Thesis (M.A.R.)--Emmanuel School of Religion, 2005. / Vita. Subtitle appears in Hebrew script. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-98).

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-88). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1993. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-114).

In recent years, the Jewish prayer for healing, the Mi Sheberach (literally, "the one who blessed"), has become a central element of North American liberal (non-Orthodox) religious and ritual life. The growing centrality of these prayers comes at a time when American Judaism has shifted away from congregational and communal life to a more personalized approach to Jewish beliefs, practices and identities; participation in both ritual and prayer practices is now based in personal choice and the desire for an individually-meaningful experience, as well as communal obligation or belief in God. This dissertation seeks to understand the meanings and impacts of these Jewish prayers for healing, by using ethnography as a tool for understanding the lived experience of religious practices, beliefs, and identities. Based in two years of ethnographic field-work in Southern Arizona, it places the relationship between Judaism and healing within the larger social, communal and historical contexts in which both of these concepts acquire meaning. I describe the complexities and contradictions inherent in modern liberal American Jewishness, demonstrating that these modern Jewish American selves are multiply-situated, multi-voiced, and characterized by diversity and dissonance. My research shows that, among liberal American Jews, the individual's search for meaning blends with the collectivist nature of Judaism, in an ongoing process of interpretive interaction between text, tradition, personal experience, and other members of the community. I find that Jewish representations of God are also complex and contradictory. Many people have difficulty articulating their thoughts about God, and their views are dynamic and inconsistent. Furthermore, Jewish belief develops in a multifaceted relationship to Jewish ritual and communal practice. Within this context, healing prayer becomes become one site, among many, through which relationships to Jewish traditions, practices and communities are negotiated and constructed. Healing prayer leads to a feeling of connection to community, ancestors and traditions; it transforms fear and anxiety into comfort, strength and acceptance; promotes spiritual transcendence; and provides a sense of agency and control at times of vulnerability and helplessness. Healing in a liberal Jewish context may involve the physical body, but it more often involves emotions, spirit, relationships to other people, and relationships to Judaism. Prayer may refer to a dialogue with the divine, but it is also a dialogue between the individual and the community, and between Jewish history and modernity. Finally, this dissertation contributes to discussions of religion and secularism, demonstrating that these analytical categories, which emerged out of European Protestantism, are neither sufficient, nor appropriate, for the study of modern Jewish life.

The thesis is divided into nine separate chapters. In the first chapter, I focused on the aftermath of the First World War. Shortly after the cessation of fighting, representatives of the powers involved met in France to establish responsibility for the outbreak of the global conflict. The Treaty of Versailles imposed high financial reparations on Germany and also stipulated a reduction of the German army and, last but not least, the removal of a part of the German territory. The second and third chapters are devoted to postwar developments in Germany. After the war, Germany became a republic, namely a democratic republic. The Weimar Republic even had one of the most democratic constitutions in Europe. From its establishment, the republic was facing hardly surmountable difficulties in the field of internal politics, economy and later finance. It is therefore no wonder that the citizens, disappointed in democracy, heeded the positively sounding mottos of the National Socialists on the eradication of unemployment and the improvement of living standards for all. I have divided the era of Hitler's Germany into three periods in terms of taking antisemitic measures for the purposes of better orientation in the text. In the first period, the Nazis focused primarily on the elimination of the Jews (with some...

M.Tech. (Biological and Health Technology) / The manner in which ritual slaughterings are executed in the R.S.A. is unknown to the majority of the population. The requirements with which religious slaughterings must comply as well as the facilities used for that purpose are even less familiar. The subject of the Jewish method of slaughter (Shechita) has especially elicited much discussion, due to the major divergence of opinion between the Jewish community and animal welfare organisations, as far as the slaughter technique and restraining facilities are concerned. This study was undertaken in an endeavour to find a solution to the problems in the form of restraining facilities acceptable to both groups. The first phase comprised a literature study of Shechita. The second phase consisted of a study tour to the United States of America and Israel, to become acquainted with the latest technology employed for Shechita. The last phase entailed the construction of a prototype restrainer facility at the Johannesburg Abattoir to facilitate experiments for the development of a head clamp. The function of the head clamp is to restrain the animal in such a manner that it can be slaughtered in the upright position but still in full compliance with the rules of Shechita. This study represents an endeavour to contribute meaningfully to and supplement existing knowledge and know-how applicable in South African circumstances.

The aims and objectives of this investigation were to find whether non-Jews or non-exiles related with the early post-exilic Jewish community in their religious life and communal living according to Ezra and Nehemiah; to discern the nature of such relationship; to discover the basis on which this relationship was sustained; and to examine the text of Ezra-Nehemiah and see whether Ezra and Nehemiah exhibits exclusivity in their dealing with non-Jews or non-exiles as supposed by others (cf Williamson 1987:83). The inquiry reveals that the author(s) or editor(s) of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah re-interpreted certain passages from the Pentateuch in a peculiar way to support the exclusive religious and social reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah. Consequently, two viewpoints emerged from the text of Ezra and Nehemiah concerning non-exiles. The one is exclusive and the other is inclusive. The researcher contended that the inclusive perspective is the appropriate approach toward non-Jews as evidenced in the spirit of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants as well as in the Deuteronomic-Deuteronomistic history. In other words, the Abrahamic covenant and certain passages from the Pentateuch and from the Deuteronomic-Deuteronomistic history provide a framework for a religious and communal relationship between the Israelites and or Jews and foreigners. / Dissertation (MTh (Old Testament Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Old Testament Studies / unrestricted

Employed as midwives, wise women, or healers, female medical practitioners of various faiths disseminated medical knowledge and supplied information pertinent to religious and legal rulings in early modern Europe. While scholars have noted this role for Christian women, they have not studied the unique position of female Jewish healers with regard to municipal regulations, communal politics, medical knowledge, and legal consultations. This dissertation examines the role and influence of Jewish midwives in early modern Western Europe, addressing their interactions with communal leaders, physicians, Christian medical practitioners, and bureaucrats. Exploring their medical influences, their engagement with administrative knowledge systems, and their intellectual status in the eyes of prominent male leaders, this dissertation demonstrates that attention to the roles of Jewish midwives yields new understandings of the structures of knowledge and authority that undergirded early modern European society. Through archival and printed sources in Hebrew, Yiddish, Dutch, and German, the dissertation argues that Jewish midwives offer a crucial analytical lens for understanding many of the shifts in early modern Jewish communal life, medical culture, gender relations, and municipal bureaucracy. It tells the story of how a discrete body of knowledge crossed medical, legal, religious, and linguistic boundaries, allowing Jewish women to become guardians of sensitive information and powerful agents of communal authority. Drawing upon a diverse source base, ranging from notarial records and archives of medical colleges, to Jewish communal registers, personal records, midwifery handbooks, and printed rabbinic sources, I show how female Jewish medical practitioners fit into the larger landscape of medical practice in early modern Europe, as well as the ways that Jewish communal structures carved out unique roles for Jewish midwives during this period. Employing methods from the history of science, gender studies, and Jewish history, my study shows that Jewish midwives became part of an international system of scientific communication, whose content flowed between vernacular and elite practitioners. This dissertation thus sheds new light on the ways in which the inclusion of women as subjects, and gender as a lens, presents a landscape of knowledge-making and transmission whose boundaries are more expansive.

Although historians generally view early Mormonism as a movement focused on restoring Christianity to its pristine New Testament state, in the Mormon movement’s first phase (1827-28) it was actually focused on restoring Judaism to its pristine “Old Testament” state and reconstituting the Jewish nation as it had existed before the Exile. Mormonism’s first scripture, “the Book of Lehi” (the first part of the Book of Mormon), disappeared shortly after its manuscript was produced. But evidence about its contents shows it to have had restoring Judaism and the Jewish nation to their pre-Exilic condition to have been one of its major themes. And statements by early Mormons at the time the Book of Lehi manuscript was produced show they were focused on “confirming the Old Testament” and “gathering” the Jews to an American New Jerusalem. This Judaic emphasis in earliest Mormonism appears to have been shaped by a set of movements in the same time and place (New York State in the 1820s) that I am calling “American proto-Zionism,” which aimed to colonize Jews in the United States. The early Mormon movement can be considered part of American proto-Zionism and was influenced by developments in early nineteenth century American Judaism.

No description available.