Islamic and Jewish Studies

The article explains the rise of Karaite Judaism (in around the 10th century CE) as primarily motivated by the Jews' pressing need to authenticate Hebrew Scripture, due to their cultural awakening to Arabic literacy in general, and to the Islamic conception of the formation of the Qur’ān as a book, in particular.  Leading Karaite thinkers reconstructed a new foundational narrative, in which a "single" (written torah), as opposed to a "dual" (oral and written torah) formed the sole revealed base for Jewish creed. In this, they also perceived a credible response to the Islamic undermining of the Hebrew Bible as a revealed scripture abrogated by the Qur’ān. Nevertheless, there was also a degree of ambivalence in the Karaite reconstruction of Judaism, which is generally typical of heretical movements that are empowered by the dissemination of literacy among their folk. Karaite attempts to retain the kudos of oral culture are also highlighted, especially, in the envisioning of a distant oral past which originally informed various genres of the Hebrew Bible, as reflected in Karaite exegesis.

What is the relationship between friendship and human flourishing? This is a central topic in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one to which Maimonides also returned throughout his career. Despite the relative neglect of this topic in recent scholarship, I argue that friendship (philia) was an important link between moral and intellectual perfection for Maimonides. He identified Aristotle’s virtue friendship with the love between students and teachers and also interpreted many of the divine commandments as efforts to promote both family and virtue friendship among the Jewish people. Friendship was aligned thematically in Maimonides’ writings with topics like kinship and sexuality, circumcision, and the ethics of speech, all of which point in different ways to the unresolved tension between rational and sensual aspects of our human condition. This article therefore contributes to the investigation of the relationship between Maimonides’ legal and philosophical writing on social themes. While Aristotle clearly influenced his reading of biblical and rabbinic texts for example, I will also argue that Maimonides’ religious and communal commitments helped to push his reading of Aristotle in a broadly inclusive direction— both with respect to the range of different goods that are appropriate to an ideal human life as well as the potential accessibility of those goods to different classes of persons. I offer this article as a corrective to the exaggerated focus on seclusion and solitary contemplation that has characterized academic scholarship on Maimonides.

This article compares the modern Hebrew and Arabic 'renaissance' movements (the haskala and the nahḍ a) to argue that the nahḍ a can and should be studied comparatively, and to illustrate some of the insights gained through a comparative reading of non-Western cultural modernity. Much as the nahḍ a is often read as the formative moment of modern Arab identity, the haskala is viewed as the originary moment of Jewish modernity. Comparative analysis sheds light on the ideas and psychology of the two movements as well their progenitors' similar historical experiences. In particular, the contribution of Arab Jewish intellectuals to the haskala and the nahḍ a opens new vistas into intersections of modern Arabic and Hebrew thought, further eroding long-standing assumptions about the boundaries between Arab and Jewish cultures. The textual output of Arab Jews in Arabic and in Hebrew illuminates the cross-cultural circulation of ideas and tropes of 'modernity' and 'enlightenment' underlying both the nahḍ a and the haskala. I use the comparison to underscore that the nahḍ a was at one and the same time an Arab movement, part of a multilingual regional discourse, and one of many global 'enlightenment' discourses that emerged contemporaneously in the colonial and post-colonial world.

How and why has anti-Zionism and antisemitism become so radical and widespread? This timely and important volume argues convincingly that today's inflamed rhetoric exceeds the boundaries of legitimate criticism of the policies and actions of the state of Israel and conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The contributors give the dynamics of this process full theoretical, political, legal, and educational treatment and demonstrate how these forces operate in formal and informal political spheres as well as domestic and transnational spaces. They offer significant historical and global perspectives of the problem, including how Holocaust memory and meaning have been reconfigured and how a singular and distinct project of delegitimization of the Jewish state and its people has solidified. This intensive but extraordinarily rich contribution to the study of antisemitism stands out for its comprehensive overview of an issue that is very much in the public eye.

Social relations between Muslims, Jews and Christians
in the Medieval Islamic West . Mark Cohen’s Under Crescent and Cross

"The myth" and the "countermyth," in Cohen's own position as he develops it in the course of his book. How does he describe the position of Jews (and dhimmis in general) in medieval Islamic society as opposed to that of Jews (the only sizeable minority) in European Christian society in the same period?

According to Islamic tradition, the term “messiah” (lit. anointed one) may be applied to two contrasting eschatological figures; the blessed Messiah — son of Mary (Jesus), and the cursed Messiah — The Dajjāl. This paper will investigate the literal meanings of the epithet “al-Masiḥ al-Dajjāl” as well as the letters "k-f-r" said to appear on his forehead. The findings will be compared to the verses of Ezekiel 28:1-19 which describe the king of Tyre in a way that appears to associate him with Satan. The results will demonstrate that the literal meanings of “al-Masiḥ al-Dajjāl” and the mark thereof (k-f-r) identify him with "the anointed cherub who covereth" of Ezekeil 28:14.

The Torah and the Quran share many common stories of key Biblical characters, each told in its own distinct way. Of the over forty Biblical persons mentioned either in passing or at length in the Quran, none is as complete or detailed as that of the Joseph story. Although a thorough scholarly examination of each and every one of the similarities and differences of the two narratives is far beyond the scope of this paper, herein is an attempt to narrow the focus on the special role which garments play in both the Genesis and Quranic accounts. The garments of the Joseph story, in primary text as well as in aggadic literature, weave a story of parental favoritism, sibling jealousy, lust, piety, social and political status, and the redemptive power of forgiveness. Using the garments of the Joseph story as presented in both scriptural texts and aggadic literature is a way of knitting back together the torn-apart skeins of a shared narrative to re-create a cross-cultural legend which touches a human universal chord, making the story of Joseph a story for all peoples, at all times.

https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/index/index/docId/9541

Zusammenfassung: In diesem Artikel wird ein vergleichender Einblick in die jüdische Responsen-Literatur 1 und in die muslimische Fatwa-Literatur 2 gegeben und herausgearbeitet, welche Fra-gen sich für weiterführende Studien ergeben. Beide Religionen haben ein normatives Bezugssystem (halacha und fiqh), das sich auf alle Bereiche des Lebens erstreckt. Die klassische Position beider Religionen sieht in der Ausübung dieser Normen den au-thentischsten Weg, Gottes Willen näherzukommen. Nach traditioneller Auffassung benötigen religiöse Menschen dabei eine permanente Supervision durch vertrauens-würdige Gelehrte, die sie bei Bedarf um Rat bitten können. Die große Zahl der Fragen, die Gelehrten – über das Internet, den Briefverkehr oder das Telefon – gestellt werden, zeigt einen auch in der Gegenwart ungebrochenen Bedarf an fachkundigen Auskünf-ten im Bereich religiöser Normen. Im vorliegenden Artikel sollen die Grundzüge dieses Prozesses religiöser Rechtsauskünfte im Judentum und Islam vergleichend dargestellt werden. Dabei können an dieser Stelle nur die bedeutendsten Momente festgehalten und auf Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede hin betrachtet werden. Als Methode dient

Martin Schreiner (1863–1926), a rabbi in Hungary and later a professor at the liberal rabbinical seminary in Berlin, was a disciple of David Kaufmann and Ignaz Goldziher, and a prominent scholar of Medieval Islamic and Jewish thought. The present paper deals with his little-known contributions to religious thought in the late nineteenth century, utilizing also his unpublished work on Jewish religious philosophy and his correspondences with Goldziher. Schreiner’s unique quest for a combination of liberal, academic Jewish theological inquiry with conservative loyalty to religious law—a precarious stance, a neo-Maimonidean attitude of sorts—confronted and challenged all the religious platforms which evolved in modern Judaism.

This article considers Israel's national image both at home and abroad through the framework of Israeli costume dolls, looking specifically at the way that gender played a role in Israel's national image as it travelled from domestic production to international reception. Initially, predominantly female doll makers produced three main types of Israeli dolls, but over time the religious Eastern European male doll triumphed in the pantheon of national types. Produced for retail sale to non-Hebrew speaking tourists by immigrant woman, the Eastern European religious male doll came to represent Israel abroad while the market pushed representations of the Middle Eastern Jewish woman and the native sabra child to the side-lines. This article examines the shift from the multi-ethnic collection of dolls as representative of the nation's idea of itself to the privileging of the male Eastern European doll as representative of the normative image of Israel abroad.

hreshold to the Sacred: The Ark Door of Cairo's Ben Ezra Synagogue focuses on a work of exceptional historical importance jointly owned by the Walters Art Museum and the Yeshiva University Museum: an intricately decorated and inscribed wood panel from a Torah ark, a special cupboard that holds the sacred Jewish scripture. The panel is believed to come from the famous Ben Ezra synagogue of Old Cairo (Fostat), Egypt, which has captivated public imagination for over a century. Associated with the famous medieval thinker Moses Maimonides (1135–1204), the Ben Ezra synagogue is the site of the great 19th-century discovery of the Cairo Geniza, a treasure trove of documents on medieval Jewish life around the Mediterranean. This exhibition presents Geniza documents, photographs of the Ben Ezra synagogue, and art from Jewish and Muslim artisans, together with conservation science research, to relate the fascinating ‘object biography’ of the Walters-Yeshiva ark door.
A version of this exhibition will travel to the Yeshiva University Museum (New York City) October 27, 2013–February 23, 2014 .

in Auftrag gegeben vom Rat muslimischer Studierender & Akademiker im Rahmen des Projekts "Zukunft bilden!"

Der Artikel soll ein pädagogisches Angebot sein, sich einen ersten Einblick in die Historie jüdisch-muslimischer Beziehungen zu verschaffen und die Neugier anzuregen.
http://www.ramsa-ev.de/zukunft-bilden/geschichte-und-gegenwart-juedisch-muslimischer-beziehungen-beitrag-von-dr-hakki

Vom Erfolg ins Abseits? Jüdische Geschichte als Geschichte der ,Anderen'. Ein Gespräch Die Diskussion geht von der Frage aus, wie man Geschichte von marginalisierten Gruppen schreiben kann, ohne historische Ausgrenzungsprozesse erneut zu vollziehen. Vor dem Hintergrund einer Debatte um den Status jüdischer Geschichte geht es um das Verhältnis zwischen allgemeiner und spezifischer Geschichte, aber auch zwischen einzelnen spezifischen Geschichten, gerade am Beispiel von marginalisierten Gruppen.

David M. FREIDENREICH and Miriam GOLDSTEIN, eds. Beyond Religious Borders: Interaction and Intellectual Exchange in the Medieval Islamic World (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) [Jewish Culture and Contexts]. Islamochristiana 38 (2012) 341-344.

This article addresses the question of the messianic motif of Christianity making its way into the Qur’an without wearing a badge of high New Testament Christology. It attempts to explore and understand a potentially underlying connection among the Islamic ‘Isā, the New Testament Jesus, and the Jewish messiah in a quest for the configuration of a historical Christ through the ideological and historical minefields that exist between the Islamic and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The person of Jesus is, therefore, understood to be historical in the article without positing a response to the fundamental questions raised by the historical Jesus skepticism. What I will try to avoid in the following pages, on the contrary, is to treat and brand the Qur’anic portrayal of Jesus as a “stand-alone” concept—indifferent to the historical context of the Bible—hanging in a theological balance, as some critics would be inclined to call it.

subtitle: Ibn Paquda’s Hidaya and its translation by Juda Ibn Tibbon; Sufi terms as discussed in Al-Qushayri's Risala were traced in Ibn Paquda's Hidaya ila faraíd al-Qulub and compared with their translation by Ibn Tibbon in Hovot ha-Levavot

La tombe de Rachel, monument se trouvant à la porte de Bethlehem, est considérée dès le 4è siècle comme le lieu de sépulture de Rachel, figure biblique importante. Ce lieu important à la fois pour le Judaïsme, l’Islam et le Christianisme a une histoire tumultueuse, histoire parsemée de moments d’accalmies et de conflits au sujet du droit d’accès à cette tombe et de divergences sur l’appartenance de cette tombe.
À qui « appartient » cette tombe et pour qui est-elle importante ? Comment est considéré le regard de l’ « autre » envers ce lieu de culte partagé ? Nous allons examiner la perception de l’ « autre » musulman et chrétien dans le journal et les cahiers de Shlomo Freiman, le gardien juif ashkénaze de la tombe de Rachel entre les années 1918 et 1948. Nous allons voir comment il perçoit le lien éprouvé par des musulmans et des chrétiens envers ce lieu et comment se constitue dans cette époque le rapport à tombe.
L’histoire de cette tombe est aussi l’histoire d’un lieu tiraillé entre deux approches : entre tenir compte de la perception d’autrui qui devient un allier d’un amour commun, et nier l’autrui ce qui accroit les éléments qui fabriquent un ennemi…

This paper traces the history and fortunes of the Hellenizing Jewish family of the Tobiads from their Persian roots, to their founding of a petty kingdom at 'Iraq al-Amir, to the Nabataean wars, to the Tubba kings of Himyar. It explores 3rd to 6th century Arabia as an extension of the Second Commonwealth, and a direct descendant of the Tobiad petty kingdom. It also covers the loss of a replica of the Ark of the Covenant adorned even today with the Tobiad/Himyar dove, now buried under a church in Axum, Ethiopia; and discusses the linguistic derivations of Saracen, mushreqoon and "Dhu Nuwas".

Introduction to the Proceedings of the 7th CISMOR Conference on Jewish Studies, titled: Jewish Cultural Creativity in Medieval Times and its Relations With Christian and Islam Traditions of Thought (The proceedings are all online; check also the six earlier volumes in this series, of yearly conferences held at Doshisha University, parts of which are in English and others in Japanese)

Dirk Hartwig, "Die 'Wissenschaft des Judentums' und die Anfänge der kritischen Koranforschung: Perspektiven einer modernen Koranhermeneutik", Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte Vol. 61, No. 3 (2009), pp. 234-256 (23 pages). "This article traces the beginnings of critical Qur'anic Studies to the nineteenth-century scholars ofthe so-called Science of Judaism school (Wissenschaft des Judentums). Until the 1930s, when the rise of the Nazis violently suppressed Jewish scholarly activities in Germany and elsewhere, generations of scholars such as Abraham Geiger, who is better known as an early leader Jewish Reform Movement, dedicated their lives to the study ofthe Qur 'an and established discipline: Qur'anic Studies. These scholars, in many ways pioneers in their fields, authored series of significant studies that contextualized the foundational documents of Islam with Rabbinic literature and were the first to undertake an unbiased study of early Islamic writings."

Maimonides makes extensive use of metaphysics in the Guide, but he does not discuss the discipline's nature or many of the basic issues it addresses. Instead, the Guide's readers would need to be familiar with the tradition of metaphysical inquiry that Maimonides draws on, which is that of the peripatetic philosophers. Aristotle's Metaphysics stands at its head, and Maimonides received it mediated through Greek and Arabic commentaries. Among the major Arabic commentators, Al-Farabi is known as "the second teacher," after Aristotle; the titles are accorded them by Avicenna, who credits Al-Farabi with enabling him to understand the Metaphysics. But Al-Farabi states that few understand this book since they approach it with the preconception that metaphysics and theology are equivalent: Many people have the preconceived notion that the point and purpose of this book is to discuss the Creator (may He be glorified and exalted!), the intellect, the soul, and other related topics, and that the science of metaphysics and the science of theology are one and the same thing. Consequently, we find that most people who study it are perplexed and misguided by it, since we find that most of the talk in it is devoid of any such aim.   A number of the points made here about the nature of metaphysics were explained in some detail by Alexander Altmann. Altmann's article (Altmann ) remains essential reading for anybody interested in Maimonides' understanding of metaphysics and the limits of human cognition, as well as the sources on which he drew.  "Among the sciences, there is one that looks into being inasmuch as it is and speculates on the things that belong to being essentially" (quoted in Averroes , ).

This article addresses the question of the messianic motif of Christianity making its way into the Qur’an without wearing a badge of high New Testament Christology. It attempts to explore and understand a potentially underlying connection among the Islamic ‘Isā, the New Testament Jesus, and the Jewish messiah in a quest for the configuration of a historical Christ through the ideological and historical minefields that exist between the Islamic and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The person of Jesus is, therefore, understood to be historical in the article without positing a response to the fundamental questions raised by the historical Jesus skepticism. What I will try to avoid in the following pages, on the contrary, is to treat and brand the Qur’anic portrayal of Jesus as a “stand-alone” concept—indifferent to the historical context of the Bible—hanging in a theological balance, as some critics would be inclined to call it. The article is linearly structured according to the major...