Faith Against Reason - for the first time in the historiography of Anglo-Jewry - traces the increasingly stormy relationship between the British Chief Rabbinate and an increasingly polarising community, from the founding of the West London Synagogue of British Jews in the 1840s to the end of the incumbency of Immanuel Jakobovits, five Chief Rabbis and 150 years later. It examines the causes and consequences of the Reform 'modifications' and of the opposition to them; the genesis and spread of the subsequent secessionist movements, Liberal and Conservative (Masorti); the reasons for the growing divisions and dissension within the community; and the results of internal and external influences on all parties to the disputes. Within that framework, the context statement, Another Way, Another Time, discusses the Chief Rabbinate of Jonathan Henry Sacks, who launched his tenure in 1991 with an inclusivist 'Decade of Jewish Renewal' - seeking to reach out, as he put it in his installation address, 'to every Jew, with open arms and an open heart' - and who, within a few years, was attracting calls, from opponents and supporters, for his resignation and for the abolition of his office. As will be seen, however, these latter calls date back to the election of Hermann Adler, exactly a century before Sacks' accession, and have pursued each Chief Rabbi from that time on, as his authority and constituency continued to diminish. First exploring Sacks' early writings and pronouncements on the theme of inclusivism, the paper then demonstrates how, repeatedly, he said 'irreconcilable things to different audiences' and how, in the process, he induced his 'kingmaker' and foremost patron to declare of Anglo-Jewry: 'We are in a time warp, and fast becoming an irrelevance in terms of world Jewry.' Another Way, Another Time contends that the Chief Rabbinate has indeed reached the end of the road and suggests the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews - a name not unlike that of the first Reform synagogue - as the possible leader of an inclusivist, if not pluralistic, community.

This thesis concerns the teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (known by the acronym of his title and name as Rashaz; 1745-1813), founder of the Habad movement, which remains to this day one of the largest and most influential schools of Hasidism. It focuses on his concept of time, which features in various contexts in both his mystical and his legal writings. The thesis challenges the commonly held view that Rashaz’s teachings form primarily a mystical doctrine concerned with supra-temporal transcendence. It begins with a description of his teachings as an integration of the philosophical definition of time into his kabbalistically informed worldview. Next, it analyses the historiosophical underpinnings of these teaching, claiming that messianic redemption played a key role in Rashaz’s model of spirituality. His messianic awareness is further explored in a critical discussion of his view of the imminence of the messianic advent, the role of the messianic figure, and the various ways in which the redeemed world will be experienced in the future-to-come. By focusing next on the significance that Rashaz ascribed to setting regular times for normative Torah study, the thesis demonstrates his keen awareness of the crucial role of time in the service of the divine, an insight which enabled him to turn Habad into a movement that attracted not only the spiritual-intellectual elite but also many ordinary, non-scholarly Jews. Finally, the thesis explores the nexus of time and femininity in Rashaz’s teachings, attempting to establish whether the significance he attached to the kabbalistic female aspect of God in the world to come entailed the prospect of any actual change in the position of women within his own community, either before or after the anticipated redemption.

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As the title indicates, this work has two related objectives. The first is to determine whether the literary conventions of the pesher genre deprive the "historical allusions" of any significance. In other words, do the allusions refer to real events and characters, or are they simply symbols or allegories. The second objective follows closely upon the first. Once the historical nature of the allusions is demonstrated, we proceed to investigate the consequences of that demonstration in one specific area: the identification of the three principal characters: the Wicked Priest, the Teacher of Righteousness and the Liar. This work is divided into three parts: Part One: Literary Genre. This section is devoted to the first objective: to determine whether the pesher allusions are in any way historical. Part Two: Information in the Pesharim. Here we list and interpret the references to the Wicked Priest, the Teacher of Righteousness and the Liar found in the commentaries. Part Three: Identification of the Characters. This final section is dedicated to the identification of the three principal characters. The information collected from the pesharim is arranged and compared to what we know about possible candidates from outside contemporary sources. Part One consists of two chapters. The first (The Problems of History in the Pesharim) spells out the problems involved in historical research based on the pesher allusions: has history been subordinated to literary device, and if so, is it possible to determine the extent of this subordination; are the characters individuals, or are they categories, types or titles. There follows upon this exposition of the question, a brief review of the various theories of identification which have been proposed for the Wicked Priest, the Teacher and the Liar. The second chapter (The Effect of Literary Genre on the Pesharim) answers the questions raised in the previous chapter. After analyzing the content, conventions and finality of the pesharim, we conclude that the allusions must refer to known events and characters. The allusions are too fragmentary and basically uninformative to have any meaning or power to convince, if they did not call to mind people and occasions that were well known to the readers. The fact that the readers necessarily had to be well acquainted with the events involved, if they were to make sense of these allusions, does not allow the author to tamper excessively with the historical narrative. Moreover, the very purpose of the whole exercise would be defeated if the author could both re-interpret the texts and falsify the history. He did not tailor 'history to fit prophecy, but rather strained the meaning of the prophet's words to fit the events of the sect's history. The second part begins with a brief introduction which explains the method we shall follow to work out the identity of the principal characters. We then gather all the passages in the pesharim which name them (principally IQpHab, 4QpPss^a, and 4QpNah.) We consider as well those places in the Damascus Document where the Teacher of Righteousness and the Liar are mentioned. The third part is divided into three chapters. Chapter Five examines the background of the documents: archaeology, paleography, the identity of the Kittim and the Qumran Community, and finally the single, apparently chronological indication to be found in the scrolls: the three hundred and ninety years in the Damascus Document. We then examine the pesher allusions to the Wicked Priest (Chapter Six) and distinguish between those statements which refer to verifiable facts, and those that merely express the hostility and disapproval of the author. By comparing these statements to information in external contemporary sources (Josephus and the Books of Maccabees) we reach the conclusion that the most likely individual to fit the scroll description of the Wicked Priest is Jonathan Maccabaeus. The texts referring to the Liar are subjected to the same scrutiny, but the results are less satisfying. There is, however, a strong possibility, but only a possibility, that the Liar and the Wicked Priest are the same individual. In that case, Liar would be another name for Jonathan Maccabaeus. Finally we analyze the pesher allusions to the Teacher of Righteousness and compare them to what we know from non-Qumran sources (Chapter Seven.) Although there is abundant information about the Teacher's role in the community, his peculiar teaching, and the esteem in which his followers held him, there is little that points towards his personal identity. Similarly, there is too little information in external sources about those individuals who might be the Teacher of Righteousness to allow us more than random guesses. We can only go so far along truly evidential lines: we can determine a certain period, discover a likely candidate for the Wicked Priest and possibly the Liar, and make certain definite exclusions. Anything beyond this enters the realm of pure conjecture.

A radar altimetry satellite measures the height of sea surface globally. However, tide gauges, measuring Sea Level Height (SLH), are set up on the Earth surface. Hence, SLHs are involved in vertical motion of the Earth crust. In this study, vertical motions of Earth crust have been separated from sea level variations. After clustering of SSH observations with K-means approach, two outlier detection methods Pope and Interquartile (IQR) Tests are implemented in data. Afterwards, each altimetry measurement is relocated to the center point of own cluster by means of geoid height derived from Earth Gravitational Model 2008 (EGM08). Before application of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to see behavior of SSH inbetween clusters, Lomb Scargle algorithm is run to realize power spectrum of every clustered observations distinctly. Besides, tide gauge measurements are used for extracting 68 constituents with T_Tide program from hourly tide gauge observations. Then, predicted signal is produced by means of classical tidal harmonic analysis. To get monthly and daily mean values of hourly data, MSDOS Processing and Quality Controlling Software (SLPR2) has been run and the results are compared with Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) monthly mean sea level values. Afterwards, the trends from altimetry, tide gauge and GPS are investigated to reveal vertical land motion. This study shows that sea level is rising every year more or less 7 mm at the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. Although Iskenderun tide gauge subsides 50 mm every year, the other stations do not show huge amount of vertical motion.