Call for Papers: How Jews Know. Epistemologies of Jewish Knowledge

Considering the many attempts to defi ne what constitutes knowledge, and especially those to distinguish it from belief, 1 one gets the impression that religious knowledge is a contradiction in terms or at least a curiosity. The fact that religion, which necessarily implies religious knowledge, is based on self-evident convictions -on the belief in an entity oft en described as all knowing -contradicts the rationality usually ascribed to knowledge. From a historical perspective this assumption has to be challenged, however. For not only were conceptions of rationality and religion subject to change and continue to be so, but religious movements time and again claimed to be rational in essence.

This seminar brings together scholars sharing an interest in an emerging subfield within rabbinic literature, in line with developments in adjacent disciplines. A growing number of projects and publications attest to an increasing awareness of new approaches (historical anthropology, cultural studies, critical science studies, gender studies) to the study of ancient sciences. Moreover, the diverse nature of ancient knowledge, its socio-historical contexts and varied ways of knowledge transfer have come more into focus. Earlier studies typically assumed the idealized Graeco-Roman scientific thinking as the foil against which one retrieves parallels and influences, without paying attention to the plurality of cultural transfers and endemic developments in Late Antiquity. This seminar on rabbinic knowledge culture(s) from a comparative perspective engages a broader approach, asking how manifestations of different forms of ancient knowing impacted on the period under discussion, and in turn were shaped by larger socio-historical, cultural and religious formations. The contributions will inquire into different but interrelated fields of knowledge about nature and creatures (Watts Belser; Neis; Hayes), the body and medicine (Fonrobert, Lehmhaus), law, truth and philosophy (Hidary; Hayes), the senses and spatiality (Mandsager; Novick; Kalmin), and ethnography (Redfield). Special attention will be paid (e.g., by Kalmin; Hayes; Neis; Watts Belser; Fonrobert, Hoffmann Libson) to modes, practices, and concepts of knowing and reasoning (e.g., embodied knowledge; empiricism and theory; exegetical approaches) as well as to their epistemic dimensions (e.g., conceptualization of 'scientific' knowledge in ancient cultures and its embeddeness within other knowledge complexes; the "Jewishness" of knowledge in rabbinic texts). Papers will address rabbinic conceptions of knowledge transfer, acquisition or displacement with a focus on strategies of framing or representing expertise and experts in certain genres and discursive contexts (e.g., lists, de-/prescriptive narratives, Halakhic debates, compilational, encyclopaedic or epitomizing discourses). The papers and discussions within this seminar shall help to increase the awareness for the topic within Jewish studies and beyond. Furthermore, the seminar will start a dialogue about methodological and theoretical issues at stake in such inquiries and it aims at fostering collaboration among the involved scholars and forging links between interested colleagues for future research on the topics at hand.

Trumah. Zeitschrift der Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg, 2018

Sa'adia ben Yosef Ga'on was one of the most outstanding figures of the Geonic period, the leading character of the 10th century's Judaism. Besides his extensive writings in almost every field of Jewish knowledge, one of Sa'adia's most innovative contributions was his philosophical treatise, KitÁb al-amÁnÁt wa-l-i'tiqÁdÁt, the first important philosophic book written in the Mu'tazila school. In the 20th century, the most prominent researchers in Jewish philosophy have tried to trace the sources of Sa'adia Ga'on's ideas and identify the grounds of his system of thought. This article deals with the conflicting interpretations of what has come to be called his 'theory of knowledge', notably by Israel Efros, Harry Austryn Wolfson, Abraham Joshua He-schel, and Georges Vajda. It concludes that just as these interpretations took up a theme which was debated in academia in their times, Sa'adia turned the current notion of ta'wÍl into a 'perfect tool' for his intellectual purposes.

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 1995

2018

In 2018, we celebrate the bicentennial of Wissenschaft des Judentums, the early Jewish Studies that began in the nineteenth century and introduced critical historical research into Jewish sources, using all academic methods available, including non-Jewish sources or the comparison with them. Today, the academic study of Judaism exists in various national and cultural contexts. Its three centers – Israel, the United States, and Germany – have different labels and forms for it such as “Jewish Studies,” “Jewish Science” (Madat ha-Yahadut), “Judaic Studies,” or “Jewish Theology.” Their differences notwithstanding, they all refer to the year 1818 as the founding date of their disciplines. In that year, Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) published his essay Etwas über die rabbinische Literatur (“Something on Rabbinic Literature”), which unfolded the thematic field of modern Jewish Studies for the first time.2 As Michael A. Meyer and Ismar Schorsch emphasize in the double interview opening this issu...

Full program.

Routledge Handbook of Religious Laws, 2019

This chapter shows that the history of Jewish law is more a matter of historiosophy, that is, of interpretation and meaning, rather than descriptive historiography, than are the histories of other religio-legal traditions. The historical narration of Jewish law is itself a disputed matter across the generations and one indispensable to ideologies and views concerning the Jewish religion. Depicting the history of Jewish law, of which there is no unitary or trans-historical conception, because each of its components – ‘history’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘law’ – is highly contested and subject to intensely held ideological perspectives. In various discourses, the subjugation of Jewish law to external meanings and conceptions was a choice intentionally made by Jewish thinkers and jurists, so that in different contexts it became the authentic and authoritative manifestation of Jewish law. Because Jewish law was seen as a means of achieving personal perfection, transcending ethnic belonging and history, its particularity to the Jews and its very Jewishness were questioned.