Abraham Isaac Hakohen Kook (1865-1935) served as the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Erets Israel during the period of the British mandate. Rav Kook was a polymath, equally talented as a Talmudic legalist and rationalist philosopher, on the one hand, and as a mystic and poet, on the other. Today, we would say that he was both "left and right hemisphere." The present collection brings together in English translation Rav Kook's contributions to the field of Jewish history, though perhaps "historiosophy" (...) would be the better word. Rav Kook joins the ranks of those great Jewish thinkers who preceded him in interpretation of history: Maharal of Prague, Moses Hayyim Luzzatto and Zadok Hakohen of Lublin. If Rav Kook's philosophy were to be summed up in a single word, it would be: Kelaliyut or universality. Whereas most of us are held captive by individual events, Rav Kook has a great gift for the overview of history. He brings this gift to bear in his ability to provide perspective on the modern rebirth of Israel against the backdrop of mankind's ongoing spiritual evolution. In the latter regard, his vision has sometimes been compared to that of Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobido, or more recently Ken Wilber. Contained in this collection are Rav Kook's eulogy for Herzl and Rav Kook's remarks at the opening of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The essays are placed in historic context and provided with copious scholarly endnotes. (shrink)

This article examines the nutritional and cultural meaning underlying the list of foods mentioned in the claims of the Israelites in Numbers 11:4–6. The foods eaten by the Israelites in Egypt express stability and a familiar routine, whilst the foods of Eretz Israel, although depicted as choicer, express uncertainty. The list of foods has a literary role on several spheres: (1) The foods are elements distinguishing the agricultural practices in Eretz Israel and Egypt. (2) Fish and vegetables are (...) an indicator of the low class of the Israelites – eating fish reflects the practice of obtaining protein from small animals available to the poor. In Egypt, vegetables were more readily available and were a more prominent ingredient in the diet of the poor and slaves. (3) The food is an indicator of the Egyptian cultural identity of the Israelites – the Bible identifies the longing for the fish and vegetables characteristic of their Egyptian diet as a sign of the Israelites’ cultural and mental affiliation with Egypt. Although they left Egypt physically, they remained affiliated with Egyptian culture and identity. Contribution: This article contributes to the understanding of the biblical story of the ‘desirers’ (Nm 11:4–6) from a multidisplinary perspective. It combines the fields of ancient Egyptian agriculture, nutrition, culture and research on features of immigrants’ foods. (shrink)

The sabbatical year in the Jewish agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel, vol. 1896-1903.

The book Shaarei Yerushalayim, written by R. Moshe Reicher, contains contemporary information on 19th-century Eretz Israel. Reicher perceived his compilation as a religious cultural moderator between the Holy Land and the Jews in the Diaspora, in which he reported to the Jews of Galicia on various aspects related to the land. This article discusses his descriptions of local food crops and the messages he attempted to convey to his readers through botanical means. Reicher describes some 70 species of fruits (...) and vegetables that were available in Jerusalem's markets. The occupation with local fruits is part of a 'covert campaign' for Eretz Israel and Jerusalem. Reicher tells his listeners about the good cheap local fruits; he stresses their uniqueness and describes their qualities and the dishes prepared from them, and also compares them with the crops in Galicia. (shrink)

In Israel, whistleblowing in the nursing profession has been largely ignored. This topic is neither part of the professional—ethical discourse nor a subject for research. Focusing on the divide between internal and external whistleblowing, this article presents a study that explores nurses’ willingness to disclose an act that could jeopardize the rights or safety of patients. Internal disclosure entails reporting wrongdoing to an authority within the organization. External disclosure involves reporting the offense to an outside agency, such as a (...) professional organization or the press. The study’s findings indicate that the nurse respondents viewed both the harmful misconduct of a colleague and that of a manager as being very serious. In such dilemmas the nurses reported a desire to correct the wrongdoing and a concomitant willingness to act. They were, however, much more likely to whistleblow internally rather than externally. This study revealed a pattern of nurses’ progressive retraction as the circle of disclosure widened. (shrink)

die 13 Kapitel der Schrift "Die Lichter der Tora", die hier in deutscher Erstübersetzung vorgelegt werden, enthalten religiöse Reflexionen und Meditationen über Sinn und Bedeutung der Tora für ein lebendiges Judentum im Lande Israel und im Exil. Die kurzen, prägnanten Texte wurden im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts geschrieben und machten wegen ihrer Verbindung von orthodoxer rabbinischer Tradition und mystischer Kontemplation "Orot HaTora" zu einem modernen Klassiker der religiösen jüdischen Literatur. Der Autor, Rav Abraham Isaak Kook, war vor der (...) Gründung des Staates Israel der erste aschkenasische Oberrabiner in Palästina und gilt als einer der bedeutendsten jüdischen Mystiker des letzten Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

Current research has identified five discrete US negotiation tactics, a traditional one considered to be ethical, and four considered to be ethically questionable. Scholars have independently used culture to explain how the endorsement of these five negotiation tactics varies across nations. They have also independently used interpersonal trust and ethics propensity to explain antecedents of the endorsement of those five negotiation tactics. This research combines all those variables into one model that investigates the influence of horizontal and vertical individualism–collectivism, ethical (...) idealism, and trust propensity on employees’ attitudes toward ethically questionable negotiation tactics in Israel and Kyrgyzstan. A survey questionnaire was translated from English to Hebrew and Kyrgyz, and 615 responses were collected from employees in various industries in the two countries. We empirically confirmed three types of questionable negotiation tactics discovered in previous one-nation studies, namely, pretending, deceiving, and lying. Vertical individualism was found to be positively, and horizontal collectivism was found to be negatively, related to pretending, deceiving, and lying. Ethical idealism was found to be negatively related to the endorsement of the lying tactics, while trust propensity was negatively related to the pretending tactics. Compared with Israel, employees’ endorsement of ethically questionable negotiation tactics was significantly higher in Kyrgyzstan. Contribution to theory and practice is discussed. (shrink)

This study of internal auditors and auditees, who engage in both financial and operational internal audits in Israel, extends theory and research on internal audits in organizational units. It develops and tests a model that examines the role of top management and internal auditors in facilitating learning from internal audits and driving perceived performance improvement. We argue that support from the top management for the internal audit as well as the auditor’s capacity facilitate learning from audits and help audited (...) units to improve ethicality, efficiency, and effectiveness in organizations. The results of time-lagged survey data provide general support for the hypothesized indirect relationships between auditor capacity, auditor–auditee relational exchanges, learning from audits, and three different perceived performance measures: ethical behavior, efficiency, and effectiveness. We discuss the implications for research on internal audits, proactive learning, ethics, and performance improvement of organizational units in the public sector. (shrink)

It is God's covenant with Abraham, freely initiated by God, that constitutes Israel as a people who gratefully recall the past, who live obediently in the present, and who face the future in the assurance of God's promises.

My assertion is that God’s biblical image may not reflect entirely His existence in itself as well as His revealed image. Even if God in Himself is both transcendent and immanent at the same time, and He is revealing accordingly in the history of humankind, still the image of God constructed in the writings of the Old Testament is merely the perspective made upon God by His followers to whom the He has revealed. That could be the reason why for (...) centuries God’s biblical image seems to emphasize more His immanence, starting with Pentateuch, where God cohabites with Adam on Earth, then He reveals Himself to Abraham and Moses and so on. Somewhere, after the Babylonian exile, the image suffers slightly differences tilting towards God’s transcendence. In a path already created and grounded by Israel’s ancestors, even this new color of transcendence bears the nuances of immanence. How can this be possible? Let’s take a look on the revelation received by Abraham from God and see how this can fit the profile. Instead of the transcendence of God regarded by others in the differentness of Yahweh appointed by Abraham in his walking out of Mesopotamia, I will prove otherwise, that Abraham is on the contrary proving God’s immanency in this very differentness of His in relation with other gods by providence and omnipresence, indwelling His creation. (shrink)

My assertion is that God’s biblical image may not reflect entirely His existence in itself as well as His revealed image. Even if God in Himself is both transcendent and immanent at the same time, and He is revealing accordingly in the history of humankind, still the image of God constructed in the writings of the Old Testament is merely the perspective made upon God by His followers to whom the He has revealed. That could be the reason why for (...) centuries God’s biblical image seems to emphasize more His immanence, starting with Pentateuch, where God cohabites with Adam on Earth, then He reveals Himself to Abraham and Moses and so on. Somewhere, after the Babylonian exile, the image suffers slightly differences tilting towards God’s transcendence. In a path already created and grounded by Israel’s ancestors, even this new color of transcendence bears the nuances of immanence. How can this be possible? Let’s take a look on the revelation received by Abraham from God and see how this can fit the profile. Instead of the transcendence of God regarded by others in the differentness of Yahweh appointed by Abraham in his walking out of Mesopotamia, I will prove otherwise, that Abraham is on the contrary proving God’s immanency in this very differentness of His in relation with other gods by providence and omnipresence, indwelling His creation. (shrink)

Drawing on the writings of the Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel, I defend a partial response to the problem of divine hiddenness. A Jewish approach to divine love includes the thought that God desires meaningful relationship not only with individual persons, but also with communities of persons. In combination with John Schellenberg’s account of divine love, the admission of God’s desire for such relationships makes possible that a person may fail to believe that God exists not because of any individual (...) failing, but because the individual is a member of a larger community that itself is culpable. (shrink)

On the Life of Abraham displays Philo's philosophical, exegetical, and literary genius at its best. Philo begins by introducing the biblical figures Enos, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as unwritten laws. Then, interweaving literal, ethical, and allegorical interpretations, Philo presents the life and achievements of Abraham, founder of the Jewish nation, in the form of a Greco-Roman bios, or biography. Ellen Birnbaum and John Dillon explain why and how this work is important within the context of Philo's own oeuvre, (...) early Jewish and Christian exegesis, and ancient philosophy. They also offer a new English translation and detailed analyses, in which they elucidate the meaning of Philo's thought, including his perplexing notion that Israel's ancestors were laws in themselves. (shrink)

Unlike the other prominent patriarchs of Israel, whose names also function as tribal or local designations, the Abraham who stands at the beginning of the patriarchal traditions appears to have been a historical individual before he became the subject of tradition and legend.

The manifest destiny of Israel runs through this uncritical, popular history like the manifest destiny of the sheriff through a Western movie, and the Israeli-Arab dispute is traced back ultimately to the characters of Jacob and Esau.--R. F. T.

Proposer une interprétation du rôle que revêt Israël dans la première période de la pensée hégélienne, de l'Esprit du christianisme et son destin jusqu'à la Phénoménologie de l'esprit, c'est ce à quoi s'attelle cet essai et ceci en montrant de quelle manière la confrontation entre Hegel et Israël est à la base de la formation des concepts de réconciliation, pardon et expérience. Hegel développe en effet certaines des thématiques centrales de sa réflexion justement au contact d'Israël, ce qui témoigne bien (...) que ce signe d'Abraham ne cesse d'interroger la pensée hégélienne dans son coeur génératif. A travers la façon dont la confrontation de Hegel avec Israël permet de jeter une lumière nouvelle sur son interprétation de l'entendement kantien, du problème de la loi (de dérivation paulinienne) et de celui du langage, cet essai entend illustrer comment la confrontation du jeune Hegel avec son fond théologique est aussi l'occasion pour la pensée de réfléchir sur sa propre genèse et sur son propre statut. En passant en revue les changements de position qui caractérisent la relation de Hegel avec Israël comme figure de la pensée, cet ouvrage montre comment l'expérience de la pensée est aussi une expérience dans le sens subjectif de ce génitif. La dernière partie de ce volume, consacrée à la dialectique qui aboutit au pardon dans l'oeuvre de 1807, unit ainsi le problème historiographique au problème théorique. (shrink)

When Augustine condemns the Jews to eternal carnality, he draws a direct connection between anthropology and hermeneutics. Because the Jews reject reading “in the spirit,” they are therefore condemned to remain “Israel in the flesh.” Allegory is thus, in his theory, a mode of relating to the body. In another part of the Christian world, Origen also described the failure of the Jews as owing to a literalist hermeneutic, one that is unwilling to go beyond or behind the material (...) language and discover its immaterial spirit.1 This way of thinking about language has been initially stimulated in the Fathers by Paul’s usage of “in the flesh” and “in the spirit” respectively to mean literal and figurative. Romans 7:5-6 is a powerful example of this hermeneutic structure: “For when we were still in the flesh, our sinful passions, stirred up by the law, were at work on our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are fully freed from the law, dead to that in which we lay captive. We can thus serve in the new being of the Spirit and not the old one of the letter.” In fact, the exact same metaphor is used independently of Paul by Philo, who writes that his interest is in “the hidden and inward meaning which appeals to the few who study soul characteristics rather than bodily forms.”2 For both, hermeneutics becomes anthropology. 1. See Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall , pp. 107-12.2. Philo, On Abraham, sec. 147, in vol. 6 of Philo, trans. and ed. F. H. Colson , p. 75. It is very important to note that Philo himself is just the most visible representative of an entire school of people who understood the Bible, and indeed the philosophy of language, as he did. On this see David Winston, “Philo and the Contemplative Life,” in Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible through the Middle Ages, ed. Arthur Green , pp. 198-231, esp. p. 211. Daniel Boyarin is Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the department of Near-Eastern studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash , as well as the forthcoming Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture, from which the present essay is drawn. He is currently engaged in a project entitled The Politics of the Spirit: Paul as a Jewish Cultural Critic. (shrink)

En 1944, Abraham Leon (1918-1944), un judío polaco que en su breve e intensa vida había pasado del sionismo de izquierdas representado por la organización juvenil _Hashomer Hatzair_ (Guardia de la Juventud) al trotskismo, escribía un breve e interesante opúsculo bajo el título _La conception matérialiste de la question juive_ (_La concepción materialista de la cuestión judía_). En sus 17 páginas intentó explicar desde postulados marxistas el origen de la ideología que había defendido en sus primeros años.

Dans cette note il s’agit de la découverte de deux copies manuscriptes inconnues du chapitre quinze d’une oeuvre d’eschatologie hebraique de la moitié du XIIe siècle rédigée par Abrahm bar HIija ou Abraham Savosarda, le Liber revelator. Cette oeuvre est connue seulement en hebraique et dans la traduction de Marie Josef Millás-Vallicrosa. Le chapitre cinque regarde une conception astrologique de la philosophie de l’histoire du monde, de la naissance ou de la chute des gouvernements et des religions avec le titre (...) De redemptione Israel. L’Autrice a retrouvé une traduction latine inconnue en deux copies manuscriptes, dans deux Bibliotèques allemandes, une à Lipsie et l’autre à Wolfenbüttel redigées par le frère des Franciscains mineurs du Couvent de Gottingen Theodoricus de Northem. On demontre en renvoyant aussi à ses études précédantes à ces propos, que ce chapitre cinq à été la source primaire de l’oeuvre de Pierre d’Ailly qui partagait la même philosophie astrologique de l’histoire sacrée, l’ Elucidarium opus concordantiae astronomiae cum theologia nec non historice veritatis édité en 1490, à commencer du chapitre 24 jusqu’au chapitre 33. (shrink)

A detailed study of the political organization in an important area of Tanzania shortly before Independence. Unyamwezi covers 35,000 square miles and has a population of 400,000. Dr Abrahams outlines the social and economic framework and examines the origins of the modern political system. He then discusses the internal organization of Nyamwezi chiefdoms and villages and the emergence of national politics. The theoretical and comparative implications of the study, which is based on extensive field work in the area, are (...) also considered. (shrink)

There are multiple manners of defining Jewish philosophy. The controversies woven around this topic seem to leave the issue perpetually open instead of determining a unique and final perspective. However, this outcome is indubitably an indication of the fact that Jewish philosophy proposes a privileged manner of understanding Judaism through the encounter between philosophy and religion as a founding polar- ity of a creative tradition. One of the ways of asserting this polarity has gained the symbolic dimension of superimposing two (...) cultural paradigms. This has been expressed through the metaphor of two cities, namely Jerusalem and Athens, and through the metaphor of two lands, Greece and Israel. Out of these symbolic designations I will bring into discussion the standpoints of Leo Strauss and Abraham Joshua Heschel and will try to offer a new perspective over this issue. (shrink)

The topic of my dissertation is satire. This seems to excite many people, and over the past four years I have heard many variations of a similar refrain: “Oh, wow. You’re studying satire? That’s very topical. You must have a lot of material to work with.” There is a way in which this is true, though I suspect in a way that diverges from the way that most of my interlocutors believed. I suspect that the material they imagined me to (...) be working with was the output of Donald Trump, first a candidate for and now holder of the office of President of the United States. That is not the material I find interesting. More interesting to me is their statement. It evinces a number of beliefs that I find interesting, chief among them that Trump makes the current period particularly apt for satire, as if a doddery and incompetent ruling class is somehow a recent phenomenon. And I suspect that underneath this belief in the aptness of satire is a belief in the power of satire. Satire is somehow how people are going to strike back at the vice-governed fools who rule us. Those beliefs are the material I want to work with. This is my interest in satire, then: not so much what it is about satire that makes it powerful, but what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful? And what is it about satire that makes people think it is powerful when there is pretty powerful evidence that it is not? Unfortunately, here is where I run into the problem that in a very important way I do not have a lot of material to work with. There is not an awful lot on satire within the analytic tradition: outside of a few references to satire, analytic discussions of satire are limited to two short articles. Accordingly, I have taken the task of my dissertation to be to create an account of satire that helps to bring forward why satire is a thing that people can imagine to be powerful, that they can imagine to be politically effective. My dissertation will effectively have two halves, one where I build my account and one where I begin to apply it. The purpose of applying my account, which will comprise the final two chapters, will not be to show its implications so much as how it can be used. My goal will not so much be to give definitive answers about the nature of satire, but rather to give a demonstration of how my account facilitates engaging questions about the role of satire in social and political context. (shrink)

Much of the literature exploring the intersection between Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy and architecture have focused on abstract theory, experimental projects and practices at the margins of the profession. But, one may ask, what of the mainstream, commercial practices that produce the offices, housing, shops, schools and community buildings that we see and engage with in our day-to-day lives? What of the everyday design decisions made by professional architects and technicians sitting at their desks and drawing boards? Are these to be excluded (...) from architecture's engagement with Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy? As I will show in this paper, Deleuze and Guattari's proposals for the strata and the machinic assemblage are drawn from their underlying attempt to expand Hjelmslev's planar composition from a tool used to analyse language to a conceptual framework used to analyse the formation and evolution of all things. There is nothing within the conceptual framework of the strata/machinic assemblage to suggest, therefore, that they should not be used to analyse such practices. With this in mind, this article considers how these concepts can be translated through and help provide new insight into a real-world design sequence taken from mainstream, commercial architectural practice. In doing so it will show how such practices can offer Deleuzo-Guattarian scholars a more nuanced insight into this conceptual framework and the concepts that form it. (shrink)

Dans cette contribution, nous chercherons à montrer comment dans l’articulation de la communauté chez Hegel et Rosenzweig, se montre une radicale différence en ce qui concerne la conception de l’horizon politique et donc – plus en généralement – la relation avec l’altérité. Contre la dure affirmation hégélienne « Abraham ne voulait pas aimer et donc être libre » et contre le vide ou la négativité que représente le judaïsme aux yeux de Hegel, Rosenzweig propose une autre compréhension du Politique, en (...) définissant l’existence du peuple d’Israël – dans la ‘parfaite’ éternité de sa persistance de peuple « déjà parvenu à destination » – comme existence métahistorique. (shrink)