Judah's Desire and the Making of the Abrahamic Israel
Judah's Desire and the Making of the Abrahamic Israel

Author: Hong Guk-Pyoung

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-07-01

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 3111376559

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In this refreshing exploration of Judah’s identity formation, the emphasis is placed on the psychological underpinnings of Judah’s sentiments towards Israel, aiming to illuminate the significance of Judah's appropriation of Israel. Richly contextual, this book draws parallels observed in Asian contexts, notably those of North and South Korea, and China with its marginal Others. Central to the thesis is that Judah’s perceived inferiority to Israel played a crucial role in its quest to appropriate Israel’s legacy and identity. Adopting a functionalist lens, Judah’s rewriting of Israel’s ancestral past is examined. The Abraham and Jacob traditions are understood as competing "identity narratives," serving as critical discursive tools to construct their pasts. The study scrutinizes how the southern Abraham tradition fundamentally reoriented the Jacob tradition, North Israel’s standalone ancestral myth. Set against the broader canvas of continued efforts to redefine and embody "Israel" within the history of Judeo-Christian religions, this exploration underscores how Judah's pivotal appropriation of Israel has established a paradigm for all future endeavors of "becoming Israel."

The Book of Shem
The Book of Shem

Author: David Kishik

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1503607356

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Can anyone say anything that has not already been said about the most scrutinized text in human history? In one of the most radical rereadings of the opening chapters of Genesis since The Zohar, David Kishik manages to do just that. The Book of Shem, a philosophical meditation on the beginning of the Bible and the end of the world, offers an inspiring interpretation of this navel of world literature. The six parts of the primeval story—God's creation, the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah's Ark, the first covenant, and the Tower of Babel—come together to address a single concern: How does one become the human being that one is? By closely analyzing the founding text of the Abrahamic religions, this short treatise rethinks some of their deepest convictions. With a mixture of reverence and violence, Kishik's creative commentary demonstrates the post-secular implications of a pre-Abrahamic position. A translation of the Hebrew source, included as an appendix, helps to peel away the endless layers of presuppositions about its meaning.

Judah's Desire and the Making of the Abrahamic Israel
Judah's Desire and the Making of the Abrahamic Israel

Author: Hong Guk-Pyoung

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-07-01

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 311137775X

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In this refreshing exploration of Judah’s identity formation, the emphasis is placed on the psychological underpinnings of Judah’s sentiments towards Israel, aiming to illuminate the significance of Judah's appropriation of Israel. Richly contextual, this book draws parallels observed in Asian contexts, notably those of North and South Korea, and China with its marginal Others. Central to the thesis is that Judah’s perceived inferiority to Israel played a crucial role in its quest to appropriate Israel’s legacy and identity. Adopting a functionalist lens, Judah’s rewriting of Israel’s ancestral past is examined. The Abraham and Jacob traditions are understood as competing "identity narratives," serving as critical discursive tools to construct their pasts. The study scrutinizes how the southern Abraham tradition fundamentally reoriented the Jacob tradition, North Israel’s standalone ancestral myth. Set against the broader canvas of continued efforts to redefine and embody "Israel" within the history of Judeo-Christian religions, this exploration underscores how Judah's pivotal appropriation of Israel has established a paradigm for all future endeavors of "becoming Israel."

Essential Israel
Essential Israel

Author: S. Ilan Troen

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-02-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780253027115

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Most Americans are ill-prepared to engage thoughtfully in the increasingly serious debate about Israel, its place in the Middle East, and its relations with the United States. Essential Israel examines a wide variety of complex issues and current concerns in historical and contemporary contexts to provide readers with an intimate sense of the dynamic society and culture that is Israel today. The expert contributors to this volume address the Arab-Israeli conflict, the state of diplomatic efforts to bring about peace, Zionism and the impact of the Holocaust, the status of the Jewish state and Israeli democracy, foreign relations, immigration and Israeli identity, as well as literature, film, and the other arts. This unique and innovative volume provides solid grounding to understandings of Israel's history, politics, culture, and possibilities for the future.

Belonging in Genesis
Belonging in Genesis

Author: Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi

Publisher:

Published: 2016-03-15

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 9781602587489

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Genesis calls its readers into a vision of human community unconstrained by the categories that dominate modern thinking about identity. Genesis situates humanity within a network of nurture that encompasses the entire cosmos--only then introducing Israel not as a people, but as a promise. Genesis prioritizes a human identity that originates in the divine word and depends on ongoing relationship with God. Those called into this new mode of belonging must forsake the social definition that had structured their former life, trading it for an alternative that will only gradually take shape. In contrast to the rigidity that typifies modern notions, Genesis depicts identity as fundamentally fluid. Encounter with God leads to a new social self, not a "spiritual" self that operates only within parameters established in the body at birth. In Belonging in Genesis, Amanda Mbuvi highlights the ways narrative and the act of storytelling function to define and create a community. Building on the emphasis on family in Genesis, she focuses on the way family storytelling is a means of holding together the interpretation of the text and the constitution of the reading community. Explicitly engaging the way in which readers regard the biblical text as a point of reference for their own (collective) identities leads to an understanding of Genesis as inviting its readers into a radically transformative vision of their place in the world.

Traces of Racial Exception
Traces of Racial Exception

Author: Ronit Lentin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2018-08-09

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350032077

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Positioning race front and centre, this book theorizes that political violence, in the form of a socio-political process that differentiates between human and less-than-human populations, is used by the state of Israel in racializing and ruling the citizens of occupied Palestine. Lentin argues that Israel's rule over Palestine is an example of Agamben's state of exception, Goldberg's racial state and Wolfe's settler colony; the Israeli racial settler colony employs its laws to rule besieged Palestine, while excluding itself and its Jewish citizen-colonists from legal instruments and governmental technologies. Governing through emergency legislation and through practices of exception, emergency, necessity and security, Israel positions itself outside domestic and international law. Deconstructing Agamben's Eurocentric theoretical position Lentin shows that it occludes colonialism, settler colonialism and anti-colonialism and fails to specifically foreground race; instead she combines the work of Wolfe, who proposes race as a trace of settler colonialism, and Weheliye, who argues that Agamben's western-centric understanding of exception fail to speak from explicitly racialized and gendered standpoints. Employing existing media, activist, and academic accounts of racialization this book deliberately breaks from white, Western theorizations of biopolitics, exception, and bare life, and instead foregrounds race and gender in analysing settler colonial conditions in Israel.

Catch-67
Catch-67

Author: Micah Goodman

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0300240783

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A controversial examination of the internal Israeli debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a best-selling Israeli author Since the Six-Day War, Israelis have been entrenched in a national debate over whether to keep the land they conquered or to return some, if not all, of the territories to Palestinians. In a balanced and insightful analysis, Micah Goodman deftly sheds light on the ideas that have shaped Israelis' thinking on both sides of the debate, and among secular and religious Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Contrary to opinions that dominate the discussion, he shows that the paradox of Israeli political discourse is that both sides are right in what they affirm—and wrong in what they deny. Although he concludes that the conflict cannot be solved, Goodman is far from a pessimist and explores how instead it can be reduced in scope and danger through limited, practical steps. Through philosophical critique and political analysis, Goodman builds a creative, compelling case for pragmatism in a dispute where a comprehensive solution seems impossible.

In the Footsteps of King David
In the Footsteps of King David

Author: Yosef Garfinkel

Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Published: 2018-06-07

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 050077420X

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King David is a pivotal figure in the Bible, which provides stirring accounts of his deeds, including the slaying of the Philistine giant Goliath and the founding of his capital in Jerusalem. However, no certain archaeological finds from the period of his reign or of the united kingdom he ruled over have been uncovered until now. In this first-hand and highly readable account, the excavators of Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David fought Goliath, reveal how seven years of exhaustive investigation have uncovered a city dating to the time of David the late 11th and early 10th century bc surrounded by massive fortifications with impressive gates, a clear urban plan and an abundance of finds that tell us much about the inhabitants, including a pottery sherd with the earliest known Hebrew inscription. The authors clearly describe the methods of the excavation and the evidence they discovered, as well as how we interpret it. But more than just a simple excavation report, this book also explains the significance of these discoveries and how they shed new light on Davids kingdom, as well as discussing the link between the Bible, archaeology and history. This topic is at the centre of a decades-long controversy, with some scholars disputing that the Bible contains a record of historical events and people, an approach that is convincingly challenged here.

Manifest Insanity
Manifest Insanity

Author: Diogenes of Mayberry

Publisher: Diogenes of Mayberry

Published: 2019-08-14

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9881235812

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Manifest Insanity is an irreverent social commentary that traces the history of Judeo-Christian doctrines and how they have evolved over the centuries, impudently contradicting the perception that these established beliefs were original to their traditions, and specifically challenging the evangelical Christian concept of literal inerrancy. The historical information is presented in an informal, but polemical, conversation between teachers and students in a Christian high school as they move from class to class throughout the day. The narrative exposes some of the historical misunderstandings and outright doctrinal forgeries that the Religious Right trumpets in their attempts to force their morality on mainstream society. Woven into the story is a satirical re-imagining of Dr. Strangelove, as modern-day liberal secularism—replacing the Soviet paranoia of the Cold War era—fuels the right-wing hype of a godless society on the road to hell. The Four Horsemen of New Atheism—Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens—have demonstrated in this new era of confrontational tactics that no longer will secularists smile politely and remain respectfully silent of religious beliefs, but will stand up and challenge the irrationality of blind faith. Following their lead, Manifest Insanity is a scathing indictment of the Christian Right and their attempts to hijack school boards in order to indoctrinate children using the public school system. Manifest Insanity is a thoroughly researched, insightful, thought-provoking and comprehensive analysis of the religious history that shaped the political and social views of American evangelical Christians—yet, an entertaining, humorous and accessible read.