PROCEEDINGS of The Third International Symposium on Jewish Studies Judaism in Modern Era Interpretative Studies of Ancient and Current Texts Held on August 19th 2018 At the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry Hebrew University of Jerusalem Organized in collaboration with The Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions (CISMOR), The Faculty of Theology, Doshisha University, Kyoto and The Faculty of Humanities, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Edited by Ada Taggar Cohen 同志社大学 Doshisha University 一神教学際研究センター Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions （CISMOR） CONTENTS Introduction to the volume 1 Opening words to the Symposium Delivered on August 19, 2018 5 By Ada Taggar Cohen and Uzi Rebhun Part I Paul Mendes-Flohr, The Academic Study of Judaism in Historical Perspective 8 David J. Leitner Cohen, A World Founded on Chesed: The Source and Content 13 ״עולם חסד יבנה״ (of the Ethical-Halachic Life (Psalms 89:3 Part II Zev Harvey, Maimonides and Bialik on Spoken Hebrew 22 Ada Taggar Cohen, Religious Prohibitions in the Bible and Hittite Cultures: 27 The Meaning of “Holiness” in Both Cultures Tetsu Kitamura, The Lack of Zion in the Book of Ezekiel 38 Part III Joel Swanson, Speech and Silence: Two Modern Readings of Psalm 115 45 Tzvi Schoenberg, Preliminary Thoughts on Ordinary Language 61 in Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov Part IV Fumio Ono, An Exegesis of “Religious Anarchism” of Martin Buber 84 Hiraoka Kotaro, Martin Buber Reception of Hasidism 95 Part V Anri Ishiguro, Progress and Ambiguities: Kaufman Kohler’s Vision for Jewish Women 102 and Zionism during the Transitional Period of the Reform Movement Masato Goda, The Secret Journey of a Small Grammar: 112 Spinoza in Contemporary French Philosophy List of Contributors 119 List of the Organizers and Participants of the Symposium 120 Jerusalem Symposium 2018 Introduction The development of Jewish Studies over the last decades is quite amazing. In many universities in North America and Canada, not to speak of European countries and even East Europe, we find programs dedicated to the study of Judaism in different periods of its history.1 In this regard Japan is lagging behind and Jewish Studies have not yet reached the universities shores in general.2 The only university in Japan that houses a vibrant research center as well as an active program on Jewish Studies is Doshisha University in Kyoto. At Doshisha University we have been fortunate in being able to open a program on Jewish Studies at the School of Theology, which has been developing and prospering for the last fifteen years of its existence, creating a welcoming atmosphere for young scholars some of whom have contributed to this volume.3 In the years since the establishment of the program and the start of the CISMOR research center, academic exchanges between Doshisha University’s School of Theology and The Hebrew University’s Faculty of Humanities have enabled us to exchange scholars as well as hold joint conferences and workshops. This volume of articles is the third to be published and the outcome of a symposium on Jewish Studies in historical perspective. This volume contains the majority of the papers presented at the symposium held in Jerusalem on August 19th 2018. Unfortunately, four participants were unable to submit their papers. The participants came from Japan and the USA and joined the Israeli scholars, with whom the first symposium was held in 2011. They include well-established scholars as well as young researchers still in the final stages of their doctoral degree. 1 For North America see Judith Baskin “Jewish Studies in North American Colleges and Universities: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 32.4 (Summer, 2014), 9-26. For Europe see the website of EAJS (=European Association of Jewish Studies), which offers information on institutions and scholars in the field of Jewish Studies URL: https://www.eurojewishstudies.org/directory/advanced-search/?type=institution (Feb. 5th, 2019). 2 In Asia, China has been showing a leap in that direction with Prof. Xu Xin the leading scholar of Judaic studies at the center and program of studies at Nanjing University. Also see the summary of Sino-Judaic Institute URL: http://www.sino-judaic.org/index.php?page=jewish_studies_situation (Feb. 5th, 2019). 3 Speaking of Jewish Studies in Japan in general, a new association of Jewish Studies was established in Kyoto of which participants in the symposium from Japan, are all members: The Kyoto Association of Jewish Thought (established 2009 in Kyoto). Prof. Masato Goda is its current president. URL: https://sites.google.com/site/kyotojewish/en (Feb. 5th, 2019). 1 Introduction The articles range from research on the Hebrew Bible, through medieval Jewish scholarship and up to contemporary interpretations of Jewish thought. The methodological approaches are also varied: comparative religion, linguistic textual readings, philosophical interpretations as well as the historical study of modern political Judaism. These all however come under the discipline of Jewish Studies, even if in other contexts they may very well belong to other disciplines. Jewish Studies today is clearly an interdisciplinary field of research. In this volume I have chosen to divide the articles into five parts, not on a chronological basis but rather by proximity of topic, and period of writers discussed. Part I: I chose to start with the article of Paul Mendes-Flohr, who wrote on the beginning of Jewish Studies in Germany, and the academic approach to the cultural heritage of the Jews, known as Wissenschaft des Judentums. Being a secular study, it enabled non-Jewish scholars in many languages to engage in this field. Its development from the 19th century study of mainly biblical interpretation, shifted to focusing on Judaism as a “living faith”. It is thus today, according to him, divided into two disciplines, one of “History of Judaism” and the other, “Jewish Studies”. Mendes-Flohr then leaves us at the end of his discussion with questions regarding the future of Jewish Studies. The second article, by David Cohen, offers a philosophical approach to the concept of the creation through the study of the writings of Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik, an American Jewish Orthodox scholar. Cohen discloses the universal essence of biblical ethics in Soloveitchik’s exploration of the creation in Genesis. Thus he shows how philosophical interpretations enable Jewish sources to be understood as part of universal ethics. Part II includes three articles. The first, by Zev Harvey, looks at similar attitudes to the development of the Hebrew language of two Jewish intellectuals, separated by more than eight centuries: Mimonides and Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik. Both these great intellectuals and interpreters of Jewish cultural assets, chose to give precedence to the usage of the Hebrew language by native speakers. The second paper by Ada Taggar Cohen takes the two cultures of the ancient Israelites in the Hebrew Bible (historically existed in the first part of the first millennium), and the culture of the Hittites (historically existed more than half a century 2 Ada Taggar Cohen earlier). This article offers a glance at the concept of holiness in these two cultures and how that concept shaped their social understanding. The third article, by Tetsu Kitamura, consists of a study discussing the fact that the second name of Jerusalem, “Zion”, the most important city for the prophet Ezekiel, is not used by him. Kitamura suggests an explanation based on his understanding of the prophet’s denial of the theological concept of Zion as the future domain and abode of the seed of the house of David. Part III comprises two articles of philosophical discussions that treat two different kinds of Jewish texts. The first article, by Joel Swanson, puts to the test a modern conceptual dichotomy posed by the philosopher Stéphane Mosès, who distinguishes ‘normative modernity’ from ‘critical modernity’. Studying interpretations of Psalm 115 by two modern Jewish writers, the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig, who interpreted the text as a universal message, and the Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein, who offers an ethnocentric interpretation of the text centered on Jewish reality after the Holocaust, Swanson suggests in a thorough discussion, that caution is required regarding the above two strict dichotomies. The second article, by Tzvi Schoenberg, discusses the concept of language in early Hasidism, by studying the use of language in Maggid Devarav le-Ya‘akov by Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Miedzyrzec. Schoenberg points specifically to the Maggid’s theology through studying the Maggid’s perception of the Hebrew terms yesh and ayin. He argues that “within the Maggid’s entire corpus of teachings, even the speech of everyday life, if spoken with the proper intentionality, can participate in the ontological constitution of the differentiated world, and can connect this fallen world to the undifferentiated state.” Thus ayin is not defined in opposition to human language, but as “in-between” in all human speech. Part IV includes two articles regarding the study of the work of the philosopher Martin Buber. The first one, by Fumio Ono, offers an interpretation of Buber’s “anarchism” in light of Buber’s encounter with revolutionary ideas. He asserts that “Buber inherited anarchist thought from mysticism, socialism, and communism,” and thus suggests that anarchist elements in Buber’s thinking are “a hidden communication between socialism/communism and I-Thou.” The second article, by Kotaro Hiraoka, looks at the way Martin Buber has been influenced by the reading of the “Testament of the Ba‘al Shem-Tov,” in understanding 3 Introduction “Jewish Renaissance”, where he finds a verbal form hinting to the way Buber started his interpretation of the idea of “holiness”. Part V consists of two articles, the only connection between them is their being relate to modern Jewish Studies.