Hava Tirosh-Samuelson - Böcker

Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy is the first systematic attempt to interpret the Jewish philosophical tradition in light of feminist philosophy and to engage feminist philosophy from the perspective of Jewish philosophy. Written by Jewish women who are trained in philosophy, the 13 original essays presented here demonstrate that no analysis of Jewish philosophy (historical or constructive) can be adequate without attention to gender categories. The essays cover the entire Jewish philosophic tradition from Philo, through Maimonides, to Levinas, and they rethink the subdisciplines of Jewish philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and theology. This volume offers an invitation for a new conversation between feminist philosophy and Jewish philosophy as well as a novel contribution to contemporary Jewish philosophy.Contributors are Leora Batnitzky, Jean Axelrad Cahan, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Claire Elise Katz, Nancy Levene, Sandra B. Lubarsky, Sarah Pessin, Randi Rashkover, Heidi Miriam Ravven, T. M. Rudavsky, Suzanne Last Stone, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, and Laurie Zoloth.

As studio bosses, directors, and actors, Jews have been heavily involved in film history and vitally involved in all aspects of film production. Yet Jewish characters have been represented onscreen in stereotypical and disturbing ways, while Jews have also helped to produce some of the most troubling stereotypes of people of colour in Hollywood film history. In Hollywood’s Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema, leading scholars consider the complex relationship between Jews and the film industry, as Jews have helped to construct Hollywood’s vision of the American dream and American collective identity and have in turn been shaped by those representations. Editors Daniel Bernardi, Murray Pomerance, and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson introduce the volume with an overview of the history of Jews in American popular culture and the American film industry. Multidisciplinary contributors go on to discuss topics such as early Jewish films and directors, institutionalised anti-Semitism, Jewish identity and gossip culture, and issues of Jewish performance on film. Contributors draw on a diverse sampling of films, from representations of the Holocaust on film to screen comedy; filmmakers and writers, including David Mamet, George Cukor, Sidney Lumet, Edward Sloman, and Steven Spielberg; and stars, like Barbara Streisand, Adam Sandler, and Ben Stiller. The Jewish experience in American cinema reveals much about the degree to which Jews have been integrated into and contribute to the making of American popular film culture. Scholars of Jewish studies, film studies, American history, and American culture as well as anyone interested in film history will find this volume fascinating reading. Contributors: Daniel Bernardi, Vincent Brook, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Lucy Fischer, Lester D. Friedman, Sumiko Higashi, Sarah Kozloff, Peter Krämer, Murray Pomerance, Catherine Portuges, William Rothman, Vivian Sobchack, David Sterritt, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson

Presenting Jewish environmentalism as a case study of contemporary post-secularism, this book exemplifies the responses of world religions to the global ecological crisis and situates Jewish environmental spirituality historically, socially, theologically, and politically.Discussing key figures, texts, and organizations that have given Jewish environmentalism its distinctive character as “earthly spirituality”, the book explains how science and technology functioned in the secularization of Judaism, on the one hand, as well as in the counter process of sacralization of nature. It explores the various dimensions of Jewish environmentalism: official statements of Jewish denominations, eco-theologies, eco-hermeneutics, eco-feminism, and public theology; and also links Jewish environmentalism to main forces in modern Jewish history - Zionism, and Americanization. Finally, the study explores the contribution of “non-Jewish Jews” to American environmentalism and explains how “radical Jews” of Leftist orientation became Spiritual Progressives who promoted the ecological wisdom of Judaism to address the social ills of American society as well as the global ecological crisis. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Jewish studies, religious studies, secularism/post-secularism studies, religion and ecology, and religion and science.

Hava Tirosh-Samuelson shows that rabbinic Judaism regarded itself primarily as a prescription for the attainment of happiness, and that the discourse on happiness captures the evolution of Jewish intellectual history from antiquity to the seventeenth century.

It is not common to think that Jews were interested in happiness or that Judaism has anything to say about happiness. On the contrary, the concept of happiness was a central concern of Jewish thinkers. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson shows that rabbinic Judaism regarded itself primarily as a prescription for the attainment of happiness, and that the discourse on happiness captures the evolution of Jewish intellectual history from antiquity to the seventeenth century. These claims make sense if one understands happiness as human flourishing on the basis of Aristotle's thought in the Nichomachean Ethics. Linking virtue, knowledge, and well-being, Aristotle's analysis of happiness can be traced in Jewish understanding of human flourishing as early as the Greco-Roman world, but the fusion of Greek and Judaic perspectives on happiness reached its zenith in in the Middle Ages in the thought of Moses Maimonides and his followers. Even the controversies about Maimonides' ideas could be viewed as discussions about the meaning of happiness and the way to attain it within Judaism. Much of this book, then, concerns the reception of Aristotle's Ethics in medieval Jewish philosophy. This book shows how a certain notion of happiness reflects the intellectual culture of a given period, including cultural exchanges among Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Demonstrating the discourse on happiness as a dramatic interplay between Wisdom and Torah, between philosophy and religion, between reason and faith, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson presents, to specialists and non-specialists alike, a fascinating tour of Jewish intellectual history.

Jewish ecological discourse has shown that Judaism harbors deep concern for the well-being of the natural world. However, the movement has not articulated a Jewish theology of nature, nor has it submitted the sources of Judaism to a systematic, philosophical examination.This volume intends to contribute to the nascent discourse on Judaism and ecology by clarifying diverse conceptions of nature in Jewish thought and by using the insights of Judaism to formulate a constructive Jewish theology of nature. The twenty-one contributors consider the Bible and rabbinic literature, examine the relationship between the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of revelation in the context of natural law, and wrestle with questions of nature and morality. They look at nature in the Jewish mystical tradition, and they face the challenges to Jewish environmental activism caused by the tension between the secular nature of the environmental discourse and Jewish religious commitments.

This is the first comprehensive, multidisciplinary, inter-religious, and critical engagement with transhumanism as a cultural phenomenon, an ideology, and a philosophy. Situating transhumanism in its proper historical context, the essays reflect on transhumanism from the perspectives of several world religions, ponder the feasibility of regulating human enhancement, tease out the philosophical implications of transhumanism, explore the interplay between technology and culture, and expose the scientific limits of transhumanism. Written by scholars of religious studies, philosophy, history, psychology, neuroscience, immunology, engineering, science/technology studies, and law, the volume encourages readers to examine transhumanism seriously and critically because of its ramifications for the future of humanity.

Humans have always imagined better futures. From the desire to overcome death to the aspiration to dominion over the world, imaginations of the technological future reveal the commitments, values, and norms of those who construct them.  Today, the human future is thrown into question by emerging technologies that promise radical control over human life and elicit corollary imaginations of human perfectibility. This interdisciplinary volume assembles scholars of science and technology studies, sociology, philosophy, theology, ethics, and history to examine imaginations of technological progress that promises to transcend the constraints of human body and being. Attending in particular to transhumanist and posthumanist visions, the volume breaks new ground by exploring their utopian and eschatological dimensions and situating them within a broader context of ideas, institutions, and practices of innovation. The volume invites specialists and general readers to explore the stakes of contemporary imaginations of technological innovation as a source of progress, a force of social and historical transformation, and as the defining essence of human life.

Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was one of the most creative and original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth-century. This volume offers a retrospective of Jonas's life and works by bringing together historians of modern Germany, Judaica scholars, philosophers, bioethicists, and environmentalists to reflect on the meaning of his legacy today. From a historian of religions, who wrote a path-breaking monograph on Gnosticism, Jonas turned to the philosophy of nature, extending his existential philosophy and phenomenological analysis to include all forms of life. Unique among twentieth-century Jewish philosophers, Jonas argued for the possibility of a genuinely symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature, which he believed had been suppressed by modern technology. Jonas spoke against the human domination of nature on the basis of Jewish sources, especially the Bible and Lurianic Kabbalah, and he was among the first to define the ethical challenges that modern technology poses to humanity.

Hans Jonas (1903-1993) was one of the most creative and original Jewish thinkers of the twentieth-century. This volume offers a retrospective of Jonas's life and works by bringing together historians of modern Germany, Judaica scholars, philosophers, bioethicists, and environmentalists to reflect on the meaning of his legacy today. From a historian of religions, who wrote a path-breaking monograph on Gnosticism, Jonas turned to the philosophy of nature, extending his existential philosophy and phenomenological analysis to include all forms of life. Unique among twentieth-century Jewish philosophers, Jonas argued for the possibility of a genuinely symbiotic relationship between humanity and nature, which he believed had been suppressed by modern technology. Jonas spoke against the human domination of nature on the basis of Jewish sources, especially the Bible and Lurianic Kabbalah, and he was among the first to define the ethical challenges that modern technology poses to humanity.

Norbert M. Samuelson is Harold and Jean Grossman Chair of Jewish Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Trained as an analytic philosopher, he went on to establish the Academy of Jewish Philosophy in 1980, which contributed greatly to the professionalization of Jewish philosophy in America. An ordained Reform rabbi, a constructive theologian, and a public intellectual, Samuelson has insisted that philosophy is the very heart of Judaism and that in order to survive in the 21st century Judaism must rethink itself in light of contemporary science. Through his scholarship and organizational work he has brought a Jewish voice to the dialogue of religion and science. Viewing Jewish philosophy as central to the understanding of the Jewish past, Samuelson has explicated the philosophical dimension of Judaism, from the Bible to the present.