17 July 1810 Birth of Reform Judaism at Seesen, Germany #otdimjh

Posted on July 17, 2015 by richardsh

Israel Jacobson

Reform Judaism was launched on this date in 1810 with the opening of the first Reform “temple” in Seesen, Germany. The event was marked by an elaborate ceremony, with a procession of rabbis, the ringing of bells, and a choir performance in both Hebrew and German.

Israel Jacobson, a philanthropist and learned Jew, launched the movement in order to enable Judaism to survive in a modern form that reflected the paradigm shifts of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, and to stem the tide of conversion to Christianity that was overtaking Western Europe’s Jews. Jacobson had already established a school in Seesen where Jewish and Christian children were educated together for free; it lasted for more than a century. The congregation gathered in the school’s chapel (it was not until 1818 that the first freestanding Reform temple was established, in Hamburg), and it had an organ, the first to appear in a Jewish house of worship. Jacobson’s other innovations included services conducted in both German and Hebrew, with men and women praying and studying together. Half a century later, Reform Judaism was carried to America by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise and eventually became the largest synagogue movement in the country.

“Who would dare to deny that our service is sickly because it has degenerated into a thoughtless recitation of prayers, that it kills devotion more than encourages it?” —Israel Jacobson

Between 1810 and 1820, congregations in Seesen, Hamburg and Berlin instituted fundamental changes in traditional Jewish practices and beliefs, such as mixed seating, singleday observance of festivals and the use of a cantor/choir. Many leaders of the Reform movement took a very “rejectionist” view of Jewish practice and discarded traditions and rituals. For example:

Circumcision was not practiced, and was decried as barbaric.

The Hebrew language was removed from the liturgy and replaced with German.

The hope for a restoration of the Jews in Israel was officially renounced, and it was officially stated that Germany was to be the new Zion.

The ceremony in which a child celebrated becoming Bar Mitzvah was replaced with a “confirmation” ceremony.

The laws of Kashrut and family purity were officially declared “repugnant” to modern thinking people, and were not observed.

Shabbat was observed on Sunday.

Traditional restrictions on Shabbat behavior were not followed.

Reflection: In the light of emancipation, assimilation and the Jewish enlightenment (haskalah) a fragmentation was inevitable, and Reform Judaism (now Liberal Judaism in the UK) pioneered seismic shifts in the worldview and practice of the Jewish people. The increasing drive to assimilate also led to the mass ‘conversions’ of the 19^th century, and the growing presence within the churches of Jewish-background believers. The modern Jewish missions movement, the development of Hebrew Christianity, and what was to become Messianic Judaism in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, are all related to the changing philosophical and cultural perspectives of which Reform Judaism was an important catalyst.

http://www.reformjudaism.org/history-reform-judaism-and-look-ahead-search-belonging

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/The_Origins_of_Reform_Judaism.html

http://jewishcurrents.org/july-17-the-birth-of-reform-6257

Reform Comes to America

American Reform Judaism began as these German “reformers” immigrated to American in the mid1800s. The first “Reform” group was formed by a number of individuals that split from Congregation Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina. Reform rapidly became the dominant belief system of American Jews of the time. It was a national phenomenon.

Reform Judaism in American benefitted from the lack of a central religious authority. It also was molded by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise. Rabbi Wise came to the United States in 1846 from Bohemia, spent eight years in Albany, NY, and then moved to Cincinnati on the edge of the frontier. He then proceeded to:

Write the first siddur edited for American worshipers, Minhag American (1857).

Found the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1873.

Found Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1875.

Found the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) in 1889.

Reform Jews also pioneered a number of organizations, such as the Educational Alliance on the Lower East Side of New York, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith.

By 1880, more than 90 percent of American synagogues were Reform. This was the time of the major Eastern European immigration, which was heavily Orthodox and nonGerman, as contrasted with the strongly German Reform movement. Many Reform congregations of this time were difficult to distinguish from neighboring Protestant churches, with preachers in robes, pews with mixed seating, choirs, organs and hymnals. Like their counterparts in Germany, American Reform rabbis, such as David Einhorn, Samuel Holdheim, Bernard Felsenthal and Kaufmann Kohler, adopted a radical approach to observance.

Although early American Reform rabbis dropped quite a bit of traditional prayers and rituals, there was still a “bottom line.” In 1909, the CCAR formally declared its opposition to intermarriage. And, although decried as “archaic” and “barbarian,” the practice of circumcision remained a central rite.

This early radicalism was mentioned in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, which dismisses “such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress” as anachronisms that only obstruct spirituality in the modern age. The platform stressed that Reform Jews must only be accepting of laws that they feel “elevate and sanctify our lives” and must reject those customs and laws that are “not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.”

Early Reform Judaism was also antiZionist, believing the Diaspora was necessary for Jews to be “light unto the nations.” Nevertheless, a number of Reform rabbis were pioneers in establishing Zionism in America, including Gustav and Richard Gottheil, Rabbi Steven S. Wise (founder of the American Jewish Congress) and Justice Louis Brandeis. Following the Balfour Declaration, the Reform movement began to support Jewish settlements in Palestine, as well as institutions such as Hadassah Hospital and the Hebrew University.

As the years passed, a reevaluation took place in which many members of the Reform movement began to question the “reforms” that were made. By 1935, the movement had begun to return to a more traditional approach to Judaism-distinctly Jewish and distinctly American, but also distinctively nonChristian. Starting with the Columbus Platform in 1937, many of the discarded practices were reincorporated into the Reform canon, and constitute what is now called “Modern” Reform Judaism, or more succinctly, Reform Judaism. The platform also formally shifted the movement’s position on Zionism by affirming “the obligation of all Jewry to aid in building a Jewish homeland….”

The first Reform temple opened its doors 200 years ago in the town of Seesen, Germany. At the inaugural ceremony on July 17, 1810, a parade of rabbis, Christian ministers, and political dignitaries passed under a chiming bell-tower and entered the sanctuary, while an adult choir, accompanied by a pipe organ, sang hymns in German and Hebrew. The businessman and philanthropist who had founded this temple, Mr. Israel Jacobson (1768-1828), delivered the sermon while draped in a black clerical robe. Standing behind a pulpit at the front of the sanctuary, the man who had also established an egalitarian, religiously pluralistic boarding school for 40 Jewish and 20 Christian children told the august assembly: “On all sides enlightenment opens up new areas for religious development. Why should we Jews be left behind?”

Jacobson’s call struck a responsive chord. In the decades that followed, Reform Judaism spread through Europe and then to North America.

Reform Judaism has now reached its 200th anniversary. Looking back, I believe it is possible to identify three stages through which our Movement has evolved and to see the beginnings of a fourth. These stages pivot on a common theme: how our predecessors confronted two opposing tendencies in their search to feel a sense of belonging within the general culture. The universalist tendency stressed the common values and behaviors they shared with their non-Jewish neighbors. The particularist tendency stressed the more introspective features of Jewish identity that made them unique among the peoples of the world. The interplay between these two factors underlies each stage of our Movement’s evolution.

Stage One: Emancipation to the Creation of the Jewish State

Even before the Seesen synagogue set Reform Judaism in motion, Jews had entered modernity. Decades earlier, Napoleon had thrown open the doors of medieval ghettos. As Jews freely mingled with fellow Europeans, they were exposed to the cosmopolitan bustle of cities, the sophistication of theaters and opera houses, the rational inquiry of universities.

Eager to participate and demonstrate to their neighbors what loyal and productive citizens they could be, many Jews decided to jettison kashrut and other traditional laws and practices which prohibited them from eating at the homes of their gentile friends or attending social gatherings at cafés. They were embarrassed, too, should neighbors accustomed to the decorum of the Protestant or Catholic church visit the synagogue and witness a spectacle of men wrapped in strange prayer shawls noisily davening a repetitive liturgy while children tore up and down the aisles.

Determined to bring Jewish life into the modern age, the early German-Jewish reformers of the mid-19th century emphasized the universalist ethical teachings of biblical prophets. They no longer viewed ritual observance as ordained by God and inviolate, but as a means to reinforce the prophetic ideals of justice, freedom, and peace.

In synagogue worship, they began to pray in unison and introduced a professional choir and organ to render their hymns. The rabbi led services covered in ministerial robes as bareheaded worshipers listened in solemn silence. Later in the century, when Reform Judaism spread to North America, the main Shabbat service shifted to Friday night, allowing Jews to pursue their occupations on Saturdays, in concert with many of their gentile compatriots.

Thus, in this first stage of Reform Judaism’s development-a period of adaptation to the wider gentile community-Reform Jews abandoned codes of diet, dress, and ritual practices which set them apart from fellow citizens.

These changes in Jewish practice were accompanied by a new theology, which also led to amendments to Reform prayer books. Traditionally, Jews had prayed for the coming of the Messiah, who would usher in a universal age of peace, resurrect the dead, and lead all Jews back to the restored Kingdom of Israel, where the Temple would be rebuilt and sacrifices once again offered upon its altars. The early reformers changed the focus of this national restoration to what they called the “Mission of Israel”: the Jews’ historic task to bring social justice to the world from within the lands where they lived. Now that the Jews of Europe or America had finally become prosperous, they had little desire to leave their “new homeland” for an uncivilized, swamp-ridden land halfway around the globe. They taught instead that “the Messianic Age,” rather than the Messiah, would come to all enlightened nations-and, better still, it was just around the corner.

Reform Jews were now able to express their particularism on their own terms and to connect with growing numbers of like-minded compatriots. The adaptations to modern culture, however, entailed sacrificing a Jewish identity that had defined the Jewish people for generations. When freed from the yoke of halachah (religious law), Judaism was recast from an all-encompassing way of life to simply a religion. Just as Christians worshiped in a church, Jews worshiped in a synagogue, but in all other respects Jews were just as European or American as their non-Jewish neighbors next door.

This optimistic, universalist attitude was severely shaken by the Holocaust. In the 1930s and ’40s Jews came to the grim realization that, despite their having blended into the general culture, they were still regarded as other. As a result, the Reform pendulum swung away from universalism toward particularism. Reform Jews began to reconsider their opposition to Zionism, the movement calling for the creation of a Jewish state. Reform support for Zionism-which the Central Conference of American Rabbis had endorsed in the Columbus Platform of 1937 by only a single vote-continued to gain momentum in the post-Holocaust years.

When the State of Israel was born in 1948, Reform Jews worldwide celebrated its creation and rejoiced in its achievements. Still, for the first two decades of Israel’s existence, the Jewish State was a world away from the daily life of Reform Jews in Manhattan or Montreal. It would take an extraordinary event to bring Israel closer to home.

Stage Two: The Six-Day War to Saving Soviet Jewry

In the 1960s, ethnic pride was on the rise throughout North America. African-Americans were asserting a proud identity with the slogan “Black is beautiful.” In Canada, French-Canadian nationalism gained momentum as the Québecois sought to become “maîtres chez nous” (“masters in our own house,” promoting French language and culture). Then, suddenly, Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War of June 1967 sparked a similar pride among Jews. The muscular, confident sabra erased the lingering stereotype of the spineless ghetto Jew. Hebrew school students learned Israeli pop songs along with the traditional z’mirot (songs). People who had never affiliated with the Jewish community suddenly joined synagogues and Jewish community centers. Jewish students flocked to newly-established Jewish studies courses on university campuses. Jewish summer camps flourished. Young adults began sporting colorful knit kipot and/or chai pendants. Jewish charitable organizations received record contributions. In short, Reform’s second stage was characterized by a rebirth of particularism manifested in a pride in Jewish peoplehood. Belonging to the Jewish people enhanced one’s personal ethnic identity.

At the same time, Jews participated actively in universal causes of social action. North American Jewish youth joined the Civil Rights Movement at home and protested against the war in Indo-China. Many of the same activists, aroused by the mitzvah to redeem captives, organized campaigns to free their fellow Jews in the Soviet Union, and later in Ethiopia. Jews were now comfortable enough in their own skin to take the universal ideal of freedom and advocate it for their own people.

In the religious sphere, Jewish ethnicity sparked a trend “back to tradition.” The Jewish Catalog, which taught its readers how to tie their own tzitzit and write a scroll for a homemade mezuzah, became a bestseller. Both children and adults were receiving a higher quality Jewish education because of the increasing professionalism of the field. As congregants became more ritually sophisticated, many Reform synagogues included more Hebrew in services.

It felt good to be Jewish-and to share one’s Jewish pride with others.

Stage Three: Innovation and Interfaith

By the 1980s, Jews were interacting confidently as equals with their non-Jewish friends, while at the same time spending more time and energy in Jewish pursuits. In this and other ways, Reform’s third stage manifested a complementary interplay between both universalism and particularism, like two weights swaying on a scale and eventually finding equilibrium.

On the universalist side of the scale, Reform congregations sought to share common principles with their neighbors by becoming increasingly active in interfaith dialogue. Jewish and Christian clergy exchanged pulpits and congregants arranged visits to each other’s houses of worship. People of many faiths worked side by side in soup kitchens and food banks, and supported aid projects overseas. The feminist revolution brought more women onto the bimah as rabbis and cantors, and as lay leaders around the temple board table.

On the particularist side, Reform Jews brought fresh creativity to ritual. Recognizing the growing diversity of their membership, they widened the circle of belonging by introducing new lifecycle events, including brit (covenantal naming) ceremonies for newborn girls, rituals for adopting children, and Mi Shebeirach blessings for healing. As new definitions of family developed, Reform synagogues opened their arms to single parents as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Jews. To accommodate those who were not born Jewish or had not been educated in Jewish tradition, experimental prayer books in the 1980s added transliteration to the Hebrew liturgy.

To address the increasing number of Reform Jews who married outside the faith, in the late 1970s the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union for Reform Judaism) launched an ambitious and successful Outreach program. Interfaith families were welcomed to join Reform congregations and non-Jewish spouses were encouraged to consider taking courses on conversion. If the female partner decided not to choose Judaism, the 1983 CCAR resolution on Patrilineal Descent acknowledged Jewish identity through the father when the child was Judaically educated and identified as a Jew.

Musically, cantorial solos were gradually replaced with new songs everyone could sing, many of them infused with a distinctly North American motif. Debbie Friedman’s “Not By Might” became an anthem for youth, and songs by the Kol B’Seder duo Cantor Jeff Klepper and Rabbi Daniel Freelander such as ” Shalom Rav” spread to synagogues and camps throughout the continent. This new music strengthened the sense of belonging to the Reform Movement: worshiping at your temple or far away from home, you could sing the same melodies.

As services became more accessible, congregants began to explore inner, spiritual quests. More time was devoted to silent prayer. New services incorporated Eastern meditation techniques; others focused upon text study as a form of prayer. In this third stage, Judaism not only clothed Reform Jews with a distinct ethnic identity; it also became more personally meaningful for many.

By the 1990s, the Reform Movement was becoming increasingly aware that the trend toward individualism posed a threat to the institution of the synagogue. Many young Jews seemed to be saying: “My religion teaches values that are essentially no different from those held by the majority of my fellow citizens; and if the most important of those values is to live an ethical life, then why do I need the rest of the baggage? Why be different? Wouldn’t it be easier to assimilate? This would give me a much wider choice for a future marriage partner. Besides, now that Judaism can be an individual choice as well as a communal one, I can still express my ethnic Jewish identity without it becoming a barrier in my relationships. By choosing Judaism for myself-and which aspects of it I wish to practice-while at the same time allowing my partner to make his or her own choices, I can have it all!”

Stage Four: A Paradoxical State

Reform Jews are in a paradoxical state today. On the one hand, most of the barriers that kept us from “fitting in” and “being like everyone else” have come down; on the other, our ancestral roots still nourish us and we want to preserve our differences. Our sense of belonging is becoming simultaneously wider and narrower.

Our expression of universalism now embraces the entire world, for global culture has become increasingly homogenized: people from Toronto to Tokyo drink Coca Cola, listen to the same musicians, wear identical brand-name clothes, and engage in instant technology-driven communication.

At the same time, our understanding of particularism has shrunk from peoplehood to self. Two hundred years ago, one’s personal identity was essentially defined through one or two primary groups to which one belonged-usually country and religion. Today, identity is more fractionalized and complex, determined by such factors as country, language, gender, profession, socioeconomic status-and religion. Each of these components make up our identity like pieces of a pie.

For many, identifying the Jewish piece of that pie or its importance among the other components has become increasingly difficult. What is the binding agent that connects us to the Jewish people? Our personal theological beliefs are far more divergent now than in stage one, and therefore connect us less strongly with Reform (or any branch of) Judaism. Our ethnic ties still draw us together, but nowadays ethnicity lacks the impetus it did in the second stage-perhaps, in part, because today’s synagogues have many more members who were not born into Judaism and cannot share the commonalities of cultural heritage. Loyalty to the Reform Movement may be waning among younger generations of Jews, who tend to dislike labels and prefer more fluid lifestyles. They may seek out the Jewish community to fulfill current needs, such as a lifecycle ceremony or the education of their children, rather than regarding synagogue membership as a lifetime commitment.

Even the State of Israel no longer confers the sense of belonging it once did. We no longer respond instinctively to the “crisis mentality”-that either Israel is in danger and we must save her, or that Diaspora Jewry is vulnerable and only Israel can save us. Instead, our relationship with Israel has become more nuanced, as we have come to understand that the Israeli government-just like our own-sometimes makes unwise decisions, and that we Diaspora Jews, who hold a variety of perspectives about such policies, are free, even duty-bound, to express them.

How Reform Jews confront the paradoxical nature of universalism and particularism will determine the character of the Reform Jewish future.

To infuse Jews with a sense of belonging in this fourth stage, our Movement will need to develop a more flexible type of community. Even as we draw sustenance from members who make a lifelong commitment, it is incumbent upon us to also provide something of value for those just passing through. Nor can we wait for everyone to come to us; we also have to meet Jews wherever they happen to gather-restaurants, living rooms, internet chat rooms. And we have to make better creative use of electronic media for communication and online study.

At the same time, if Reform Judaism is to survive in this fourth stage, we will have to go somewhat against the stream in a society in which the only constant is change, by creating a community that stands for something timeless. As in the previous stages, our message is twofold. The universalist Mission of Israel teaches that our lives have meaning beyond the immediate present, beyond the aims and ambitions that we assign to ourselves. It reminds us that we must settle for nothing less than tikkun olam -repair of the world-in our continuous quest to bring justice, peace, freedom, and enlightenment to the world. The particularist side of the coin is that the Jewish people has a unique contribution to make in this effort. Our uniqueness derives from a blend of ethical, spiritual, educational, and cultural elements-a blend that is different for each individual, but can be shared with fellow Jews in community.

Adapting to new conditions while maintaining ancient traditions is part and parcel of the Jewish historical experience. In the Mishnah, at the end of Tractate Berakhot, the rabbis quote Psalm 119:126: “It is time to act for Adonai; they have nullified Your Torah.” While most of the rabbis interpret this to mean that Jewish tradition must be preserved despite trends toward apostasy or assimilation, Rabbi Natan offers a different interpretation. He reverses the two parts of the verse: “Nullify Your Torah” because “it is time to
act for Adonai.”

In Rabbi Natan’s view, one way to preserve tradition is to transform it. This is precisely what Reform Judaism, at its best, has been doing at every stage for the past 200 years.

Lawrence A. Englander is rabbi of Solel Congregation, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and former editor of the CCAR Journal.

Source:

Reform Judaism magazine

– See more at: http://www.reformjudaism.org/history-reform-judaism-and-look-ahead-search-belonging#sthash.tSkSpXf2.dpuf

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16 July 1759, Rabbi Nahman ben Samuel of Busk, follower of false Messiah Jacob Frank, is baptized #otdimjh

Posted on July 16, 2015 by richardsh

Jacob Frank

Jacob Frank (Hebrew: יעקב פרנק‎, Polish: Jakub Frank, born Jakub Lejbowicz; 1726, Korołówka – December 10, 1791, Offenbach am Main) was an 18th-century Polish-Jewish religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of the self-proclaimed messiah Sabbatai Zevi and also of the biblical patriarch Jacob. The Jewish authorities in Poland excommunicated Frank and his followers due to his heretical doctrines that included deification of himself as a part of a trinity and other controversial concepts such as neo-Carpocratian “purification through transgression”.

Frank arguably created a new religion, now referred to as Frankism, which incorporated some aspects of Christianity into Judaism. The development of Frankism was one of the consequences of the messianic movement of Sabbatai Zevi, the religious mysticism that followed violent persecution and socioeconomic upheavals among the Jews of Poland and Ruthenia.

FRANKISM, a Jewish religious movement centered on the leadership of

Ya‘akov (Jakub) ben Yehudah Leib Frank (1726?–1791). The term Frankism was coined in early nineteenth-century Warsaw and was initially a slur directed at the descendants of Frank’s followers who converted to Roman Catholicism and attempted to conceal their background. It was only with the appearance of the first scholarly accounts of the movement in the second half of the nineteenth century that the term became to be used for the whole variety of phenomena connected by the authors to Frank’s activity.

Sources [material from http://www.yivo.org/downloads/frankism.pdf] from Frank’s era, however, provide several different perspectives. In Jewish accounts, his followers are normally not presented as a separate group but as an offshoot of preexisting heretical movements, most notably of Sabbatianism. The majority of Christian observers saw the Frankists as a Jewish sect opposed to the Talmud. The Frankists initially thought of themselves as a branch of Judaism opposed to the authority of the rabbis and rejecting some elements of rabbinic tradition. Subsequently, Frankists redefined themselves as a separate religious group, practically independent from hitherto existing forms of both Judaism and Christianity.

The Jewish Encyclopedia, relying on Graetz’s History of the Jews, states:

NAḤMAN B. SAMUEL HA-LEVI:

Frankist; rabbi of Busk, Galicia; lived in the first part of the eighteenth century. When Mikulski, the administrator of the archbishopric of Lemberg, invited the representatives of Judaism to a disputation with the Frankists July 16, 1759, Naḥman was one of the Frankist delegates. On his baptism into the Christian faith he took the name of Piotr Jacobski.

Bibliography:

Grätz, Gesch. der Juden, x. 392.

Reflection: Modern scholars such as Pawel Maciejko do not give the same date, but reveal more information about the strange apocalyptic sect that formed around Frank, which gave both Jewish and Christian authorities cause for concern. The Jewish leaders were glad when Frank and several thousands of his supporters were baptised as Christians, as they did not want the Frankist doctrines to spread further in the Jewish communities of Poland. The Catholic church, and some Protestants, allowed the Frankists to retain Jewish clothing, beards, religious practices and identity, in their composite faith. While Frankist descendants continued for several generations (and even the composer Chopin was accused of having Frankish origins), Frank’s own claims to be the incarnation of Jesus were discredited by all but his closest followers, and the conversions to Christianity were seen as a mask for a far more esoteric, gnostic sect which emerged in the harsh anti-Semitic context of early modern Poland.

Prayer: Lord, there have been many false messiahs and messianic movements among the Jewish people, and it is not surprising that belief in Yeshua has been seen as such a betrayal and deception by our people. Help us as Messianic Jews to live our faith with integrity to you and your Word, and loyalty and commitment of our people. In Yeshua’s name we pray. Amen.

From Graetz: History of the Jews

The position of affairs changed, however, when Lubienski withdrew to Gnesen, his arch-episcopal seat, and the administrator of the archbishopric of Lemberg, the canon De Mikulski, showed more zeal for conversion. He immediately promised the Frankists to arrange a religious conference between them and the Talmudists, if they would exhibit a sincere desire for baptism. On this the deputies, Leb Krysa and Solomon of Rohatyn, in the name of the whole body, made a Catholic confession of faith (May 25), which savored of Kabbalism: “the cross is the symbol of the Holy Trinity and the seal of the Messiah.” It closed with these words: “The Talmud teaches the use of the blood of Christians, and whosoever believes in it is bound to use this blood.” Thereupon Mikulski, without consulting the papal nuncio Serra, made arrangements for a second disputation in Lemberg (June, 1759). The rabbis of this diocese were summoned to appear, under pain of a heavy fine, and the nobility and clergy were requested in case of necessity to compel them. The nuncio Serra, to whom the Talmudists complained, was in the highest degree dissatisfied with the idea of the disputation, but did not care to prevent it because he wished to learn with certainty whether the Jews used the blood of Christians. This appeared to him the most important point of all. Just at this time Pope Clement XIII had given a favorable answer on this question to the Jewish deputy Selek. Clement XIII proclaimed that the Holy See had examined the grounds on which rested the belief in the use of human blood for the feast of the Passover and the286 murder of Christians by Jews, and that the Jews must not be condemned as criminals in respect of this charge, but that in the case of such occurrences legal forms of proof must be used. Notwithstanding this, the papal envoy at this very time, deceived by the meanness of the Frankists, partially credited the false accusation, and notified the Curia of it.

The religious conference which was to lead to the conversion of so many Jews, at first regarded with indifference, began to awaken interest. The Polish nobility of both sexes purchased admission cards at a high price, the proceeds to go to the poor people who were to be baptized. On the appointed day the Talmudists and Zoharites were brought into the cathedral of Lemberg; all the clergy, nobility, and burghers crowded thither to witness the spectacle of Jews, apparently belonging to the same religion, hurling at each other accusations of the most abominable crimes. In reality it was the Talmud and the Kabbala, formerly a closely united pair of sisters, who had fallen out with each other. The disputation failed miserably. Of the Frankists, who had boastfully given out that several hundreds of their party would attend, only about ten appeared, the rest being too poor to undertake the long journey and attire themselves decently. Of the Talmudists forty were present owing to their dread of the threatened fine. How Judaism had retrograded in the century of “enlightenment” when compared with the thirteenth century! At that time, on a similar occasion, the spokesman of the Jews, Moses Nachmani, proudly confronted his opponents at the court of Barcelona, and almost made them quake by his knowledge and firmness. In Lemberg the representatives of Talmudic Judaism stood awkward and disconcerted, unable to utter a word. They did not even understand the language of the country—their opponents, to be sure, were in like case—and interpreters had to be employed. But the287 Catholic clergy in Poland and the learned classes also betrayed their astounding ignorance. Not a single Pole understood Hebrew or the language of the rabbis sufficiently to be an impartial witness of the dispute, whilst in Germany and Holland Christians acquainted with Hebrew could be counted by hundreds. The Talmudists had a difficult part to play in this religious conference. The chief thesis of the Frankists was that the Zohar teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, and that one Person of the Godhead became incarnate. Could they dare to deny this dogma absolutely without wounding the feelings of the Christians, their masters? And that leanings toward this doctrine were to be found in the Zohar they could not deny. Of course, they might have refuted completely the false charge of using the blood of Christian children and of the bloodthirsty nature of the Talmud, or might have cited the testimony of Christians and even the decisions of popes. They were, however, ignorant of the history of their own suffering, and their ignorance avenged itself on them. It is easy to believe that the Talmudic spokesmen, after the three days’ conference, returned home ashamed and confused. Even the imputation of shedding Christian blood continued to cling to their religion.

The Zoharites who had obtained their desire were now strongly urged by the clergy to perform their promise, and allow themselves to be baptized. But they continued to resist as if it cost them a great struggle, and only yielded at the express command of their chief, Frank, and in his presence. The latter appeared with great pomp, in magnificent Turkish robes, with a team of six horses, and surrounded by guards in Turkish dress. He wished to impress the Poles. His was the strong will which led the Frankists, and which they implicitly obeyed. Some thousand Zoharites were baptized on this occasion. Frank would not be baptized in Lemberg,288 but appeared suddenly, with dazzling magnificence, in Warsaw (October, 1759), aroused the curiosity of the Polish capital, and requested the favor that the king would stand godfather to him. The newspapers of the Polish capital were full of accounts of the daily baptisms of so many Jews, and of the names of the great nobles and ladies who were their godparents. But the Church could not rejoice in her victory. Frank was watched with suspicion by the clergy. They did not trust him, and suspected him to be a swindler who, under the mask of Christianity, as formerly under that of Islam, desired to play a part as the leader of a sect. The more Frank reiterated the demand that a special tract of country be assigned to him, the more he aroused the suspicion that he was pursuing selfish aims and that baptism had been but a means to an end. The Talmud Jews neglected nothing to furnish proofs of his impostures. At length he was unmasked and betrayed by some of his Polish followers, who were incensed at being neglected for the foreign Frankists, and showed that with him belief in Christianity was but a farce, and that he had commanded his followers to address him as Messiah and God Incarnate and Holy Lord. He was arrested and examined by the president of the Polish Inquisition as an impostor and a blasphemer. The depositions of the witnesses clearly revealed his frauds, and he was conveyed to the fortress of Czenstochow and confined in a convent (March, 1760). Only the fact that the king was his godfather saved Frank from being burnt at the stake as a heretic and apostate. His chief followers were likewise arrested and thrown into prison. The rank and file were in part condemned to work on the fortifications of Czenstochow, and partly outlawed. Many Frankists were obliged to beg for alms at the church doors, and were treated with contempt by the Polish population. They continued true, however, to their289Messiah or Holy Lord. All adverse events they accounted for in the Kabbalistic manner: they had been divinely predestined. The cloister of Czenstochow they named mystically, “The gate of Rome.” Outwardly they adhered to the Catholic religion, and joined in all the sacraments, but they associated only with each other, and like their Turkish comrades, the Donmäh, intermarried only with each other. The families descended from them in Poland, Wolowski, Dembowski, Dzalski, are still at the present day known as Frenks or Shäbs. Frank was set at liberty by the Russians, after thirteen years’ imprisonment in the fortress, played the part of impostor for over twenty years elsewhere, in Vienna, Brünn, and at last in Offenbach; set up his beautiful daughter Eva as the incarnate Godhead, and deceived the world until the end of his life, and even after his death; but with this part of his career Jewish history has nothing to do.

http://www.yivo.org/downloads/frankism.pdf

FRANKISM, a Jewish religious movement centered on the leadership of

Ya‘akov (Jakub) ben Yehudah Leib Frank (1726?–1791). The term Frankism

was coined in early nineteenth-century Warsaw and was initially a slur

directed at the descendants of Frank’s followers who converted to Roman

Catholicism and attempted to conceal their background. It was only with the

appearance of the first scholarly accounts of the movement in the second half

of the nineteenth century that the term became to be used for the whole

variety of phenomena connected by the authors to Frank’s activity. Sources

from Frank’s era, however, provide several different perspectives. In Jewish

accounts, his followers are normally not presented as a separate group but as

an offshoot of preexisting heretical movements, most notably of

Sabbatianism. The majority of Christian observers saw the Frankists as a

Jewish sect opposed to the Talmud. The Frankists initially thought of

themselves as a branch of Judaism opposed to the authority of the rabbis and

rejecting some elements of rabbinic tradition. Subsequently, Frankists

redefined themselves as a separate religious group, practically independent

from hitherto existing forms of both Judaism and Christianity.

On 20 February 1759, on Sołtyk’s instigation, the Contra-Talmudists requested permission for another disputation. They called for a unity of all faiths, and promised to prove that Jews used Christian blood for ritual purposes. They presented the following seven points for the debate: 1. All prophecies about the coming of the Messiah have already been fulfilled. 2. The Messiah is the true God, whose name is Adonai. He took human form and suffered for our redemption. 3. Since the advent of the true Messiah, sacrifices and ceremonies have been abolished. 4. Everyone should follow the teaching of the Messiah, for salvation lies only within it. 5. The cross is the sign of the Holy Trinity and the seal of the Messiah. 6. A person can achieve faith in the Messiah the King only through baptism. 7. The Talmud teaches that Jews need Christian blood, and whoever believes in the Talmud is bound to use it. The disputation took place in Lwów from 17 July to 19 September 1759. Although Frank did not take part in the disputation, he came to Lwów and was recognized as the leader of the Contra-Talmudists. Pressure from the Vatican led to no decisive verdict being promulgated and the rabbis were obliged only to formulate a written response to the Frankists’ accusations. During the disputation, Frank’s followers became to be treated not as a Jewish sect professing tenets that were not recognized by mainstream Judaism, but as a group of candidates for conversion to Christianity. The first baptisms took place even before the formal end of the disputation, and they were attended by a large public, with many important noblemen acting as godparents. On 17 September, Frank himself was baptized in Lwów Cathedral and adopted the name Jakub Josef. Approximately 3,000 people converted in Lwów, Lublin, and Warsaw. Some of them were immediately ennobled on the basis of a Lithuanian statute of 1588, which gave the prerogatives of the gentry to baptizing Jews and their offspring. The church devoted much effort to spreading news of the Lwów disputation. The primate of Poland issued a pastoral letter urging Catholics to support the converts with alms and ordered that an abridged version of the minutes of the disputation be sent to parish churches and read during Sunday sermons. Reports and manifestos from the disputations were translated into Latin, French, Spanish, Armenian, Portuguese, Italian, and German and disseminated in different countries. News of the conversions reached England and the New World. After his baptism, Frank conducted

From: The Mixed Multitude

Jacob Frank and the Frankist Movement, 1755-1816

Pawel Maciejko

http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/toc/14870.html

Conversions to Christianity were among the most traumatic events in the history of medieval and early modern Jewish communities. Jews regarded baptism as a “betrayal of communal values, a rejection of Jewish destiny, a submission to the illusory verdict of history.” Willing apostates were seen as the worst traitors and renegades, forced conversions were considered the ultimate form of persecution of Israel by the Gentiles, and, according to the common ideal, it was better to choose a martyr’s death than to submit to the power of the Church. Each soul that Judaism lost was mourned. The dominant narrative did not even entertain the possibility that a Jew might embrace Christianity without any threat or ulterior motive. Christians themselves, while officially praising the apostates and expressing hope for “the blind synagogue’s” future recognition of the “obvious” truth of Christianity, privately voiced doubts concerning the sincerity of the converts and the very ability of the Jews to truly accept Christ.

In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the largest Catholic country in Europe and, at the same time, the home of the largest Jewish community in premodern times, baptisms of Jews were rare. Neither the local church nor the state conducted systematic missionary campaigns targeting the Jews. Forced conversions of individuals were forbidden by law and were few. Mass apostasies, like those known in Western Europe, did not occur-with one significant exception. In late summer and early autumn 1759, a sizable group of Jews-thousands, by most accounts-led by one Jacob Frank embraced Roman Catholicism in the city of Lwów. The conversion was unique not only in its sheer size. It was also-or at least appeared to be-voluntary: whatever caused Frank and his followers to approach the baptismal font, they were not facing a choice between baptism and expulsion or violent death like their brethren in medieval German lands or Portugal. What was most unusual, however, was the reaction of most Jewish contemporaries. In contrast to typical reactions of sadness, anger, or despair, many Jews saw the conversion of Frank and his group as a God-given miracle and a great victory for Judaism. Entire communities celebrated.

Among early Jewish accounts of the 1759 conversion, only one departed from the prevailing triumphant mood and expressed radically different sentiments. Israel Ba’al Shem Tov, known as the BeSh”T (1698-1760), who was the founder of Hasidism, the most important spiritual movement in Judaism of the period, was said to have bemoaned the Lwów mass apostasy or even to have died of pain caused by it. According to the story recorded in the hagiographic collectionShivhe ha-BeSh”T, the Ba’al Shem Tov laid the blame for the eruption of the entire affair on the Jewish establishment; he was “very angry with the rabbis and said that it was because of them, since they invented lies of their own.” The leader of Hasidism saw Frank and his group as part of the mystical body of Israel and presented their baptism as the amputation of a limb from the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence on earth: “I heard from the rabbi of our community that concerning those who converted [in Lwów], the Besht said: As long as the member is connected, there is some hope that it will recover, but when the member is cut off, there is no repair possible. Each person of Israel is a member of the Shekhinah.”

The Ba’al Shem Tov died in 1760, a year after the Lwów apostasy. Some 150 years later, in Berlin, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, an aspiring writer who was later to become the State of Israel’s most celebrated author and a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote a short essay on Frank. He juxtaposed various Jewish accounts of the 1759 conversion, ending his piece with the testimony concerning the BeSh”T’s words. He concluded:

We are only dust under the feet of this holy man, yet we dare to be of another opinion. Frank and his gang were not a limb of the body of Israel; rather, they were a [pathological] excrescence. Praise and thanks to our doctors, who cut it off in time, before it took root in the body!… Undoubtedly, Frank and his group were descendants of the foreign rabble, which tacked itself onto Israel during the Exodus from Egypt, and followed it thereafter. In the desert, in the Land of Israel, and later in the Exile, this multitude defiled the purity of Israel and defiled its holiness. May we be freed from them forever!
In recounting the BeSh”T’s reaction to Frank’s conversion, Agnon alluded to the symbolism of the “mixed rabble” or “mixed multitude,” the erev rav. The concept appears in the Hebrew Bible in the narrative account of the Exodus (Exod. 12:37-38): “And the People of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on foot, who were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude [erev rav] went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, and very many cattle.” Jewish tradition interpreted the phrase erev rav as denoting a group of foreigners who joined the Israelites following Moses from Egypt. While some midrashim understood it as a reference to the “righteous among the Egyptians, who celebrated Passover together with Israel,” a prototype for future converts to Judaism, the majority of rabbinic exegetes saw in the mixed multitude the source of corruption, sin, and discord: accustomed to idolatry, the erev rav enticed Israelites to make the Golden Calf and angered God by demanding the abolition of the prohibition of incest. Thus, the emblem of the erev rav came to evoke the image of unwelcome strangers present in the very midst of the Holy People; the mixed multitude were not true “children of Abraham” but Egyptian rabble who mingled with Israelites, contaminated their purity, incited them to sin, and caused them to stray from the right path in the wilderness. It was because of them that the generation of the Exodus lost the right path on the desert and Moses did not enter the Land of Israel.

In the Middle Ages, the symbolism established by the ancient midrash was taken up and developed by kabbalah, particularly the book of the Zohar. The Zohar universalized the midrashic image by removing it from its original place in the sequence of biblical narrative: the presence and activity of the mixed multitude were not restricted to the generation of the Exodus but extended over the entire history of humanity. The erev rav were the impurity that the serpent injected into Eve; they were the descendants of Cain; the nefilim, “sons of God” who procreated with the daughters of men (Gen. 6:2-4); the wicked ones who survived the deluge. They were progeny of the demonic rulers, Samael and Lilith. They contributed to the building of the Tower of Babel and caused the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. They practiced incest, idolatry, and witchcraft. They were the cause of the imprisonment of the Divine Presence in the demonic realm of the “husks” (kelippot) and, likewise, the exile of Israel among the nations.

In the Zohar’s narrative, the activity of the mixed multitude was by no means restricted to the past. Rather, the erev rav represented the ever-present force of destruction, whose aim was to bring the world back to the state of biblical “waste and void,” the primordial chaos (tohu va-vohu). And, it should be noted, this force was located within the Jewish people. As the mixed multitude mingled with Israelites in the desert, their descendants became outwardly undistinguishable from other Jews and existed in every generation: in accordance with its wider mythology of metempsychosis, the Zohar depicted present-day Jewish sinners as Jews the “roots of whose souls” originated among the erev rav.

The topos of the mixed multitude thus became the figure of the ultimate enemy within, as opposed to Gentile haters of Israel. As Yitzhak Baer has demonstrated, in its original Zoharic setting, this motif had already been employed as a vehicle of a powerful social critique directed against the contemporary Jewish establishment, which was said to oppress scholars and abuse the poor. The rabbis and parnassim (lay leaders), who “studied Torah not for its own sake,” “erected synagogues not for the glory of God but rather to make a name for themselves,” and turned into “false shepherds of Israel,” were surely not “true children of Israel” but the descendants of the Egyptian hangers-on who had joined Moses in the wilderness. Thus, the rich, powerful, materialistic rabbinic and secular powers were contrasted with holy spiritualists lacking riches or high social position and extolling poverty for the sake of God. In the eyes of kabbalists, only the latter formed the true congregation of Israel.

The Jews who converted in Lwów in 1759 were Sabbatians-followers of a religious movement triggered by messianic claims of the Ottoman Jew Sabbatai Tsevi (1626-76). Sabbatai first voiced his pretensions to the messiahship in 1648, but the movement that formed around him began to gain momentum only in 1665, when a young kabbalist, Nathan of Gaza (1643-80), “recognized” the truth of his mandate in an ecstatic vision. Shortly after proclaiming Sabbatai as the messiah, Nathan-who was soon to become “at once the John the Baptist and the Paul of the new messiah” -composed a commentary on an ancient apocalyptic text that he had supposedly discovered in an old synagogue’s storage room. In order to counter rabbinic opposition to the budding messianic upheaval, he invoked the symbolism of the mixed multitude: the messiah’s contemporaries “shall rise against him with reproaches and blasphemies-they are the ‘mixed multitude,’ the sons of Lilith, the ‘caul above the liver’ [Lev. 3:4], the leaders and rabbis of the generation.”

In his subsequent writings, Nathan developed a doctrine of salvation attainable by messianic belief alone (as opposed to the observance of commandments) and extended his use of the motif of the erev rav claiming that all Jews who fully observed the Law but denied Sabbatai’s mandate had souls of the mixed multitude. As Gershom Scholem observed, by linking the symbolism of the mixed multitude with eschatology and messianic mysteries, Nathan combined two distinct motifs that function separately in the Zohar. For the Sabbatians, the litmus test of what was the root of one’s soul became not, as in the Zohar, spiritual piety and “observance of the Torah for its own sake” but faith in the messiah Sabbatai Tsevi (or lack thereof): the sectarians “increasingly felt themselves to be the true Israel, harassed by the ‘mixed multitude’ because of their faith.”

The radical dichotomy between the messianic believers and the rabbinic skeptics was further elaborated in the Commentary on the Midnight-Vigil Liturgy, composed by Nathan’s disciple Rabbi Israel Hazzan of Kastoria. Hazzan argued that the true messiah would be recognized not by the Jewish leaders, whom he defined as the progeny of the mixed multitude, but by simpletons. The denial of Sabbatai Tsevi as the messiah and the failure to understand hints about him in the Jewish canon came to be attributed to a kind of metaphysical blindness stemming from the very roots of the nonbelievers’ souls. According to the Sabbatians, the “pretended rabbis” could no longer assert any rights to leadership over the Jewish people or lay claims to the authoritative interpretation of Jewish tradition. Their learning was false, their worldly position based on abuses of power, their ostensible piety worthless and lacking deeper sense.

Nahman ben Samuel of Busk (Piotr Jakubowski), 13, 16, 18, 22, 26

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45085/45085-h/45085-h.htm

http://www.yivo.org/downloads/frankism.pdf

Bernstein also uses this material

Nachman ben Samuel Halevi, Rabbi of Busk, Galicia. When Mikulski, the administrator of the Archbishopric of Lemberg, invited the representatives of Judaism to a disputation with the Frankists, July 16, 1759, he was one of the Frankist delegates. He afterwards became a Christian, and took the name of Pietr Jacobski (Gräetz x., 392).

Posted in otdimjh | Tagged article, false messiah, frank, frankism, nahman ben samuel, otdimjh, poland | 1 Comment

15 July 1930, Birth of Jacques Derrida, Jewish philosopher, critic and postmodern deconstructionist #otdimjh

Posted on July 15, 2015 by richardsh

“A Jew is one who asks: Who is a Jew?”

JACQUES DERRIDA (1930–2004) was a French philosopher and literary critic. Born on 15 July 1930 in El-Biar, Algeria, he was expelled from his lycée by Algerian administrators who were anxious to implement anti-Semitic quotas set by the Vichy government. In 1949 his family moved to France. Beginning in 1952 he was a student at the École Normale Superiéure in Paris where he studied under Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. Later he studied at the Husserl Archive in Leuven, Belgium where he completed his aggregation. Later he became a lecturer there. [Dan Cohn-Sherbok: Fifty Key Jewish Thinkers, 52-54]

During the Algerian War of Independence, Derrida taught children of soldiers. Following the war, he was associated with the Tel Quel group of literary and philosophical theorists. From 1960 to 1964 he taught philosophy at the Sorbonne, and from 1964 to 1984 at the École Normale Superiéure. He completed his These d’Etat in 1980; this was published in English as The Time of a Thesis: Punctuations. Until his death in 2004 he was director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. With François Châtelet and others, he served as co-founder of the International College of Philosophy. From 1986 he served as Professor of Philosophy, French and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Irvine. Derrida was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2001 received the Adorno-Preis from the University of Frankfurt.

He received honorary doctorates from Cambridge University, Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, University of Essex, University of Leuven and Williams College.

Derrida’s earliest manuscript dealt with Edmund Husserl; it was submitted for a degree in 1954 and was later published as The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Phenomenology. In 1962 he published Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry: An Introduction. Derrida’s first major contribution to the international academic community was his essay ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ which was delivered to a conference at Johns Hopkins University in 1966. The conference dealt with structuralism, which was then widely discussed in France but was only becoming familiar to departments of French and comparative literature in the United States. Derrida’s lecture charted the accomplishments of structuralism, but also expressed reservations about its limitations.

In 1970 the conference proceedings were published as The Structuralist Controversy. At the conference Derrida met Paul de Man and Jacques Lacan. In 1967 Derrida published three collections of work: Of Grammatology; Writing and Difference; and Speech and Phenomena. These contained studies of: philosophers such as Rousseau, Saussure, Husserl, Lévinas, Heidegger, Hegel, Foucault, Bataille and Descartes; anthropologists such as Levi-Strauss; psychoanalysts, including Freud; and writers such as Edmond Jabés and Antonin Artaud. In these early works Derrida set out the principles of deconstructionism in an attempt to illustrate that the arguments put forward by their subject matter exceeded and contradicted the oppositional parameters in which they were located. The next five years of work were collected in two publications: Dissemination and Margins of Philosophy; in addition, a collection of interviews, published in 1981 as Positions, appeared.

On 14 March 1987 Derrida presented at the International College of Philosophy conference an essay entitled ‘Heidegger: Open Questions’, which was later published as Of Spirit. This work demonstrates, in response to the debate about Heidegger’s Nazism, the transformation of Derrida’s philosophical inheritance. In it he traced the shifting role of Spirit through Heidegger’s work, and also considered three fundamental and recurring elements of Heideggeran philosophy: the distinction between human beings and animals; technology; and the privilege of questioning as the essential nature of philosophy.

Derrida’s essay ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ which he published in 1966 was the starting point of what is Derrida’s most important contribution: deconstruction. Basically this concept is an attempt to open a text to a range of meanings and interpretations; its method is to take binary oppositions within a text and illustrate that they are not as stable as might appear. In fact the two opposed notions are fluid; as a consequence, the meaning of the text is similarly fluid. This fluidity is a legacy of traditional metaphysics founded on oppositions that seek to establish a stability of meaning through conceptual absolutes where one term is elevated to a status that designates its opposite.

According to Derrida, these hierarchies are silently challenged by the texts themselves, where the meaning of a text depends on this contradiction. The aim of the critic is to show that this dialectical stability is subverted by the text’s internal logic. Deconstruction thereby leads to new interpretations of philosophical and literary texts. No meaning is ever fixed; rather, the only thing that ensures there is a sense of unity within a text is what Derrida refers to as ‘the metaphysics of presence’, where presence is granted the privilege of truth.

Although Derrida’s writings have had a profound influence, analytic philosophers and scientists have been critical of his approach. Some of his detractors regard his work as non-philosophical or as pseudophilosophy. Supporters of Derrida maintain that such criticism is circular – detractors of Derrida propose a system of evaluating philosophy that is antithetical to Derrida, and then criticize Derrida for not following it. In their view, these philosophers fail to recognize the complexity of Derrida’s work. Commenting on such criticism, Derrida wrote in ‘Following Theory’:

You also asked me, in a personal way, why people are angry at me. To a large extent, I don’t know. It’s up to them to answer. To a small extent I know: it is not usually because people are angry at me personally, but rather they are angry at what I write. They are angry at my texts more than anything else, and I think it is because of the way I write – not the content, or the thesis. They say that I do not obey the usual rules of rhetoric, grammar, demonstration, and argumentation.

Despite such criticism, Derrida has had a major impact on academics in a wide range of fields. Deconstruction has been used in such diverse fields as law, politics, literary theory and criticism, and philosophy.

Reflection and Prayer: Messianic Jews have yet to come to terms with the life and significance of this pivotal Jewish thinker. But his work has paved the way for postmodern thought, identity and expression, something the Messianic Jewish movement is indebted to as a child of its time. Derrida’s playful indeterminacy is both threatening and fascinating, and serious theological reflection demands an engaged response to the effect of his work. May Messianic Jews and others not flinch from such work, and may Derrida’s contribution be appreciated, appropriately responded to, and developed further. In Yeshua’s name we pray. Amen.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/137581/jacques-derrida-benoit-peeters

http://www.jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/article4f5f.html?articleid=39

http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2010/12/derridas-crypto-jewish-identity/

http://cup.columbia.edu/book//9780231128247

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/shofar/summary/v021/21.2cohen.html

A more accurate title for this book would have been The Non-Jewish Derrida.

Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint

Hélène Cixous. Translated by Beverley Bie Brahic

Who can say “I am Jewish?” What does “Jew” mean? What especially does it mean for Jacques Derrida, founder of deconstruction, scoffer at boundaries and fixed identities, explorer of the indeterminate and undecidable? In Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, French feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous follows the intertwined threads of Jewishness and non-Jewishness that play through the life and works of one of the greatest living philosophers.

Cixous is a lifelong friend of Derrida. They both grew up as French Jews in Algeria and share a “belonging constituted of exclusion and nonbelonging”–not Algerian, rejected by France, their Jewishness concealed or acculturated. In Derrida’s family “one never said ‘circumcision’but ‘baptism,’not ‘Bar Mitzvah’but ‘communion.'” Judaism cloaked in Catholicism is one example of the undecidability of identity that influenced the thinker whom Cixous calls a “Jewish Saint.”

An intellectual contemporary of Derrida, Cixous’s ideas on writing have an affinity with his philosophy of deconstruction, which sought to overturn binary oppositions–such as man/woman, or Jew/non-Jew–and blur boundaries of exclusion inherent in Western thought. In portraying Derrida, Cixous uses metonymy, alliteration, rhyme, neologisms, and puns to keep the text in constant motion, freeing language from any rigidity of meaning. In this way she writes a portrait of “Derrida in flight,” slipping from one appearance to the next, unable to be fixed in one spot, yet encompassing each point he passes. From the circumcision act to family relationships, through Derrida’s works to those of Celan, Rousseau, and Beaumarchais, Cixous effortlessly merges biography and textual commentary in this playful portrait of the man, his works, and being (or not being) Jewish.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hélène Cixous is one of today’s best-known feminist theorists and author ofComing to Writing and Other Essays, The Newly Born Woman, and Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (Columbia), as well as fiction and plays. Beverley Bie Brahic is a translator and poet living in Paris.

JACQUES DERRIDA’S LIFE AS AN ALGERIAN JEW REVEALED IN NEWLY TRANSLATED BIO

The philosopher’s influential legacy is reshaped by the part of his life story that is often overlooked

By Scott Krane

July 15, 2013

Jacques Derrida, 1993. (Ferenc Kalmandy/AFP/Getty Images)

“Writing a biography means living through an intimate and sometimes intimidating adventure,” writes Benoît Peeters in his newly translated biography of Jacques Derrida, who would have turned 83 today. But what is the difference between the biography of a living man and a dead man? In the Introduction toDerrida, published in France in 2010 and now beautifully translated into English by Andrew Brown, French artist, critic, and author Peeters writes, “Whatever happens, Jacques Derrida will not be part of his own life, like a sort of posthumous friend. A strange one-way friendship that he would not have failed to question.” The author continues in the book’s introduction: “I am convinced of one thing: there are biographies only of the dead. So every biography is lacking its supreme reader: the one who is no longer there. If there is an ethics of biographers, it can perhaps be located here: would they dare to stand, book in hand, in front of their subject?”

Peeters is pleased that his book is now appearing in English. “My biography of Derrida, the first to be based on research work first-hand, was very well received when it was published in France,” Peeters told me in a recent interview. “And Derrida as a thinker is reflected in the world; it was logical that my book be translated. The United States played a decisive role in the reception of deconstruction. It is therefore not surprising that the English translation was the first to appear,” he said. Soon, he added, there will be translations available in German and Spanish, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

But there is also Jacques Derrida’s own reckoning on the art of biography to consider: “As you know, the traditional philosophy excludes biography, it considers biography as something external to philosophy. You’ll remember Heidegger’s reference to Aristotle: ‘What was Aristotle’s life?’ Well, the answer lay in a single sentence: ‘He was born, he thought, he died.’ And all the rest is pure anecdote.” While a French audience wouldn’t be surprised by such sardonic nihilism, it may be shocking for readers who are used to the ethic of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose theory of history from a century earlier held that there is no history, only biography.

Derrida’s attitude toward biography may have also been shaped by the experiences of his own family and his resulting loss of verifiable connection to his origins. Most of the papers concerning Derrida’s family life and his early life growing up as a Jew in Algiers have disappeared. In a book review for the Guardian, literary theorist Terry Eagleton wrote:

At the age of 12, Derrida was excluded from his lycee when the Algerian government, anxious to outdo the Vichy regime in its anti-semitic zeal, decided to lower the quota of Jewish pupils. … Paradoxically, the effect of this brutal rejection on a “little black and very Arab Jew” as he described himself, was not only to make him feel an outsider, but to breed in him a lifelong aversion to communities. He was taken in by a Jewish school, and hated the idea of being defined by his Jewish identity. Identity and homogeneity were what he would later seek to deconstruct. Yet the experience also gave him a deep suspicion of solidarity.

In an interview, Peeters said, “In 1942, anti-Semitic measures taken by the Vichy regime had him excluded from school for a year. Like other Jews of Algeria, he was stripped of French nationality. These experiences marked him forever. But this time, he also kept away from the Jewish school founded by teachers excluded from formal education. These themes run throughout his life and his work.”

In 1962, Derrida’s parents left their home and his birthplace of El Biar in the “hill suburbs of Algiers.” But Peeters manages to capture content that may have seemed elusive to researchers and searchers for autobiographical sentiment. “I was part of an extraordinary transformation of French Judaism in Algeria: My great-grandparents were still very close to the Arabs in language and customs,” Derrida once recalled during a later-in-life interview quoted by Peeters.

Peeters, a one-time teacher of Bernard Henri-Lévy, was attracted to the project in part by the idea of exploring the literary biographical materials that the philosopher himself refused to trust. “I first wanted to capitalize on the huge archive left by Jacques Derrida, and I was the first to explore it,” Peters said. “I found notes, manuscripts, diaries, especially the thousands of letters of great literary quality. But it would have been absurd to rely only on written materials, while most of the relatives are still living.” He then proceeded to offer a glimpse at his craft: “Essential meetings were often long and sometimes repeated, with numerous witnesses, all ages. I had the chance to talk with the brother, sister, and cousin closest to Derrida, with his wife Margaret, his sons Peter and John, as well as many friends.” Reviewing in the Guardian, Elisabeth Roudinesco wrote of Peeters, “He is the first to have gained access to the writer’s records at France’s Institute of Contemporary Publishing Archives and the Langson Library at the University of California, Irvine. He also interviewed around 100 essential figures.”

The book explores everything from its subject early to later intellectual pursuits, beginning with his childhood initiation in Algeria into the world of cheap French novels and translations of Nietzsche. From this point, the young Derrida falls in love with Sartre, of whom he writes, “I recognize my debt, the filiation, the huge influence, the huge presence of Sartre in my formative years.” He writes, “I have never striven to evade it,” however he found Being and Nothingness to be “philosophically weak,” outshined as it were, by his early readings of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. He would travel to Harvard University, leaving Paris in 1956, to study Husserl’s microfilms and acquired special audit status.

In this period, Derrida ambiguously asked his lifelong lover Marguerite and her family for their blessings in a decidedly quirky if not unorthodox application to matrimony. At Harvard he purchased an Olivetti 32 typewriter and, for the first time in his life, learned to use the mechanical instrument. His main reason for coming to America, however, according to Peeters, was to avoid military service. Derrida returned to Algeria in 1957, after marrying Marguerite and honeymooning in Paris, to join the military and please his bride’s family, with whom he had held rickety correspondence in the formative stages of arranging the marriage. Derrida asked to teach the children of soldiers in lieu of military service during the Algerian War for Independence from the French from 1957 to 1959. Most of the research for this section of the biography is based on formerly recorded memoirs, which Peeters has sifted through with care.

In 1960, Derrida was appointed an official lecturer at the Sorbonne in Paris. Peeters writes: “As there was no syllabus in general philosophy, Derrida was at liberty to choose his subjects. He gave entire lecture courses on Heidegger’s Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics and ‘What Is Metaphysics.’ ” Peeters stresses that Derrida’s ethics for public politicizing and propagandizing were built and developed in consequence of the geopolitical upshot of the Algerian War. Peeters makes a citation of a book that greatly influenced Derrida’s opinion of Algerian geopolitics. The book was The French of Algeria published by Julliard, written by one of Derrida’s fellow pupils at Louis-le-Grand, his wartime station: “Isn’t it difficult to lay the blame for all of France’s policies in Algeria over the past 130 years on something like the French Algerians (in spite of their massive and unremitting guilt, which should neither be overlooked nor diluted on the pretext of sharing it round)?” The citation continues, “If, as you say, the French Algerians have indeed been the ‘makers’ of their own history and misfortune, this is true only if, at the same, one points out that all governments and the whole army (in other words the whole French people in whose name they act) have always been the masters.”

Derrida supported the writings of Albert Camus—a French Algerian elder contemporary and a thoughtful absurdist—while gracefully disagreeing with his philosophy. Peeters explains, “Over and above the wounds on the family and personal level, the Algerian War also constituted one of the stimuli for all Derrida’s political thinking.” Perhaps it is his political thinking that this biographer is able to crystallize and explain more efficiently than others and perhaps via Derrida’s own memoirs and interviews: “In France,” writes Peeters, “for years, he would avoid speaking in public about a subject that remained too controversial. But in an interview he gave in Japan in 1987, he acknowledged that, while he had approved of the Algerians’ struggle for independence, he had long hoped for ‘a solution that would allow the French Algerians to continue to live in that country,’ ‘an original political solution that was not the one that actually came about.’ ” In his final TV broadcast in 2004, Derrida refers to the Israel and Palestine conflict, seeing it as “a different problematic than that of two sovereign states” and using his purview of the Algerian Republic and war as a random geopolitical corset to assess the situation. Benoît Peeters’ inclusion of these opinions makes his biography unique in shaping Jacques Derrida’s legacy in a way that a new generation would benefit from knowing.

http://www.jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/article4f5f.html?articleid=39

How to Survive Jacques Derrida

Devorah Baum on the French philosopher’s moral legacy

Devorah Baum | Winter 2004 – Number 196

‘What happens when a great thinker becomes silent?’ – Jacques Derrida, ‘Adieu à Emmanuel Levinas’

I can’t believe he’s dead: the ‘greatest living philosopher’ no more. Yet the facts are these: Jacques Derrida (15 July 1930-8 October 2004). There have already been attempts to evaluate the singular life that spanned those dates. I find myself reading countless articles, by his friends, supporters and detractors, and awaiting his response. As if death were not, after all, decisive; as if I were still expecting to hear from him once more. Perhaps because, if there was one word (and there is never only one word) to describe the tenor of his writings, for me it would be the word response. Derrida often described death, after Levinas, as an experience of the ‘non-response’. To quote Levinas’s own God, Death, and Time (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000):

“There is here an end that always has the ambiguity of a departure without return, of a passing away but also of a scandal (‘is it really possible that he’s dead?’) of non-response and of my responsibility.”

Derrida will never again respond. And so, with his scandalous ‘passing away’, we are called upon to respond, not only to those words that have been written about him, but to everything that survives him: everything he opened up to us, everything he revealed as demanding thought, consideration, a response. As if we, the survivors of Derrida, were responsible for his death – responsible for what takes place in his name, or in the future of his name, now that he no longer bears it.

Derrida conceived of a ‘friend’ as someone whose name he might be left to utter in their absence: ‘in calling or naming someone while he is alive, we know that his name can survive him and already survives him’. The name, therefore, because it exists independently of the one who bears it, is connected, in Derrida’s imagination, to death. The name is not, like its bearer, finite. As such, it will outlive its bearer, alerting the friend, in advance, to the ‘work of mourning’ that will follow the death of the friend, depending on which dies first. At the same time, the fact that the name will survive my death, alerts me to the thought that I cannot ever fully command the ‘life’ and meaning of my own name. My name does not belong to me, even if I belong to my name.

In what follows, I will examine how Derrida responded to ‘being named’. It is a question of identity, and of a certain departure in the ‘politics of identity’. It is also a question of the response, and of our responsibility before those condemned to silence or the ‘non-response’.

In 1942, aged 12, the as yet undetected ‘great twentieth-century philosopher’, Jacques Derrida, was expelled from his lycée in French-occupied Algeria. On the first day of term the head teacher had announced that ‘French culture is not made for little Jews’. And so it would seem that Derrida’s early or earliest experience of the ‘academy’ was of anti-Semitism, as if, from the outset, the western (‘Greek’) schools of learning were linked to his personal experience of suffering an injustice.

Exiled from his lycée, the young Derrida was sent to a Jewish school set up for the expelled Jewish students and staffed by the expelled Jewish teachers. The exclusively Jewish school was called Alliance, the French term for ‘covenant’, referring to the covenant of the Jewish people with their G-d; the covenant that binds one in advance, before one has the right to decide or choose for oneself to agree to the terms of the arrangement. The covenant whose mark on the flesh of the male Jewish infant is the sign of circumcision, which Derrida received when he was eight days old and in no way able to say Yes or No to the law, anymore than he was able to choose the name he would be called by or the language he would later learn to speak. Derrida was enrolled in the Alliance school but absented himself because, as he explained, ‘I felt . . . just as out-of-place in a closed Jewish community as I did on the other side’, which was, he observes, the

“Paradoxical effect, perhaps, of this brutalization: a desire for integration in the non-Jewish community . . . an impatient distance with regard to the Jewish communities, whenever I have the impression that they are closing themselves off by posing themselves as such. Whence a feeling of non-belonging that I have no doubt transposed . . .”

Evidently the young Derrida was not happy to be cast in a situation not of his own choosing. He did not wish to be forced to identify with a particular community or group; especially thisAlliancewhich both condemns and saves him – providing him with a place of refuge from those who expelled him, but also naming the reason for his expulsion. And this ‘double rejection’, as Geoffrey Bennington puts it in his and Derrida’s book Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) – first the rejection of Derrida by the French authorities (or ‘French culture’) and then Derrida’s own rejection of the marginal and insular Jewish community into which he felt pushed or exiled – was ‘transposed’ by Derrida into his thinking about other things. Derrida wanted to situate himself nowhere, he wanted to belong nowhere; just as, in his theoretical work, the critic or philosopher is, and must be as a kind of guiding principle, perpetually displaced.

As an autobiographical note, this ‘double rejection’ appears to provide a rich resource for anyone interested in the psychological background of deconstruction. For it would seem as if Derrida’s entire philosophical contribution was marked by this originating trauma or wound. As Bennington comments, ‘this difficulty with belonging, one would almost say of identification, affects the whole of J.D.’s oeuvre, and it seems to me that . . . [deconstruction] is the very thought of this’. Bennington’s description of deconstruction as ‘this difficulty with belonging, one would almost say of identification’ explicitly associates Derrida’s ambivalent ‘Jewish identity’ to the larger question of his philosophy. Derrida felt ‘difficulty with belonging’, it seems, because belonging (to any particular community, culture or group) can never be justified. Every identification or alliance implies the exclusion of others, hence the desire for non-belonging in order to protest at the injustice of belonging.

Indeed, Bennington has argued that Derrida did manage to belong nowhere, by standing neither on one side nor the other side of the dialectic between ‘Greek’ exclusion and ‘Jewish’ exclusivity. Derrida, says Bennington, is ‘neither Jew nor Greek’. Hence the difficulty the academy has had, within its various disciplines and departments, when dealing with him – for he has no (and deliberately has no) position, no place.

But the politics of identity cannot be resolved quite so simply. Indeed, there is a certain conception of the Jew with which Derrida did seem to identify. The Wandering Jew as one who, by very definition, has no place. The uprooted stranger in the wilderness of messianic desire, always awaiting deliverance into the Promised Land as the promise of justice; the promise of a just place – a place always in the future, always to come. In this sense, if non-belonging or displacement was to be Derrida’s theoretical position, then, if he was to identify with anyone at all, identifying with the Diaspora Jew was perhaps the most compatible with his thinking. The Diaspora Jew, like Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, who is on the one hand as integrated as possible within his society, observing no particular ritual to mark him out as different, but who, on the other hand, remains conscious of a certain otherness buried deep within his being, even if what attaches him to this otherness – which is his Jewishness – only hangs there by the weakest of threads.

This rather romanticized figure, the Wandering Jew, is perhaps how most European Jewish intellectuals after the Shoah have wanted to see themselves. For this figure, lacking all power, property and territory, at least in the national sense, is always in the role of victim rather than persecutor. He is the perpetual stranger in our midst and therefore a reminder of everything we owe the stranger.

But this identification seems to be towards a sense of oneself as the victim – the one to whom things happen – the one who, lacking a place of his own, need not therefore take any responsibility for the place of the world or for the events of history. And this echoes a common criticism of deconstruction, on both the left and the right, as a form of parasitism (bearing in mind that the parasite is also an antisemitic stereotype): the deconstructionist has sometimes stood accused of feeding off the canon, only commenting and never crafting, and so, in a certain sense, risking nothing of his own.

Defending deconstruction against this type of allegation could, inadvertently, also suggest a defence of the Jew. For Derrida, whose influence is beyond any reasonable doubt, did not pretend to the innocence of a victim. The ‘absolute victim’, he argued, is powerless to identify himself, even to himself. He bears no name, like Hannah Arendt’s stray dog, a metaphor for the plight of the refugee. As she put in in The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1951), ‘a dog with a name has a better chance of survival than a stray dog’. Or, if I may be permitted the extremity of the example, it has often been noted that, amongst the first to die in the concentration camps were those who they did not know when they were being called because they could not speak any German; they had no power of response, not even the power of saying: ‘Yes, it is me, I recognize myself in your address.’ In other words, the first moment in becoming responsible is the moment of being called and responding to the call: response-ability, quite literally. Whoever is not responsible, because not response-able, is the ‘absolute victim’ – he is the stranger, not because he wants to be as a theoretical choice, but because he is entirely estranged from the world in which he takes place.

It was also Hannah Arendt who stated, in her conversation with Gunter Gaus which appears inThe Portable Hannah Arendt (edited by Peter Baehr; New York: Penguin Books, 2000), that:

“If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew. Not as a German, not as a world-citizen, not as an upholder of the Rights of Man, or whatever. But: What can I specifically do as a Jew?”

She was responding to her own first realization of a ‘Jewish identity’, which came from a less than desirable source:

“I did not know from my family that I was Jewish. My mother was completely a-religious . . . the word ‘Jew’ never came up when I was a small child. I first met up with it through antisemitic remarks.”

Arendt thus saw it as her absolute responsibility to identify with and defend the Jewishness with which others had sought to victimize her. Shylock’s famous defence – ‘Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?’ – would not be enough. Attacked as a Jew, it is as a Jew that one must defend oneself: one must speak out against the persecutor as the very Jew undergoing this specific persecution.

Responding as called, then, for Arendt, is the refusal to play the part of the victim. Whoevercan identify herself, can name herself, regardless of the evils perpetrated on her or in her name, she, in Arendt’s trenchant analysis, must take some responsibility. This didn’t win Arendt many friends in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust when she demanded accountability of a certain kind even from the victims. Responding as a Jew is already to deny a certain victimhood: it is to own that I have response-ability, that is, the ability to respond.

In which case, the desire to be no one and to stand nowhere, out of concern for justice, is perhaps a failure of responsibility; it perhaps assumes an even greater injustice than the one against which it would like to protest. Indeed, contrary to popular misconceptions, Derrida did not resist ethical responsibility. He responded to ‘his calling’ (and I intend here the spiritual sense of the word calling as well as the literal fact of being called by/a name). Derrida responded, as called, I would argue, precisely on behalf of those who have no power of response.

Arendt positioned the Jew as one who must answer to that name when called. Derrida, one could argue, expanded her argument to include the address not just of the persecutor but also of those in one’s own community who regard themselves as being on ‘one’s own side’. As such, one might reformulate Arendt’s position as follows: the other, whether friend or foe, decides who I am; the other names and calls me, and I must respond to the other as and when called.

Derrida spent his life and his career responding with great ambivalence to the names he was called – and particularly to the name Jew. Consider, for example, an event to which Derrida alludes at the end of his most autobiographical work, Circumfession (which forms part of Bennington and Derrida’s Jacques Derrida). He refers to a conference at the UCLA on The Final Solution and the Limits of Representation where some ‘young imbecile’ dares to ask, after the lecture, ‘what you [he] had done to save the Jews during the war’. The question insinuates an accusation: you, Derrida, who come here and speak on this grave and serious subject from the arrogant pulpit of philosophy, you yourself did not do enough to save the Jews during the war, did you?

This insinuation of an accusation by a younger generation towards its parent generation is doubly impertinent because Derrida has the best line of defence: he was Jewish during the war! he was the victim! He, it was, who needed saving: there was nothing he could do, the evil was visited upon him (even if not to the extent that it was visited upon the Jews in central Europe). But relating this episode with the ‘young imbecile’, Derrida is also forced to acknowledge the following:

“but though he may well not have known, until your reply, that you will have been Jewish, it recalls the fact that people might not know it still, you remain guilty of that, whence this announcement of circumcision, perhaps you didn’t do enough to save the Jews, he may be right, you [I] always think the other is right.”

Note the way Derrida moves from a reaction of self-defence towards a position of responsibility. Annoyed at first by the young imbecile’s question or accusation, Derrida soon acknowledges its legitimacy because he understands that it is addressed to Derrida not as a Jew. He acknowledges that he has not announced or revealed his Jewishness publicly enough, he has not owned it and so may stand guilty as charged of not doing enough to ‘save the Jews’. For if he is only prepared to identify publicly as Jewish in these moments of pure defensiveness, when to be Jewish is to plead the case of the victim, then he fails to defend them at other times, by not speaking out in their name. Rejecting the imposition of this Jewish identity, only owning it here and now when it names the name of the victim who could do nothing, who was innocent, vulnerable, passive and defenceless, this puts Derrida on the side of the persecutor – the one who is not prepared to take on the responsibilities of being called, of having a place and a name. So Derrida confesses that: ‘I am ready to justify or even repeat the very thing I’m being accused of’ (and here the name Jew is represented as an accusation: he is accused of being Jewish just as he is accused of not doing enough to save the Jews). He goes on: ‘for after all . . . what else am I in truth, who am I if I am not what I inhabit and where I take place’? In this particular passage, then, Derrida is prepared to own his place – and the place he refers to is the place or position of the Jew.

It seems to me that Derrida’s ‘announcement of circumcision’, the hidden sign of the JewishAlliance with which he was indelibly marked, and which he had rejected as a child, indicates a new departure in the politics of identity. Derrida did not say, in the present tense, ‘I am Jewish’, because the name Jew remained, for him, the name of a secret whose meaning was always to come. But he did come to accept the name Jew as one name of his calling – responding to that call without ever claiming to be the thing he was called.

He followed that call wherever it took him, to a Jewish Library in Paris, Jewish Book Week in London, and even to Israel. Israel: the modern Israeli state, which, today, is surely the crux of the problem of identification and the ‘difficulty with belonging’ for the European Jewish intellectual. For the State of Israel has seemed to mark an end to the wanderings of the Jew and an end to the status of the Jew as solely the victim of history. But if one responds to the call of the other, and to the name one has been called, in order to reject the identity of the victim, then one must continue to respond to that name in the moments when it does not name the innocent, but in the moments when it names the guilty party. As Levinas says, the more responsible one is, the more guilty one is: the responsible person is one who bears the guilt. Which is why Derrida, a quintessentially Diaspora figure, did not pass over the responsibility for Israel.

Wanting to be in the place of the innocent, which is no place, that’s when one is really guilty – guilty of not responding when one has the ability to respond and bearing the guilt that comes with having a name and a place. But by taking responsibility for that name and place, by bearing that guilt, and by committing oneself to the future of both name and place, then one stands for, not only those in whose name one speaks (those who have the same name as I do), but for those who cannot speak or respond or answer for themselves.

Devorah Baum is researching European philosophy at Kings College, University of London.

Posted in otdimjh | Tagged article, cohn-sherbok, derrida, otdimjh | 1 Comment

14 July 1391 Forced Baptism of Samuel Abravalla #otdimjh

Posted on July 14, 2015 by richardsh

Samuel Abravalla, called ‘the great’, was the richest Jew in Valencia. He was forced during the persecution of 1391 to accept Christianity. The jurados of Valencia reported on this baptism on July 14, 1391, as follows: “Yesterday there was baptized the great Don Samuel Abravalla with great solemnity in the palace of En Gasto under the patronage of the marquis, and he has received the name of Alfonso Ferrandes de Villanueva, from an estate which he owns in the marquisate, called Villanueva” (De los Rios, “Hist. de los Judíos de España y Portugal,” ii. 603). This Samuel Abravalla can scarcely be identical with Don Samuel Abravanel, who was also baptized in 1391, but took the name Juan de Sevilla. Abravalla soon returned to Judaism, as did also Abravanel. He was sent with Don Solomon ha-Levi to Rome as ambassador of the Spanish Jews, and had an interview with the pope. [Jewish Encyclopedia]

Bibliography:

Shebeṭ Yehudah, No. 41;

Grätz, Gesch. d. Juden, iv. 219.

In Valencia, the wealthy and influential Joseph Abarim and Samuel Abravalla led the way; and they were followed by all of their surviving coreligionists, except a few who remained in hiding. So many came forward for baptism, it was said, that the holy chrism in the churches was exhausted, and it was regarded as miraculous that the supply held out. The number of converts here alone was stated, with palpable exaggeration, to amount to eleven thousand. In some places, the Jews did not wait for the application of compulsion, but anticipated the popular attack by coming forward spontaneously, clamoring for admission to the Church. All told, the total number of conversions in the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile was reckoned at the improbable figure of two hundred thousand. It was a phenomenon unique in the whole of Jewish history. [The Marranos: Cecil Roth]

Reflection: Whilst there is some confusion as to the precise identity of Samuel Abravalla, there is little doubt of the sad circumstances, replicated many times over in medieval Spain, that left a lasting and damaging legacy on Jewish-Christian relations. The church still has a long way to go to show repentance, reconciliation and restoration of relationship between Jewish and Christians, and Messianic Jews often suffer the stigma and scrutiny of both communities as to the genuineness of their characters and motives, because of such oppressive circumstances and the duress under which so-called ‘converts’ were placed. Lord, have mercy!

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/630-abravalla

Click to access A%20History%20of%20The%20Marranos.pdf

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13 July 1844 John Moses Eppstein declares his faith in Yeshua #otdimjh

Posted on July 13, 2015 by richardsh

Eppstein, Rev. John Moses (Levi, such was his name at first), was born at Memel, in Prussia, Feb. 24, 1827, being the son of Elijah Levi and Rose, his wife (née Eppstein). Soon after his birth his father died, and he was brought up by his grandfather, Rabbi Benjamin Eppstein, who retired to Jerusalem when his grandson was nine years old, adopting him as his son, and making him take the name of Eppstein [Bernstein: Some Jewish Witnesses]

Until he was sixteen years old Moses was taught little else than Hebrew and the Talmud. About this time several friends of his became Christians. At first the only effect on him of their conversion was to make him more bigoted; indeed, he went about with a dagger for some time in the hope of killing his cousin Lauria, a rabbi who had become a Christian. At last, through the latter, he was led to study the Prophets, and eventually the New Testament. After this his eyes began to be opened to the truth as he saw fact and figure, and type fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, who must have been the promised Messiah. The Talmud was put aside for the whole written Word of God; this he studied at the risk of being killed, the reading of even the Old Testament causing suspicion. He had therefore to resort to all sorts of contrivances to enable him to search the Scriptures.

His own words tell out his feelings at this time:—”My convictions deepened daily, and I longed to openly confess the Lord Jesus; but I had not the courage to give up all for Him. All sorts of thoughts swayed my mind, and often, when my conscience troubled me, something would whisper to [201] my troubled heart, ‘When you grow up and get your property you will be free to embrace Christianity, now your wisdom is to hide your convictions.’ But I was not happy, and continued praying, and the Lord heard my prayer, for I was soon compelled to take refuge with the Society’s missionaries. In the house where I lived there was a small synagogue. I was the only Levite in the congregation, so that on days when the Law was read I had to read after the priest; as I was going up to the desk my sash caught, and the tracts I had in it fell out. The bystanders stepped forward to see what they were; on finding their contents, ‘Apostate,’ they yelled, ‘with these about you, you desecrate our place of worship, and dare even to go up to read the Law!’ The whole congregation began beating me, and would probably have murdered me, had it not been for one of them. As soon as I was free from my persecutors, my only safety was in flight. I went to my room, and committed myself in prayer to the Lord, and then went straight to the house of Mr. Nicolayson.” After a course of instruction he was baptized, July 13, 1844, by Bishop Alexander.

RtRevdMichaelSolomonAlexander_NYPL_497978

Bishop Michael Solomon A;exander

After his baptism he found a situation in Cairo, in which he stayed for several years, until he felt the missionary call. His employer did his best to prevent him leaving, even to offering him a share in his business. But his mind was made up, and he entered the Protestant College at Malta, as a theological student, spending five years there. He then offered himself to the Society, and in 1854 entered the Hebrew College in Palestine Place.

Palestine Place

In 1857 he was appointed a missionary [202] of the Society at Bagdad. The results of his work are summed up in his own words, “The mission was a great success, not from the number of baptisms, but from the large numbers to whom we preached Christ.” In 1867 he commenced his great work at Smyrna, where, through his labours during eighteen years, many Jews were born again, and were baptized. In 1885 he left Smyrna. One who knew him and his work there wrote after his death, “Mr. Eppstein will ever be remembered by thousands of Jews living at Smyrna, and in the interior of Asia Minor. When his death became known many Jews said, ‘He was a good man, and loved our people.’ He had friends amongst the rich as well as the poor, whilst learned and unlearned looked up to him for his great learning and Talmudical knowledge.”

In 1885, on the death of Dr. Stern, he was appointed head of the Society’s mission in London, a post for which he was singularly fitted. He knew English, German, French, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Greek (both modern and classic), Latin, Syriac, Chaldee, Felachi (the Nestorian dialect of Chaldee), Persian, Italian, and Turkish. In 1893 he removed to Bristol, in charge of the “Wanderers’ Home.” Here his work was greatly blessed, as many as eighty-two Jews being baptized by him up to 1902. During his missionary career he baptized 262 Jews and Jewesses.

At last, in May, 1903, his call came to higher service. Shortly before his death, though suffering greatly, he said he was “the happiest man in the world,” and again, “I thank God that He enabled me to lay hold [203] of the Pearl, and to lay hold of it with both my hands.” The Society suffered a great loss when Mr. Eppstein passed away to his eternal rest. As a missionary he was to the end most able and faithful, and his life and life work will ever be remembered with heartfelt gratitude to the Almighty God for all that he was able to do through a life so fully dedicated to His service, as was that of the late John Moses Eppstein.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for the life of John Moses Eppstein, a faithful scholar, servant and witness to Yeshua. May we follow his example of active service, joy and wisdom. In Yeshua’s name we pray. Amen.

https://jewinthepew.org/2015/07/07/7-july-1850-rabbi-eliezer-lauria-ordained-in-jerusalem-otdimjh/

Posted in otdimjh | Tagged alexander, article, eppstein, lauria, otdimjh | 4 Comments

12/14 July 1555 Papal Bull “Cum Nimis Absurdum” establishes Roman Ghetto and revokes Jewish community rights #otdimjh

Posted on July 12, 2015 by richardsh

Cum nimis absurdum was a papal bull issued by Pope Paul IV dated 12 July 1555. It takes its name from its first words: “Since it is absurd and utterly inconvenient that the Jews, who through their own fault were condemned by God to eternal slavery…”

The bull revoked all the rights of the Jewish community and placed religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States, renewed anti-Jewish legislation and subjected Jews to various degradations and restrictions on their personal freedom.

The bull established the Roman Ghetto and required the Jews of Rome, which had existed as a community since before Christian times and numbered about 2,000 at the time, to live in it. The Ghetto was a walled quarter with three gates that were locked at night. Jews were also restricted to one synagogue per city. Under the bull, Jewish males were required to wear a pointed yellow hat, and Jewish females a yellow kerchief. Jews were required to attend compulsory Catholic sermons on the Sabbath.

280px-RioneSAngeloInRomaByMonaldini,_coloured_to_show_the_ghetto

Map of the Rione Sant’Angelo from 1777, coloured to show the extent of the ghetto at that time

The bull also subjected Jews to various other restrictions such as a prohibition on property ownership and practising medicine among Christians. Jews were allowed to practice only unskilled jobs, as rag men, secondhand dealers or fish mongers. They could also be pawnbrokers.

Paul IV’s successor, Pope Pius IV, enforced the creation of other ghettos in most Italian towns, and his successor, Pope Pius V, recommended them to other bordering states. The Papal States ceased to exist on 20 September 1870 when they were incorporated in the Kingdom of Italy, but the requirement that Jews live in the ghetto was only formally abolished by the Italian state in 1882.

cum-nimis-absurdum-194x300

Though the Roman and other ghettos have now been abolished, the bull has never been revoked.

Piazza Giudia, showing the gate of the ghetto (middle right), the police post and the gallows; engraving from: Giuseppe Vasi, Delle Magnificenze di Roma

Reflection: As with other Papal Bulls, the limitations of rights and freedoms of the Jewish population was part of a prolonged political and religious campaign against Jews and Judaism. Today the Roman Catholic church has renounced such teaching of contempt and cruel treatment of the Jewish people, but old wounds are still remembered. Can any new initiatives compensate for such pain?

https://jewinthepew.org/2015/02/19/19-february-1543-pope-paul-iii-opens-house-of-catechumens-in-rome/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_nimis_absurdum

Text:

Laws and ordinances to be followed by Jews living in the Holy See [decreed by the] Bishop [of Rome, the Pope] Paul, servant of the servants of God, for future recollection.

Since it is completely senseless and inappropriate to be in a situation where Christian piety allows the Jews (whose guilt—all of their own doing—has condemned them to eternal slavery) access to our society and even to live among us; indeed, they are without gratitude to Christians, as, instead of thanks for gracious treatment, they return invective, and among themselves, instead of the slavery, which they deserve, they manage to claim superiority: we, who recently learned that these very Jews have insolently invaded Rome from a number of the Papal States, territories and domains, to the extent that not only have they mingled with Christians (even when close to their churches) and wearing no identifying garments, but to dwell in homes, indeed, even in the more noble [dwellings] of the states, territories and domains in which they lingered, conducting business from their houses and in the streets and dealing in real estate; they even have nurses and housemaids and other Christians as hired servants. And they would dare to perpetrate a wide variety of other dishonorable things, contemptuous of the [very] name Christian. Considering that the Church of Rome tolerates these very Jews (evidence of the true Christian faith) and to this end [we declare]: that they, won over by the piety and kindness of the See, should at long last recognize their erroneous ways, and should lose no time in seeing the true light of the catholic faith, and thus to agree that while they persist in their errors, realizing that they are slaves because of their deeds, whereas Christians have been freed through our Lord God Jesus Christ, and that it is unwarranted for it to appear that the sons of free women serve the sons of maids. [Therefore,]

1. Desiring firstly, as much as we can with [the help of] God, to beneficially provide, by this [our decree] that will forever be in force, we ordain that for the rest of time, in the City as well as in other states, territories and domains of the Church of Rome itself, all Jews are to live in only one [quarter] to which there is only one entrance and from which there is but one exit, and if there is not that capacity [in one such quarter, then], in two or three or however many may be enough; [in any case] they should reside entirely side by side in designated streets and be thoroughly separate from the residences of Christians, [This is to be enforced] by our authority in the City and by that of our representatives in other states, lands and domains noted above.

2. Furthermore, in each and every state, territory and domain in which they are living, they will have only one synagogue, in its customary location, and they will construct no other new ones, nor can they own buildings. Furthermore, all of their synagogues, besides the one allowed, are to be destroyed and demolished. And the properties, which they currently own, they must sell to Christians within a period of time to be determined by the magistrates themselves.

3. Moreover, concerning the matter that Jews should be recognizable everywhere: [to this end] men must wear a hat, women, indeed, some other evident sign, yellow in color, that must not be concealed or covered by any means, and must be tightly affixed [sewn]; and furthermore, they can not be absolved or excused from the obligation to wear the hat or other emblem of this type to any extent whatever and under any pretext whatsoever of their rank or prominence or of their ability to tolerate [this] adversity, either by a chamberlain of the Church, clerics of an apostolic court, or their superiors, or by legates of the Holy See or their immediate subordinates.

4. Also, they may not have nurses or maids or any other Christian domestic or service by Christian women in wet-nursing or feeding their children.

5. They may not work or have work done on Sundays or on other public feast days declared by the Church.

6. Nor may they incriminate Christians in any way, or promulgate false or forged agreements.

7. And they may not presume in any way to play, eat or fraternize with Christians.

8. And they cannot use other than Latin or Italian words in short-term account books that they hold with Christians, and, if they should use them, such records would not be binding on Christians [in legal proceedings].

9. Moreover, these Jews are to be limited to the trade of rag-picking, or “cencinariae” (as it is said in the vernacular), and they cannot trade in grain, barley or any other commodity essential to human welfare.

10. And those among them who are physicians, even if summoned and inquired after, cannot attend or take part in the care of Christians.

11. And they are not to be addressed as superiors [even] by poor Christians.

12. And they are to close their [loan] accounts entirely every thirty days; should fewer than thirty days elapse, they shall not be counted as an entire month, but only as the actual number of days, and furthermore, they will terminate the reckoning as of this number of days and not for the term of an entire month. In addition, they are prohibited from selling [goods put up as] collateral, put up as temporary security for their money, unless [such goods were] put up a full eighteen months prior to the day on which such [collateral] would be forfeit; at the expiration of the aforementioned number of months, if Jews have sold a security deposit of this sort, they must sign over all money in excess of the principal of the loan to the owner of the collateral.

13. And the statutes of states, territories and domains (in which they have lived for a period of time) concerning primacy of Christians, are to be adhered to and followed without exception.

14. And, should they, in any manner whatsoever, be deficient in the foregoing, it would be treated as a crime: in Rome, by us or by our clergy, or by others authorized by us, and in the aforementioned states, territories and domains by their respective magistrates, just as if they were rebels and criminals by the jurisdiction in which the offense takes place, they would be accused by all Christian people, by us and by our clergy, and could be punished at the discretion of the proper authorities and judges.

15. [This will be in effect] notwithstanding opposing decrees and apostolic rules, and regardless of any tolerance whatever or special rights and dispensation for these Jews [granted] by any Roman Pontiff prior to us and the aforementioned See or of their legates, or by the courts of the Church of Rome and the clergy of the Apostolic courts, or by other of their officials, no matter their import and form, and with whatever (even with repeated derogations) and with other legally valid sub-clauses, and erasures and other decrees, even [those that are] “motu proprio” and from “certain knowledge” and have been repeatedly approved and renewed. By this document, even if, instead of their sufficient derogation, concerning them and their entire import, special, specific, expressed and individual, even word for word, moreover, not by means of general, even important passages, mention, or whatever other expression was favored, or whatever exquisite form had to be retained, matters of such import, and, if word for word, with nothing deleted, would be inserted into them in original form in the present document holding that rather than being sufficiently expressed, those things that would stay in effect in full force by this change alone, we specially and expressly derogate, as well as any others [that might be] contrary to them.

Declared at St. Mark’s, Rome, in the one thousand five hundred fifty fifth year of the incarnation of our Lord, one day prior to the Ides of July [July 14], in the first year of our Papacy [1555].

Leges et Ordinationes to iudaeis in statu Ecclesiastical degentibus observandae

Paulus episcopus servus servants of God, to futuram rei memoriam.

Cum nimis absurdum et inconveniens existat ut iudaei, quos own culpa perpetuae servituti submisit, sub praetextu quod piety Christiana illos receptet et eorum cohabitationem sustineat, christianis adeo sint ungrateful, ut, eis pro gratia, contumelian reddant, et in eos, pro servitute, quam illis debent, dominatum avenge procurent: nos, such quorum notitiam nuper devenit eosdem iudaeos in our alma Urbe and nonnullis SRE civitatibus, Terris et locis, in id insolentiae prorupisse, ut non solum Mixtim cum christianis prope et eorum ecclesias, nothing interceding distincione habitus, cohabitare, verum etiam domos in nobilioribus civitatum, terrarum et locorum, in quibus degunt, vicis et Plateis conducere, et bona Stabilia et compare possidere, ac nutrices et ancillas aliosque servientes christianos mercenarios habere, et alia in different ignominiam et contemptum christiani nominis perpetrate praesumant , considerantes Ecclesiam Romanam eosdem iudaeos tolerare in testimonium verae christianae fidei et ad hoc ut ipsi, sedis Apostolicae pity et benignate allecti, errores suos tandem recognoscant, et ad lumen fidei received verum catholicae satagant, et propterea agree ut quamdiu in eorum erroribus persistunt, effectu operis recognoscanti if servos, christianos true liberos for Iesum Christum Deum et Dominum nostrum effectos fuisse, iniquumque existere ut filii liberae filiis famulentur ancillae.

1. volentes in priemissis, quantum cum Deo possumus, salubriter providere, hac our perpetual valitura Constitution of States sancimus quod de Cetero perpetuis futuris temporibus, tam quam in Urbe in quibusvis aliis ipsius Romanae Ecclesia civitatibus, Terris et locis, iudaei omnes in one o’clock ET eodem , ac is ille capax not fuerit, in duobus aut vel tribus quot satis tot Sint, contiguis et ab habitationibus christianorum penitus seiunctis, for nos in Urbe et for magistratus nostros in aliis civitatibus, Terris et locis praedictis designandis vicis, quos to unicus off ingressus pateat, et quibus solum unicus exitus Detur, omnino habitent.

2. Et in singulis civitatibus, Terris et locis in quibus habitaverint, unicam synagogam off-site usually habeant, nec aliam de novo construere, aut bona immobilia possidere possint. Quinimmo omnes eorum synagogas, praeter unam off, demoliri et wreak havoc. Ac bona immobilia, here to praesens possident, infra tempus eis for ipsos magistratus praesignandum, christianis sell.

3. Et ad hoc ut pro iudaeis ubiquitous dignoscantur, mascula biretum, foeminae true aliud signum patens, ita ut zero so Celari aut abscondi possint, glauci coloris, palam Deferre teneantur et sint adstricti; nec not super delatione bireti aut alterius means huiusmodi, praetextu cuiusvis eorum gradus vel priaeminentiae seu toierantiae excusari, aut for eiusdem Ecclesiae camerarium vel Camerae Apostolicae clericos, seu alias illi praesidentes personas, aut Sedis Apostolicae legatos vel eorum vicelegatos quovis way dispensaries aut absolvi possint.

4. Nutrices quoque seu ancillas aut alias utriusque sexus servientes christianos habere, vel eorum infantes for mulieres christianas lactari aut nutriri facere.

5. Seu dominicis vel aliis praecepto Ecclesiae de festis diebus in public laborare aut laborari facere. § 6. Seu christianos quoquo way encumber aut contractus fictos vel simulatos celebrate.

cum nimis absurdum

Papal Bull Cum nimis absurdum

7. Seu cum ipsis christianis ludere comedere aut vel familiaritatem seu conversationem habere nullatenus praesumant.

8. Nec in Libris rationum et computorum, quae cum christianis pro tempore habebunt, aliis, quam Latinis Literis et quam alio vulgari italics sermon, uti possint, et si utantur, books huiusmodi contra christianos nullam fidem faciant.

9. Iudaei quoque praefati only art strazzariae, seu cenciariae (ut vulgo dicitur) happy, aliquam vel mercaturam wheats hordei, aut aliarum rerum usui humano necessariarum facere.

10. And here former medical fuerint eis, et etiam suited rogati, to curam christianorum access aut illi interest nequeant.

11. Nec if pauperibus christianis dominos vocari patiantur.

12. Et menses in eorum et rationibus computis former triginta diebus completis omnino conficiant, et dies, here to numerum triginta not ascenderint, not pro mensibus integris, sed solum pro tot diebus quot effectu in fuerint, computentur, et iuxta ipsorum dierum numerum et not to rationem intact mensis eorum credita exigant. Ac pignora, eis pro cautione pecuniarum suarum pro tempore consignata, nisi prius transactis to die, court illa eis date fuerint, Decem et octo integris mensibus, sell nequeant, et postquam menses praedicti effluxerint, you ipsi iudaei pignora huiusmodi vendiderint, omnem pecuniam, quae eorum credit superfuerit, domino pignorum consignare.

13. Et statue civitatum, terrarum et locorum, in quibus pro tempore habitaverint, favorem christianorum concernentia, inviolabiliter observata etiam teneantur.

14. Et is about praemissa in aliquo quomodolibet defecerint, iuxta qualitatem deiicti, in Urbe for nos seu vicarium nostrum, aut alios a nobis deputandos, ac in civitatibus, Terris et iocis praedictis for eosdem magistratus, etiam tamquam rebelles criminis lesae nous et rei , ac toto populo christiano warned ,. our et ipsorum vicars, ac deputandorum et magistratuum will puniri possint.

15. No ostantibus constitutionibus et Ordinationibus Apostolicis, ac quibusvis tolerantiis seu privilegiis et indultis Apostolicis eisdem iudaeis for quoscumque Romanos Pontifices praedecessores nostros ac Sedem praedictam aut illius legatos, vel ipsius Romanae Ecclesiae et camerarios Camerae Apostolicae clericos, seu alios illius praesidentes, sub quibuscumque tenoribus et formis, ac cum quibusvis, etiam deregatoriarum derogatoriis, aliisque efficacioribus et insolitis clausulis, nec not irritantibus et aliis decretis, motu proprio et etiam ex certa scientia de ac apostolicae potestatis plenitude concessis, ac etiam iteratis vicibus approbatis et innovatis, quibus omnibus, etiamsi, pro illorum sufficient derogatione, de eis eorumque totis tenoribus specialis specific expressa detects ac et de verb to Verbum, non autem for ciausulas generales idem importantes, mentio, seu quaevis alia expressio Habenda, aut aliqua exquisita form servanda esset, tenores huiusmodi , is de ac verb to Verbum, nihil penitus omisso, et form in illis betrayed observata inserts Forent, praesentibus pro sufficienter expressis habentes, illis alias in his robore permansuris, hac vice dumtaxat specialiter et expresse derogamus, ceterisque contrariis quibuscumque.

Datum romae apud S.Marcum year Incarnationis Domicae, thousandth quingentesimo quingentesimo fifth, Pridie idus Julii, Pont. Our year I.

July 14, 1555

On July 12, 1555, Pope Paul IV issued his bull, cum nimis absurdum, which reenacted remorselessly against the Jews all the restrictive ecclesiastical Legislation hitherto only intermittently enforced. This comprised the segregation of the Jews in a special quarter, henceforth called the ghetto; the wearing of the Jewish badge, now specified as a yellow hat in the case of men, a yellow kerchief in the case of women; prohibitions on owning real estate, on being called by any title of respect such as signor, on the employment by Christians of Jewish physicians, and on dealing in corn and other necessities of life; and virtual restriction to dealing in old clothes and second-hand goods.

This initiated the ghetto period in Rome, and continued to govern the life ofroman Jewry for more than 300 years. Occasional raids were made as late as the 18th century on the ghetto to ensure that the Jews did not possess any “forbidden” books – that is, in effect, any literature other than the Bible, Liturgy, and carefully expurgated ritual codes. Each Saturday selected members of the community were compelled to go to a neighboring church to listen to proseletysing sermons, running the gauntlet of the insults of the populace. In some reactionary interludes, the yellow Jewish hat had to be worn even inside the ghetto.

In the ghetto there were five synagogues or “Scole,” located on different floors of teh same building: the Scola Tempio for the most ancient Roman Jews, the Scola Nova for those that came from small villages of Lazio, the Siciliana for the Jewish refugees from Southern Italy, the Catalana and the Castigliana for the Spanish Jews.

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11 July 1942 Letter from Dutch Christians protesting Deportations of Jewish Christians leads to arrest of Edith Stein #otdimjh

Posted on July 11, 2015 by richardsh

Edith Stein, also known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, OCD, (German: Teresia Benedicta vom Kreuz, Latin: Teresia Benedicta a Cruce) (12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942), was a German Jewish philosopher who joined the Roman Catholic Church and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church.

She was born into an observant Jewish family, but was an atheist by her teenage years. Moved by the tragedies of World War I, in 1915 she took lessons to become a nursing assistant and worked in a hospital for the prevention of disease outbreaks. After completing her doctoral thesis in 1916 from the University of Göttingen, she obtained an assistantship at the University of Freiburg.

From reading the works of the reformer of the Carmelite Order, St. Teresa of Jesus, OCD, she was drawn to the Catholic Faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Roman Catholic Church. At that point she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nun, but was dissuaded by her spiritual mentors. She then taught at a Catholic school of education in Speyer.

As a result of the requirement of an “Aryan certificate” for civil servants promulgated by the Nazi government in April 1933 as part of its Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, she had to quit her teaching position. She was admitted to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne the following October. She received the religious habit of the Order as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (“Teresa blessed by the Cross”). In 1938 she and her sister Rosa, by then also a convert and an extern Sister of the monastery, were sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands for their safety. Despite the Nazi invasion of that state in 1940, they remained undisturbed until they were arrested by the Nazis on 2 August 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they died in the gas chamber on 9 August 1942. She was canonized by Pope Saint John Paul II in 1998

From Thalia Gur-Klein

Some Like Them Iconised: Edith Stein, the Ambiguity of Jewish Female Sainthood in WWII [footnotes omitted]

1.1. History: The Nazi Occupation, the Jews, the Christian Jews and the Church

On July 11, 1942, a collective letter of ten Protestant and Catholic Dutch Churches was sent to the occupying German authorities. In this letter the ten most prominent Christian representatives, Protestants and Catholics, expressed their dismay at the decrees and exclusion of the Jews from normal life due to recent deportation of men, women, children and entire families. Appealing to the Christian sentiments of the occupiers, the Churches ended their pleas arguing that the Christians Jews moreover would be cut off from the Church way of life and devotion.

The nazi General Schmidt offered a concession to the Dutch Churches, in which Christian Jews converted before 1 January 1941 were to be exempted from deportation. This exemption was meant to appease the protesting spirit of the Churches before a large deportation of the bulk of the Jews was to take place on 15 July 1942. Five days later, the occupying general declared that it had never been his intention to exempt the Christian Jews indefinitely. His future policy would depend on the attitude of the Churches. For this purpose, the German occupying police was given ‘Kanzeluberwachung’, a right to listen to Church sermons during the coming Sundays. The original letter to the occupying Nazi general from July 11, 1942 was first circulated on 23 July, with the intention of having it read on Sunday 26 July from the Churches’ pulpits. As a result of a warning from Generalkommissar zur bezonderen Verwendung, Gruffke, on July 24 1942, the larger branch of the Protestant Church, the Reformed Church, withdrew its planned protest.

Both the Catholic and the smaller and more orthodox branch of the Protestant Church, de Gereformeerde Kerken decided to proceed with their plan. The original 11 July letter was indeed read on Sunday 26 July 1942 from most pulpits throughout the country belonging to these two clerical organisations, with a pastoral letter attached to it. Archbishop de Jong of Utrecht and the Bishops Breda, Roermond, Haarlem and ‘s-Hertogenbosch, all signed the sermon.

Consequentially, the Nazis rounded up Catholic Jews on one day, Sunday, 2 August 1942. The massive arrest included monks and nuns, among them Edith Stein. They were to perish in concentration camps a few weeks later. Their exact number seems unclear. In ‘Memoriam to Edith Stein’, Maria Buchmuller mentions 1200 Catholic Jews. In their biographical book of Sophie van Leer, Marcel Poorthuis and Theo Salemink write that the Nazis possessed a list of 722 names. 213 Jews were detained in a camp in Amersfoort, and unknown number of detainees were held in Amsterdam. For various reasons, a number of Catholic Jews from the original list were originally exempted, others were detained and then freed later.

114 Catholic Dutch Jews from the original list of 722 are known to have perished in the Camps. On the one hand, the discrepancy between the two sources shows that even a reliable academic research is left with an open information like ‘unknown numbers detained in Amsterdam’, which in turn may be liable for speculation. On the other hand, the same ambiguous information may initiate legendary numbers of martyrs, which is classical of legends of saints.

Prayer: Thank you Lord for the life, legacy and saintly example of Edith Stein. Help us to think your thoughts after you, as she did, and to stand with your people Israel, as she did, to her cost and martyrdom. In Yeshua’s name we pray. Amen.

http://www.edithsteincircle.com/

Some Like Them Iconised: Edith Stein, the Ambiguity of Jewish Female Sainthood in WWII

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein

Academic Biography

Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany (Wrocław, Poland) on 12th October, 1891. She began her studies by pursuing psychology, German and history at the University of Breslau, but became interested in the philosophy of science and moved in 1913 to the University of Göttingen to study phenomenology under Edmund Husserl. In 1916 Stein defended her doctoral dissertation, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein, 1989) which was published in 1917. After finishing her doctorate Stein became Husserl’s assistant, during which time she prepared his manuscripts for publication. This resulted in Stein completing fragments of paragraphs and drafting portions of text which found their way into Husserl’s posthumous publications (e.g. Ideas II).

In 1918 Stein finished working with Husserl. At this stage in her career Stein edited the papers of her teacher Adolf Reinach who sadly was killed in the First World War. Stein organised a Festschrift for Husserl and contributed two essays to Husserl’s Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phaenomenologische Forschung, which are published together in English as The Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities (trans. Mary Catharine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki, 2000). These articles of Stein’s are considered to have influenced Husserl’s thought in terms of his social philosophy in the early 1920s.

In 1925 Stein published Eine Untersuchung über den Staatin Husserl’s Jahrbuch, translated into English as An Investigation Concerning the State (trans. Marianne Sawicki, 2007). At this time Stein worked as a private lecturer (her prospects of securing university tenure being hampered by the fact that she was a woman). This is considered the early period in Stein’s intellectual journey.

Stein received baptism into the Catholic Church in 1922. After her conversion Stein translated several works of John Henry Newman and Thomas Aquinas. From 1926 onwards she gave lectures to German teachers, especially women teachers. Her articles and lectures in this period are collected in two volumesBildung und Entfaltung der Individualität. Beiträge zum christlichen Erziehungsauftrag and Essays on Woman (trans. Freda M. Oben, 1987). In 1930 she tried again to join a university faculty and wrote Potenz und Akt (Potency and Act,trans. Walter Redmond, 2009) which was an attempted Habilitationsschrift. Once again she was unsuccessful, but secured a post in a teacher training college. Here she continued to work on a systematic philosophy of pedagogy (Der Aufbau der menschlichen Person/Was ist der Mensch?). Due to the Nazi prohibition against Jewish professionals, she had to abandon this, and return to her family home in Breslau in 1933.

In October 1933 Stein joined the cloister of Carmel. She revised Potenz und Aktat this time and producedEndliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines Aufstieges zum Sinn des Sein, translated into English as Finite and Eternal Being (trans. Kurt Reinhardt, 2002). This volume was to be published in the 1930s but was forbidden given Stein’s Jewish ancestry (first pub. 1950). The appendix of this work contains a critique of Martin Heidegger, now published in English as Martin Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy (trans. Mette Lebech, 2007). In 1942, Stein wrote Kreuzeswissenschaft: Studie über Joannes a Cruce, (first pub.1952) translated into English as The Science of the Cross: A Study of St. John of the Cross (trans. Josephine Koeppel, 1998). Other publications remain untranslated from German, such as Einführung in die Philosophie (possibly a third Habilitationsschrift written c. 1920s-30s).

Posted in otdimjh | Tagged article, edith stein, otdimjh | 1 Comment

10 July 1509 Birth of Jean Calvin, Protestant Reformer and Theologian #otdimjh

Posted on July 10, 2015 by richardsh

Born in France in 1509, theologian/ecclesiastical statesman John Calvin was Martin Luther’s successor as the preeminent Protestant theologian. Calvin made a powerful impact on the fundamental doctrines of Protestantism, and is widely credited as the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1564. [Biography.com]

Background

Born on July 10, 1509, in Noyon, Picardy, France, John Calvin was a law student at the University of Orléans when he first joined the cause of the Reformation. In 1536, he published the landmark text Institutes of the Christian Religion, an early attempt to standardize the theories of Protestantism. Calvin’s religious teachings emphasized the sovereignty of the scriptures and divine predestination—a doctrine holding that God chooses a select few to enter Heaven, regardless of their good works or their faith.

Leading Figure of Reformation

Calvin lived in Geneva briefly, until anti-Protestant authorities in 1538 forced him to leave. He was invited back again in 1541, and upon his return from Germany, where he had been living, he became an important spiritual and political leader. Calvin used Protestant principles to establish a religious government; and in 1555, he was given absolute supremacy as leader in Geneva.

As Martin Luther’s successor as the preeminent Protestant theologian, Calvin was known for an intellectual, unemotional approach to faith that provided Protestantism’s theological underpinnings, whereas Luther brought passion and populism to his religious cause.

While instituting many positive policies, Calvin’s government also punished “impiety” and dissent against his particularly spare vision of Christianity with execution. In the first five years of his rule in Geneva, 58 people were executed and 76 exiled for their religious beliefs. Calvin allowed no art other than music, and even that could not involve instruments. Under his rule, Geneva became the center of Protestantism, and sent out pastors to the rest of Europe, creating Presbyterianism in Scotland, the Puritan Movement in England and the Reformed Church in the Netherlands.

Death and Legacy

The last moments of Calvin (Barcelona: Montaner y Simón, 1880-1883)

Calvin died on May 27, 1564, in Geneva, Switzerland. It is unknown where he is buried. Today, Calvin remains widely credited as the most important figure in the second generation of the Protestant Reformation.

Calvin “generally had a more benevolent view of the Jews” than did other Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther. However, his views are somewhat inconsistent, and the subject of continuing debate.

“Although at times his remarks could be acerbic, he nevertheless taught that the Bible indicated a time when Israel would be restored by coming to faith in their Messiah. “ In speaking about the Jews, Calvin said, “I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning, When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both; and yet in such a way that the Jews shall obtain the first place, being as it were the first born in God’s family.”

“As Jews are the firstborn, what the Prophet declares must be fulfilled, especially in them: for that scripture calls all the people of God Israelites, it is to be ascribed to the pre-eminence of that nation, who God had preferred to all other nations…God distinctly claims for himself a certain seed, so that his redemption may be effectual in his elect and peculiar nation…God was not unmindful of the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and by which he testified that according to his eternal purpose he loved that nation: and this he confirms by this remarkable declaration, that the grace of the divine calling cannot be made void.”

One of the issues confronting Christians was the determination of the proper age for Baptism. Calvin believed in the baptism of infants. He saw baptism as analogous to circumcision – a rite by which the child is sealed in the faith of his fathers. Since God had ordained circumcision for Jewish infants, it was obvious that He intended for Christian to undergo their version of the ritual as infants as well.

Prayer: Thank you Lord for the life, work and legacy of this great Protestant Reformer. Help us to make use of his contribution as he sought to explain the nature of the Church and Israel, and develop his thought further where necessary. In Yeshua’s name we pray. Amen.

Please see Mary Potter Engel’s excellent study for more material, and R K Soulen’s important work “The God of Israel and Christian Theology” to set Calvin in his place in Christian thought on Israel.

Michael Vlach writes:

John Calvin’s views on Israel also appear to evidence a rejection/acceptance tension. According to Willem VanGemeren, “Some have seen the utter rejection of Israel in Calvin’s writing, whereas others have also viewed the hope for national Israel.”57 Williamson, for example, believes there is a tension in Calvin’s writings on this issue when he states, “On the one hand, Calvin strongly insisted that God’s promise to and covenant with the people Israel was unconditional, unbreakable, and gracious. . . . On the other hand, Calvin often makes statements exactly opposing the above.”58

At times, Calvin made statements consistent with supersessionism. For him, the “all Israel” who will be saved in Rom 11:26 is a reference to the church composed of Jews and Gentiles.59 He also took the interpretation that the “Israel of God” in Gal 6:16 refers to “all believers, whether Jews or Gentiles, who were united into one church.”60 At other times, though, Calvin made statements that seem to indicate he believed in some form of a future for the Jewish people. For example, in his commentary on Isa 59:20, he stated,

Paul quotes this passage, (Rom. xi. 26,) in order to shew that there is still some remaining hope among the Jews; although from their unconquerable obstinacy it might be inferred that they were altogether cast off and doomed to eternal death. But because God is continually mindful of his covenant, and “his gifts and calling are without repentance” (Rom. xi. 29), Paul justly concludes that it is impossible that there shall not at length be some remnant that come to Christ, and obtain that salvation which he has procured. Thus the Jews must at length be collected along with the Gentiles that out of both “there may be one fold” under Christ. (John x. 16). . . . Hence we have said that Paul infers that he [Christ] could not be the redeemer of the world, without belonging to some Jews, whose fathers he had chosen, and to whom this promise was directly addressed.61

http://www.reformedinstitute.org/documents/GSPak.pdf

http://pdf.ptsem.edu/digital/journal.aspx?id=PSB1990Sup1&div=dmd011

http://www.biography.com/people/john-calvin-9235788

Click to access tmsj20d.pdf

John Calvin and the Jews: His Exegetical Legacy

by G. Sujin Pak

The topic of Calvin and the Jews is a much-debated topic within scholarship. Indeed, the lack of consensus in scholarship on Calvin’s place in the history of Christian-Jewish relations ranges from seeing Calvin as one of the least anti-Judaic figures of his time1 to one holding typical sixteenth-century views of Jews and Judaism2 to being a firm antagonist of Jews and Judaism.3 Achim Detmers’s book Reformation und Judentum is the most thorough recent account on the topic of Calvin and the Jews, and in it he distinguishes between a first and a second way in which Calvin teaches about “Israel.” The first way concerns biblical Jews and Judaism, whereas the second way concerns contemporary Jews and Judaism. Indeed, Detmers rightly points out that a key cause of the discrepancies in scholarship on the topic of Calvin and the Jews is that “Calvin’s theological statements regarding biblical Judaism and his statements about contemporary Judaism have not been clearly enough distinguished.”5 Detmers also appropriately calls attention to the fact that the history of Calvin’s actual contacts with Jews has not been adequately investigated. Indeed, Detmers

provides one of the most thorough accounts available of what we can know about Calvin’s contacts with Jews.6

Posted in otdimjh | Tagged article, calvin, otdimjh, supersessionism | 1 Comment

9 July 1391 Jewish Community of Valencia attacked and destroyed #otdimjh

Posted on July 9, 2015 by richardsh

9 July

The Persecutions of 1391

On July 9, 1391, the community of Valencia was attacked and destroyed by rioters who arrived from Castile and soldiers who were stationed in the port from where they were due to sail for Sicily with the infante Martín. [Jewish Encyclopedia]

In this assault 250 Jews died, while the remainder agreed to convert to Christianity or found refuge in the houses of the townspeople. Isaac b. Sheshet Perfet was among those who fled. Those who converted included distinguished personalities such as Don Samuel Abravalia (who took the name Alfonso Fernández de Villanova after his apostasy), the king’s physician Omar Tahuel, who ranked among the muqaddimūn, and his relative Isaac Tahuel. According to some documents, it seems that R. Isaac b. Sheshet was also among the forcibly converted, before he fled. On July 16 the king ordered that Jews who had hidden in the houses of Christians should not be compelled to convert, but be taken to a place of safety. He also prohibited the conversion of synagogues into churches. However, on September 22 the king instructed that a list of the property of the Jews who had perished should be drawn up, in order to have it transferred to him. In November a pardon was granted to the Christian inhabitants of Valencia for the attack because, according to the city elders, the town was being emptied of its inhabitants who were fleeing in every direction. None of the synagogues of Valencia survived the 1391 massacres. The Jewish market, the zoco, which was just outside the Jewish quarter, was in Gallinas Street, at the beginning of Mar Street. The Jewish cemetery was outside the Jewish quarter but within the walls of the city. At the expulsion it was given by Ferdinand to the Dominicans. In its place today stands the El Corte Inglés department store.

After this destruction, the community proved unable to recover, even though in 1393 the king and the queen entrusted Ḥasdai Crescas and the delegates of the communities of Saragossa and *Calatayud with the task of choosing 60 families who would settle in Barcelona and Valencia. A year later John I ordered that their cemetery should be restored to the Jews of Valencia. A small community may have been reconstituted, because, according to Simeon b. Ẓemaḥ *Duran, there were Jews living in Valencia at the close of the century (Responsa, Yakhin u-Vo’az, pt. 2, paras. 14–15).

In 1413 Vicente *Ferrer is known to have endeavored to convert Jews in Valencia, but these may have been concentrated in localities in the vicinity. Only Jewish merchants continued to visit the town. In 1483 King *Ferdinand canceled the permission given to the Jews for prolonged stays in Valencia. He also abolished the privilege exempting Jews who came there from wearing a distinctive *badge.

Prayer: Lord, again we read of the terrible treatment Jews and Jewish Christians received at the hands of so-called Christians. Father, forgive, they know not what they do. In Yeshua’s name. Amen.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_20291.html

Posted in otdimjh | Tagged article, otdimjh, valencia | 1 Comment

8 July 1822 Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley, author of “The Wandering Jew” poem #otdimjh

Posted on July 9, 2015 by richardsh

In 1810 Shelley wrote a poem in four cantos with the title The Wandering Jew but it remained unpublished until 1877.

The Wandering Jew, A Poem in Four Cantos by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Written in 1810, published posthumously for the Shelley Society by Reeves and Turner, London 1877.

Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He

Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny

And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?

Will not the lightning’s blast destroy my frame?

Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?

No—let me hie where dark Destruction dwells,

To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,

And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,

Light long Oblivion’s death-torch at its flame

And calmly mount Annihilation’s pyre.

Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery’s jackal Thou!

Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate

Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate?

No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow

That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?

Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew

The myriad sons of Israel’s favoured nation?

Where the destroying Minister that flew

Pouring the fiery tide of desolation

Upon the leagued Assyrian’s attempt?

Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged

At the dread word Korah’s unconscious crew?

Or the Angel’s two-edged sword of fire that urged

Our primal parents from their bower of bliss

(Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own

By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?

Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,

Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee—

Drink deeply—drain the cup of hate; remit this—I may die.

Reflection: For all his creativity and genius, Shelley still used popular themes that captured contemporary imagination. He repeats stereotypes, augmenting them with poetic license. In today’s world of political correctness it would be difficult to publish such a poem with such a title, but the poem stands as an indicator of the two thousand year prejudice against Jews and Judaism.

https://jewinthepew.org/2015/04/22/22-april-1774-wandering-jew-of-medieval-myth-arrives-in-brussels-otdimjh/

https://archive.org/details/wanderingjewpoem00shelrich

https://archive.org/stream/wanderingjewpoem00shelrich/wanderingjewpoem00shelrich_djvu.txt

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric, as well as epic, poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Shelley is perhaps best known for such classic poems as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works include a groundbreaking verse drama The Cenci (1819) and long, visionary poems such as Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon of the World), Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs, Prometheus Unbound (1820) – widely considered to be his masterpiece – and his final, unfinished work The Triumph of Life (1822).

Shelley’s close circle of friends included some of the most important progressive thinkers of the day, including his father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin and Leigh Hunt. Though Shelley’s poetry and prose output remained steady throughout his life, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of being arrested for either blasphemy or sedition. Shelley’s poetry sometimes had only an underground readership during his day, but his poetic achievements are widely recognized today, and his advanced political and social thought impacted the Chartist and other movements in England, and reach down to the present day. Shelley’s theories of economics and morality, for example, had a profound influence on Karl Marx; his early – and perhaps first – writings on nonviolent resistance influenced both Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

Shelley became a lodestar to the subsequent three or four generations of poets, including important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets such as Robert Browning and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. He was admired by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, W. B. Yeats, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan. Henry David Thoreau’s civil disobedience was apparently influenced by Shelley’s non-violence in protest and political action. Shelley’s popularity and influence has continued to grow in contemporary poetry circles.

Posted in article, otdimjh, shelley, wandering jew | 1 Comment

On This Day In Messianic Jewish History

17 July 1810 Birth of Reform Judaism at Seesen, Germany #otdimjh

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16 July 1759, Rabbi Nahman ben Samuel of Busk, follower of false Messiah Jacob Frank, is baptized #otdimjh

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15 July 1930, Birth of Jacques Derrida, Jewish philosopher, critic and postmodern deconstructionist #otdimjh

Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JACQUES DERRIDA’S LIFE AS AN ALGERIAN JEW REVEALED IN NEWLY TRANSLATED BIO

How to Survive Jacques Derrida

Devorah Baum on the French philosopher’s moral legacy

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14 July 1391 Forced Baptism of Samuel Abravalla #otdimjh

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13 July 1844 John Moses Eppstein declares his faith in Yeshua #otdimjh

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12/14 July 1555 Papal Bull “Cum Nimis Absurdum” establishes Roman Ghetto and revokes Jewish community rights #otdimjh

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11 July 1942 Letter from Dutch Christians protesting Deportations of Jewish Christians leads to arrest of Edith Stein #otdimjh

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10 July 1509 Birth of Jean Calvin, Protestant Reformer and Theologian #otdimjh

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9 July 1391 Jewish Community of Valencia attacked and destroyed #otdimjh

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8 July 1822 Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley, author of “The Wandering Jew” poem #otdimjh

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Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JACQUES DERRIDA’S LIFE AS AN ALGERIAN JEW REVEALED IN NEWLY TRANSLATED BIO

How to Survive Jacques Derrida

Devorah Baum on the French philosopher’s moral legacy

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