<p> This dissertation examines the use of Leviticus 26 in four Second Temple-era Jewish texts: Chronicles, Jubilees, Words of the Luminaries, and the Damascus Document. Prevailing scholarship will cite the fact that these texts&rsquo; review the history of how Israel&rsquo;s disobedience provoked the covenant chastisements epitomized by exile as proof that Second Temple Jews believed that they had fallen under the curses. The Chronicler&rsquo;s views on chastisement have been attributed to extreme (Deuteronomic) doctrines of immediate retribution and human initiated repentance. A contrasting belief that true repentance, bringing salvation, was only possible through a divinely initiated recreation of the human spirit has been increasingly imputed to the latter three texts. However, this dissertation argues that Chronicles, Jubilees, Words of the Luminaries, and the Damascus Document texts&rsquo; are all fundamentally oriented to the Leviticus 26 teleological paradigm of chastisement-induced repentance, more than the concept of tit-for-tat retributive cursing generally associated with Deuteronomy 28&ndash;29. All four texts read and reference Leviticus 26 for an optimistic, reassuring understanding that the covenant chastisements epitomized by exile are a God-guided experiential process whose <i>telos </i> is their repentance. Israel&rsquo;s suffering serves a purpose, bringing about a reversal of deliberately-committed ancestral trespass (<i> ma&lsquo;al</i>; Lev 26:40&ndash;41). In conceptualizing repentance in these texts as a divinely initiated process of inner transformation, this study moves beyond the dichotomy of &ldquo;human-initiated&rdquo; and &ldquo;divine-initiated&rdquo; repentance assumed by earlier scholarship. The latter three texts draw overt&mdash;but by scholars unappreciated and/or actively denied&mdash;references to the simple meaning of Lev 26:44&ndash;45 promising that God will preserve the people and the covenant he struck with them at Sinai no matter what the people do.</p><p>

abstract: The traditional site of Rachel's Tomb is located just south of Jerusalem on the border of Bethlehem. In recent years, Rachel's Tomb architectural appearance and cultural significance have shifted dramatically in the last two decades and the Biblical figure of Rachel has evolved in the Jewish imagination as a figure "emplaced" there as well. The original stories that have drawn visitors to the site have developed from Biblical and Rabbinic texts, yet contemporary visitors to the site have their own perspectives and stories to tell, grounded in religious tradition, nostalgia, and current political and social realities. At the traditional site of her tomb, Rachel has served for at least the last century as something like a "patron saint" for Jewish women's domestic issues, but her intercessory abilities have recently been expanded. Her special relationship to Zionism through her connections to the Biblical notions of Jewish "return" and end-times "redemption" have been recast to fit contemporary political viewpoints and contestations. In addition, she has developed into a kind of national "mater dolorosa," representing the collective grief for deaths through acts of political violence, particularly women's deaths. This project traces the ways in which current narrative and praxis at the traditional site of Rachel's Tomb have developed as well as the ways in which current perceptions of the site-and Rachel as the cultural figure associated with the space-draw upon temporally-situated interpretations of her textual tradition, as well as affective discourse and collective cultural memory. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2019

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<p> This research consists of three case studies conducted within American Jewish day schools (JDSs). Addressing some of the issues pointed to by past researchers, this investigation focuses on the following discrete areas of Hebrew language (HL) programs: the stated visions for Hebrew language learning as noted in the mission statements and other documents of the schools and as articulated by teachers and administrators, the methodologies employed by Hebrew and Jewish Studies educators within these institutions, and the assessment practices employed by these schools and educators to determine whether the expressed goals of these programs are being met. By exploring the missions, methods, and assessment processes within these Hebrew language programs, and contrasting these aspects of the schools, we come to a better understanding of the inner workings of these programs and the issues that may be addressed in practice and future research. The following questions guided this mixed-methods study: (1) Within each JDS, what are the goals, according to the mission statement, teachers and administrators, for receptive and productive oral proficiency and literacy in HL? (2) Within each JDS, what are the instructional methodologies employed by teachers in HL and Jewish Studies? (3) Within each JDS, what formal and informal assessments, including teacher perceptions, are currently used for student placement, ongoing and recursive assessment, and outcome assessment? Findings indicate that each of these schools has articulated its missions and program goals to incorporate the development of some kind of Hebrew proficiency and Jewish identity among students. However, confusion was identified within each institution regarding planning methodological approaches and employing systematic and meaningful evaluations of student progress, both of which are found to be interwoven with the desired development of Hebrew language, Jewish identity and a Zionist orientation. In order to successfully achieve their goals and missions, clearer articulation, more consistent and research-based methodological choices, along with consistent and meaningful assessments are required.</p>

<p> This dissertation presents a Whiteheadian interpretation of the notions of mind, immanence and process as they are addressed in the <i> Zohar</i>. According to many scholars, this kabbalistic creation story as portrayed in the <i>Zohar</i> is a reaction to the earlier rabbinic concept of God qua creator, which emphasized divine transcendence over divine immanence. The medieval Jewish philosophers, particularly Maimonides influenced by Aristotle, placed particular emphasis on divine transcendence, seeing a radical separation between Creator and creation. With this in mind, these scholars claim that one of the goals of the <i>Zohar</i>&rsquo;s creation story was to emphasize God&rsquo;s immanence within creation. </p><p> Similar to the <i>Zohar</i>, the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and his followers was reacting to the substance metaphysics that had dominated Western philosophy as far back as ancient Greek thought. Whitehead adopts a very similar narrative to that of the <i>Zohar</i>. First there is mind containing all the eternal objects which serve as potential for the creation (God&rsquo;s primordial nature). Mind becomes immanent in all actual occasions through prehension (God&rsquo;s consequent nature). Finally God becomes &ldquo;the lure&rdquo; (to use Whitehead&rsquo;s phrase) in the ongoing process of nature (God as superject). In this narrative, God is not the static being, the unmoved mover as discussed by Aristotle, but rather, is portrayed as a dynamic becoming, a God of process. </p><p> Due to these significant similarities between Whitehead&rsquo;s process philosophy and the <i>Zohar</i> with regard to the immanence of God and the process of creation, it is worthwhile to attempt a process interpretation of the kabbalistic creation story. The first part of this dissertation is entitled <i>Philosophical Foundations</i>, focusing on the intellectual framework of this study of the <i>Zohar</i>. The second part is entitled <i>Creating a Narrative</i>, looking at the text of the <i> Zohar</i> through the lens of Whitehead&rsquo;s metaphysics. Finally, the conclusion looks at the narrative and discusses whether the goals of the dissertation have been achieved.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates how the Holocaust and postwar sovietization shaped the dynamics of Jewish communities and ordinary life in southwestern Ukraine. I examine the relationship between state policy and the sphere of Jewish religious practice. Two research questions motivated this study: (1) What was the trajectory of the lives of Eastern European Jews who came back from Nazi concentration camps? and (2) How did Jews negotiate their religious and public identities in an everyday setting? To examine these questions, the study illuminates the postwar life of one group of Jewish Holocaust survivors in the periphery of the Soviet Union. Literature on postwar Soviet Jewry has focused almost exclusively on the lives of elites in the center. This study enhances our understanding of Jewish integration into Soviet society. </p><p> I used oral history, collected during my own ethnographic fieldwork in Israel and Ukraine, as well as state archives to analyze processes of return and integration. Interviews with ordinary people permit a social perspective on political developments and communal reconstruction. Statistical data and official communication provide the framework necessary to show the dynamics of Jewish life. Combining archival material with oral history demonstrates that the impact of Soviet rule on Jewish life after World War II is more complex than previously portrayed. Topics examined include the liberation from Nazi concentration camps, arrival experiences in Transcarpathia, the reconstruction of private and public Jewish life in the late 1940s and everyday Jewish practice in the 1950s and early 60s. </p><p> Ordinary Jews fully integrated into society, succeeded in their careers and expressed their Jewish identity through religious practice. The findings include individual negotiation of demands in secular society and the methods of circumventing obstacles that restricted religious practice. The analysis of the interviews, however, prompts a reconsideration of postwar Soviet Jewish life with regard to persecution and emigration narratives.</p>

<p> From a reading of the Hebrew Bible itself it would be difficult to determine that a goddess culture existed for thousands of years prior to the appearance of the monotheistic Father God of Hebrew Scripture. As such, the repression of the Goddess during the Iron Age and the implications of this repression in our own Western culture have been evaluated throughout this dissertation. This hermeneutic study weaves together a broad range of topics that begins with an exploration into the roots of the Hebrew God-image as it emerged out of a polytheistic context that included powerful female deities. The study reveals that Yahweh once had a divine feminine consort and together they were known as Yahweh and his Asherah. Over time the feminine aspect of the Godhead was torn asunder and the divine feminine was submerged and repressed into the unconscious. The research explores the effects of this repression within the feminine psyche and the ways in which the one-sided masculinity of the Western God-image has become incorporated into the individual psychology of women. This study seeks to reclaim the deep feminine repressed by the Father God complex through an amplification of serpent symbolism that leads towards the recovery and redemption of the feminine principle in her creating, preserving, and destroying aspects. </p><p> Additionally, the research addressed the development of the God-image by examining the relationship between a negative father complex and the traditional God-image of Western culture through a psychoanalytic object relations perspective. The research shows how early object relations can color the ways in which we perceive the divine. The study suggests that when we can withdraw our infantile projections onto a God-image we are able to develop a more mature spirituality that no longer reflects a parent-child relationship. Jung devoted attention to this evolutionary process, that he refers to as the transformation of God, leading to the birth of a new God-image.</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the meaning and usage of a particular set of linguistically related Talmudic terms in order to show how and in what cultural context the Talmud began to take shape in the emerging scholastic centers of rabbinic learning in late Sassanian Babylonia. The term tistayem is here defined as meaning, "let it be promulgated" and is thus shown to be inherently redactional in nature. By its very meaning and the way it is employed it speaks to the ordering of extant traditions in new literary frameworks. This term has analogs both in early sources dating from Amoraic disciple circles, in which an analogous term was used to indicate the process by which different reports of statements could be combined to achieve a more authoritative version of a tradition, and in later texts from Geonic times in which the term comes to denote a specific kind of scholastic practice in which traditions were ordered for easy memorization and promulgation. Additionally, parallels to these terms are found in the literatures of Syriac speaking Christians providing avenues for comparisons between these scholastic cultures which shared scripture, language and similar modes of study as worship. Finally, this study demonstrates the ways in which increasing sophistication in usage of these terms mirrors increasing academization during the Talmudic period. As such, evidence is marshalled in support of a more gradual model of the redaction of the Talmud. </p>

<p> This dissertation explores the close literary, thematic and linguistic relationships between <i>The Hebrew Chronicles of the First Crusade</i> and the later pietistic text <i>Sefer Hasidim</i>. Despite a long-standing tendency to view the Jewish martyrdom of 1096 and the development of German pietism (<i>Hasidut Ashkenaz</i>) as unrelated. upon closer scrutiny, we find strong ties between the two texts. <i>Sefer Hasidim</i>, the most well-known pietistic text, contains dozens of martyrological stories and references that share similar language, themes and contexts as the crusade chronicles. Indeed, rather than standing alone, and unrelated to the first crusade literature, we find tales of martyrdom that closely resemble those in the first crusade narratives. <i>Sefer Hasidim</i> also contains numerous statements that indicate the primacy of martyrdom within the hierarchy of the pietistic belief system, while other martyrological references function as prooftext for the traditional pietistic themes distilled by Ivan Marcus and Haym Soloveitchik. The extent to which martyrological themes are integrated into the belief system articulated in <i>Sefer Hasidim</i> indicates that the martyrdom of the First Crusade should be viewed as formative to the development of <i>Hasidut Ashkenaz</i>. A close reading of <i> Sefer Hasidim</i> conclusively demonstrates this premise. Moreover, a similar analysis of the crusade chronicles reveals a wide range of martyrological tales described in quintessential pietistic terms; expressions of the will of God, the fear of God. and the pietistic preference for life in the hereafter, are found throughout the martyrological text.</p><p> When reading these two diverse texts side by side, we find substantive elements of a common world view spanning the period of the first crusade through the appearance of <i>Sefer Hasidim</i>. This allows us to understand each text through a new lens; the crusade chronicles now appear to be an early articulation of pietistic thought, while the later pietistic text now reads in part as a martyrological document of great significance.</p><p>

The following examination of Cordelia Edvardson's Burned Child Seeks the Fire: A Memoir, Ruth Klüger's Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Elizabeth Trahan's Walking with Ghosts: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Vienna explores how three German-speaking, Jewish women remember their childhoods by creating a new lens through which the Holocaust can be viewed. The authors compel their readers to accompany them on their journeys into the past and to witness particular events by using language to zoom in and focus on childhood experiences—like a camera bringing an image closer through a telephoto lens. Their narratives remain translucent in that the reader is always aware of the authors' contemporary, critical perspective. Edvardson's, Klüger's, and Trahan's writings are similar in how they transmit memory; they break from the traditional, nineteenth-century form of autobiography by constantly interrupting the chronological framework of their narratives to oscillate between past and present as memories occur to them. This process of interweaving memory into narrative challenges readers to re-view in a new way the making of testimony about events with which they (the readers) may already be familiar. By using James Young's Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation as a theoretical foundation, I approach these narratives as a viewer with the intention of documenting the transmission of memory rather than merely examining the events that the authors recalled. These texts offer us access to an extraordinary perspective in Holocaust literature—an uninhibited view of daily life through the eyes of three young girls who came of age during the National Socialist era and who were persecuted for being Jewish.