Jewish Studies Commons^™

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

An Evaluation Of The Book Of Hosea And Its Impact For Our Lives Today, Nathan Fulton

Honors Projects

The book of Hosea provides a rich story of the life of the prophet Hosea and the constant woes of the nation of Israel. Through analysis of commentaries from past theologians and modern psychological studies, the contents of Hosea will be reinforced as viable literature to learn from. Despite belief in the historical legitimacy of the book, through research, we find humanity’s deepest desire is to be fully loved and fully known. Analysis of attachment theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs show us that the story of Hosea demonstrates our insecurities and the proper response to them.

Negative Psychology Of Anti-Semitism: Fear Of The Uncategorizable, Benjamin Strosberg

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anti-Semitism is a pervasive global issue, particularly prominent in the United States. Studying and defining anti-Semitism prove remarkably challenging for scholars, leading to inadequate understanding and exclusion from contemporary academic discourse and social justice initiatives. In this dissertation, I made the case that anti-Semitism is hard to categorize, stemming, in part, from the difficulty in categorizing what it is to be Jewish, which seems to be multi-form (a figure of thought, a race, an ethnicity, a religion, a nation, none of the above). In thinking about the difficulty in categorization, I constellated various instances of anti-Jewish practices across historical epochs …

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination Of The Eternal Now” 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月） (July 1931) §1 Of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft Of 2 Jan 19); Translated By Christopher Southward; Revision And Expansion Underway, Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Japanese-English Translation: Nishida Kitarō––“Self-Determination of the Eternal Now” (July 1931) 「永遠の今の自己限定」、西田幾多郎著（昭和六年七月）

§1 of 4; Complete Draft (Supersedes Draft of 2 Jan 2019)

Translated from the Japanese by Christopher Southward; Revision and Expansion Underway, October 2023

No Place Like Home? A Dialogical Journey With Shlomo Biderman, Daniel Raveh

Comparative Philosophy

This paper aims to think or rethink the concept of home as the contemporary avatar of the age-old question of self-identity. In dialogue with Shlomo Biderman, a comparative philosopher without borders who feels at home both in Jewish and Indian sources, the author assembles a philosophical jigsaw-puzzle made of different materials from different thinking traditions in attempt to reveal a new picture of home (and self) compatible with the changing world of immigration, relocation, dislocation and displacement, a world of emigrants, refugees and exiles, in which we live. The puzzle pieces include Plato’s cave, Isaiah Berlin’s “inner citadel”, Shmuel Yosef …

New Commandments, Jacob Sussman

Masters Theses

I reach into the earth, pull out mud-encrusted objects, and recombine them to define new meanings. With every object transposed, the past breaks down; new potentials form. “New Commandments” recombines historical symbolism through an intuitive building, destroying, and merging to reimagine or re-establish meaning.

The work critiques rites of passage, masculinity, and stereotypes by deconstructing how histories, ideologies, and preconceptions form.

As a queer person raised in-between Judaism and Christianity, social preconceptions and religious expectations festered my formation. Our choice is taken away at this moment of conception. To take back autonomy, I reimagine historical, and religious symbolism and transmute …

Against Leo Strauss, Zachary Braiterman

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Leo Strauss And Hermann Cohen’S “Archenemy”: A Quasi-Cohenian Apology Of Baruch Spinoza, Irene Abigail Piccinini

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Reading Strauss On Maimonides: A New Approach, Alan Verskin

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Guttmann’S Critique Of Strauss’S Modernist Approach To Medieval Philosophy: Some Arguments Toward A Counter Critique, Mari Rethelyi

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Strauss And Textual Reasoning, Leora Batnitzky, Michael Zank

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Resisting Nazism Within Hitler’S Germany, Patricia M. Mische

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Jonathan L. Milevsky. Understanding The Evolving Meaning Of Reason In David Novak’S Natural Law Theory. Leiden: Brill, 2022. 146 Pp., Samuel J. Kessler

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Innovation In Crescas's Light Of The Lord, Peter Ochs

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Wolfson's Pragmatic Crescas, Warren Zev Harvey

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In a 1912 essay, written when he was a student of Santayana's at Harvard, a young Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974) presented Hasdai Crescas as a forerunner of American Pragmatism. Wolfson emphasized Crescas' "Hebraic" focus on action, and his critique of the Aristotelian notion of the vita contemplativa as the goal of life. The scientist's pleasure is not in contemplation itself, but in problem-solving, and problem-solving presupposes a "practical interest in the world." In 1929, Wolfson wrote his monumental Crescas' Critique of Aristotle, the most important study of Crescas' philosophy and one of the most impressive works of scholarship on …

Medieval Jewish Philosophy And Authentic Jewish Piety: Yitzhak Baer And Julius Guttmann On Hasdai Crescas’S Philosophy, Ari Ackerman

Journal of Textual Reasoning

The article examines personalistic elements in Hasdai Crescas’ conception of God. It argues that embedded in Crescas’ innovative approach to divine attributes and divine love is a critique of Maimonides’ impersonalistic theology and an alternative theology which attributes to God a relation with human beings and personalistic features. It also examines how Crescas’ theological orientation regarding divine personalism is integrated into the philosophies of modern Jewish thinkers particularly Samuel David Luzzatto and Julius Guttmann.

Crescas On Time, Space, And Infinity, Tamar Rudavsky

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In her introductory comments to her translation of Crescas's Light of the Lord (p. 9), Prof. Weiss suggests that Crescas must be credited with introducing a series of new perspectives with respect to theories of place and time. In contradistinction to standard Aristotelian physics, Crescas frees place and time from their connection to corporeal substances, allows for the possibility of actual infinity with respect to both place and time. As a result, Weiss continues, Crescas can entertain the idea of an expansive universe with no boundaries.

This paper explores Crescas’s theories of time (and to some extent place) in more …

"I Feel Love": Ḥasdai Crescas On Reward And Punishment, Igor De Souza

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In his work Light of the Lord, Ḥasdai Crescas develops a seemingly naturalistic account of the doctrine of personal reward and punishment. For Crescas, reward and punishment are not doled out by a deity to an individual for fulfilling the mitzvot. Rather, reward or punishment depend on the extent to which an individual exercises will and effort in investigating true beliefs. One is rewarded not merely for accepting true beliefs as such, but more so for assenting to them, a process that involves intention as well as exertion in establishing the truth of those beliefs. Furthermore, one is …

Ḥasdai Crescas And Simeon Ben Ẓemah Duran On Tradition Versus Rational Inquiry, Seth (Avi) Kadish

Journal of Textual Reasoning

Hasdai Crescas (c. 1340-1410/11) and Simeon ben Ẓemah Duran (1361-1444) were products of the same culture and reflect a shared intellectual tradition. Persecution of the Jews of Spain in 1391 led the former to devote his life to rebuilding Spanish Jewish communities, while the latter fled Spain and became a rabbinic leader in Algiers.

As time went on, the intellectual gap between them became much wider than the sea that separated them. Duran was an eclectic thinker with a passion for the details both in his Torah study and in his analysis of the shared general knowledge of the middle …

Philosophy And Religion In R. Crescas's Light Of The Lord, Shalom Tzadik

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Four Critiques Of Crescas Against Maimonides And The Relationship Of Intellect And Practice In Religion, Alexander Green

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

The Inexhaustible Metaphor Of Light: Illuminating The Fault Lines Between Crescas And Maimonides, James A. Diamond

Journal of Textual Reasoning

Moses Maimonides’ (1138-1205) Guide of the Perplexed, and his later philosophical and theological arch-nemesis Hasdai Crescas’ (circa 1340-1412) Light of the Lord, are works of philosophical theology intended in a core sense as primers on how to properly understand God’s revealed word. Since metaphor and allegory are the primary instruments of philosophical exegesis my paper focuses on light as a root metaphor which illuminates an array of the challenges Crescas mounts against Maimonides. Their different uses of light imagery capture what is the core issue that informs the opposition between them across the theological spectrum. For Maimonides reason is the …

Hasdai Crescas's Philosophical Biblical Exegesis, Roslyn Weiss

Journal of Textual Reasoning

In this paper I present several examples of Crescas’s biblical exegesis in which his unique understanding of the text in question informs his philosophic ideas. We shall consider first a Crescasian interpretation of a biblical text in which there is a pointed and explicit departure from a Maimonidean interpretation: trials in general and the Aqeidah, the Binding of Isaac, in particular. What we shall see is that for Crescas, the purpose of this trial is to increase Abraham’s love for God, since, on Crescas’s understanding, the purpose of doing deeds—whether in the form of specific trials or in fulfilling commandments …

Crescas Among The Textual Reasoners, Mark Randall James

Journal of Textual Reasoning

No abstract provided.

Philosophers Of Catastrophe: Early 20th Century Jewish Proponents And Opponents Of Objectivity In Science, Steven Gimbel, Stephen J. Stern

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The Second World War ended with the exposure of the Nazi death camps and the threat of global nuclear annihilation. The former disclosed the depths of human depravity and the latter warned us about the severity of the consequences that could await us as a result. The grimness of each, much less both, had the effect of shielding from our collective consciousness the equally dire warnings from the First World War that had occurred only a couple of decades earlier. [excerpt]

“I Held On At Any Price”: Victim Self-Preservation In The Sonderkommando In Auschwitz And Treblinka, Jessica Christina Foster

All Theses

Many Holocaust victims have expressed uneasiness or even shame regarding the actions they took to stay alive in the death camps. These acts of self-preservation were usually humiliating and often came at the expense of their fellow victims. This comes out most clearly in the testimonies of the members of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Writers such as Filip Müller, Zalmen Gradowski, and Richard Glazar recount how they survived the lethal environment of the camp by appropriating the food, clothing, and valuables of the people murdered in the gas chambers. Although most scholars have interpreted these testimonies, and the …

The Mystical Exodus In Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma And The Wellsprings Of Renewal, B. Les Lancaster

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

No abstract provided.

Civil Disobedience From A Biblical Perspective, Gabriel Reed

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

To say that civil disobedience is a complicated topic is to severely understate the topic. It is a subject matter that has derived many different and disparate opinions, points of view, and public policies. Specifically, within America today, we observe calls for civil disobedience from both sides of the political spectrum, over several divergent political ideals. These issues are, primarily, driven from both sides’ desire to provide protection and provision for the oppressed and those who cannot necessarily speak for themselves. The definition of who is necessarily oppressed and whom their oppressors are varies from person to person, regardless of …

A Literary Analysis Of The Origin Of Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Its Advancements, Philosophical, Ethical, Sociocultural, And Political Aspects; An Investigation Of The Underlying Attributes That Affect One’S Views On Hesc Research To Resolve Turkey And Brazil’S Hesc Policy, Religious, And Cultural Conflicts, Haleema Shamsuddin

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are cells derived from 5-day human embryos and are self-renewing cell lines that change into any type of cell in the body, a trait called pluripotency. hESCs have almost unlimited clinical and medical research potential. Despite the great therapeutic promise of hESC research, it comes with a controversial ethical debate due to its involvement with the destruction of the human embryo. The central argument revolves around the question of whether or not these human embryos should be ascribed equal moral status to fully developed humans. This thesis aims to analyze the origin and advancements of …

Hannah Arendt’S Vision Of Politics: Exemplary Negativities And The Ostjuden, Jacob E. Pearce

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Hannah Arendt’s vision of politics is one of the most enigmatic, perplexing, thoroughly analyzed, and potentially generative aspects of her philosophic corpus. It is marked by insightful analysis, cutting deconstructions of pressing moral issues, and confusing vernacular wherein her analytic boundaries, topics, and categories appear obfuscated. Although it has been observed that Arendt’s late-career theory of the political owes a debt to her earlier writings on Jewish history, including her Kantian-influenced theory of political judgment and storytelling, in this thesis I would like to narrow down this debt to a specific trope: The Ostjuden, or the imagined associations with Eastern …