(1994). An impossible pluralism? European jews and oriental Jews in the Israeli history curriculum. History of European Ideas: Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 41-51.

Jews and Islamic Law in Early 20th-Century Yemen. By Mark S. Wagner. Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015. Pp. xi + 208. $75 ; $29.

In German Idealism and the Jew , Michael Mack uncovers the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the German philosophical tradition. While many have read German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's conception of universal reason. Offering the first analytical account of the connection between anti-Semitism and philosophy, Mack begins his exploration by showing how the fundamental (...) thinkers in the German idealist tradition--Kant, Hegel, and, through them, Feuerbach and Wagner--argued that the human world should perform and enact the promises held out by a conception of an otherworldly heaven. But their respective philosophies all ran aground on the belief that the worldly proved incapable of transforming itself into this otherworldly ideal. To reconcile this incommensurability, Mack argues, philosophers created a construction of Jews as symbolic of the "worldliness" that hindered the development of a body politic and that served as a foil to Kantian autonomy and rationality. In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Franz Rosenzweig, and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and Jewish. Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees, while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened--a concept that differed substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner. By speaking the unspoken in German philosophy, this book profoundly reshapes our understanding of it. (shrink)

In _German Idealism and the Jew_, Michael Mack uncovers the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the German philosophical tradition. While many have read German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's conception of universal reason. Offering the first analytical account of the connection between anti-Semitism and philosophy, Mack begins his exploration by showing how the fundamental thinkers (...) in the German idealist tradition—Kant, Hegel, and, through them, Feuerbach and Wagner—argued that the human world should perform and enact the promises held out by a conception of an otherworldly heaven. But their respective philosophies all ran aground on the belief that the worldly proved incapable of transforming itself into this otherworldly ideal. To reconcile this incommensurability, Mack argues, philosophers created a construction of Jews as symbolic of the "worldliness" that hindered the development of a body politic and that served as a foil to Kantian autonomy and rationality. In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Franz Rosenzweig, and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and Jewish. Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees, while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened—a concept that differed substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner. By speaking the unspoken in German philosophy, this book profoundly reshapes our understanding of it. (shrink)

Exile in the Maghreb: Jews under Islam, Sources and Documents, 997–1912. By Paul B. Fenton and David G. Littman. Madison, NJ: FairLeigh Dickinson University Press, 2016. Pp. xxxv + 627. $60, £39.95 ; $57, £39.95.

The Business of Identity: Jews, Muslims, and Economic Life in Medieval Egypt. By Phillip I. Ackerman-Lieberman. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Cultures. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014. Pp. xvi + 446. $65.

The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina. By Haggai Mazuz. Brill Reference Library of Judaism, vol. 38. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Pp. xvi + 132. $122, €103.

In this article, I explore the relationship between the philosophy of Theodor Adorno and the Bilderverbot , or biblical Second Commandment against images. My starting point is J. F. Lyotard's construction of the melancholic sublime in his essay `What is the Postmodern?', which I argue he uses to critique Adorno's aesthetics, and, more generally, his position as a `modern' thinker. To prove that Lyotard had Adorno in mind when he constructed the category of the melancholic sublime, I return to an (...) earlier piece by Lyotard — `Adorno as the Devil' — which is a reading of Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus , in which Adorno is said to be one of the faces of the Devil. My argument is that Lyotard's understanding of Adorno is flawed because he does not recognize the distinctly Jewish, albeit secularized, character of his thought. I set out to challenge Lyotard by demonstrating the central importance that the Bilderverbot plays in Adorno's work, which should not be understood as melancholic because the Jewish Messianism associated with the Bilderverbot is profoundly future-oriented. In short, I argue that Lyotard's depiction of Adorno is flawed because he reads him as a Christian, while he should be approaching him as a secularized Jew. Key Words: Theodor Adorno • aesthetic theory • Dr Faustus • the image prohibition • Jewish thought • Jean-François Lyotard • Thomas Mann • Messianism • representation • the sublime. (shrink)

Becoming Diaspora Jews: Behind the Story of Elephantine. By Karel van der Toorn. The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. xi + 270. $65.

One of the main topics of the völkisch racial scientist Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß was the racial cartography of the Orient. Based on older discussions in anti-Semitic literature, Clauß constructed a racially divided – double – Orient and made a sharp distinction between Arabs and Jews. His depiction largely follows patterns of ascription from Orientalist as well as anti-Semitic discourses. By doing so he draws attention to structural overlaps and differences between Orientalism and anti-Semitism: a romanticized Arabic Orient served as (...) an antipole to a “Nordic” Europe, and as such was finally able to advance to a positive alternative. The Jewish Orient, on the other hand, embodied for Clauß a threatening ambivalence and contrariety, which from the very beginning precluded romanticization and identification. (shrink)

Medieval Jerusalem: Forging an Islamic City in Spaces Sacred to Christians and Jews. By Jacob Lassner. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Pp. xxv + 242. $75.

A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam. By Uriel I. Simonsohn. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Pp. ix + 306. $79.95, £52.