This dissertation examines the ethical systems created in response to the crisis of the Holocaust by Emmanuel Levinas, Elie Wiesel and Richard Rubenstein. Prior to the Holocaust, European Jewish philosophers grounded ethics in traditional metaphysics. Unlike their predecessors, Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein all make ethics "first philosophy" by grounding ethics in the temporal experience of suffering rather than ontology or theology, deliberately rejecting ethical views rooted in traditional metaphysical claims. With varying degrees of success, they all employ Jewish texts and traditions to do so. Their applications of Jewish sources are both orthodox and innovative, and show how philosophical approaches to ethics can benefit from religion. Suffering becomes not only the first priority of ethics, but an experience that simultaneously necessitates and activates ethical response. According to this view, human beings are not blank slates whose values are informed exclusively by culture and moral instruction alone; nor is human consciousness awakened or even primarily constituted by reason, as argued by deontologists. Rather, consciousness is characterized by affectivity and sensibility as interconnected faculties working in concert to create ethical response. This dissertation argues that if what makes ethical response possible is located in human consciousness rather than in metaphysics or culture, a re-orientation of philosophy toward the investigation of human affectivity and its role in ethical response is in order. All three thinkers examined actively resist categorization and repudiate claims that a single philosophical system can be successfully applied to all aspects of life, and this dissertation does not choose one of the three projects examined here as the most persuasive or significant. Instead, it explores how the work of Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein might be combined, built upon and expanded to form an ethics that is deeply informed by human experience and makes human and non-human suffering our greatest priorities.

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Chasing Yiddishkayt: Music for Accordion, Klezmorim Concertino, Strings, and Percussion is a four-movement composition that combines the idioms of klezmer music with aspects of serialism. I aimed to infuse the piece with a sense of yiddishkayt: a recognizable, rooted Jewishness. In order to accomplish this goal, I based each movement on a different klezmer style. I used the improvisatory-style of the Romanian Jewish doina as the foundation for Movement 1. For Movements 2 through 4 I selected tunes from the 1927 Hoffman Manuscript-a fake-book assembled by Joseph Hoffman in Philadelphia for his son, Morris-as the starting point in my process, and also for the generation of pitch material. Each movement places the tunes in a different serialist context through the use of abstraction, manipulation and regeneration. The orchestration of the composition is designed as a modified a concerto structure that alternates between featuring the accordion and contrasting the klezmorim concertino (fiddle, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, tuba, and accordion) with the orchestra. Depending on the context, the percussion section functions as part of the concertino and the orchestra. In the monograph, I place the composition in a historical and musical context. In Chapter 1, I trace my travels to Kraków, Poland for the Jewish Culture Festival, where I began to explore and understand the intricate language of this music. In Chapter 2, I provide a summary of the history of klezmer music by looking at it through the context of a musical style that has developed across regional and cultural boundaries, and has drawn influences as far and wide as the Turkish maqam system in Constantinople, to the Moldavian Roms (Gypsies), to czarist Military bands, to jazz and swing, and to rock and roll. I conclude the chapter with a brief survey of four contemporary klezmer musicians of the new generation. In Chapter 3, I look at the modal structure of klezmer music. I used the work of Joshua Horowitz as the starting point for my research on various modal progressions and tetrachords. I then applied this research by analyzing a set of thirty freilechs in the Hoffman manuscript. In Chapter 4, I present an analysis of my composition as well as historical background for the tunes that I used as source material. I outline my future research goals in Chapter 5. / Music Composition / Accompanied by one .pdf score: Chasing Yiddishkayt.pdf .

This dissertation is an inquiry into the origin, history, and interpretation of Genesis 4:26b, translatable as “then calling on the name of YHWH was begun”. Several methods, including philological analysis, semantic analysis, text criticism, and redaction criticism are brought to bear to understand the possible denotations of this verse and which are most likely given the context, what challenges exist to any preferable readings, and how those challenges might be addressed. Then, a survey is presented considering how ancient and modern interpreters have understood this half-verse, especially when considered in light of other passages that appear to contradict it. Potential interpretations are then laid out and assessed for plausibility before the historical and archaeological records are considered for what they suggest Gen 4:26b was actually read as meaning or altered contextually to mean at different points in Israelite history. Finally, a “speculative biography” of Gen 4:26b is provided, beginning with the origin of the ideas it presents in Israelite cultural memory and folklore, then laying out a model for how it was composed, understood, and recontextualized over time. It is tentatively concluded that most interpreters recognized Gen 4:26b as denoting the pronunciation of YHWH’s name, though other phenomena like participation in the YHWH cult were at times understood to be connoted. This meaning likely reflects the intent of the original author, who meant Gen 4:26b to serve as the introduction of the knowledge and use of YHWH’s name by characters. Gen 4:26b represented a tradition reflecting a cultural memory of a subgroup of Israelites who already worshipped YHWH before joining the Israelite coalition. Rival traditions reflecting the variant cultural memories of other groups are manifest in passages that seem to contradict Gen 4:26b like Exod 3:14-15 and Exod 6:2-3, though other programs are at work in each of these passages. Gen 4:26b was transposed from the beginning of what is now Gen 4 to its end when a “major redactor” combined its parent text with “Priestly material”, which obscured the original author’s programmatic intent to introduce the use of YHWH’s name by characters. The major redactor introduced a secondary program in place of this, whereby Gen 4:26b now contained the 70th mention of God and a culmination of Gen 1-4. Gen 4:26b was associated by most interpreters with Enosh, the character born in Gen 4:26a, immediately before. Attitudes towards Enosh, then, can serve as a proxy for the understood connotations of Gen 4:26b over time. These reveal a generally positive opinion of what occurred in Gen 4:26b in Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, but a shift to negative assessments of Enosh in Rabbinic Judaism as an idolator. These most likely reflect the emergence of negative associations with pronouncing “YHWH” in virtually all contexts in Rabbinic Judaism. / Religion

<p>This dissertation examines the ideological developments and strategies of boundary formation which accompanied the sociological novelty of gentiles&rsquo; becoming Jews in the Second Temple period. I argue that the phenomenon of gentile conversion influenced ancient Jews to re&ndash;conceive their God as they devised new ways to articulate the now&ndash;permeable boundary between Jew and &lsquo;other,&rsquo; between insiders and outsiders. Shaye Cohen has shown that this boundary became porous as the word &lsquo;Jew&rsquo; took on religious and political meanings in addition to its ethnic connotations. A gentile could therefore become a Jew. I focus on an ancient Jewish author who thought that gentiles not only could become Jews, but that they should: that of <italic>Joseph and Aseneth</italic>. Significant modifications of biblical traditions about God, Israel, and &lsquo;the other&rsquo; were necessary in order to justify, on ideological grounds, the possibility of gentile access to Jewish identity and the Jewish community. </p><p>One such rewritten tradition is the relationship of both Jew and gentile to the &lsquo;living God,&rsquo; a common epithet in Israel&rsquo;s scriptures. Numerous Jewish authors from the Second Temple period, among whom I include the apostle Paul, deployed this biblical epithet in various ways in order to construct or contest boundaries between gentiles and the God of Israel. Whereas previous scholars have approached this divine title exclusively as a theological category, I read it also as a literary device with discursive power which helps these authors regulate gentile access to Israel&rsquo;s God and, in most cases, to Jewish identity. <italic>Joseph and Aseneth</italic> develops an innovative theology of Israel&rsquo;s &lsquo;living God&rsquo; which renders this narrative exceptionally optimistic about the possibilities of gentile conversion and incorporation into Israel. Aseneth&rsquo;s tale uses this epithet in conjunction with other instances of &lsquo;life&rsquo; language not only to express confidence in gentiles&rsquo; capability to convert, but also to construct a theological articulation of God in relationship to repentant gentiles which allows for and anticipates such conversion. A comparison of the narrative&rsquo;s &lsquo;living God" terminology to that of the book of <italic>Jubilees</italic> and the apostle Paul sets into relief the radical definition of Jewishness which <italic>Joseph and Aseneth</italic> constructs &mdash; a definition in which religious practice eclipses ancestry and under which boundaries between Jew and &lsquo;other&rsquo; are permeable.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This study examines how rabbinic texts from the land of Israel explain and respond to poverty. Through this investigation, I also analyze images of the poor in this literature, asking whether the rabbis considered poor persons to be full participants in communal religious life. Within the context of rabbinic almsgiving, this study describes how Palestinian rabbis negotiated both the biblical commands to care for the poor and Greco-Roman notions of hierarchy, benefaction and patronage. </p><p> The sources at the heart of this study are Tannaitic texts: the Mishnah, the Tosefta and Tannaitic midrashim; and Amoraic texts: the Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud) and the classical Amoraic Midrashim - Genesis Rabbah, Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta de Rab Kahana. Other texts such as Babylonian Talmud, non-rabbinic and non-Jewish texts are included in this study only when they are able to shed light on the texts mentioned above. In reading rabbinic texts, I pay close attention to several textual features: distinctions between Tannaitic and Amoraic compositions, as well as between rabbinic texts from the land of Israel and the Babylonian Talmud, and evidence of texts that were influenced by the Babylonian Talmud. This method of careful assessment of texts according to their time of composition and geographic origin forms the basis of this investigation. </p><p>The investigation yields several key findings: </p><p>I suggest various factors that shaped Palestinian rabbinic approaches to poverty and almsgiving, including: the biblical heritage, the Greco-Roman and Byzantine environments, the diverse socio-economic status of the rabbis, and their adherence to "measure for measure" as a key hermeneutic principle. </p><p>The study also portrays how the rabbinic charitable system evolved as an expansion of the biblical framework and through engagement with Greco-Roman notions and practices. This unique system for supporting the poor shows evidence of the adoption of select Greco-Roman customs and views, as well as the rejection of other aspects of its hegemonic patterns. We have seen that the language of patronage is absent from the Mishnah's articulation of the rabbinic charitable model. </p><p>Several of the texts analyzed in this study indicate that, for the rabbis, the poor were not necessarily outsiders. Following the main stream of biblical thinking, where the ordinary poor are rarely considered sinners who bear responsibility for their abject situation, Palestinian rabbinic texts seldom link ordinary poverty to sinful behavior. In these texts, the poor are not presented as passive recipients of gifts and support, but as independent agents who are responsible for their conduct. Moreover, rabbinic teachings about support for the poor reveal not only provisions for basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter but also attention to the dignity and the feelings of the poor, as well as their physical safety and the value of their time.</p> / Dissertation

<p>“American Manna: Religious Responses to the American Industrial Food System” is an investigation of the religious complexity present in religious food reform movements. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at four field sites. These field sites are a Jewish organic vegetable farm where the farmers begin their days with meditation, a Christian raw vegan diet center run by Messianic Jews, a Christian family that raises their cattle on pastures and sends them to a halal processing plant for slaughter, and a Jewish farm where Christian and Buddhist farm staff helped to implement shmita, the biblical agricultural sabbatical year. </p><p>The religious people of America do not exist in neatly bound silos, so in my research I move with the religious people to the spaces that are less clearly defined as “Christian” or “Jewish.” I study religious food reformers within the framework of what I have termed “free-range religion” because they organize in groups outside the traditional religious organizational structures. My argument regarding free-range religion has three parts. I show that (1) perceived injustices within the American industrial food system have motivated some religious people to take action; (2) that when they do, they direct their efforts against the American food industry, and tend to do so outside traditional religious institutions; and finally, (3) in creating alternatives to the American food industry, religious people engage in inter-religious and extra-religious activism. </p><p>Chapter 1 serves as the introduction, literature review, and methodology overview. Chapter 2 focuses on the food-centered Judaism at the Adamah Environmental Fellowship at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT. In Chapter 3, I discuss the Hallelujah Diet as prescriptive literature and as it is put into practice at the Hallelujah Diet Retreat Center in Lake Lure, NC. Chapter 4 follows cows as they move from the grassy hills of Baldwin Family Farms in Yanceyville, NC to the meat counter at Whole Foods Markets. In Chapter 5, I consider the shmita year, the biblical agricultural sabbatical practice that was reimagined and implemented at Pearlstone Center in Baltimore, MD during 2014-2015. Chapter 6 will conclude this dissertation with a discussion of where religious food reform has been, where it is now, and a glimpse of what the future holds.</p> / Dissertation

Scholarship on the founder of modern Jewish literature, Sholem Abramovitch (1836-1917), is a rich field of study, yet it has been largely abandoned today, and the author has hardly been studied at all in nineteenth-century comparative European context. This study uses an unprecedented comparison between Abramovitch and his contemporary, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), to reveal the complexity with which Abramovitch pioneered the integration of European and Russian literary trends into Jewish literature. These writers came from very different cultures and literary situations; however, they also shared many of the same influences due to their shared location in Tsarist Russia in the mid nineteenth century. During this time, the cultural sources and social preoccupations of their intelligentsias increasingly converged, producing a shared zeitgeist which – in combination with their similar early experiences and tendencies for dialogism (contradictory duality) – led to their many literary intersections. A comparison of their oeuvres reveals similar replacements of Gogol’s condescension toward poor protagonists with compassion, subversions of the feuilleton in the service of social critique, unprecedented uses of the “dialogic word,” new variations on the European theme of the “fantastic city,” applications of contemporary concepts such as “necessary egoism” and “free will” to the psyche of the downtrodden, enlistments of the Devil to warn against the dangers of Utilitarianism, and literary efforts to bridge the gap between the classes which include a convergence between romanticism and religion. Though Abramovitch has been designated as a satirist and realist, this study shows how he also pioneered the integration of romanticism into Jewish literature through, psychological penetration of the poor, and themes such as: the truth inherent in emotion, the subconscious and folklore, the transcendent wisdom of the people, and the divine meaning of nature. Abramovitch has been compared on isolated themes with other Russian writers, such as Turgenev, Shchedrin and Gogol; however, only a comparison with Dostoevsky can reveal the nuance and complexity of his many formal and thematic achievements. / Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

<p>The endowment of land as a gift for religious institutions was a prominent feature of ancient society in the Near Eastern and Mediterranean worlds. Landed plots could with proper care become enduring, remunerative assets to these institutions and their ownership a mark of honor and prosperity. Once endowed, such plots were regularly viewed across cultures as the property of a patron deity, his or her role modeling that of the absentee landlord. Tantalizing clues in the Jewish source material relevant to the Second Temple period (515 BCE-70 CE) demonstrate that the phenomenon was part of early Jewish life in this period as well, though it has hardly been considered in scholarship.</p><p> The source material consists of a diverse group of ancient Jewish texts. A utopian vision at the end of the book of Ezekiel discusses a sacred land endowment as part of a reform program for the Jerusalem temple and its economy (Chapter 2). A legislative addendum to the book of Leviticus presents regulations on the proper use of arable land as a means of dedicating assets from the farm (Chapter 3). A description by the Jewish historian Josephus of the founding of a schismatic Jewish temple in Egypt delegitimizes the cult of sacrifice there by calling attention to the impurity of its land endowment; a similar perspective emerges in 1 Maccabees from its literary use of the gifting of the Ptolemais hinterland to the Jerusalem temple (Chapter 4). A legal section of the Damascus Document is concerned with the consecration of property as an act of fraud (Chapter 5), while the apostle Paul quotes a halakhic teaching on field consecrations in a preface to his famous olive tree allegory (Chapter 6). A halakhic text (4Q251) from the Qumran repository reasserts the priesthood's claim to a specific type of sacred land donation and works to uphold its sanctity (Chapter 7). </p><p> I argue by virtue of these various Jewish texts that the category of "temple land" simply does not apply for greater Judea in the Second Temple period. In Jerusalem, the temple did not hold tracts of land and enter into leasing arrangements with agricultural entrepreneurs or small renters, as attested in other regions of the ancient world. Rather it seems to have encouraged a system where gifts of land went directly from benefactor to priest or stayed entirely in the hands of the benefactor, the land's products or monetary equivalent then dedicated toward sacred purposes. Only in Egypt do we see evidence of a Jewish temple holding land of the type well known in other societies. </p><p> I suggest that the Judean sacred landholding arrangements were part of an ethos whereby land cultivation and support for the temple were to remain in the hands of the people, the accumulation and leasing out of temple land seen as perhaps contradictory to this ethos if not also a mark of foreignness. Incidentally, by the later centuries of the era the Judean religious authorities sustained its sanctuary in Jerusalem quite effectively by encouraging the devotees of the religion to contribute an annual tax and visit the city bearing gifts on three yearly pilgrimage festivals. Landed gifts are indeed an overlooked feature of this temple economy but were probably not a major component of its revenues.</p> / Dissertation

<p>The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are not often read against the backdrop of the sacrificial system of Leviticus, despite the fact that the Letter to the Hebrews and other New Testament texts do exactly this. Until recently, Hebrew Bible scholars had little insight into the function of many of the sacrifices of Leviticus. However, over the last thirty years, Jacob Milgrom has articulated the purgative function of the purification offering of Leviticus, the principal sacrifice offered for wrongdoing. The blood of the purification offering, which contains the animal's ,<italic>nefesh</italic>, best understood as the animating force of the animal, acts as a ritual cleanser. Milgrom has insisted that the purification offering only cleanses the sanctuary, never the offerer. This conclusion likely has kept many New Testament scholars from seeing the impact this sacrifice had on various New Testament authors. Thus although Milgrom's work has had a profound impact on Hebrew Bible scholarship, it has had little effect on New Testament scholarship on the sacrifice of Jesus.</p><p>Using source criticism and a close reading of the relevant Hebrew Bible texts and New Testament texts, this study argues that the purification offering of Leviticus can purge the offerer, as well as the sanctuary. Moreover, the logic of the purification offering of Leviticus informs many New Testament texts on the sacrificial offering of Jesus. Leviticus demonstrates that there is a relationship between the Israelites and the sanctuary. The wrongdoings and impurites of the Israelites can stain the sanctuary and sacrificial procedures done in and to the sanctuary can purge the Israelites. The purgation of the offerer takes place in two stages. In the first stage, described in Lev 4:1-5:13, the offerer moves from being guilt-laden to being forgiven. In the second stage, outlined in Lev 16, the sanctuary is purged of the wrongdoings and impurities of the Israelites. The Israelites shift from being forgiven to being declared pure. The Israelites cannot be pure until the sanctuary is purged and reconsecrated.</p><p>The Letter to the Hebrews, along with other New Testament texts, articulates the same process and results for the sacrificial offering of Jesus. The emphasis in Hebrews and elsewhere in the New Testament is on the power (typically the cleansing power) of Jesus' blood. Jesus' death is necessary but insufficient. Hebrews clearly asserts that it was through the offering of Jesus' blood in the heavenly sanctuary that the heavenly things were cleansed, and more importantly, that believers were cleansed. Hebrews also articulates a two-stage process for the transformation of believers. In the first stage, believers are cleansed by Jesus' sacrificial offering in heaven. However, believers anticipate a final rest after Jesus' return when their flesh will be transformed as Jesus' flesh was after his resurrection. This transformation allows believers to dwell in harmony with and in proximity to God. The logic of the purification offering of Leviticus, then, informs the Letter to the Hebrews and other New Testament texts.</p> / Dissertation