The jewish people today is mostly divided into two subpopulations: the jews of israel (~43%) and ... more The jewish people today is mostly divided into two subpopulations: the jews of israel (~43%) and those of north America (~40%). They differ not just in the content of jewish identity but in its very structure. jewish identity in the Diaspora consists of voluntary religious and ethnic identification and solidarity. Alternatively, in israel, while jewish identity is of core importance, it is largely automatic. its major implications have to do with language, territory, citizenship, and political membership. Reigning patterns of jewish identity are now challenged by dissenting conceptions and emerging new forms. in order to make effective policy, decision makers must deepen their understanding of jewish identity in each of the two main centers and confront the challenge of forming a common language to bridge these two disparate conceptions of jewish identity.
In this review, I analyze, in regard to Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, how the crisis of the holy ... more In this review, I analyze, in regard to Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, how the crisis of the holy in contemporary culture is not formed directly by the effect of modernity on traditional religion but rather by the defensive steps of the religion itself in protection of its religious identity. In other words, I show how the contemporary concern for religious identity renders contemporary spirituality—the living relationship with God—problematic. In the course of this analysis, I focus first upon the thought of R. A. I. Kook as well as upon contemporary trends in Islam and Hinduism. In the second part of the essay, drawing especially upon contemporary Jewish thought and the Frankfurt School critique of modern capitalist society, I show how both postmodern theory and “negative theology” can be resources for the contemporary renewal of spirituality.
This special issue offers new readings of Arnold Van Gennep’s (1873–1957) seminal Les rites de pa... more This special issue offers new readings of Arnold Van Gennep’s (1873–1957) seminal Les rites de passage, first published in French in 1909 (Van Gennep, 1909). This slim book has provided the intellectual world some invaluable and well-known concepts for the analysis of social lives. Yet, it still tends to be read in a way that very much narrows the scope of its insights and implications. This book’s title is frequently used as a self-standing idiom, hindering further exploration of Rites de passage’s content, and thereby diminishing a full view of its potential contributions to contemporary social research. Shaped by functional and structural sensitivities, conventional assessments allude to Rites de passage when discussing both continuity and change in social lives. Addressing continuity, Van Gennep assumes that events in individual lives, such as marriage or death, can lead to social disorder. He thus asks; how do societies regulate the destabilizing potential of transitions? He responds by analyzing rites that accompany shifts in social roles, as well as movements across territories. This analysis propels him to claim that societies regain stability by ritualistically regulating three phases comprising any passage: separation from society (séparation), a period of margin (la période de marge), and incorporation into society (agrégation). Diverse disciplines from the humanities and social sciences have found this framework highly useful in identifying sequences of rituals and exploring their significance in maintaining social continuity. As for change, Van Gennep develops the concepts of la période de marge and liminality to denote an abeyant period, during which ordinary regulations are suspended. Studies tracing social
Classical social theory, and even more radically critical social theory, is historical and holist... more Classical social theory, and even more radically critical social theory, is historical and holistic. Neither politics nor education can be understood without grounding in society. Sociologists of education know about the contemporary tendency, rooted in the instrumentalist and rationalizing side of modernity, to abstract educational phenomena from social life, recoding them as individual attributes and increasingly as cognitive processes (Wexler, 2008, 2009). The forgetting of the social in the digital age continues and intensifies the “dialectic of Enlightenment,” where the promise of pure reason, above society, unexpectedly returns a desocialized, means-oriented, technical form of thought and a complementary mythical and stereotypical way of thinking, in place of wisdom (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1971). Forgetting the social constitution of political, educational, and, for that matter, economic, aesthetic, and erotic phenomena (Weber, 1946) is only the first step, although the major one, in an amnesia about the sources of collective life. When meaning is reduced to a combination of advertising-like slogans and numerical indices, we lose all sense of the importance of culture, both in everyday life and in social understanding. Religion, which was the first to go in the long shadow of modernity’s triumph, was more easily vanquished in the names of science, rationality, and Enlightenment. It survived mostly in compartmentalization, as the separate sphere of “the sacred.”
Arye Edrei’s paper Law Interpretation and Ideology,1 deals with three different approaches to dea... more Arye Edrei’s paper Law Interpretation and Ideology,1 deals with three different approaches to dealing with the lacuna in Jewish law regarding the perception and functioning of a Jewish sovereign state. Edrei’s paper focuses on the laws of war to exemplify how Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli and Rabbi Shlomo Goren each provide a different way of dealing with the challenge in light of their disparate ideologies and understandings of the significance and import of the Zionist enterprise in Jewish law. This paper offers a fourth angle: that of R. Ovadiah Yosef, and focuses on another facet of the same problem: that of returning territory, once conquered by Israel, to neighboring Arab states or to the Palestinians in the context of peace negotiations. Coming from a different ideology and a Sepharadic background, R. Ovadiah Yosef rejects the creation of a legal construct used to understand the religious implications of the existence of the State of Israel on a national-collectiv...
Hasidism is presented as a movement which breaks the pattern of Jewish utopian movements. In cont... more Hasidism is presented as a movement which breaks the pattern of Jewish utopian movements. In contrast to the traditional focus on collective salvation, Hasidism attemtps to reconstruct the social order on the basis of a utopian vision of individual salvation. The implications of this change regarding the reconstruction of Jewish society are examined, as well as the indication that it contains for a reorientation of Jewish civilization.
While acknowledging the decisive contribution of conflict sociology to our understanding of the (... more While acknowledging the decisive contribution of conflict sociology to our understanding of the (Jewish) ethnic issue in Israel, this article focuses on the actual political behavior of the Mizrahi population. Instead of developing radical social protest movements as might be expected, the Mizrahim have largely supported right-wing parties and policies. The article argues that in response to their exclusion from full membership in the Jewish-Israeli collective that the veteran Ashkenazim constructed, and from the material and symbolic goods that such membership entails, the Mizrahim have built a counter-collectivity. Using the cultural tool kit that they acquired in their experience of modernization in North Africa and the Middle East, the Mizrahim have created a (semi-) traditional ethno-religious Jewish collectivity from which they have excluded veteran left-wing Ashkenazim, accusing them of disloyalty and delegitimizing their Jewish identity.
... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 19... more ... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 1978: 272). ... being interested in supporting the Kehilla; in fact, quite the opposite, they became increasingly interested in subjecting the Jews to their direct con-trol (Rossman, 1982: 399 ...
ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvation... more ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvational visions are presented. Two patterns of alternatives emerge: one which does not impinge upon the broader society but only upon spiritual elites and while subordinating ...
In this paper I relate Jewish cultural resources to the structuring of intolerance and tolerance ... more In this paper I relate Jewish cultural resources to the structuring of intolerance and tolerance in the Jewish tradition.
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 1988
... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 19... more ... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 1978: 272). ... being interested in supporting the Kehilla; in fact, quite the opposite, they became increasingly interested in subjecting the Jews to their direct con-trol (Rossman, 1982: 399 ...
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 1988
ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvation... more ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvational visions are presented. Two patterns of alternatives emerge: one which does not impinge upon the broader society but only upon spiritual elites and while subordinating ...
The jewish people today is mostly divided into two subpopulations: the jews of israel (~43%) and ... more The jewish people today is mostly divided into two subpopulations: the jews of israel (~43%) and those of north America (~40%). They differ not just in the content of jewish identity but in its very structure. jewish identity in the Diaspora consists of voluntary religious and ethnic identification and solidarity. Alternatively, in israel, while jewish identity is of core importance, it is largely automatic. its major implications have to do with language, territory, citizenship, and political membership. Reigning patterns of jewish identity are now challenged by dissenting conceptions and emerging new forms. in order to make effective policy, decision makers must deepen their understanding of jewish identity in each of the two main centers and confront the challenge of forming a common language to bridge these two disparate conceptions of jewish identity.
In this review, I analyze, in regard to Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, how the crisis of the holy ... more In this review, I analyze, in regard to Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, how the crisis of the holy in contemporary culture is not formed directly by the effect of modernity on traditional religion but rather by the defensive steps of the religion itself in protection of its religious identity. In other words, I show how the contemporary concern for religious identity renders contemporary spirituality—the living relationship with God—problematic. In the course of this analysis, I focus first upon the thought of R. A. I. Kook as well as upon contemporary trends in Islam and Hinduism. In the second part of the essay, drawing especially upon contemporary Jewish thought and the Frankfurt School critique of modern capitalist society, I show how both postmodern theory and “negative theology” can be resources for the contemporary renewal of spirituality.
This special issue offers new readings of Arnold Van Gennep’s (1873–1957) seminal Les rites de pa... more This special issue offers new readings of Arnold Van Gennep’s (1873–1957) seminal Les rites de passage, first published in French in 1909 (Van Gennep, 1909). This slim book has provided the intellectual world some invaluable and well-known concepts for the analysis of social lives. Yet, it still tends to be read in a way that very much narrows the scope of its insights and implications. This book’s title is frequently used as a self-standing idiom, hindering further exploration of Rites de passage’s content, and thereby diminishing a full view of its potential contributions to contemporary social research. Shaped by functional and structural sensitivities, conventional assessments allude to Rites de passage when discussing both continuity and change in social lives. Addressing continuity, Van Gennep assumes that events in individual lives, such as marriage or death, can lead to social disorder. He thus asks; how do societies regulate the destabilizing potential of transitions? He responds by analyzing rites that accompany shifts in social roles, as well as movements across territories. This analysis propels him to claim that societies regain stability by ritualistically regulating three phases comprising any passage: separation from society (séparation), a period of margin (la période de marge), and incorporation into society (agrégation). Diverse disciplines from the humanities and social sciences have found this framework highly useful in identifying sequences of rituals and exploring their significance in maintaining social continuity. As for change, Van Gennep develops the concepts of la période de marge and liminality to denote an abeyant period, during which ordinary regulations are suspended. Studies tracing social
Classical social theory, and even more radically critical social theory, is historical and holist... more Classical social theory, and even more radically critical social theory, is historical and holistic. Neither politics nor education can be understood without grounding in society. Sociologists of education know about the contemporary tendency, rooted in the instrumentalist and rationalizing side of modernity, to abstract educational phenomena from social life, recoding them as individual attributes and increasingly as cognitive processes (Wexler, 2008, 2009). The forgetting of the social in the digital age continues and intensifies the “dialectic of Enlightenment,” where the promise of pure reason, above society, unexpectedly returns a desocialized, means-oriented, technical form of thought and a complementary mythical and stereotypical way of thinking, in place of wisdom (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1971). Forgetting the social constitution of political, educational, and, for that matter, economic, aesthetic, and erotic phenomena (Weber, 1946) is only the first step, although the major one, in an amnesia about the sources of collective life. When meaning is reduced to a combination of advertising-like slogans and numerical indices, we lose all sense of the importance of culture, both in everyday life and in social understanding. Religion, which was the first to go in the long shadow of modernity’s triumph, was more easily vanquished in the names of science, rationality, and Enlightenment. It survived mostly in compartmentalization, as the separate sphere of “the sacred.”
Arye Edrei’s paper Law Interpretation and Ideology,1 deals with three different approaches to dea... more Arye Edrei’s paper Law Interpretation and Ideology,1 deals with three different approaches to dealing with the lacuna in Jewish law regarding the perception and functioning of a Jewish sovereign state. Edrei’s paper focuses on the laws of war to exemplify how Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli and Rabbi Shlomo Goren each provide a different way of dealing with the challenge in light of their disparate ideologies and understandings of the significance and import of the Zionist enterprise in Jewish law. This paper offers a fourth angle: that of R. Ovadiah Yosef, and focuses on another facet of the same problem: that of returning territory, once conquered by Israel, to neighboring Arab states or to the Palestinians in the context of peace negotiations. Coming from a different ideology and a Sepharadic background, R. Ovadiah Yosef rejects the creation of a legal construct used to understand the religious implications of the existence of the State of Israel on a national-collectiv...
Hasidism is presented as a movement which breaks the pattern of Jewish utopian movements. In cont... more Hasidism is presented as a movement which breaks the pattern of Jewish utopian movements. In contrast to the traditional focus on collective salvation, Hasidism attemtps to reconstruct the social order on the basis of a utopian vision of individual salvation. The implications of this change regarding the reconstruction of Jewish society are examined, as well as the indication that it contains for a reorientation of Jewish civilization.
While acknowledging the decisive contribution of conflict sociology to our understanding of the (... more While acknowledging the decisive contribution of conflict sociology to our understanding of the (Jewish) ethnic issue in Israel, this article focuses on the actual political behavior of the Mizrahi population. Instead of developing radical social protest movements as might be expected, the Mizrahim have largely supported right-wing parties and policies. The article argues that in response to their exclusion from full membership in the Jewish-Israeli collective that the veteran Ashkenazim constructed, and from the material and symbolic goods that such membership entails, the Mizrahim have built a counter-collectivity. Using the cultural tool kit that they acquired in their experience of modernization in North Africa and the Middle East, the Mizrahim have created a (semi-) traditional ethno-religious Jewish collectivity from which they have excluded veteran left-wing Ashkenazim, accusing them of disloyalty and delegitimizing their Jewish identity.
... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 19... more ... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 1978: 272). ... being interested in supporting the Kehilla; in fact, quite the opposite, they became increasingly interested in subjecting the Jews to their direct con-trol (Rossman, 1982: 399 ...
ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvation... more ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvational visions are presented. Two patterns of alternatives emerge: one which does not impinge upon the broader society but only upon spiritual elites and while subordinating ...
In this paper I relate Jewish cultural resources to the structuring of intolerance and tolerance ... more In this paper I relate Jewish cultural resources to the structuring of intolerance and tolerance in the Jewish tradition.
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 1988
... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 19... more ... the discussion of this praxis by Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), quoted in Dan and Tishby, 1978: 272). ... being interested in supporting the Kehilla; in fact, quite the opposite, they became increasingly interested in subjecting the Jews to their direct con-trol (Rossman, 1982: 399 ...
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 1988
ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvation... more ABSTRACT The institutionalized Jewish salvational vision of the Halacha and alternative salvational visions are presented. Two patterns of alternatives emerge: one which does not impinge upon the broader society but only upon spiritual elites and while subordinating ...
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Papers by Shlomo Fischer