Bastards and Believers
Bastards and Believers

Author: Theodor Dunkelgrün

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2020-04-03

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0812251881

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A formidable collection of studies on religious conversion and converts in Jewish history Theodor Dunkelgrün and Pawel Maciejko observe that the term "conversion" is profoundly polysemous. It can refer to Jews who turn to religions other than Judaism and non-Jews who tie their fates to that of Jewish people. It can be used to talk about Christians becoming Muslim (or vice versa), Christians "born again," or premodern efforts to Christianize (or Islamize) indigenous populations of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It can even describe how modern, secular people discover spiritual creeds and join religious communities. Viewing Jewish history from the perspective of conversion across a broad chronological and conceptual frame, Bastards and Believers highlights how the concepts of the convert and of conversion have histories of their own. The volume begins with Sara Japhet's study of conversion in the Hebrew Bible and ends with Netanel Fisher's essay on conversion to Judaism in contemporary Israel. In between, Andrew S. Jacobs writes about the allure of becoming an "other" in late Antiquity; Ephraim Kanarfogel considers Rabbinic attitudes and approaches toward conversion to Judaism in the Middles Ages; and Paola Tartakoff ponders the relationship between conversion and poverty in medieval Iberia. Three case studies, by Javier Castaño, Claude Stuczynski, and Anne Oravetz Albert, focus on different aspects of the experience of Spanish-Portuguese conversos. Michela Andreatta and Sarah Gracombe discuss conversion narratives; and Elliott Horowitz and Ellie Shainker analyze Eastern European converts' encounters with missionaries of different persuasions. Despite the differences between periods, contexts, and sources, two fundamental and mutually exclusive notions of human life thread the essays together: the conviction that one can choose one's destiny and the conviction that one cannot escapes one's past. The history of converts presented by Bastards and Believers speaks to the possibility, or impossibility, of changing one's life. Contributors: Michela Andreatta, Javier Castaño, Theodor Dunkelgrün, Netanel Fisher, Sarah Gracombe, Elliott Horowitz, Andrew S. Jacobs, Sara Japhet, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Pawel Maciejko, Anne Oravetz Albert, Ellie Shainker, Claude Stuczynski, Paola Tartakoff.

Bastards and Believers
Bastards and Believers

Author: Theodor Dunkelgrün

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2020-03-06

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0812296753

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A formidable collection of studies on religious conversion and converts in Jewish history Theodor Dunkelgrün and Pawel Maciejko observe that the term "conversion" is profoundly polysemous. It can refer to Jews who turn to religions other than Judaism and non-Jews who tie their fates to that of Jewish people. It can be used to talk about Christians becoming Muslim (or vice versa), Christians "born again," or premodern efforts to Christianize (or Islamize) indigenous populations of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It can even describe how modern, secular people discover spiritual creeds and join religious communities. Viewing Jewish history from the perspective of conversion across a broad chronological and conceptual frame, Bastards and Believers highlights how the concepts of the convert and of conversion have histories of their own. The volume begins with Sara Japhet's study of conversion in the Hebrew Bible and ends with Netanel Fisher's essay on conversion to Judaism in contemporary Israel. In between, Andrew S. Jacobs writes about the allure of becoming an "other" in late Antiquity; Ephraim Kanarfogel considers Rabbinic attitudes and approaches toward conversion to Judaism in the Middles Ages; and Paola Tartakoff ponders the relationship between conversion and poverty in medieval Iberia. Three case studies, by Javier Castaño, Claude Stuczynski, and Anne Oravetz Albert, focus on different aspects of the experience of Spanish-Portuguese conversos. Michela Andreatta and Sarah Gracombe discuss conversion narratives; and Elliott Horowitz and Ellie Shainker analyze Eastern European converts' encounters with missionaries of different persuasions. Despite the differences between periods, contexts, and sources, two fundamental and mutually exclusive notions of human life thread the essays together: the conviction that one can choose one's destiny and the conviction that one cannot escapes one's past. The history of converts presented by Bastards and Believers speaks to the possibility, or impossibility, of changing one's life. Contributors: Michela Andreatta, Javier Castaño, Theodor Dunkelgrün, Netanel Fisher, Sarah Gracombe, Elliott Horowitz, Andrew S. Jacobs, Sara Japhet, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Pawel Maciejko, Anne Oravetz Albert, Ellie Shainker, Claude Stuczynski, Paola Tartakoff.

How Did God Do It? A Symphony of Science and Scripture
How Did God Do It? A Symphony of Science and Scripture

Author: Walt Huber

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2013-12

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1460211278

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Have you ever wondered... How Did God Do It? How did God perform the many miracles and supernatural events described in the Holy Bible - without violating the laws of physics and chemistry that He Himself put into place? And without conflicting with the basic tenets of Judaism and Christianity? This book proposes a theory that marries faith and rationality in a symphony of science and scripture....

Voltaire's Bastards
Voltaire's Bastards

Author: John Ralston Saul

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-12-25

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 1476718938

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With a new Introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) expertly dissects the political, economic, and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise. With a new introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) astutely dissects the political, economic and social origins of Western civilization to reveal a culture cripplingly enslaved to crude notions of rationality and expertise. The Western world is full of paradoxes. We talk endlessly of individual freedom, yet we’ve never been under more pressure to conform. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in politics. We complain about invasive government, yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are deteriorating. All these problems, John Ralston Saul argues, are largely the result of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the past 400 years, our “rational elites” have turned the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, directionless machine, run by process-minded experts—“Voltaire’s bastards”—whose cult of scientific management is empty of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertain­ment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose ordinary citizens are increasingly excluded from the decision-making process. In this wide-ranging anatomy of modern society and its origins—whose “pages explode with insight, style and intellectual rigor” (Camille Paglia, The Washington Post)—Saul presents a shattering critique of the political, economic and cultural estab­lishments of the West.

The Mixed Multitude
The Mixed Multitude

Author: Paweł Maciejko

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-03-08

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0812204581

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In 1756, Jacob Frank, an Ottoman Jew who had returned to the Poland of his birth, was discovered leading a group of fellow travelers in a suspect religious service. At the request of the local rabbis, Polish authorities arrested the participants. Jewish authorities contacted the bishop in whose diocese the service had taken place and argued that since the rites of Frank's followers involved the practice of magic and immoral conduct, both Jews and Christians should condemn them and burn them at the stake. The scheme backfired, as the Frankists took the opportunity to ally themselves with the Church, presenting themselves as Contra-Talmudists who believed in a triune God. As a Turkish subject, Frank was released and temporarily expelled to the Ottoman territories, but the others were found guilty of breaking numerous halakhic prohibitions and were subject to a Jewish ban of excommunication. While they professed their adherence to everything that was commanded by God in the Old Testament, they asserted as well that the Rabbis of old had introduced innumerable lies and misconstructions in their interpretations of that holy book. Who were Jacob Frank and his followers? To most Christians, they seemed to be members of a Jewish sect; to Jewish reformers, they formed a group making a valiant if misguided attempt to bring an end to the power of the rabbis; and to more traditional Jews, they were heretics to be suppressed by the rabbinate. What is undeniable is that by the late eighteenth century, the Frankists numbered in the tens of thousands and had a significant political and ideological influence on non-Jewish communities throughout eastern and central Europe. Based on extensive archival research in Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, Germany, the United States, and the Vatican, The Mixed Multitude is the first comprehensive study of Frank and Frankism in more than a century and offers an important new perspective on Jewish-Christian relations in the Age of Enlightenment.

A Brief History of Vice
A Brief History of Vice

Author: Robert Evans

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-08-09

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0147517605

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A celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time, A Brief History of Vice explores a side of the past that mainstream history books prefer to hide. History has never been more fun—or more intoxicating. Guns, germs, and steel might have transformed us from hunter-gatherers into modern man, but booze, sex, trash talk, and tripping built our civilization. Cracked editor Robert Evans brings his signature dogged research and lively insight to uncover the many and magnificent ways vice has influenced history, from the prostitute-turned-empress who scored a major victory for women’s rights to the beer that helped create—and destroy—South America's first empire. And Evans goes deeper than simply writing about ancient debauchery; he recreates some of history's most enjoyable (and most painful) vices and includes guides so you can follow along at home. You’ll learn how to: • Trip like a Greek philosopher. • Rave like your Stone Age ancestors. • Get drunk like a Sumerian. • Smoke a nose pipe like a pre–Columbian Native American. “Mixing science, humor, and grossly irresponsible self-experimentation, Evans paints a vivid picture of how bad habits built the world we know and love.”—David Wong, author of John Dies at the End

I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die
I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die

Author: Sarah J. Robinson

Publisher: WaterBrook

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0593193539

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A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.

The Marrano Way
The Marrano Way

Author: Agata Bielik-Robson

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-05-09

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 3110768348

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The Marrano phenomenon is a still unexplored element of Western culture: the presence of the borderline Jewish identity which avoids clear-cut cultural and religious attribution and – precisely as such – prefigures the advent of the typically modern "free-oscillating" subjectivity. Yet, the aim of the book is not a historical study of the Marranos (or conversos), who were forced to convert to Christianity, but were suspected of retaining their Judaism "undercover." The book rather applies the "Marrano metaphor" to explore the fruitful area of mixture and cross-over which allowed modern thinkers, writers and artists of the Jewish origin to enter the realm of universal communication – without, at the same time, making them relinquish their Jewishness which they subsequently developed as a "hidden tradition." The book poses and then attempts to prove the "Marrano hypothesis," according to which modern subjectivity derives, to paraphrase Cohen, "out of the sources of the hidden Judaism": modernity begins not with the Cartesian abstract ego, but with the rich self-reflexive self of Michel de Montaigne who wrestled with his own marranismo in a manner that soon became paradigmatic to other Jewish thinkers entering the scene of Western modernity, from Spinoza to Derrida. The essays in the volume offer thus a new view of a "Marrano modernity," which aims to radically transform our approach to the genesis of the modern subject and shed a new light on its secret religious life as surviving the process of secularization, although merely in the form of secret traces.

Sabbatian Heresy
Sabbatian Heresy

Author: Pawel Maciejko

Publisher: Brandeis University Press

Published: 2017-05-02

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1512600539

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The pronouncements of Sabbatai Tsevi (1626-76) gave rise to Sabbatianism, a key messianic movement in Judaism that spread across Jewish communities in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The movement, which featured a set of theological doctrines in which Jewish Kabbalistic tradition merged with Muslim and later Christian elements, suffered a setback with Tsevi's conversion to Islam in 1666. Nonetheless, for another hundred and fifty years, Sabbatianism continued to exist as a heretical underground movement. It provoked intense opposition from rabbinic authorities for another century and had a significant impact on central developments of later Judaism, such as the Haskalah, the Reform movement, Hasidism, and the secularization of Jewish society. This volume provides a selection of the most original and influential texts composed by Sabbatai Tsevi and his followers, complemented by fragments of the works of their rabbinic opponents and contemporary observers and some literary works inspired by Sabbatianism. An introduction and annotations by Pawe_ Maciejko provide historical, political, and social context for the documents.

After the Deportation
After the Deportation

Author: Philip Nord

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-12-03

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 1108478905

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Examines the change in memory regime in postwar France, from one centered on the concentration camps to one centered on the Holocaust.