A literary masterpiece, the Hebrew Psalter is considered one of the most complex books of the Hebrew Bible. In order to understand the whole, and its parts, interpretive clues fill the pages of this intriguing, and oftentimes obscure, book. Selah, an obscure term in the Psalter and Habakkuk, has commonly been the subject of discussion regarding its meaning and use. Many 19th century scholars have spent countless hours, and devoted many pages, to remove Selah from obscurity. Only now have we revealed a previously undiscovered clue in Selah’s use during the Second Temple period due to 20th century archaeological finds. The present work approaches each text with a “whole picture” perspective so as to examine each psalm and Selah occurrence in its immediate context. A journey through the ancient witnesses such as the Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Dead Sea Scrolls (biblical and non-biblical) not only exposes common literary features, but a communal use of the term in worship.

This thesis explores transmission of religious representations of sacrifice and commitment within modern Jewish-Israeli culture. The thesis begins with a focus on the domain of religious representations and then explores the empirical plausibility of a context-based approach for studying their transmission patterns using recently emerging perspectives within cognitive science of religion. On that basis, the thesis turns the attention to religious representations that violate shared cultural assumptions (counter-cultural), through a review of the possible differences between these and religious representations that violate innate intuitions ( counterintuitive ). It is argued that without further expanding of the context-based view to include violations of cultural kind, new advances in this approach will not be convincing. A theoretical model of the effect of context on the spread of counter-cultural religious representations is therefore developed through a conceptual integration of aspects of script theory. The socio-cognitive model presented here is based on the potential connection between emerging accounts for cultural transmission and script theory. The first study involves an empirical investigation of media representations of sacrifice and commitment scripts within Jewish - Israeli culture. A second study, involving 1,005 participants, seeks to operationalize the investigation of religious representations, and does so by an online research tool that allows structured insight into mental representations of sacrifice and commitment scripts, based on representation elicited from the previous media analysis. This dynamic technology facilitates the investigation of the different qualities of recurrent representations over time and under different contextual conditions. In conclusion, this thesis attempts to explore the potential connections between the context in which counter-cultural representations are spread and the degree to which they spread by suggesting that under some conditions representations that maximally deviate from cultural assumptions can turn minimal, becoming optimal for transmission, as long as they can be justified in that context.

This thesis seeks to gain a fresh perspective on the movement reflected in the Damascus Document by asking if it could be seen as a Revitalization Movement, a theoretical construct developed by the American anthropologist Anthony Wallace. Signs of a cultural identity crisis and the changes in society causing it are evident throughout the Damascus Document. By comparing the findings to Wallace's model, we understand that the movement could have developed as a reaction to a context of profound cultural changes. This study challenges the prominent view that the major crisis causing the rise of the movement was the Babylonian exile, as another paradigm related to Isa 7 .17, featuring Ephraim's departure from Judah, is alluded to in several ways. The princes of Judah are compared to Ephraim and depicted as those who depart, because they have adopted a foreign way of life, the way of the kings of Greece. While both paradigms were seen to represent collective memories used as warnings of judgment, the theme of division of the northern and the southern kingdoms in the past is portrayed as comparable to the current conflict in society.

This study provides a small-scale comparative analysis of the religious outlook and practice of two generational groups of Masorti Jews in Israel. Conducted from an insider perspective, it aims to provide insights into changes of religious outlook and practices between the two generations. The first-generation participants comprised immigrants from North America whereas the second-generation participants were born and raised in Israel. Its results are mat to inform and support the future development of Masorti Judaism in Israel while also making an original contribution to sociological knowledge about the lived experiences of religiously motivated migrations from a generational perspective. The research adopts a pragmatic, predominantly qualitative approach, utilizing the Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, doxa, field, and capital to better understand how religious outlook and practices were sustained and transmitted across generations. The use of the Bourdieusian theory has provided a framework for structuring and conceptualizing day-to-day behaviors, actions and statements, as presented in the interviews, and for developing an analysis of the different fields which each generational group encountered, the ways that different forms of capital were valued and transformed, and how this affected interviewees' habitus. Data were gathered from interviews with nine members of the first generation and eight members of the second generation. The data relating to second generation participants were ultimately supplemented by a short questionnaire completed by thirty additional members of the same generation. The Bourdieusian analysis has provided a holistic approach that illuminated important differences in religious outlook and practices between the generational groups. The first generation group had generally tried to maintain the religious outlook and practice with which they came to Israel. They also created new congregations and institutions to sustain and perpetuate them. The second-generation participants displayed a reduced commitment to Jewish law and religious-communal structures. Both generational groups shared a strong commitment to Jewish activism as a feature of their Jewish outlook, although this outlook was carried out in different ways.

This thesis identifies the German rabbinate in British exile as a distinct refugee sub-group and traces its experiences from the onset of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s to those in Britain, ending in 1956 It argues that the rabbinate rose to unprecedented prominence under the Nazi regime as it was part of the communal leadership structure within German Jewry and maintained this role in the early years in exile. It was found that the end of the war and the vanishing of outside pressures impacted on the German rabbinate changing it into a different, modern, Anglo-Jewish institution, with German roots and influences. With the changed demands of the Anglo-Jewish population on their rabbis and the ageing German rabbis passing on, the heritage was transferred into Anglo-Jewish institutions such as newly founded synagogues and the Leo Baeck College. This had been facilitated through the rigorous training and the powerful experiences of the immigrant rabbis which gave the impact for religious expansion in Britain. Their influence turned the progressive but also the orthodox movement into a powerful force in the Anglo-Jewish landscape today. On a personal level the study uncovered that despite their prominence, the experiences of the German rabbinate in British exile unfolded along the same lines as that of the general refugee population fleeing Nazism. In their leadership capacity however most rabbis were able to reclaim their position in the midst of the refugees, the remnants of their former communities now in exile. With that they held responsibility and power. Their attempts of transplanting and maintaining the German Jewish heritage in Britain was a desperate and only marginally successful undertaking with only few traces still recognizable today. Their attempts had a dramatic influence on the course and future of Anglo-Jewry.

This thesis comprises an introduction to the life and works of Victorinus of Pettau, a translation of his commentary on the Apocalypse and a select commentary on that work.

Once regarded as a vibrant centre of intellectual, cultural and spiritual Jewish life, Lithuania was home to 240,000 Jews prior to the Nazi invasion of 1941. By war's end, less than 20,000 remained. Today, 4,000 Jews reside there, among them 108 survivors from the camps and ghettos and a further 70 from the Partisans and Red Army. Against a backdrop of ongoing Holocaust denial and a recent surge in anti-Semitic sentiment, this thesis presents the history and experiences of a group of elderly survivors in modern-day Vilnius through the lens of their stories and memories, their special places and their biographical objects. Incorporating interdisciplinary elements of cultural anthropology, social geography, psychology, narrative and sensory ethnography, it is informed, at its core, by an overtly spiritual approach. Drawing on the essentially Hasidic belief that everything in the material world is imbued with sacred essence and that we, as human beings, have the capacity through our actions to release that essence, it explores the points of intersection where the individual and the collective collide, illuminating how history is lived from the inside. Glimpses of the personal, typically absent from the historical record, are afforded prominence here: a bottle of perfume tucked into a pocket before fleeing the ghetto, a silent promise made beside a mass grave, a pair of shoes fashioned from parachute material in the forest. By tapping the material for meaning, a more embodied, emplaced, experiential level of knowing, deeper and richer than that achieved through traditional life history (oral testimony and written documents) methods, can emerge. In moving beyond words and gathering a bricolage of story, legend, artefact, document, monument and landscape, this research suggests a multidimensional historiography that is of particular relevance in grasping the lived reality of survivors in Lithuania where only the faintest traces of a once thriving Jewish heritage now remain.

Detta arbetes uppgift är att konstruera ett redskapsfäste för en lastmaskin av modell Volvo BM 840. Lastmaskinen är idag försett med ett gammalt mindre bra fäste, den behöver därför ett bättre, modernare och mer användbart redskapsfäste med hydraulisk redskapslåsning. Den typen av redskapsfäste som ger detta är ett Stora BM-fäste. För att få rätt mått har måttuppgifter tagits på andra maskiner och redskap. Resultatet blev kompletta ritningar för att kunna tillverka delarna till fästet på en verkstad. Hållfasthetsberäkningar har gjorts på de viktigaste ställena.

I examined the characteristics of converts to Judaism through the Reform Synagogues, 1952-2002, exploring the psychological impact of conversion, the nature of their Jewish identity and the durability of their religious commitment through time. Recognising the large variation in the Jewish practice and attitudes displayed, I also examined the influence of motivational, family and biographical factors on their Jewish identity. Motivation for conversion was multi-dimensional. The instrumental desire to create family unity was identified as the most powerful motivating factor. The strength of this variable was found to be a significant predictor of the level of behavioural changes in the converts’ Jewish lifestyle. Counter-intuitively, this motivational factor formed negative correlations with ethnicity and a non-significant relationship with ritual behaviour. The data highlight differences between the factorial structure of the Jewish identity of converts and born Jews. For converts, four identity factors were identified: ritual practice, ethnic belonging, Jewish development and spirituality. Miller et al. have identified three factors underlying the Jewish identity of born Jews under 50: behavioural ethnicity, religiosity and mental ethnicity. Survey data of converts has shown a clear division of ritual and ethnic behaviours, whilst in born Jews, the same differentiation is not demonstrated. Like moderately engaged born Jews, converts emphasised the notion of affective identity rather than the actual performance of Jewish ritual acts, though it is clear that ‘on average’ converts have a somewhat more intense pattern of ritual practice than born (Reform) Jews. The majority of the converts felt content with the results of their conversion but the relative lack of emphasis placed on Jewish continuity as opposed to the convert’s individual self-fulfilment, can be seen as an indication of a possibility that the conversion process may only delay demographic decline in the Jewish community for just one or two generations.

The Name of God has formed a crucial element of Jewish thought throughout its history, from the Biblical text, through the rabbinic and kabbalistic writings and into the modern age when the topic has still been a focal point for Jewish philosophers. The purpose of this study is to examine the texts of Judaism, especially those within the mystical tradition, pertaining to the Name of God, and to offer a philosophical analysis of these as a means of understanding the metaphysical role of the name generally, in terms of its relationship with identity. While the materials are historical, the aim is a speculative re/construction of a systematic philosophical approach to naming from these materials. Beginning with the formation of rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity, I will progress through the development of the motif into the Medieval Kabbalah, where the Name reaches its grandest and most systematic statement – and the one which has most helped to form the ideas of Jewish philosophers in the 20th Century. This will highlight certain metaphysical ideas which have developed within Judaism from the Biblical sources, and which present a direct challenge to the paradigms of western philosophy. Thus a grander subtext is a criticism of the Greek metaphysics of being which the west has inherited, and which Jewish philosophers often subject to challenges of varying subtlety; it is these philosophers who often place a peculiar emphasis on the personal name, and this emphasis seems to depend on the historical influence of the Jewish metaphysical tradition of the Name of God.