论犹太文化的内敛性

犹太文化是一种以犹太教为核心的内敛性文化。这种集闭合性和开放性为一体的内敛性文化,使犹太民族能够在长期的流散中始终保持着强烈的民族认同意识,从而流而不散,流而重聚。     

论犹太教与世俗文化的兼容

作为一种文化体系的犹太教并不排斥世俗的因素,而且在其发展中融入了很多世俗的智慧,尤其是理性和科学的要素。从《圣经》时代到中世纪,犹太教在认识自然、与异质文明交往、解释经典过程中逐渐形成了兼容世俗文化的能力和特征。而作为一种传统,又使得犹太教在面临现代性挑战的情况下,能够适时地调整自身,以顺应现代社会的需要。犹太教与世俗文化的兼容体现了犹太文化的巨大创造性和生命力。     

Historical Reasons of the Crisis in the Near East and the Ways of Solutions

This article is a just study about political situation in the Near East. Everything that is connected with Israel and Palestine is analysed shortly. Starting with the explanation of a Jewish concept, the society of the State of Israel is described. Being a non-integral society, it has deep roots in the Bible--in Jewish traditions. It is the only nation whose start of history is described in the Old Testament. So, Jews are not occupants who come from a strange country. Their ancestors used to live in Palestine for already 4000 years. A national or Zionistic movement united them for a great struggle--to re-establish the State of Israel. At the beginning of the 20th century, Jews used to be a minority in the land of Palestine while the majority was comprised by Palestinians. It is a wonderful national and religious phenomenon that Jews survived the horrors of Holocaust and did not lose the hope--to return to the land of Abraham. The war started between the Palestinians and Jews when independence of Israel was proclaimed. In the other part, the author will review the relations between the Jewish State and the Arabian world, and political system, and will try to provide the ways of solutions of the conflict for the peace and security in the Near East.     

Chinese policy towards Kaifeng Jews

China is the only country in Far East in which Jews have continually lived for over 1,000 years. The best-known Jewish community in China is the Kaifeng Jewry. What, if any, has been official policy of China towards Jews and their religious practices? This article seeks to explain the issue from a historical perspective with a focus on the Kaifeng Jews, who have lived in China for many hundred years but are not considered as official ethnic group. It does so by exploring official attitudes (based on available documents) towards the Jews of Kaifeng over the past five decades.     

Más allá del crisol de razas: los judíos argentinos,el peronismo y la lucha por un hogar multicultural

Acknowledging the surge of Peronism as a critical turning point in Argentina's modern history -which has had a lasting impact on the contemporary society-, this study is focused on a very specific analytical perspective: the peculiarities of the process of insertion of different ethnic groups and their Argentina-born descendants during the first Peronism. The author describes changes in political representation and the various dimensions of the participative democratization process that the Peronist Argentina went through, and he later examines the Peronist efforts to mobilizing support within the Jewish-Argentinian population. Assuming that instead of promoting a traditional melting pot, the regime gave an increasing legitimacy and an unprecedented acknowledgment to multiple identities, this article asserts that before the rise of Peronism, Jewish were not always considered as part of the Argentinian polis, civitas or demos. Finally, the concept of citizenship is used as focal point and analytic framework to understand the change in the relationship among Argentinian-Jewish, the institutions, and the symbols of the Argentinian state.     

‘The Open Church’ and ‘the Closed Church’ and the discourse on Jews in Poland between 1989 and 2000

This paper analyzes the attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland towards the Jews and anti-Semitism during the first decade since the political transformation of 1989–1990. After discussing briefly the main patterns of the development of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland in the modern era I examine two opposing positions within the institutionalized Roman Catholic Church — the ‘Open Church’ and the ‘Closed Church’ — that emerged in the aftermath of Poland's regaining full sovereignty in 1989. The ‘Open Church’ and the ‘Closed Church’ represent opposite views on the role of the church in society and on the dialogue with Jews and Judaism and on anti-Semitism.The ‘Open Church’ is a relatively recent phenomenon that originated in the circles of the layman progressive Catholic intelligentsia in the post-1945 period. It is the first visible formation within Roman Catholic Church in Poland, which advocates dialogue with Jews and Judaism and is engaged in the eradication of anti-Semitic attitudes. The ‘Closed Church,’ which represents the formation of the ‘besieged fortress’ was historically strongly intertwined with the exclusivist ethno-nationalistic political movement of the National Democracy. The remnants of this fusion were still visible in the statements of high rank clergy in the 1990s and early 2000. This formation ignores the concept of the dialogue with Jews and Judaism advocated by Pope John Paul II and among its supporters there are still many holders of anti-Semitic views. The paper provides various examples of anti-Semitic occurrences and pronouncements of the 1990s and it discusses various initiatives aimed at the facilitating dialogue between Christians and Jews introduced by the members of the ‘Open Church’ in the 1990s. It assess the importance of the ‘Open Church’ in the eradication of anti-Semitic views and the extent of the influence of the ‘Closed Church’ on both the clergy and Catholic community at large.     

Promising Justice: Derrida with Jewish Jurisprudence

Law and Critique - “Deconstruction is justice”. How are we to understand this striking and extraordinary sentence Jacques Derrida has written? Whose justice? Which deconstruction? The...     

Religious Violence in Judaism: Past and Present

Throughout Jewish history, religious tradition has had a dialectical relationship with violence. Judaism is neither more nor less violent than any other religion. In this essay, however, we offer a comprehensive and integrated survey of the components of Jewish ethos and mythos relating to violence while analyzing and illustrating their development and influence over the course of three millennia, from biblical times to the contemporary Jewish world, particularly in the Jewish State. We analyze the various transformations that Jewish religious violent norms, values, moods, and symbols have undergone, their linkage to ever-changing social and cultural circumstances, their social-political roots and implications, and their relationship to other Jewish traditions. We trace how ancient violent motifs have emerged and have been processed over time, and observe present-day violent behavior in light of these motifs. Along the way, we explicate the dynamics that characterize the tradition of Jewish religious violence and its paradoxical nature. Our argument implies a general theoretical model of religious violence that can be applied in a comparative context: Actors engage in a constant evaluation, selection, and reinterpretation of religious ideas and practices from an ever-growing reservoir and in so doing contribute to that reservoir. Religious tradition is adaptable but it also places limits on the violence agents can justify at any point in time.