of commercial entertainment can be traced back to the Lumière brothers. In December of 1895, they attracted a fee-paying public in Paris to sit and watch flickering images on an illuminated screen. The commercial Pandora's Box they opened was to blossom in a few years into a world cinema industry and, at its peak, the fantastical Hollywood. Yet in the 30 years in which this miraculous construction was accomplished, audiences rarely had to listen to films, only watch them. Hence, the early decades of cinema were characterised by the title ‘silent’. In fact, there was a lot of noise, machinery, audiences, musicians, and commentators. Even so, the absence of the human voice and dialogue make the films seem rather strange when viewed by a modern audience. Nevertheless, while they lack the audio impact of the sound film, the photographic quality of many silents is superb. Not only had the film-makers mastered the main techniques of photography, but as the industry developed they also added a whole range of techniques for editing and movement.
The Wider Context
Authors: Withall Keith
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the topics of silent film, censorship, and the development of cinematic technology. The roots of all the major film censorship systems lie in the silent era. As such, it helps one to understand the peculiarities of the British system by explaining how the system emerged, and in particular the odd role of local authorities, which produces idiosyncratic exceptions to this day. Equally, the US Hays Code, while its enforcement really dates from the sound era, was formed and moulded in the silent days. Many of the motifs and generic elements of film music also go back to silent roots. The chapter then examines the widespread variety and diversity of silent world cinema. It also considers the return to classical Hollywood for film plots and narratives in contemporary Hollywood.
The Shock of the Old
Authors: Marriott James
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the lure of atavism in horror, and suggests where Neil Marshall's The Descent (2005) might fit in to this tradition. Horror recognises the allure of the past, figured variously as either pre-Enlightenment or pre-industrial, but tends to conceive of it only in the bloodiest, most violent terms. The nostalgia is driven by a dissatisfaction with modern life, an urge to live closer to a state of nature, untrammelled by the bounds of civilisation. The decision to go on a caving trip, putting their lives in danger for a leisure activity, suggests that the group in The Descent considers modern life soft and unchallenging. They are driven to test themselves in ways otherwise unavailable to them in modern life; they want adrenalin kicks and the best way they have found to get them is through extreme sports.
‘Now I’ll show you what I already know’
Authors: Conolly Jez
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the initial reception of audiences to the horror film The Thing. At the time, horror films were considered 'video nasties,' which journalists and news networks spoke ill of, implying that such films could influence its viewers to behave immorally. The chapter mentions the case of two serial rapists who had cited The Thing as a major influence on their behaviour. The chapter describes The Thing as the ultimate 'clunker to cult to classic' movie journey. Because even though the film initially received poor critical and commercial reception, it bounced back so spectacularly that it became one of the most highly regarded productions from the 'Body Horror' cycle of films during the 1980s.
‘First goddamn week of winter’
Authors: Conolly Jez
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses isolation as the main theme of The Thing. It discusses how The Thing was able to achieve an emphasised sense of internalization and isolation throughout the film, starting with the juxtaposition of contrasting colors across scenes. It discusses why it was necessary for The Thing to be situated in the harsh white wilderness of the south pole region. It compares certain elements of The Thing to John Campbell's novella Who Goes There? The chapter discusses the science behind The Thing and how anything Thing-influenced is apt to disobey the laws of physics. It describes how its bronze-like qualities binds all of the characters together in a state of physical and psychological homogeneity, while Macready, its main character, seems much less affected by the magnetic or gravitational pull that the Thing exerts, creating an atmosphere of isolation. The chapyter then discusses 'The Thing Effect' as the feeling of polarization.
Black Sunday’s Legacy
Authors: Conterio Martyn
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Black Sunday's influence that was not only felt in the movies. It mentions Marvel man Jack Kirby that used the central Mask of Satan image and the character Javuto as inspiration for Doctor Doom, including the backstory of being the son of an Eastern European witch. It also talks about Black Sunday's influence on Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce in 1985, which featured a gorgeous and completely naked female vampire that is awoken from her slumber. The chapter emphasizes how the Mario Bavian imagery can be detected in a range of contemporary movies and television shows, such as Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that was aired from 1997 to 2003. It cites Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 feature, Bram Stoker's Dracula that could be retitled 'Mario Bava's Dracula'.
Conclusion
Authors: Conterio Martyn
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at the traditional Gothic ambience, the surrealist-tinged irrationality, the fairy-tale plot and graphic violence that were combined to make Mario Bava's Black Sunday stand out and remain highly regarded over half a century on. It discusses Time Out's 2012 survey of '100 Best Horror Films', in which Black Sunday was ranked 84th. It also mentions Alan Jones, who commented how the Mario Bava's filmography was often atrociously dubbed, appallingly retitled, re-edited by distributors, cut by censors, and dumped in the bottom half of exploitation double bills. The chapter describes Black Sunday as the quintessence of fatal beauty and cinema's beguiling dream reality. It explores Bava's talent and ability to capture the attention of critics and movie fans worldwide.
Marketing, Reception and Legacy
Authors: Turner Peter
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies how The Blair Witch Project (1999) was marketed, how it was received by critics and audiences, and the legacy that endures more than a decade after its release. The Blair Witch Project was one of the first films to fully explore the potential of the Internet as a marketing tool. The distributors of The Blair Witch Project used ancillary media methods, including a detailed website that immersed the browser in the mythology of the film and an accompanying documentary, The Curse of the Blair Witch. After the Sundance screening that allowed the filmmakers to sell it to distributor Artisan, the marketing became a huge part of making The Blair Witch Project the phenomenon it was in 1999. It affected the reception with audiences being encouraged to see the film as just one more part of a larger experience and helped build the legacy that would make The Blair Witch Project such an enduring part of popular culture, with spoofs, a sequel, porn versions, and a whole sub-genre of horror imitating it by copying the found footage format.
Conclusion
Authors: Harmes Marcus K.
Published: February 2021

This chapter iterates the arguments set forth in the previous chapters. It talks about the film as an adaptation of multiple sources. Though there were a few fundamental components from Mary Shelley's novel included in the film, the script that they followed through production created cinematic solutions for a book that was essentially incapable of 'faithful' adaptation. Much of the film was inspired by comedy horrors from the 1940s and 1950s. It explains that adaptations brings familiarity onto the screen in terms of what audiences may have already read or seen, which creates different pathways for understanding. The chapter describes The Curse of Frankenstein as the beginning of a tradition that would last for a very long time.
Chapter Summaries
Authors: Lagrone Matthew
Published: February 2021

This chapter begins with reflections on some previously proposed historical timeframes for the formation of Noahide law. Earlier scholars located its origins variously: in the Bible, among Hittite legal scholars and during the Maccabean era. This chapter maintains, contrary to prior scholarship, that the concept of the Noahide is absent until the first century CE; that is, it is a rabbinic creation. While theology can discover the beginnings of the Noahide laws in the Torah, their historical starting point can only be established following the social, demographic and religious dislocations of the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 CE. For the rabbis, these laws originated prior to the Sinaitic revelation; they were the moral standard for the entire gentile world, and that world of course included the ancestors of those who would later accept the covenant at Sinai. Israelites before Sinai, then, were Noahides....
The Origins of the Noahide Laws
Authors: Novak David
Published: February 2021

This chapter traces the origins of the Noahide laws in the history of Judaism. Earlier scholars located its origins variously: in the Bible, among Hittite legal scholars, and during the Maccabean era. The chapter maintains, contrary to prior scholarship, that the concept of the Noahide is absent until the first century CE; that is, it is a rabbinic creation. While theology can discover the beginnings of the Noahide laws in the Torah, their historical starting point can only be established following the social, demographic, and religious dislocations of the Second Temple's destruction in 70 CE. For the rabbis, these laws originated prior to the Sinaitic revelation; they were the moral standard for the entire gentile world, and that world of course included the ancestors of those who would later accept the covenant at Sinai. Israelites before Sinai, then, were Noahides. The Noahide laws were also considered obligatory for all time, and would be the measure by which gentiles would be judged.
Albo’s Theory of Noahide Law
Authors: Novak David
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Joseph Albo's theory of Noahide law. The great fifteenth-century theologian Joseph Albo considered Noahide law to be a category of divine law. He divided law per se into three classes: natural, conventional, and divine, in an ascending hierarchy. Natural law is concerned with right and wrong in the human situation; conventional law is related to what is desirable; and divine law is occupied with true good and true evil. The superiority of divine law consists in its specificity, and it is greater than either of the other two groups because it is absolute like natural law and transcendent like conventional law. Despite the superiority of divine law, the chapter argues that Albo's philosophical and theological thinking demonstrates a strong interrelationship among the three laws.
Moses Mendelssohn and his School
Authors: Novak David
Published: February 2021

This chapter illustrates how Moses Mendelssohn, the first truly modern Jewish philosopher, tendered a philosophically rich interpretation of the Noahide laws, one at great variance with the interpretations that preceded it. In Jerusalem, Mendelssohn held that the Noahide laws were not part of revelation, and were universally intelligible through human reason. In fact, revelation is inferior to reason because the latter is immediately and publicly available to all and the former is a snapshot in time, restricted, non-universal. Consequently, Noahide law, which is universal, is greater than revealed law. Mendelssohn is not calling for the removal of Judaism, and in fact holds that Judaism is the most rational of the revealed religions. Nonetheless, Judaism remains a component in a universal religion of reason. Mendelssohn's reversal of the traditional understanding of the respective roles of Noahide and Mosaic law was revolutionary.
Conclusion
Authors: Novak David
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains why Noahide law is an appropriate starting point for Jewish philosophy today. Most philosophical reflections on Judaism have not only avoided Noahide law as a starting point, but have avoided halakhah in general. This is because of a basic misunderstanding in Jewish philosophy. This misunderstanding is based on the assumption that the systematic structure admitting philosophical analysis is evidently deductive. Since halakhah is not a process where first principles are set down and thereafter specified, it seems to elude philosophical analysis. The chapter then considers how Noahide law functions as a criterion of the possibility of divine revelation to humanity; as a criterion of human potentiality for knowledge of God; as a criterion of the possibility of revelation; and as a criterion of human potentiality in relation to revelation.
Afterword
Authors: Lagrone Matthew
Published: February 2021

This afterword is designed to fill out some of the larger concerns of The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism. David Novak’s book is a thick historical delineation of the concept on the Noahide from rabbinic times to the twentieth century. This section touches on some of his concerns subsequent to the original publication of the book. In particular, it considers the philosophical underpinnings of natural law and their relationship to Noahide law; the use of natural law thinking in Jewish history, especially since Emancipation; and Novak’s analysis of Marvin Fox’s and Devora Steinmetz’s attitudes towards natural law....
Jewish Views of World Religions
Authors: Brill Alan , Neiss Rori Picker
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses four models that past and present Jewish thinkers have adopted in understanding other religions and urge Jews to hold on to multiple models in tension with each other. Jewish inclusivism affirms the uniqueness of Judaism, but rejects the idea that non-Jews lack religion. Jewish universalists accept a universal truth available to all humanity, beyond revelation but not against it. However, religious universalists remain close to the inclusivists in that everything is grounded in the teachings of Judaism. In contrast, religious pluralism is a modern philosophical approach that accepts that one's religion is not the sole and exclusive source of truth. Jewish pluralists write that God has chosen Jews to walk the way of the Torah, Christians to follow Christ, Hindus to be guided by the Vedas, and Muslims to follow the way shown by the Quran. Finally, for Jewish exclusivists, the sole domain of truth is the Torah and Judaism is the sole path to God; those who are not Jews follow a mistaken path and are at best bystanders in the divine scheme.
Encountering Hinduism
Authors: Goshen-Gottstein Alon
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Hinduism from a Jewish perspective. It explores the nature of Hinduism, exposing its complexity, and moving beyond the simplistic understanding to a more accurate picture of Hindu theology and reality. Jews in Indian societies have lived with an attitude of acceptance towards their Hindu neighbours. The chapter then offers an honest reappraisal of avodah zarah applied to contemporary Hinduism, finding support for new theological understanding of Hinduism in the rabbinic wisdom of the medieval sage Menahem Me'iri and the contemporary thinker Adin Steinsaltz. The religious conversation with Hindus is important because of the spiritual opportunities it presents. As such, the chapter considers the Hindu quest for God and the model of Hindu saints as significant topics for a Jewish–Hindu conversation. Nuancing one's understanding of avodah zarah and of Hinduism must continue, and the dialogue on spirituality and the benefits of spiritual exchange must advance.
Chapter Two Fabrics and Techniques
Authors: Yaniv Bracha
Published: February 2021

This chapter is devoted to the linen and silk fabrics used in the production of medieval ceremonial textiles, and the techniques employed to create the embroidered and woven patterns that embellished them. As we have already seen, the elegance of ceremonial textiles in antiquity is revealed in the use in early sources of the term ...