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Messianic ideas in Jewish mysticism
No full textThe Jewish belief in a final redemption brought about by a kingly messiah, the descendant of the dynasty of King David, emerged in biblical times under specific historical and ideological circumstances which are gone long ago. Nevertheless, the core of the messianic idea remained within Judaism and became even stronger and stimulated Jewish yearnings and thought. Around this core of messianic belief grew, in the course of time, a garland of interpretations which sought to accommodate the persisting messianic hope to the new historical situations and even more to the changing philosophical and theological thought. Regarding all the messianic testimonies handed down to us, we might find three major types of interpretation depicting the messianic events: There is the more traditional apocalyptic view, then a somewhat distinct philosophical-rationalistic one and finally a mystical approach to messianism
Den teologiska Holocaustlitteraturen
No full textThis article examines Holocaust from the perspective of Jewish theology. In the history of Judaism, there have been several disastrous events which have gained much attention in Jewish theology. In the core of the question why Jews repeatedly have encountered hardship, is the question of theodicy: how is it possible that the God of Israel, the God of the chosen people, leaves his people in hardship? Theological Holocaust literature should be viewed against this background
Some reflections on the Arabic translation of the Samaritan Pentateuch
No full textThe various Arabic translations of the Bible, Rabbinic, Karaite, Samaritan and Christian, are a vivid witness to the fact that the Bible has remained firmly roots to the civilization of the Middle East. These religious communities, with the exception of the Karaites, lived before the advent of Islam in the 7th century and continued all to exist until the present day. These religious communities called by Islamic law the people of the book, had gradually been arabicized by the end of the 11th century. The Samaritans had been speaking and writing Arabic without interruption for about a dozen of centuries. Their Arabic version of the Pentateuch is undoubtedly an important source for a better understanding of their concepts and beliefs, of their medieval exegesis and of their Aramaic and Arabic dialects
Slimy stones and philosophy: some interpretations of tohu wa-bohu
No full textThe creation account in the first chapter of Genesis tells us how, from this state called tohu wa-bohu in Hebrew, God created and formed the world in the course of six days. To this is added a mythical statement, probably by a Babylonia Amora, Rav, about tohu as a green line encircling the world and bohu as wet stones immersed deep in water. During centuries, the Jews became exposed to philosophy and science which were built on Greek heritage. Almost a thousand years after Rav, Abraham bar Hiyya, a Spanish astronomer, presented tohu and bohu as identical to the Aristotelian matter and form. Jewish thinkers were sometimes discussing the physical reality, sometimes the divine reality, sometimes both. Tohu and bohu, which in the beginning were empty, without value and next to nothing, had grown to be the roots of being, the secret of knowledge both physical and divine
Tolerance and Enlightenment in Denmark: the theologian Christian Bastholm (1740–1819) and his attitude toward Judaism
No full textChristian Bastholm was one of the leading theologians in Enlightenment Denmark, and it is in his attitude towards Judaism and the Jews that we shall be able to get some ideas as to how his thoughts about tolerance and enlightenment were able to manifest themselves as to the limits he imposed on those ideas. To him, Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem and the statement that the Jews would be spread throughout the world meant that they would remain scattered for 1700 years and no one had succeeded by means of either threats or promises to induce them to abandon Judaism and become Christians. Bastholm was also involved in the conversion of Dr. Solomon de Meza and Jacob de Mesa from Judaism to Christianity. He knows that one must be tolerant and excuse the Jews who know no better and who have been raised in Judaism. At least in formal fashion he distances himself as a modern enlightened man from Christian prejudices, although he is himself susceptible to prejudice. Thus he acknowledges that the Jews who exercise their faith straightforwardly and truly, even if it is false, can be saved
Harlot's ghost and the rise of the American-Jewish novel in the fiction of Norman Mailer
No full textIn Harlot’s Ghost (1991), a curious yet subtle change takes place in Mailer’s fiction, a change that in some way may be compared to a tentative return to his early artistic and emotional roots. Harlot’s Ghost may be many novels cohabiting the same book or a curious hybrid of novelistic forms or even a collection of text redolent of different authors and different historical time periods. Amid this narrative exuberance, one text particular emerges in a somewhat veiled form – the American-Jewish novel. Mailer regarded Hasidism as a source of mystical inspiration, an alternative to the rationalistic-positivistic worldview that was threatening to undermine the richness of American culture. In the case of the latter a new text exerts its influence in Mailer’s work, vestiges of the American-Jewish anti-hero that in itself had become an established cultural symbol and which had been almost exorcised from his work in favor of the American Adam myth. If the American Adam was the primary myth and motif in Mailer’s work, the schlemiel steals its way into his work, adding a new textual variety to an achievement which, while adventurous in its choice of literary forms, has tended to become perhaps fixated on certain themes and figures
An emerging trend of charismatic religiosity in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland
No full textThe membership rates of the Evangelical Lutheran Church are declining; thus its position in society is becoming more and more precarious. This article focuses on a description of how charismatic religiosity, as one possible answer to the challenges faced, has gained a foothold inside the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and what might be the premises that have made its emergence within an institutionalized Evangelical Lutheran religion possible. Because of the several decades of work done by the association known as Spiritual Renewal in Our Church, the publication of the Bishops’ Commendation, and the Church’s awakening to the ‘crisis of the folk church’, more doors have been opened to collaboration and the search for sources of inspiration
Aesthetics as metaphysical meaning-making in the face of death
No full textIn my ethnographic research on death and dying in contemporary Finland, I explore how Finns facing end of life due to a long-term illness or other terminal condition seek to orient themselves and make meaning with cultural tools such as imagery, language, and metaphysical thinking. My primary research material is based on extensive fieldwork at Terhokoti Hospice and in the cancer clinic of Helsinki University Hospital, where I have had numerous conversations with terminally ill patients. This paper seeks to explore the way in which metaphysical aesthetics is assuming the role that religious thinking has traditionally played. When the role of institutional religion is diminishing, it becomes important to understand how emotional and spiritual resolution can be arrived at by means of aesthetics
A cinematographic fence and ornamental oars: experiencing the sublime in structures of urban public space
No full textI approach the theme of the sublime experience in public urban space from the point of view of a visual artist and from one of a person walking through the city. In this essay a concrete sublime experience in public urban space is analysed through an experimental artistic intervention. In this way knowledge is gathered about the relationship between public urban space and its users. I engage in a dialogue with the ancient understanding of the sublime as an effect of elevated, performed language. Features of this rhetoric are adapted on to the visual appearance of public urban space in order to reveal situations that evoke sublime experiences.
Response to Melissa Raphael
No full textA response to Melissa Raphael’s article ‘The creation of beauty by its destruction: the idoloclastic aesthetic in modern and contemporary Jewish art’. Key themes discussed include the notion of human beings as created in the image of God, Levinas’s understanding of the face and its ethical demand as well as the contemporary issue of the commodification of the human face in digital media