Reviews for Hasidism In Israel

The average rating for Hasidism In Israel based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-09-05 00:00:00 John Smith REVIEW AND CRITIQUE Shaye J. D. Cohen, S. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, 2nd ed., 2006 In From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (2nd ed., 2006), Cohen a contemporary Jewish scholar teaching at Harvard gives the most concise account of the three-hundred-and-fifty years of history of Judaism from the Maccabbees to Mishnah. This work is significant to Christian biblical scholarship because Cohen in his research and presentation completely stands away from the current debate regarding early Judaism and unsurprisingly he presents a complete different picture of the history from that offered by the "New Perspective" scholars such as James Dunn and N. T. Wright. Cohen's study was influenced by Wayne A. Weeks, the pioneer in biblical scholarship who applies sociological approach to the social history of the NT period. His results focus on the general diversity of Jewish world and religious thoughts in the Second Temple period, with mild intention of advocating for the "common Judaism" (Judaism as practiced by the common people) and the religiosity as shown in the liturgical life. Different from N.T. Wright's summary of the themes of early Judaism (Monotheism, Election, Eschatology), Cohen concludes, ""...the three themes of the Shema are the Kingship of God, Reward and Punishment, and Redemption...by virtue of its central place in the liturgy, serves well as a convenient outline of Jewish beliefs (76)." Apparently unaware of, or uninterested in, Wright's thesis of Israel's corporate notion of Israel's national identity, Cohen remarks, "It is perhaps not surprising that outsiders saw the Jews as a single people or ethnic group. Outsiders seldom see the disagreements, tensions, and rivalries that are so apparent to insiders. It is perhaps more surprising that the Jews of antiquity, in some contexts at least, saw themselves as citizens of one nation and one religion, unaware of, or oblivious to, the fact that they were separated from each other by their diverse languages, practices, ideologies, and political loyalties. But in fact, for all of their disagreements and rivalries, ancient Jews were united by a common set of practices and beliefs that characterized virtually all segments of Jewry...This common Judaism was the unity within the diversity (14)." Also different from Wright, Cohen notes the "innovative" development of reward and punishment to the individuals as opposed to the corporate reward and punishment in the Second Temple period, "Ezekiel claims that every person receives his or her just deserts from God. The author of Chronicles, a work of the Persian or early Hellenistic period, implemented this theory in his revision of the book of Kings. The Deuteronomic historian was satisfied with the doctrine of corporate responsibility, but the Chronicler was not (85)." And finally, Cohen's reconstruction of the eschatology in the Second Temple Judaism is much closer to the traditional Christian understanding and more distant to Wright's version: "Preexilic Israel and Second Temple Judaism also differed in their understanding of theodicy, God's administration of justice...Preexilic Israel believed that God administered justice in this world. The righteous and the wicked were not always the direct recipients of God;s attentions, because God could reward or punish their offspring in their stead (emphasis on the collective). Second Temple Judaism insisted that God punishes and rewards only those who deserve it, and that the conduct of one's ancestors is irrelevant (emphasis on the individual). Since God does not always seem to set matters right in this world, he must do so in the next. Second Temple Judaism therefore elaborated complex schemes included the resurrection of the dead. Just as God will reestablish justice for the individual, he shall do so for the nation by destroying the yoke of the nations and restoring the sovereignty of the people of Israel. Jerusalem and the temple will be restored to their former glory and God's annointed one (messiah) shall reign securely, All of these eschatological doctrines....are innovations of Second Temple Judaism (10)." Critiques: It is very unfortunate that Cohen's work has been rarely heeded by biblical scholars. This is such a vivid example of how a Jewish historian is not able to reproduce Wright's reconstruction of historical early Judaism. Cohen's own reconstruction, however, is not without flaws. First of all, he fails to engage detailed exegeses of the Jewish literatures throughout the whole book. And he is not so much self-aware of his own hermeneutic assumptions as the contemporary scholars. He tends to read more Mishnah tradition into the early traditions. And his focus on the "common Judaism" in the liturgical form has misdirected him from probing the depth of Jewish thoughts as contained in the literatures. His general lack of the skills in "narrative analysis" and "worldview analysis" in historical study makes him appear more superficial than Wright. However it also exposes the possibility that Wright's approach is not so much purely "historian" but also a mixture of ideological re-imagination in the enterprise of historical study. Cohen remains to be a Jewish Rabbis and historian rather than an interpreter and philosopher.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-04 00:00:00 Tammi White More a textbook than a monograph'which does not stop it from advancing an argument. The major change in the current edition is a new, concluding chapter on the "parting of the ways" between Jews and Christians. I cannot imagine how the prior editions would read, as the book builds thematically toward that chapter. Cohen's take, in brief, is that the ways did not part, because they never ran together in the first place. As soon as we can identify a Christian church from documentary or material evidence, it did not mix with Jewish communities in "the land of Israel"* or in the diaspora. This telos, in retrospect, governs his prior account of Jewish practice, social organization, and belief. Likewise, this telos is a function of the book's audience. The primary constituency for a course in "Second Temple Judaism" (let alone "The Jewish Background to the New Testament") is, if not Christian, then at least conditioned by prior interest in the New Testament or Christian origins. I should add, in this connection, that my training is in Christian systematic theology, so I am very much a part of this same audience. Any American Jew writing for Christians knows what questions are likely to interest them. Such is the balance of power. In my judgment, Cohen assesses the New Testament, and Christian evidence on the period more generally, scrupulously and even generously: He treats Jesus as a healer, speaks of "post-resurrection" communities, and considers Paul a very strange Jew, but also a significant Jewish writer of the period and a source of evidence for Jewish language and internal politics. There is refreshingly little polemic here, at least on the surface where a non-specialist would notice it. A prior reviewer contrasts Cohen's account to that of N. T. Wright, which is frankly apologetic: Quite so. Much of this material was familiar to me in other ways, but there was still plenty to learn from Cohen's presentation, and not only from his argument. Some takeaways'perhaps not new to you, but new to me: 'The only Jewish writer who ever self-identified as a Pharisee was Paul, and then of course as an ex-Pharisee. That name (which seems to come from a word for "separation") functioned to name a party, clearly, but that party's members never identified with it, either at the time or in retrospect. The word does not even appear in the Mishnah! 'Likewise with Sadducee, a group that leaves no written testimony at all. One clue: The root of the word seems to be Zadok, a priestly lineage also claimed at Qumran! Now I want to read a 19th-c. historical novel, à la Ben-Hur, about a falling-out of aristocratic priestly brothers in the late Hasmonean period. 'The word politeuma, cf. Phil 3:20 ("our politeuma is in heaven"), referred to autonomous ethnic communities within Greek cities, such as those of diaspora Jews. The exegetical implications are not yet clear to me, and it can simply mean "citizenship" in a broader sense, but now I'm curious whether NT commentators have picked up on the diasporic specificity here, as Paul certainly would have done. *Cohen consistently uses this language as the counterpoint to the diaspora. He likewise includes, in his preface, a protest against the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which he believes to reflect an "obsess[ion] with the sins of Israel" on the part of Christians. (In case any reader doesn't know: The book's publisher is affiliated with the PCUSA.) I appreciated his forthrightness, while still finding the apologetic undercurrent a bit distracting. YMMV.