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This essay engages the thought of US rabbi Meir Kahane (1932–1990), a provocative, militant, and, to many, demonized figure in postwar American Judaism. Among his other interventions in Jewish life in the 1960s and 1970s, Kahane played a major role in the movement for Soviet Jewry that occupied Jews from the early 1960s through the early 1980s when the USSR loosened its restrictions on Jewish emigration. I suggest that, for Kahane, the movement for Soviet Jewry was much more than protesting the unfair treatment of Jews in Soviet Russia. It was, for him, part of a global conflagration between democracy and communism that implicated Jews, Vietnam, Israel, and the Arab world, as well as the US, China, and Russia. Moreover, the US was a fundamental part of Kahane's views on Soviet Jewry; he saw it as the pivotal player in the war against communism, which for him also represented the battle against the erasure of religious freedom and proved crucial for the support of Israel against its Arab enemies. I begin by briefly introducing Kahane, his relationship to the US and religion, and then develop his complicated views on Soviet Jewry and the US's role in saving Jews in the Soviet Union. Resumen: Este ensayo aborda el pensamiento del rabino estadounidense Meir Kahane (1932–1990), una figura provocadora, militante y, para muchos, demonizada del judaísmo estadounidense de posguerra. Entre sus otras intervenciones en la vida judía de los años sesenta y setenta, Kahane desempeñó un papel importante en el movimiento a favor de los judíos soviéticos que ocupó a los judíos desde principios de los sesenta hasta principios de los ochenta, cuando la URSS suavizó sus restricciones a la emigración judía. Sugiero que, para Kahane, el movimiento a favor de los judíos soviéticos era mucho más que protestar por el trato injusto que recibían los judíos en la Rusia soviética. Para él, formaba parte de una conflagración global entre democracia y comunismo que implicaba a judíos, Vietnam, Israel y el mundo árabe, así como a Estados Unidos, China y Rusia. Además, EE. UU. era una parte fundamental de las opiniones de Kahane sobre el judaísmo soviético; lo veía como el actor central en la guerra contra el comunismo, que para él también representaba la batalla contra la supresión de la libertad religiosa y resultaba crucial para el apoyo a Israel contra sus enemigos árabes. Comienzo presentando brevemente a Kahane, su relación con Estados Unidos y la religión, y luego desarrollo sus complicadas opiniones sobre el judaísmo soviético y el papel de Estados Unidos en la salvación de los judíos de la Unión Soviética. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient city of Magdala, on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, represents the most significant archaeological site discovered in recent decades in Israel, mainly because it houses one of the few known synagogues from the period of the Second Temple of Jerusalem. The excavation of the site recently completed ten years and to find out about the scientific advances resulting from this work, we invited the expert responsible for the excavation, the archeologist Marcela Zapata-Meza, to this interview. The main objective of this interview is to present the alterations provided by Archeology after the contrast with known written records from Antiquity. It is hoped, with this, that it will be possible to know more about the challenges found in a Biblical Archeology work and that the knowledge about the context of formation of Judaism and Christianity will be expanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jewish poet, rabbi, doctor and thinker Iehuda Ha-Levi was a religious polemicist who lived in the late 11th and mid 12th century in the Hispania of the three religions. His poetic work is wide ranging, including poems that recount the relationship of the Jews with Zion, their ancestral land. The focus of this article is the construction of a rhetoric of the oppressed in the context of Jewish polemics in confrontation with the other two monotheistic religions. In the work "Cuzari", Ha-Levi recovers the narrative of the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, creating a literary work that endeavors to demonstrate that the Jewish religion is superior to that of its competitors, even if the Jewish people were subject to an oppressed minority condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The cry of the poor, the theme of this work, challenges the humanitarian consciousness of the people and is a strong questioning of the religious conscience and the Christian faith. Nevertheless, the preferential option for the poor, consecrated in the Final Document of the Episcopal Conference held in Puebla of Los Angeles, is still the cause of much controversy inside and outside the Church. Bearing in mind this context, this article aims to present the resonance of the cry of the poor in the context of the Puebla Conference; demonstrate that this cry is not recent: it has been present since antiquity, and was contemplated in the earliest sacred texts, including the religious culture of Israel and the Christian religion; to reflect on this cry of impoverished crowds in contemporary times. The research is bibliographic, based on the Official Document of the conclusions of the Puebla Conference; from critical analysis by Latin American theologians, as well as from articles and books by authors from the epistemological field of the Sciences of Religion. The results achieved point to the timeliness of the issue, as there is a growing wave of impoverishment everywhere and, at the same time, a growing lack of commitment and intolerance towards the outcry of the great excluded masses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bajo Palabra: Journal of Philosophy is the property of Bajo Palabra: Journal of Philosophy and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Antiguo Oriente is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Circumcision has been a debated topic in recent years in Germany, Israel and other Western countries. Muslims and Jews have united to defend a ritual that both religions believe to come from Abraham. Moreover, for the Jewish people, circumcision is a sign of the Covenant. For Christians, following Saint Paul, neither circumcision nor incircumcision has any religious value (1 Car 7:19). In order to avoid tensions with Judaism, this practice is tolerated, but with certain conditions. The polemic has calmed down, but it will come back because there are not good reasons to justify this "savage" practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyze the process of dejudaization of the biblical character of Abraham operated by the Christian philosopher Justin Martyr, in his book entitled Dialogue with Trypho, written in mid-second century. The article demonstrates that Justin has as its exegesis of the Hebrew Bible the theology of Paul of Tarsus, especially the teaching on justification of non-Jewish believers in Jesus before Yahweh, based on faith alone, making not necessary the performance of the Jewish ritual. However, is also shown that Justin surpasses and even subverts the Pauline understanding, which aimed to match the Gentile Christians to the Jews as the God's provided spiritual descendants of Abraham. Justin brings a true ethnic transplant. Abraham is striped off from his identity as the patriarch of the Jewish people, becoming the patriarch of the Christians only. It is intended to demonstrate that the intent of the author of the Dialogue with Trypho is to strengthen the Christian identity, still in formation in mid-second century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on the emergence of a new religious-ethnic educational stream in Israel, Maayan Hachinuch Hatorani, ("The Wellspring of Torah Education"). It was founded in 1984 and is controlled by the leadership of Shas, a movement of religious renewal and Sephardic-Oriental identity. Discriminatory policies, implemented by the ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi establishment, brought the leaders of the Shas movement to initiate a new system capable of responding to the hardship of a marginalized population. Shas schools, functioning within and being supported by the Ministry of Education, also became socializing agents for children and parents that were far from religious lifestyle. Thus, through the creation of strategies for the transmission of knowledge and behavior, the new stream challenges the secular national project, and contributes to the formation of a new cultural sphere. In this paper we explore how a religious movement embraces education to foster social mobilization and group solidarity. The research is an ethnographic study that was conducted between 2000-2005 in three cities in Israel. By transforming cultural boundaries and institutionalizing norms that contradict in some respects the principles underlying the relationship between government and mass schooling, Shas's education systems contributes to forge an Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Judaism based on an ethnic type of primordial identity. The case contributes to understand the challenges that religion holds to modern systems of education and to analyze new developments in Judaism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]