Political Hebraism

This article investigates for the first time some dynamics related to the development of Hebraic scholarship in the Netherlands during the 17th century. According to the paradigm of the 'mosaic moment' as developed by Philip Gorski, this essay focuses on the collateral effects of political Hebraism and its Old Testament semantics in some reformed catechisms edited by ministers and preachers more or less related to the "Nadere Reformatie". It will then proceed to deal with the effects and premises of the 1637 state translation of the Bible. Eventually, the paper will briefly analyse the development of an autonomous Hebraic scholarship between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, both through the phenomenon of the so-called Hebraizers and the works of polymath Willem Goeree.

When countries think of advancement they don't think of one country advancing in democracy and another in art. Instead they think that they must advance in all of these areas. If one country is outstanding in all of these areas, every other country will admire its achievement. It is always important to determine the essence of a country which warrants respect. Then what is the element of a country which every other country can admire? It is not likely to be seen in one building or a modern factory. Even achieving the fullest perfection in art is not likely to warrant the fullest respect. Art is viewed as art, economy as economy and technology as technology, while the people who produced a brilliant result are not thought about. When we look for the most basic element of a nation we see it is people who produce a country.

The Colloquium is a conversation between seven highly educated representatives of various religions and worldviews: a supporter of natural religion (Toralba), a Calvinist (Curtius), a Muslim (Octavius), a Roman Catholic (Coroneus), a Lutheran (Fridericus), a Jew (Salomon), and a pagan (Senamus). Bodin never signed this work and it was not published during his lifetime. The new concept of religion represented by Toralba emphasises the role of reason and natural law, independent of any ecclesiastical allegiance. Here, natural religion is not conceived, as it was earlier, as being preliminary to divine revelation, but rather as a free-standing position, always distinguished from-and at times opposed to-traditional religions. Toralba's universalism and the genealogies of natural religion that he traces distinguish his religion from Judaism even though he relies on a twofold foundation: the biblical history of primitive mankind and natural reason.

The essays gathered together in this ground-breaking volume explore the ways in which Jewish communities and individuals across Europe and the wider world experienced, interpreted and remembered the ‘war to end all wars’. Just decades after the experience of intense persecution and struggle for recognition that marked the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish men and women around the globe found themselves drawn into a conflict of unprecedented violence and destruction. The frenzied military, social and cultural mobilisation of European societies between 1914 and 1918, along with the outbreak of revolution in Russia and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East had a profound impact on Jewish communities worldwide. This book sheds new light on this seminal but surprisingly under-researched moment in the evolution of modern Jewish history.

Lo spazio ambivalente e poroso della Mitteleuropa, per sua natura terra di attraversamenti e transizioni, è luogo di molteplici passaggi e sconfinamenti per gli intellettuali e gli autori di origine ebraica, dal ghetto all’assimilazione, dall’assimilazione al sionismo, dal messianismo al cosmopolitismo, dalla tradizione al socialismo e alla psicanalisi.
Nel mio saggio saranno di seguito presi in esame alcuni degli scritti autobiografici di Jakob Wassermann e Georg Hermann, due tra i più significativi autori della letteratura ebraico-tedesca, per esaminare la loro posizione rispetto ai concetti di apparte- nenza, patria, territorio natio, nazione, delineando una topografia i cui contorni intersecano tracciati e steccati convenzionali di identità e comunità, creando una geografia pluricentrica della lingua e della cultura. Si tratta di due fra gli autori più letti e celebrati del periodo che precede l’ascesa al potere del nazional- socialismo, scrittori di bestsellers, caratterizzati da una spiccata vena affabulatoria e da una tendenza all’affresco sociale, rap- presentanti di una Jüdische Moderne la cui mappatura, i cui assi portanti e le cui ramificazioni, nel fertile alveo della letteratura di lingua tedesca dell’epoca, sono ancora da investigare compiu- tamente. Wassermann gravita intorno al polo viennese e meridio- nale dell’area culturale germanofona, Hermann era invece noto come il “Fontane ebreo”, intimamente legato alla topografia ber- linese. Si metterà in luce come tali definizioni colgano solo un aspetto della complessità di posizioni e tesi presenti nell’opera di questi due scrittori, al di là della loro vena narrativa che tanto fa- vore riscosse presso il pubblico dell’epoca, prima che anch’essi cadessero vittime del rogo dei libri sgraditi al regime hitleriano nel 1933 e fossero avvolti da un lungo oblio, fino ai nostri giorni.

ВСТУП Актуальність. Перша книга Самуїла є значною частиною єврейської Біблії та християнського Старого Завіту, оскільки розповідає про перехід Ізраїлю від вільної конфедерації племен до єдиної монархії під керівництвом царя Саула та його наступника царя Давида. Це також ключовий текст у єврейській та

chapter vii The moral and political philosophy of Spinoza 183 Lee C. Rice, 'Emotion, appetition, and conatus in Spinoza', Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 119-120 (1977) pp. 102-116; Jerome Neu, Emotion, thought and therapy. A study of Hume and Spinoza and the relationship of philosophical theories of the emotions to psychological theories of therapy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1977; Frijda, Emotions. Mitchell seems to hold that against the 'fallacy of self-assumed action' of modern political theory, one should understand the present 'human condition' from 'the history of God/ nature's concealment and unconcealment': Mitchell, Not by reason alone, pp. 132-133.

chapter vii The moral and political philosophy of Spinoza 183 Lee C. Rice, 'Emotion, appetition, and conatus in Spinoza', Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 119-120 (1977) pp. 102-116; Jerome Neu, Emotion, thought and therapy. A study of Hume and Spinoza and the relationship of philosophical theories of the emotions to psychological theories of therapy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1977; Frijda, Emotions. Mitchell seems to hold that against the 'fallacy of self-assumed action' of modern political theory, one should understand the present 'human condition' from 'the history of God/ nature's concealment and unconcealment': Mitchell, Not by reason alone, pp. 132-133.

In questa breve relazione ho ritenuto interessante delineare, in prima istanza, quella poderosa congiuntura culturale sviluppatasi nell’Olanda della guerra degli ottant’anni (1568-1648: dall’inizio della rivolta delle Provincie capeggiata da Guglielmo I d’Orange  alla pace di Vestfalia corrispondente alla fine della prima età moderna); in un luogo dove, così come la terra si sposa al mare generando nuove possibilità di vita, le culture e gli stili di vita propri del popolo della Riforma incontrano, in un clima di tollerante confronto accademico, la ricchezza di pensiero e il peculiare approccio esistenziale dei dotti ebraici scampati alle persecuzioni avvenute nel resto d’Europa. Il tutto in attenzione ad un patrimonio d’idee e riflessioni che, da ambo le parti, proprio a cavallo dei due secoli, si decide di ritenere comune ad entrambi.

The history of the people of God is tightly dependant on receiving the Law, as, by fulfilling it, Israel remained within the realm of knowing God. The institution of the monarchy was obliged to stay faithful to the law of God in order for the State of Israel to remain within God’s favour. In that context, the king had a duty to his people to remain faithful to God, as embracing idolatry would have been a danger to the very religious, social and political stability of Israel. The Christian perspective of the early 1 st century, marked by the political context of the rule of the Roman Empire, continues the Judaic paradigm as to the relation between the political and the religious authority, but adds certain nuances to it (Matt. 22:21;Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-17). For this very reason, the  Leviathan  proposed by Thomas Hobbes does not have a correspondence in the Jewish-Christian world. The birth of a political system based on society voluntarily renouncing its most basic rights, esta...

The paper examines the book Martin Buber’s Theopolitics and analyzes the conflict between the hierarchy in nature and in human society. Buber qualifies our relations to nature and to other non-living objects as darker than human relations. This creates an imbalance between the human You and the other type of You. This reflection allows us to think about the meaning of the principle of humanity in relation to personhood, and in relation to different forms of communities (natural, or inorganic communities). It is an important question in the light of “conflicts” and tensions created by the environmental crisis we are facing today. The paper explains how to use the word “conflict” in this context and whether it is justified.

The foreword examines the historical neglect of the book "De Creatione Problemata XXX (1635)" - Thirty Problems Concerning Creation (2023), shedding light on the factors contributing to its obscurity for nearly 500 years. Despite the significant effort invested by the translator of Gersonides and scholar, Professor Seymour Feldman over a few decades, the book remained untranslated. This is perhaps due to distinct factors: the book's challenging alignment with changing political orders, its theological and philosophical content at odds with prevailing materialism, its complex classical Sephardic literary style out of step with modern conventions, and its misinterpreted identity to garner dedicated readership.

Religion and power in Spinoza. Essays on the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is the outcome of a painstaking effort to offer a multifaceted vision of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (henceforth, TTP). Josep Olesti and Jörg Zimmer, both professors at the Universitat de Girona, have managed to compile six articles that address different salient aspects of the work, giving rise to a whole that embraces different points of interest for scholars of Spinoza's political thinking. The choice of English as the language of the compilation reveals Olesti's and Zimmer's goal for the book to engage in dialogue with recent international scholarly works on Spinoza and the TTP. With this gesture, Olesti and Zimmer are contributing to helping Catalan philosophical research to gain international traction and thus consolidate its place within the contemporary scholarly world. A quick glance at the contents of the different articles reveals the precision of the contributions and their interest within the context of current debates on the TTP.

The aim of this paper is to correct an historical error: the ancient claim, grounded in a flawed understanding of the reproductive act, that woman is inferior to man. I will show that the lineage of this can be traced as far back as the pre-Socratic philosophers, finally finding its earliest concrete expression in a claim most have either dismissed, forgotten, or never heard: Aristotle’s argument that women are merely “malformed males” and are therefore “inferior to man.” The theory found support in the first century with a historical interpretation of Genesis 2:18-23, traceable in particular to the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher, Philo (BC 13-AD 54). Philo’s own theory about woman echoed that of Aristotle’s; his legacy includes the vague feeling that Scripture itself declares that, since woman is created after man, she is necessarily subservient to him. She becomes, as it were, the “second sex.” I dispute both these accounts and show that they can be defeated on their own terms. Th...

Although Jackie Derrida had a deep interest in the hidden meanings of proper names, he never left us a satisfactory deconstruction of his own name. This article therefore attempts to fill this gap by examining-in a Derridean waythe name "Jackie", whose etymology refers to the sphere of subversion. In order to achieve that, the paper takes into account two other characters from Jewish history named "Jackie"-the biblical Jacob and Jacob Frank-, who entertain an ambivalent relationship with the notion of sovereignty and embody a paradoxical coincidence of rebelliousness and obedience. The contribution then argues thatin a manner not unlike his namesakes-Derrida rejects the classical definition of power and shows the double-bind of operative de facto sovereignty and ineffectual de jure sovereignty. In conclusion, it is suggested that deconstructing the name "Jackie" helps illustrate the incompatibility of the Greek category of archè with Jewish spirituality.

Although Jackie Derrida had a deep interest in the hidden meanings of proper names, he never left us a satisfactory deconstruction of his own name. This article therefore attempts to fill this gap by examining-in a Derridean waythe name "Jackie", whose etymology refers to the sphere of subversion. In order to achieve that, the paper takes into account two other characters from Jewish history named "Jackie"-the biblical Jacob and Jacob Frank-, who entertain an ambivalent relationship with the notion of sovereignty and embody a paradoxical coincidence of rebelliousness and obedience. The contribution then argues thatin a manner not unlike his namesakes-Derrida rejects the classical definition of power and shows the double-bind of operative de facto sovereignty and ineffectual de jure sovereignty. In conclusion, it is suggested that deconstructing the name "Jackie" helps illustrate the incompatibility of the Greek category of archè with Jewish spirituality.

The history of the people of God is tightly dependant on receiving the Law, as, by fulfilling it, Israel remained within the realm of knowing God. The institution of the monarchy was obliged to stay faithful to the law of God in order for the State of Israel to remain within God’s favour. In that context, the king had a duty to his people to remain faithful to God, as embracing idolatry would have been a danger to the very religious, social and political stability of Israel. The Christian perspective of the early 1 st century, marked by the political context of the rule of the Roman Empire, continues the Judaic paradigm as to the relation between the political and the religious authority, but adds certain nuances to it (Matt. 22:21;Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-17). For this very reason, the  Leviathan  proposed by Thomas Hobbes does not have a correspondence in the Jewish-Christian world. The birth of a political system based on society voluntarily renouncing its most basic rights, esta...

Using M. Bakhtin’s genre-critical approach, I argue that the Torah, as a work of literature, shows similarities with the genre of the novel. This approach allows me to distinguish between Torah and rabbinic law, a difference that is relevant to understanding the categorical differences between two major moments of reappropriation and self-fashioning in light of these two distinct, though related, traditions, namely, the early modern Protestant use of the “ancient Hebrew republic” and the modern “Jewish law” (mishpat ivri) discourse in Russian Zionism and Israeli constitutional theory.

In his autobiography, Thomas Hobbes stated that he wrote his most influential work of political theory, Leviathan, to “absolve the divine laws” in response to “atrocious crimes being attributed to the commands of God.” This article attempts to take Hobbes seriously, and to read Leviathan as a contribution to the religious politics of the English Civil War. I demonstrate Hobbes’ appropriation of the religious terms and sources characterizing civil-war political discourse, and explore these terms and sources both in Hobbes’ response to religiously motivated politics and in the foundations of his most important political ideas. Hobbes emerges from this account as a critic of Christian politics and enthusiasm broadly conceived, as a political philosopher who employed an Israelite political model, and as an erstwhile ally of some of those usually considered his deepest opponents.

Hobbes anticipates many important features of liberalism, including rights, the sovereign state, social contract and constitutionalism. Yet in his insistence that the sovereign will have final authority in matters of faith he appears to repudiate what we have come to consider the core liberal assumptions regarding separation of church and state. In this article I argue that Hobbes takes this approach because of the political challenge posed by immortality (the promise of eternal rewards and the threat of eternal torment and damnation after death). Hobbes regards immortality as one of the most important factors that transform a religion from a means to strengthen the sovereign's authority, a 'humane politiques', to a 'Divine politiques', where others come to exercise countervailing claims on subjects' loyalty. Because immortality presents such a profound challenge to Hobbes's political remedy founded on the judicious use of fear, he adopts a twofold strategy to moderate its political influence. The first is a redefinition of who shall speak and what shall be said about immortality. The second strategy is to elevate the demands of this-world, by promising an eternal peace that will ensure a commodious life.

In this essay we discuss the philosophy of law of Moses Ben Maimon, dedicating special attention to two issues: the function of the law and the golden middle way of the
classic ethical tradition. We argue that the intersection among these two issues lies in
the concept of the law as an instrument to temper human excess in order to achieve
an ordered society, an ethical life, and a sufficient knowledge of God. Drawing on the
philosophical, ethical, and medical writings of the Jewish thinker, we argue that the
achievements of good habits and an educated inclination do not make laws irrelevant
and superfluous. On the contrary, human beings are required to comply with both
intelligible and less intelligible rules, to the extent these rules come directly or indirectly (via interpretation) from God. The revealed law (Torah) as paradigm of limit
and moderation emerges as well in Maimonides conception of legal hermeneutics. In
this way, we argue that the high moral value represented by the action’s attributes of
God in Jewish thought is matched by the awareness of the limits of human intellect: it
is according to these limits that the Jewish law (Halakha) outlines its rules.

In this essay we discuss the philosophy of law of Moses Ben Maimon, dedicating special attention to two issues: the function of the law and the golden middle way of the
classic ethical tradition. We argue that the intersection among these two issues lies in
the concept of the law as an instrument to temper human excess in order to achieve
an ordered society, an ethical life, and a sufficient knowledge of God. Drawing on the
philosophical, ethical, and medical writings of the Jewish thinker, we argue that the
achievements of good habits and an educated inclination do not make laws irrelevant
and superfluous. On the contrary, human beings are required to comply with both
intelligible and less intelligible rules, to the extent these rules come directly or indirectly (via interpretation) from God. The revealed law (Torah) as paradigm of limit
and moderation emerges as well in Maimonides conception of legal hermeneutics. In
this way, we argue that the high moral value represented by the action’s attributes of
God in Jewish thought is matched by the awareness of the limits of human intellect: it
is according to these limits that the Jewish law (Halakha) outlines its rules.

Il tema del discernimento, trascurato per molti anni, è ritornato alla ribalta grazie a papa Francesco. Sull'onda di tale rinnovato interesse, offriamo qui a seguire qualche riflessione di taglio biblico nella prospettiva specifica della vita consacrata. In questa prima parte si ripercorrono la vita e alcuni gesti di Mosè, traendone delle indicazioni per il discernimento nella propria vita spirituale.

L'elezione di Israele com'è noto -e come ha ben messo in evidenza il contributo di Giancarlo Lacerenza -rappresenta un vero e proprio tòpos nella storia del pensiero. Un dato quasi scontato, diffuso da una semplificata lettura e da una interpretazione della Bibbia che ha prodotto nei secoli una sorta di luogo comune a-problematico.

My Master's thesis examines the sixteenth-century Italian Jewish convert to Christianity Immanuel Tremellius. While many Jewish converts wrote tracts dismissing and denigrating Judaism, Tremellius did no such thing. The thesis seeks to provide an explanation for what can be described as his proto–Philo-Semitism by successively studying the status of Jewish converts in Christian society, the Renaissance flowering of Hebraist scholarship, and the Calvinist reception of Judaism. Ultimately, the thesis argues that Tremellius maintained a sympathy and identification with Judaism that went beyond the waters of baptism (but in a German-speaking, not Spanish-speaking, environment), and that his innovative views can be explained by reference to his upbringing in the comparatively tolerant, pluralistic Ferrara, whose dukes fostered a Jewish presence in the city, the influence of heterodox Catholics who converted him to Christianity, and the Calvinist assessment of Judaism.

In the last third of the sixteenth century, humanists and Calvinists created a unique text genre, the so-called politia judaica-literature, that was centered around the model of the ancient Jewish polity and the political laws of Moses. Markus M. Totzeck, for the first time, surveys the beginnings, the first works, and early writers of the politia judaica-literature. The author examines the decisive ancient traditions and sources, and shows that the model of the Mosaic polity influenced early-modern political thinking, especially in the seventeenth century.

Vordenker der Moderne wie Thomas Hobbes, Baruch de Spinoza, James Harrington, Christian Thomasius und viele mehr griffen in ihren politischen Lehren oft auf das Modell des alten jüdischen Gemeinwesens zurück. Entscheidend beeinflusste sie dabei ein Schrifttum (politia-judaica-Literatur), das in der zweiten Hälfte des 16. Jahrhunderts entstand und Moses Gesetze als politisches Vorbild darstellte. Markus M. Totzeck legt die erste vollständige Untersuchung zur Entstehung dieser Literatur vor. Die antiken außerbiblischen Mose-Traditionen bilden den Hintergrund seiner Arbeit. Diese Traditionen waren in der Frühen Neuzeit zum ersten Mal als Druckausgaben erschienen und hatten sich im Renaissance-Humanismus mit Konzeptionen einer uralten Theologie und Weisheit (prisca theologia bzw. prisca sapientia) des Mose verbunden. Totzeck stellt heraus, wie Debatten über die politische Relevanz der mosaischen Gesetze später in der Reformation zur Entstehung der politia-judaica-Literatur beitrugen. Die ersten Werke stammten aus der Feder humanistischer Gelehrter, die in erster Linie ausgebildete Juristen und Historiographen waren, zugleich aber auch einen mehrheitlich calvinistischen Hintergrund hatten. Die Nähe zwischen humanistischer Jurisprudenz und dem Calvinismus prägte die politia-judaica-Literatur in einer ersten Phase bis zu Petrus Cunaeus’ Werk De republica Hebraeorum libri III (1617). Die Verbreitung dieses Buchklassikers des 17. Jahrhunderts führte den ursprünglichen Rechtsdiskurs in umfangreichere politische Diskussionen.

La ‘Guida dei perplessi’ è concepita come un percorso di formazione per il raggiungimento della scienza maggiormente elevata e nobile, secondo il principio aristotelico della gradualità della conoscenza. Si trova un’applicazione di tale principio anche in una delle sezioni più propriamente esegetiche della ‘Guida’, ovvero nei capitoli dedicati all’interpretazione di Exod. 24, nel quale si riferisce di una visione avuta dai “nobili” del popolo d’Israele, in seguito alla quale costoro “mangiarono e bevvero”. Il passo presenta diverse difficoltà interpretative, innanzitutto per quel che riguarda l’identificazione dei destinatari della visione. In secondo luogo, l’oggetto della visione costituisce un problema, poiché sembra presupporre una concezione antropomorfica della divinità. Infine, l’atto di mangiare e bere compiuto dai nobili introduce un elemento di materialità all’interno di un’esperienza paragonabile a quella profetica. È proprio la presenza di questo elemento materiale che determina il giudizio maimonideo relativo a tale episodio; la visione avuta dai nobili sarebbe stata, infatti, imperfetta. In cosa sia consistita l’imperfezione di questa visione non emerge chiaramente dall’argomentazione maimonidea. Scopo di questo contributo è dunque far luce sui passaggi meno chiari dell’esposizione maimonidea in merito all’errore compiuto dai nobili nell’episodio della visione, anche tramite il riferimento ai commentatori medievali di Maimonide e alla letteratura esegetica ebraica tradizionale. Si vedrà come tale errore vada concepito all’interno della struttura gnoseologica aristotelica, che presuppone la propedeuticità delle scienze in vista del raggiungimento della conoscenza più elevata.

Non sempre gli anniversari sono occasioni per pubblicare e recensire nuovi libri, sono anche momenti utili per riscoprire vecchi autori e testi. È il caso di Lincoln Steffens e del suo Moses in red, un libro unico nel suo genere, perché fu il primo a riconoscere nel racconto biblico dell'Esodo, le tracce di una 'teoria' della rivoluzione che aveva trovato la sua realizzazione negli eventi russi del 1917. «Il libro che ho appena finito», scriverà all'amico Gilbert Roe nel 1925, «è la storia di Mosè raccontata alla luce della rivoluzione, un classico esempio di come la rivolta di un popolo avviene. Jehova simbolizza la natura; Mosè, il riformatore e il leader; il faraone, il re o il padrone capitalista; Aronne l'oratore e gli ebrei sono il popolo. Il parallelo con la Russia o ogni altra rivoluzione è strettissimo». Quando il libro uscì, nel 1926, Steffens era stato in Russia già tre volte, spettatore degli eventi e intervistatore dei principali protagonisti, come Lenin: una prima, nell'estate del 1917, dopo la rivoluzione di aprile; la seconda, nel 1919 a seguito della missione di pace guidata da William C. Bullitt; la terza nel 1923, durante il periodo della NEP. Fino a quel momento egli era stato quello che negli Stati Uniti si chiamava un muckrakers, cioè un giornalista d'inchiesta che aveva aperto il fronte, nella società americana, della aperta critica al sistema liberale. Ma Steffens non era rimasto chiuso nei confini statunitensi, aveva allargato i suoi orizzonti intellettuali in Europa alla fine dell'800, studiando teoria sociale e psicologia, e assistendo ai primi tentativi di costruire una scienza dell'organizzazione e del comportamento umano. Egli era convinto che la società fosse soggetta a leggi che potevano essere studiate come quelle che regolavano la natura. Se in un primo momento della sua carriera Steffens aveva creduto nella possibilità che bastasse rendere evidente il legame corruttivo tra politica e affari per riformare la società, dopo l'incontro con la rivoluzione bolscevica si fece strada in lui l'idea che l'unico modo per trasformare la comunità degli uomini era la rivoluzione, che in Messico, in cui era stato tra il 1915 e il 1916 aveva avuto un suo primo momento, ma che in Russia aveva trovato la sua piena realizzazione.

Vadim Chepizhenko. Biblical images of Richard II: an
essay on political hebraism

The article deals with the identification of the biblical tradition
as one of the trends in the ideology of England late 14th century. The
key issue is the biblical images of Richard II. The author focuses on
the significance of reflections on the Bible in the history of ideas.