Archive | Vol. 1/2008 | No. 2. The theo-political meaning of diasporic existence
Diner, Dan [Publishing editor]
Content
Review
[Rezension von: Jennifer Wood,Clifford, Shearing imagining security] / Dölemeyer, Anne [Autor:in] – 2008
Dölemeyer, Anne
Pages:
Scientific article
Carl Schmitt and Ahasver: the Idea of the state and the wandering Jew
Hasan-Rokem, Galit
Abstract:
In this article the cultural effects and the specific reverberations in Carl Schmitt’s work of two literary figures emerging in vastly different cultural contexts in the 16th century, Leviathan and the Wandering Jew, are analyzed using a pair of discursive concepts – political theology and Midrash. Whereas Leviathan is an explicitly discussed figure in Carl Schmitt’s work, Ahasver the Wandering Jew is a concealed figure in his writing – but, however, one that conceivably was in the range of cultural associations that he and especially the recipients of his work were exposed to. My aim is to show that whereas Schmitt was informed by the kind of stereotypical thinking embodied in the legendary and very popular figure of Ahasver, the figure itself was suppressed and replaced by a seemingly rational political discourse addressing Leviathan.
Pages: 4-25
Scientific article
The kingdom of god : Martin Buber’s critique of messianic politics
Mendes-Flohr, Paul
Abstract:
Through a textual and contextual analysis of Martin Buber’s scholarly disquisition, Königtum Gottes (1932), the article focuses on his critique of political Messianism. This critique is addressed to his friends who participated in the Bavarian Revolution of 1918/19, the political theology of Friedrich Gogarten and Carl Schmitt, and given trends in Zionism. With regard to the latter, Buber’s religious and social anarchism is particularly manifest as it is in his study of the biblical origins of Messianism, Königtum Gottes. The article concludes with a discussion of the affinities of Buber’s critique of political Messianism with that of Max Weber who like Buber called for a political and ethical re-valorization of the everyday. This call is contrasted with Walter Benjamin’s political Messianism, whose dialectic in effect endorses a similar ethos.
Pages: 26-38
Scientific article
Common law and jewish law : the diasporic principle of dina de-malkhuta dina
Goldberg, Sylvie Anne
Abstract:
Medieval rabbis conceived of a legal framework for the relations between Jews and non-Jews according to a principle: dina de-malkhuta dina, ‘the Law of the Kingdom is Law.’ This framework depended on the fact that Jews were living in Galut, Diaspora. Thus, the notion of Diaspora, which in the last century came to be used to refer to the fate of migrants in general, bears a dual legal connotation in Judaism. This article tries first, by tracing back the origin of the word “galut” or “golah” (translated as “exile”) in Antiquity, to demonstrate how it is related to the core of Jewish definitions of the “present” as construed by Rabbinic Judaism. It then ventures across the boundaries of time and place to question the purely theological and particularly Jewish evolution of this concept. It is an attempt to apprehend the ways in which the evolution of the notion of Diaspora bears witness to the transformation of the history of the Jews.
Pages: 39-53
Scientific article
Exile and diaspora : Jewish concepts of dispersion
Azria, Régine
Abstract:
The Jewish experience of Diaspora can be seen as a condensation of the diasporic condition more universally because of the breadth of its dispersion over space and time and the changing circumstances which compelled the Jews to permanently adjust their frames of living and thinking down to the present. The present paper intends to illustrate this paradigmatic (albeit atypical) imprint of Diaspora, in processes subject to dynamic change, using two examples: (1) the place of the exile/return topic in religious and modern representations, moving from a center/periphery paradigm to one of circulation and mobility; (2) the confrontation between the Jewish traditional lexicon of Diaspora, which retained a traditional diasporic geography (Ashkenaz, Sefarad, Mizrah), dissociated from its territorial substratum, and real geography.
Pages: 54-66
Scientific article
Nationalized judaism and diasporic existence : Jakob Klatzkin and Hans Jonas
Hotam, Yotam
Abstract:
This article characterizes the modern Jewish debate around Zionism as a profound political theological controversy by juxtaposing the works of two significant twentieth-century Jewish scholars, Jakob Klatzkin (1882–1948) and Hans Jonas (1903–1993). The article demonstrates that, for these scholars, the Zionist political venture was informed by a Gnostic theological message. While Klatzkin campaigned for Zionism as Gnosticism, Jonas critically challenged this link in his writings from the 1950s and 1960s. In presenting a theological reading of modern Jewish secular thought, the article transcends the political controversy between Zionists and Post-Zionists that dominated the literature in recent decades. It proposes a new horizon in the study of Jewish modern-secular thought.
Pages: 67-78
Scientific article
"Exile" as a theologico-political principle in Leo Strauss′s Jewish thought
Yaffe, Martin
Abstract:
I consider the recent attempt by Professor Eugene Sheppard to follow the development of Strauss’s thought within the parameters of Strauss’s biographical circumstance as a German-Jewish “exile.” I begin by mentioning two key points in Strauss’s critique of historicism. I then sketch Sheppard’s approach to Strauss in a preliminary way so as to bring out something of its historicist character. After that, I test the soundness of Sheppard’s approach by looking at a statement of Strauss’s on “exile” which is found in his most autobiographical writing. Since this statement is only a small part of Strauss’s larger argument in that writing, I comment on it in terms of its place in his argument as a whole. My purpose in doing so is to discover whether Strauss’s statement when understood in its own terms warrants being placed within Sheppard’s historicist parameters.
Pages: 79-94
Review
[Rezension von Pat O’Malley (Hg.), Governing risks] / Feustel, Robert [Autor:in] … – 2008
Feustel, Robert; Rodatz, Mathias
Pages: 95-107
Review
[Rezension von: Sally Engle Merry, Human rights and gender violence] / Froböse, Ulrike [Autor:in] – 2008
Froböse, Ulrike
Pages: 98-107
Review
[Rezension von: Jonathan Simon, Governing through crime: how the war on crime transformed American democracy and created a culture of fear] / Pates, Rebecca [Autor:in] – 2008
Pates, Rebecca
Pages: 100-107