A dispute between Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper beginning in the 1960s reveals two competing worldviews within the contemporary Roman Catholic Church with regard to Catholic-Jewish relations: An ontological approach, represented by Ratzinger, which understands the truth to be eternal, unchanging and handed down from above, and a historicalphenomenological approach, represented by Kasper, which understands human experience as dynamically shaping conceptions of the truth. These competing worldviews hold further theological implications (anthropological, Christological, soteriological, ecclesiological, and missiological) in terms of how Catholics approach and understand their relationship with Judaism. This thesis will argue that because Kasper’s worldview is more open to the experience of the religious other, it has proved more beneficial to the Catholic-Jewish dialogue process and, therefore, represents a better articulation of the directives of Vatican II, which mandates all Catholics to renounce hatred and anti-Semitism and to engage in friendly dialogue and theological enquiry with Jews in order to “further mutual understanding and appreciation.” The thesis will further argue that the Catholic Church, on the whole, is trending toward the historicalphenomenological worldview and away from the ontological worldview, most noticeably in its relation with the Jews. The election of Pope Francis in 2013 is the best example of this trend as his magisterial teachings and publications thus far indicate that his worldview is more in line with Kasper’s historical-phenomenological approach than with Ratzinger’s ontological approach.

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<p>In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he asks the readers this question: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:16). Although Paul is the earliest Christian writer to explicitly identify the Christian community with the temple of God, this correlation is not a Pauline innovation. Indeed, this association between the community and the temple first appears in pre-Pauline Christianity (see Gal 2:9) and is found in many layers of first-century Christian tradition. Some effects of this identification are readily apparent, as the equation of the Christian community with a temple conveyed the belief that the presence of God was now present in this community in a special way, underlined the importance of holy living, and provided for the metaphorical assimilation of Gentiles into the people of God. Though some of the effects of this correlation are clear, its origins are less so.</p><p>This study contends that the early Christian idea of the Christian community as a temple should be understood in relation to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Moreover, this nascent Christian conception of the community as a temple should be seen in light of the existence of other Jewish temples which were established as alternatives to the one in Jerusalem: namely, the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim, the Oniad temple in Leontopolis, and the "temple of men" at Qumran. Though the formation of each temple was a complex affair, in each case the primary motivating factor appears to have been conflict with the Jerusalem religious establishment. </p><p>This work concludes that the application of temple terminology to the Christian community also developed through conflict with the Jerusalem chief priests charged with oversight of the temple, and that the creation of a communal temple idea should be understood as a culturally recognizable way to register dissent against the Jerusalem priesthood. As a result, we are better able to situate the early Christians in their originally Jewish nexus and see the extent to which tension in Jerusalem helped to forge the nascent Christian psyche.</p> / Dissertation

<p> This study conducts a close literary analysis of a variety of Talmudic-era prayers in order to develop a method of interpretation, called the "literary-intertext" method. Drawing on literary theory and the work of intertextuality in biblical and midrashic fields, this method offers a literary reading of prayer texts based on the juxtaposition with biblical intertexts. The method can be described as follows: </p><p> Step 1: Approach the liturgical text from a standpoint of exegesis, in which allusions abound and the surface rendering is never satisfactory. </p><p> Step 2: Using the tools of philology and academic inquiry, establish as many parallels to the liturgical text as one can to point more clearly to the identification of the intertexts. </p><p> Step 3: Identify the biblical intertext or intertexts at play in the line of prayer, and consider the surrounding biblical context. </p><p> Step 4: Identify the rabbinic interpretation(s) of the biblical intertext, giving additional layers of meaning to the text behind the prayer text. </p><p> Step 5: Offer an interpretation or set of interpretations that relate to the prayer. In the course of this study, we employ this method with the first blessing of the <i>amidah,</i> the blessings that constitute <i> havdalah,</i> and the texts of confession for Yom Kippur. In each case, the multiplicity of interpretations that emerges through the juxtaposition of the prayer text with the biblical intertext (and its rabbinic understanding) extends far beyond the original surface rendering. These interpretations are offered throughout the analysis.</p>

This thesis examines the philosophy of language of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), one of the most influential and creative early Hasidic masters, and the teacher whose students effectively created the Hasidic movement. I argue that Dov Baer offers an innovative approach to the role of language in religious life and its relationship to the inner workings of the human psyche. In contrast to scholars who emphasize aspects of Dov Baer’s thought that idealize silence, my research demonstrates that he embraced words as a divine gift, even describing the faculty of speech as an element of God imbued within humanity. Dov Baer does refer to a realm of creativity and inspiration that lies beyond words. It is into this region that the mystic journeys in his contemplative prayer, tracing spoken words back to their roots in the mind, and then the ineffable beyond. Yet this realm is restricted by its silence, for flashes of insight have no expression until they are brought into language. Indeed, says Dov Baer, all conscious thought occurs within the framework of words, even before it is spoken aloud. A similar transformation characterizes all acts of divine revelation, including Creation and the giving of the Torah, which originate in a pre-verbal inner divine realm and then spread through the pathways of language. My dissertation is a diachronic study illustrating the ways in which Dov Baer’s sermons creatively interpreted and developed conceptions of language in rabbinic, philosophical and kabbalistic literature, but devotes careful attention to his social and historical context as well. This project models a novel approach to the study of mystical texts that interfaces with contemporary issues like the study of language and epistemology, as well as broader methodological questions of the relationship between orality, authorship, and textuality. Dov Baer did not transcribe any of his own sermons, and all homilies attributed to him were recorded in writing by his disciples. Instead of attempting to reconstruct the historical sermons that have been forever lost, my dissertation draws upon the full spectrum of his teachings as they appear in printed books, manuscripts, and quotations by students in the decades after his death. The task is not to determine the veracity of these traditions in order to reconstruct Dov Baer’s “authentic” sermons, since no such Urtext ever existed in written form. I examine his theology of language as presented in early Hasidic literature, acknowledging their diversity while tracking their consistency, seeking to understand the ways in which they shaped emerging Hasidic thought. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The story of Phinehas’ zealous slaying of an Israelite man and the Midianite woman with whom he dared consort in public (Numbers 25) is perhaps the most notorious of a number of famed pentateuchal narratives that are marked with vigilante violence. Significantly, these narratives feature members of the Israelite priesthood or their eponymous ancestors. When reading these texts together, we uncover a consistent literary undercurrent which associates the priesthood with acts of interpersonal violence –– a phenomenon which I refer to as the motif of priestly violence. This dissertation examines the origins and discursive functions of this motif, and, employing the violence of Phinehas as a test-case, explores its interpretive afterlife in biblical and Jewish literature. I argue that likely impelling the motif of priestly interpersonal violence is the cultural memory of the violence of the sacrificial cult –– be it the violence inherent in the slaughter of animals, or the possible Israelite prehistory of human sacrifice. Despite these seemingly negative associations, the discourse of priestly violence functions as a critical legitimating component of the priestly imagination in the Hebrew Bible. Indeed, numerous biblical texts insinuate that it is violence, not the right lineage, that generates priestly identity. Exploring the Nachleben of Phinehas’ famed violence, I demonstrate how ancient readers of the Hebrew Bible recognized and were sensitive to these facets of the motif. My findings reveal that the legitimating function of Phinehas’ priestly violence continues in the Jewish literary tradition. From the literature of the Second Temple period through the rabbinic canon and continuing through the medieval midrashim, Jewish authors employed Phinehas’ violence in the service of their own discourses of group (de)legitimation. Priestly groups with questions about their pedigree, such as the Hasmonaeans, appropriated the discourse of Phinehas’ violence as a bulwark against the contestation of their priestly identity. But we also find subversive uses of Phinehas’ violence, particularly in Palestinian rabbinic texts, which question the integrity of Phinehas’ priestly lineage as well as the propriety of his lethal zeal. This serves to delegitimize the priesthood and effectively quash any lingering priestly claims to ritual leadership. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

The subject of this dissertation is the conception of congruity in the narrative of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Ps-J). A literary study of Ps-J reveals a two-part conundrum regarding congruity in the Targum. First, congruity seems to be disrupted with regard to the vertical dimension of the Targum, that is, between the Aramaic translation and its Hebrew Vorlage. This appearance of incongruity is considered below in the analysis of five cases of translation that seem to state in the Aramaic the exact opposite of what the corresponding passages state in the Hebrew. Second, congruity seems to be disrupted with regard to the horizontal dimension of the Targum, that is, within the literary boundaries of the Ps-J corpus itself. This appearance of incongruity is considered below in the analysis of twenty-two cases of contradiction that seem to emerge in the narrative as a result of the targumist’s interpretive translation and expansion of the text. On account of the apparent incongruities, two interrelated questions arise: As regards the vertical dimension, does Ps-J preserve continuity with its Hebrew Vorlage? As regards the horizontal dimension, does Ps-J itself render a coherent narrative? Addressing this query, the present dissertation offers a contribution to the study of Ps-J, and to the study of ancient Jewish literature in general, by analyzing a broad variety of passages that within the surface structure seem to disrupt narratival congruity, and, moreover, by demonstrating how these passages ultimately prove to be congruous once the targumist’s presuppositions about the narrative are taken into consideration. This dissertation hopes to show that the targumist approached the Hebrew text with a particular set of assumptions, as regards both his exegetical reading of each passage and his knowledge of interpretive tradition associated with the respective passage. These assumptions, while not always obvious, are, nevertheless, discernible in the targumic text; and it is these assumptions that carry the underlying congruity of the text that may otherwise seem fractured. Inasmuch as targumic additions are often terse, they are, in effect, often difficult to reconcile at first sight with the Hebrew Vorlage and with the broader context of the Ps-J narrative. Attention to the targumist’s assumptions, therefore, is necessary to discern the manner in which the apparently discrepant passages hang together. The presence of apparent contradictions in Ps-J also implies two characteristics about the targumist himself. First, while the targumist exegeted the Hebrew text and sought to bring clarity to ambiguity in the biblical narrative, he nevertheless had high tolerance of and exercised patience toward literary tension in the surface structure of the Aramaic text, but, to be sure, tension that is ultimately brought to resolution in the light of the targumist’s assumptions about the text. Second, the targumist maintained certain readerly expectations of his audience: he expected his audience to be able to follow his interpretive approach to the text in order to ascertain the sense of the translated and expanded text and to discern the overall coherence and logical consistency of the narrative. Reckoning with these aspects of Ps-J, this study shows how a coherent synchronic reading of a difficult narrative is possible and, indeed, necessary for a better understanding of the literary nature of an early Jewish text as well as for the understanding of the encounter a text such as Ps-J provided for its audience. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Dissertation Abstract “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938.” Tatjana Lichtenstein Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Department of History, University of Toronto This dissertation examines the efforts of Jewish nationalists to end Jews’ social marginalization from non-Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands between the world wars. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish nationalist movement sought to transform Czechoslovakia’s multivalent Jewish societies into a unified ethno-national community. By creating a Jewish nation, a process challenged by the significant socio-cultural differences dividing the country’s Jews, Jewish nationalists believed that they could restore Jews’ respectability and recast the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as one of mutual respect and harmonious coexistence. The dissertation explores Jewish nationalists’ struggle to make Jews at home in Czechoslovakia by investigating a series of Zionist projects and institutions: the creation of an alliance between Jews and the state; the census and the making of Jewish statistics; the transformation of the formal Jewish communities from religious institutions to national ones; Jewish schools; and the Jewish nationalist sports movement. Exploring a Jewry on the crossroads between east and west, the dissertation delves into broader questions of the impact of nationalism on the modern Jewish experience. Within the paradoxical context of a multinational nation-state like Czechoslovakia, Zionists adopted a strategy which sought integration through national distinctiveness, a response embodying elements of both west and east European Jewish culture. The study thus complicates the history of Zionism by showing that alongside the Palestine-oriented German and Polish factions, there were significant ideological alternatives within which ideas of Jewish Diaspora nationalism co-existed with mainstream Zionism. Moreover, the study points to the continuities in the relationship between Jews and the state. As in the time of empire, Jews cultivated partnerships with the political elite, a strategy developed to balance the interest of the state and its Jewish minority. In the interwar years, Jewish activists thus looked to the state for assistance in transforming Jewish society. This dissertation seeks to broaden our understanding of Jewish responses to nationalism, the relationship between Jews and the modern state, and more broadly, about the complex ways in which marginalized groups seek to attain respectability and assert their demands for equality within modern societies.

<p> In Jewish Studies in general and Jewish literary studies in particular, the autobiography has taken on renewed significance in the twenty-first century. A recent wave of Hebrew autobiographical writing has reinvigorated long-standing debates about the connections between family drama and national history in the modern state of Israel. This dissertation examines the discourse of selfhood generated by a select group of authors from the 1950s-1990s, the decades immediately preceding the genre's current boom. The "confessional mode of Israeli literary autobiography," as I designate this discourse, exposes the religious underside of early Israeli life writing. </p><p> The proposed genealogy uncovers a heretofore unacknowledged stream of autobiographical writing positioned at the nexus of public and private expression. Starting with Pinhas Sadeh's <i>Hah&barbelow;ayim kemashal</i> (1958), I deconstruct the author's sacred-profane terminology and his embrace of sacrificial tropes. I then explore David Shahar's <i>Kayitz bederekh hanevi'im</i> (1969) and <i>Hamasa le'ur kasdim</i> (1971), two works engaging with the Lurianic kabbalistic mythology of fracture and restoration (<i> tikkun</i>). The next turn in my discussion, Hanokh Bartov's <i> Shel mi atah yeled</i> (1970), focuses on the development of individual memory and artistic identity. Haim Be'er's confessional oeuvre anchors the final two chapters, which reveal the therapeutic and theological motivations behind <i>Notsot</i> (1979) and <i>H&barbelow;avalim</i> (1998). </p><p> My interdisciplinary engagement offers fresh readings of these autobiographical performances. The narratives by Sadeh, Shahar, Bartov, and Be'er deploy memories as a conscious, aesthetic act of self-construction. Riffing on the portrait of the artist as a young man, each author reveals the intimate connections among memory, trauma, and artistic creation. Concurrently, they mediate their religious identities in the new Jewish state, Oedipally rejecting the father's faith. The combination of literary self-reflexivity with spiritual self-accounting (<i>h&barbelow;eshbon nefesh</i>) links these Israeli writers with the classic confessional "double address," which engages both God and the human reader. My analysis thus contributes a new consideration of the relationship between author and audience in modern Hebrew culture. </p>