Don Seeman
Emory University, Religion, Faculty Member
- Emory University, Anthropology, Department MemberEmory University, Candler School of Theology and Graduate Division of Religion, Faculty Member, and 4 moreadd
- Phenomenological Anthropology, Jewish Thought, Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Medical Anthropology, Ethnography, and 140 moreExistential Phenomenological Psychotherapy, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, contemporary continental philosophy, axiology (theories and applied research on values), philosophical and cultural anthropology, diversity managment, gender studies, intercultural communication, and translations studies, Jewish Mysticism, Anthropology, Israel Studies, Maimonides, Sociology, Levinas, Hasidism, Contemplative Studies, Religious Experience, Aristotle's Ethics, Theory, Research Methodology, Religion, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, History of Science, Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), Tulasi Srinivas, Cheryl Mattingly, Moshe Idel, Joel Robbins, Hasidic Jews, Hasidic Judaism, Anthropology of Christianity, Ethnography of Religion, Sociology of Prayer, Pentecostalism and Charismatics, Yoram Hazony, Global Pentecostalism, Habad, Habad, Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, Chabad, Chassidism, Rambam, Menachem Kellner, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, Tanya Luhrmann, Unni Wikan, Ritual Theory, Hasidut, Alfarabi, Esh Kodesh, Judaeo Arabic Literature, Mindfulness & CBT, Mindfulness, Yehuda Ashlag, Rav Kook, Abraham Isaac Kook, Religious Zionism, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Existential Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Martha Nussbaum, Gershom Scholem, Anthropology of Kinship, Kinship (Anthropology), Thomas Csordas, Anthropology of the Body, Georg Simmel, Martin Buber (Philosophy), Anthropology of ethics and morality, Arthur Kleinman, Anthropology of Experience, Religion and Violence, Anthropology of Ethiopia, Tamar Ross, Philosophy Of Friendship, Mind- Life Institute, Lubavitch Hasidism, Walter Benjamín, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology of Friendship, Paul Farmer, Shluchim (Emissaries), Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Phenomenological Sociology, Phenomenological and Hermeneutical Approaches to Religion, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, Literary Approaches to Biblical Studies, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 1111), Rabbi Kook, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Talal Asad, Charles Taylor, medieval islam and Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, João Biehl, Honor-Shame culture, Phenomenology of Religion, Anthropology of Emotion, Comparative Mystical Literature, Cultural Phenomenology, Jerusalem, Philosophy of halakhah, Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Greek Virtues and Emotions, Ancient Emotions, Anthropology of emotions, Sufi Psychology, Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism, Lived Religion, Buddhist modernism, Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, Clifford Geertz, Alfred Schutz, Merleau-Ponty, Sally Falk Moore, Marcel Mauss, Don Handelman, Orson Scott Card, Modern Judaism, Transcultural Psychiatry, Kotsk, Izbica, Hasidism, Izbica, Kotsk, Hasidism, Przysucha, personal redemption, Guide for the Perplexed, Mishneh Torah, Ethiopian-European encounter, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopia. Anthropology, Social Suffering, Philosophy of Human Suffering, Judaic Studies, Star Trek, Interreligious Dialogue, Ethnography of Reading, Anthropology of Religion, Literature, Anthropology of Kinship and the Family, Bioethics Reproductive Technology, Religous Groups Activism In Bioethics, Ignaz Goldziher, Ibn Khaldun, Adab, and Benny Lévyedit
- Don Seeman is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory Uni... moreDon Seeman is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. He is co-editor of the "Contemporary Anthropology of Religion" series at Palgrave and is also the convener of the 'Emory Forum for the Ethnographic Study of Religion.' He currently holds research grants from the Social Science Research Council and the Mind-Life Institute. He received his PhD in Social and Medical Anthropology from Harvard University, where he was advised by Arthur Kleinman and also held an NIMH postdoctoral fellowship in applied medical anthropology. He works to bring together textual and ethnographic research methods and to forge new bridges between anthropology and religious studies approaches to the study of human experience. His work speaks to ritual theory, medical/psychological anthropology and the phenomenology of religion.edit
Contemporary Anthropology of Religion is proudly sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion,. and is co-edited by Don Seeman and Tulasi Srinivas. We seek proposals for ethnographic monographs and edited volumes that... more
Contemporary Anthropology of Religion is proudly sponsored by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion,. and is co-edited by Don Seeman and Tulasi Srinivas. We seek proposals for ethnographic monographs and edited volumes that contribute broadly to the anthropological study of religious experience, cultures and practice, as well as innovative interdisciplinary works. Please see our flier for more details!
Research Interests: Religion, New Religious Movements, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, and 56 moreHistorical Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Philosophy Of Religion, Social Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Social Sciences, Philosophical Anthropology, History of Religion, Ethnography, Practical theology, Religion and Politics, Political Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of the Body, Psychology of Religion, History of Anthropology, Critical Medical Anthropology, American Religion, Anthropology of Christianity, Science and Religion, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Religious Conversion, Ethnographic Fieldwork (Anthropology), History of Religions, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Medical Anthropology/ antropología médica, Magic and the Occult (Anthropology Of Religion), Witchcraft (Anthropology Of Religion), Ethnographic fieldwork, Cultural Anthropology, Ritual Theory, Lived Religion, Religious Experience, Ethnography of Religion, Ethnographic Methods, Sociology of religion (Religion), Ethnographic Studies, Interdisciplinary research (Social Sciences), Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Experience, Ethnographic Research, Antropología cultural, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Popular Hinduism; Medical Anthropology (Mental Health); Anthropology of Psychiatry; Anthropology of Religion, Secularism and Non-Religion; and Ritual Theory, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Anthropology of Islam, Anthropology of Buddhism, Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Cultural and Social Anthropology, Theology and Religious Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnography, Anthropology, History of Religions, Social Science, Anthropology of Judaismn, and Contemporary Anthropology of Religion
The new softcover edition is out (Jan. 2022!). See the attached flier for a discount code, 30% off till May and 50% for the rest of this month when you order directly from the publisher!
Research Interests: Religion, Jewish Studies, History of Religion, Jewish Mysticism, Theodicy, and 15 moreHolocaust Studies, Religious Experience, Judaism, Hasidism, Theology of Suffering and Evil, Religious Studies, Warsaw Ghetto, Judaica, Social Suffering, Polish Jewish history, Hasidic Judaism, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Piaseczner Rebbe, Literature and mysticism, and neohhasidism
This book is the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Ethnography called “Jewish Cultures of the World,” edited by Matti Bunzl and Jeffrey Shandler. Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews... more
This book is the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Ethnography called “Jewish Cultures of the World,” edited by Matti Bunzl and Jeffrey Shandler.
Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity and are today clamoring for the right to ‘Return to Judaism’ and claim citizenship in the State Israel. It focuses on the lived experience of these refugees and on the complex moral and political controversy over their ongoing cultural and religious transformation. This is the first ethnography ever devoted to this group, or to the cultural politics of Ethiopian Judaism. I argue that epistemological limitations in the study of religious experience ought to be taken into account by Israeli policy makers who decide “who is a Jew” based on uncritical assumptions about the nature of religious conversion. I also use the ‘Feres Mura’ dilemma to raise broader questions about the nature of Jewishness and the political role of academic scholarship.
Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity and are today clamoring for the right to ‘Return to Judaism’ and claim citizenship in the State Israel. It focuses on the lived experience of these refugees and on the complex moral and political controversy over their ongoing cultural and religious transformation. This is the first ethnography ever devoted to this group, or to the cultural politics of Ethiopian Judaism. I argue that epistemological limitations in the study of religious experience ought to be taken into account by Israeli policy makers who decide “who is a Jew” based on uncritical assumptions about the nature of religious conversion. I also use the ‘Feres Mura’ dilemma to raise broader questions about the nature of Jewishness and the political role of academic scholarship.
Research Interests: Jewish Studies, Ethnography, Israel Studies, Ethiopian Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and 42 moreAfrican Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Race and Ethnicity, Political Violence and Terrorism, Religious Conversion, Middle East Anthropology, African Diaspora, Race and Religion, Migration Studies, Anthropology of Ethiopia, Ritual Theory, Ethnography of Religion, Existential Anthropology, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Phenomenology of Religion, Land of Israel Studies, Modern Judaism, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of Experience, Judaic Studies, Violence and social suffering, Conversion, Honor-Shame culture, Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Social Suffering, Ritual Purity, african Jews, black Jews, jazz, Refugees, migration and immigration, Anthropology of migration, Ethiopian History, Ethiopian-European encounter, Anthropology of Jewish communities, African pentecostalism, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnography, Anthropology, History of Religions, Anthropology of Bureaucracy, Ethiopia. Anthropology, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopian Christianity, and Ethnography of Jewish Communities
Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, Jewish Law, Anthropology, and 43 moreMedical Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Middle East Studies, History of Religion, Ethnography, Israel Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Religion and Politics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Race and Ethnicity, Middle East (Anthropology), Critical Medical Anthropology, Religious Conversion, Middle East Anthropology, Migration Studies, African Religions, Race and ethnicity (Anthropology), Pentecostalism, Ethnography of Religion, Existential Anthropology, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Jewish Cultural Studies, Horn of Africa, Modern Judaism, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Religious Studies, Judaic Studies, Violence and social suffering, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Social Suffering, African Christianity, Social Suffering and Structural Injustice, Anthropology of Violence, Ethiopian-European encounter, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Anthropology of Religion, Religion, Race and Ethnicity, Anthropology of Bureaucracy, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopian Christianity, and Ethnography of Jewish Communities
Research Interests: Medical Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Ethnography, Israel Studies, and 26 moreEthiopian Studies, Religious Conversion, Middle East Anthropology, Ethnography of Religion, Ethnographic Methods, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Jewish Cultural Studies, Israel, Modern Judaism, HIV, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Religious Studies, Judaic Studies, Orthodox Judaism, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Social Suffering, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Anthropology of Religion, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopian Christianity, Hebraic and Judaic Studies, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, and Ethnography of Jewish Communities
Research Interests: Jewish Studies, Israel Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Ethnography of Religion, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, and 8 morePhenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of Experience, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Anthropology of Religion, and Ethiopian Immigrants
""In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like 'culture,' which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of 'experience'... more
""In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like 'culture,' which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of 'experience' has generated its own interpretive literature, competing schools of analysis, and internal resistances. We propose that the anthropology of experience has achieved a degree of recognition and maturity that renders genealogical reflection, stocktaking, and agenda setting both possible and necessary.
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for naıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls 'the inclusive integrity of "experience."’ This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions." [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]""
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for naıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls 'the inclusive integrity of "experience."’ This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions." [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]""
Research Interests: Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Ethnography, Anthropology of Knowledge, and 26 moreSocial and Cultural Anthropology, History of Anthropology, Cultural Psychology, Phenomenology, Critical Medical Anthropology, Subjectivity (Culture), Ethnography (Research Methodology), Intersubjectivity, Phenomenology of the body, Cultural Psychiatry, Transcultural Psychiatry, Psychiatric anthropology, Philosophy of Human Suffering, Existential Anthropology, Phenomenology of Religion, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Psychoanalytic Anthropology, Anthropology of Experience, Experience, Violence and social suffering, Social Suffering, .Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Religion, Arthur Kleinman, and Phenomenology of Intersubjectivity
Despite the explosion of interest in Jewish mysticism in recent decades, scholars have only recently begun to explore in any depth how mystical texts function as literature. This includes not just literary readings of Jewish mystical... more
Despite the explosion of interest in Jewish mysticism in recent decades, scholars have only recently begun to explore in any depth how mystical texts function as literature. This includes not just literary readings of Jewish mystical texts, but also extends to questions of mystical and literary efficacy. In other words, what kinds of strategies are employed in Jewish mystical writing to convey mystical content and ethos, to shape religious subjectivity in distinctive ways, or even to influence the cosmos through specialized acts of writing and reading (i.e., producing and consuming literature)? Moreover, how do these literary and mystical projects intersect, reinforce, and possibly even place limits upon one another in different textual settings? Finally, how might consideration of these topics change the way we think about Jewish literary studies more broadly?
Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Comparative Literature, Jewish Studies, Jewish Mysticism, and 63 moreMysticism, Comparative Mysticism, Spirituality & Mysticism, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Jewish Thought, Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Literature, Religion and Literature, Literature and Religion, Medieval Jewish History, Hassidism, Kabbalah, Judaism, Hasidism, Jewish Cultural Studies, Medieval Mysticism, Spirituality and Mysticism, Comparative literature, Literary theory, Mystical Theology, Comparative Religions, Religious Studies, Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism, Judaic Studies, Zohar, Modern Jewish Thought, Contemporary Kabbalah, Lurianic Kabbalah, Russian Jewry, Hasidism, Jewish Traditional Society, Comparative Religious Studies, Comparative Mystical Literature, Jewish Alchemy, Safed/Tzfat, Kabbalat Shabbat, Kabbala, Isaac Luria, History of Kabbalah, Mystical experience, Comparative Study of World Religions, Kabbalah and Jewish Philosophy, Mystical literature, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Cultural Poetics, Jewish Mysticism and Qabbalah, Hasidim, Lurianic Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism. Kabbalah, Chabad, Zohar, Kabbalah, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Field of Comparative Religion, Kabbalah In Safed, Hasidut, Kaballah,chassidut,jewish Misticism, Chassidism, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Chassidus, Hasidic Judaism, Mystical Psychology, Schools of Mystical Thought and Evolution of Them, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Comparative Philosophy and Religion, Lubavitch Hasidism, Ecstatic Kabbalah, Comparative History of Religions, Mysticism and Literature, and Chasidut
This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theological inquiry. The following round table between theologians, anthropologists and scholars of religion asks each participant to reflect on... more
This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theological inquiry. The following round table between theologians, anthropologists and scholars of religion asks each participant to reflect on the limitations of their own major field of inquiry
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Hinduism, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, and 35 moreAnthropology, Social Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Theology, Ethnography, Practical theology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Anthropology of Christianity, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Scriptural Reasoning, Epistemology Of Religious Experience, Ethnographic fieldwork, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Experience, Ethnography of Religion, Ethnographic Methods, Anthropology and Religion, Existential Anthropology, Phenomenological Anthropology, Comparative Religions, Religious Studies, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Indian Philosophy and Religion, Comparative Study of World Religions, Theology and Religious Studies, Theology and Religion, Jewish Folklore and Ethnography, Yiddish Folklore, Folk Medicine, Religion and Theology, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnography, Anthropology, History of Religions, Practical Theology, Theology and Ethnography, and Anthropology and Theology
Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Aristotle, Contemplative Pedagogy, Aristotelianism, and 15 moreBiblical Interpretation, Contemplative Prayer, Contemplative education, Ancient Contemplative Practices, Contemplative Practice, Contemplation, COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS LAWS, Aristotelian Ethics, Al Andalus, Anthropology of Religion, Constructing a Theory of Halakhah, Contemplative Political Philosophy, Contemplative Practice Pedagogy, Contemplative Practices, and Aristotle on Virtue
Research Interests: Anthropology, African Diaspora Studies, Anthropology of Food, African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Critical Medical Anthropology, and 15 moreAnthropology of Christianity, Anthropology of Ethiopia, Cultural Anthropology, African Diasporic Religions, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Anthropology of Experience, Beta Israel, American Ethnologist, Anthropology of Jewish communities, African pentecostalism, Ethiopian, Anthropology of Religion, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopian Christianity, and Anthropology of Jews and Judaism
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This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theological inquiry. The following round table between theologians, anthropologists and scholars of religion asks each participant to reflect on... more
This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theological inquiry. The following round table between theologians, anthropologists and scholars of religion asks each participant to reflect on the limitations of their own major field of inquiry
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Hinduism, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, and 15 moreEpistemology, Jewish Studies, Ethnography, Practical theology, African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Anthropology of Christianity, Ethnography of Religion, Anthropology and Religion, Religious Studies, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Indian Philosophy and Religion, Theology and Religion, Ethnography Research methodology, Anthropology of Religion, and Practical Theology
Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Jewish Mysticism, Jewish Ethics, Émmanuel Lévinas, Ethics and Religion, and 15 moreHasidism, Jewish Cultural Studies, Émmanuel Lévinas on ethics and the other, Comparative Religious Ethics, Immanence, Hillel Zeitlin, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Chassidism, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Acosmism, Hasidic Judaism, Israel Salanter, Ethical Experience, and Chasidut
... Back to Top. Postcolonial Disorders (review). Don Seeman. Common Knowledge, Volume 15, Issue 3, Fall 2009, pp. 510-511 (Review). ...
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Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (b. 1865–d. 1935) is considered one of the most important modern Jewish thinkers and shaper of some of the most significant trends in Religious Zionism. He was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory... more
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (b. 1865–d. 1935) is considered one of the most important modern Jewish thinkers and shaper of some of the most significant trends in Religious Zionism. He was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and the founder of the institutional state rabbinate, as well as an influential yeshiva known as Mercaz Ha-Rav. Rabbi Kook was known for the breadth and depth of his scholarship across all the branches of traditional Jewish scholarship, including law, philosophy, and Kabbalah as well as his appreciation for contemporary science and non-Jewish philosophy. Witnessing the disaffection or rebellion of Jewish youth from tradition, particularly among the Zionist pioneers in the Land of Israel, he devoted himself with special fervor to the attempted reconciliation of modernity with Orthodox Judaism. To this end, he developed a series of dialectical responses that often seemed to accord spiritual dignity to the characteristic features of modern c...
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William Robertson Smith wrote in 1885 that the biblical convention whereby aman is said to “go in” to his bride represents a linguistic trace ofonce widespread “beena marriage,” in which men joined the natal households of the women who... more
William Robertson Smith wrote in 1885 that the biblical convention whereby aman is said to “go in” to his bride represents a linguistic trace ofonce widespread “beena marriage,” in which men joined the natal households of the women who took them as husbands. It was an error of literalist reductionism, but one that lent support to an imposing infrastructure of systematic kinship theory and evolutionism that continues to excercise an influenceon some contemporary scholars. Another way of saying this is that Robertson Smith failed to recognize a significant biblical metaphor—that of men enteringwomen's tents—when he saw one. This misapprehension of biblical poetics has had important consequences for the way in which he and his successors have interpreted the Hebrew Bible.
Research Interests: History, Anthropology of space, Middle East Anthropology, Book of Genesis, Literary study of the Bible, and 14 moreBiblical Interpretation, Literary Approaches to Biblical Studies, Women in the Bible, Poetics of Space, Anthropology of Space and Place, Women in the Bible and Midrash, Biblical Hermeneutics, Gender and Judaism, Cultural Poetics, Honor Shame Culture, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Anthropology of Religion, Anthropology of the Hebrew Bible, and Reproductive Anthropology
Ce commentaire critique de l'article d'Eliezer Witztum et Yehuda Goodman, paru dans le meme numero, sur la psychotherapie de juifs appartenant a la communaute ultra-orthodoxe Hareidi de Jerusalem, souligne d'importantes... more
Ce commentaire critique de l'article d'Eliezer Witztum et Yehuda Goodman, paru dans le meme numero, sur la psychotherapie de juifs appartenant a la communaute ultra-orthodoxe Hareidi de Jerusalem, souligne d'importantes questions theoriques quant aux modalites d'une psychotherapie fondee sur la narration de la douleur. L'A. pose la question d'une psychologie adaptee a cette communaute culturelle et religieuse d'une part, et celle plus generale d'une phenomenologie culturelle. L'A. montre que le recours a la subjectivite en ethnopsychiatrie, a l'experience collective et a la signification culturelle est fondamental pour l'avancee de la psychologie clinique et theorique.
Research Interests: Psychology, Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Jewish Mysticism, Transcultural Psychiatry, and 14 moreKabbalah, Judaism, Hasidism, Existential Anthropology, Israel, Phenomenological Anthropology, Speech, Anthropology of Experience, Subjectivity, Near East, Belief, Cross Cultural Psychology, Anthropology of Mental Health, and Haredim
This article examines the significance of Birgit Meyer’s work on the ‘moral imaginary.’ The first part of the article argues that Meyer has more in common with phenomenological anthropologists than she admits and endorses her approach to... more
This article examines the significance of Birgit Meyer’s work on the ‘moral imaginary.’ The first part of the article argues that Meyer has more in common with phenomenological anthropologists than she admits and endorses her approach to the current debate between ‘ontological’ and ‘cultural constructivist’ approaches. The second section invokes the moral psychology of Maimonides along with contemporary debates in the anthropology of Islam to argue that Meyer’s work should stimulate a broadly comparative approach to the whole topic of moral imagination. Do filmic media, for example, inevitably favor a dualistic conflict between personifications of good and evil over other, more monistic, religious positions? And how might the study of medieval moral psychologies enrich the contemporary ethnography of religion?
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... Hinduism may resonate with unconscious fantasies, Ingham writes, but this is not all it is about and, in any case, what is more interesting is the way in which Hindu epics, lore, and practice may have rhetorical effects on socially... more
... Hinduism may resonate with unconscious fantasies, Ingham writes, but this is not all it is about and, in any case, what is more interesting is the way in which Hindu epics, lore, and practice may have rhetorical effects on socially ger-mane unconscious motivation (1996: 238). ...
Research Interests: Philosophy and Stereotype
One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism, by Don Seeman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009. 240 pp. $46.95. One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism is an ethnographic... more
One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism, by Don Seeman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009. 240 pp. $46.95. One People, One Blood: Ethiopian-Israelis and the Return to Judaism is an ethnographic study of the "Feres Mura" in Israel and Ethiopia. The so-called "Feres Mura" are the descendants of Ethiopian Jews, some of whose ancestors converted to Christianity in Ethiopia in the 1800s but have now reasserted their Jewish identity and desire to live in Israel. There are now more than 100,000 Ethiopians living as Jews in Israel, with about 20,000 "Feres Mura" who are the central concern of Seeman, although he also gives attention to "Feres Mura" still in Ethiopia. Seeman started research on the Beta Israel community in 1989, conducted research in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the summers of 1992 and 1993 and in Israel between 1994 and 1996, and concentrated on Jerusalem and Haifa, including immigrant absorption centers, between 1998 and 2003. He clearly is an expert on the topic. One of his main arguments is that the "Feres Mura" must be viewed as "an integral part of the larger Beta Israel or Ethiopian Jewish community whose center is today in Israel" (p. 5). Seeman notes that the term Beta Israel is the term most commonly used today in both academic and historical contexts, and is frequently used by Beta Israel to describe themselves. He puts the words "Feres Mura" in quotation marks every time he uses them, and advocates that another term should be used. In fact, as seen, he uses the more encompassing term Ethiopian-Israelis in the subtitle to make his point, this term being used to accurately include those "Feres Mura" who now live in Israel. Seeman emphasizes three spheres of state policy that impinge heavily upon the "Feres Mura": (1) immigration policy, (2) public health practice, and (3) the power of Israel's religious establishment. He also emphasizes the controversy over the policy of return to Judaism, a policy constantly under pressure to change, and which did change drastically during his years of research. Seeman reminds the reader that it was Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef 's ruling in 1973 accepting the Jewishness of the Beta Israel that set the stage for the eventual immigration to Israel of the Beta Israel, but that, after years of arguments both ways, this drastically changed in 2007 when Minister of the Interior Meir Shitreet "tried to galvanize public opinion to emend the Law of Return to withhold automatic citizenship from immigrant converts in order to remove the temptation of mass conversion by groups like the 'Feres Mura'" (p. 196). The Minister's position was, "No one should go looking for any lost tribes because I won't let them in any more. . . . Let them go to America" (p. 196). After an Introduction, the book is divided into seven chapters. In Chapter One, "A Death in Addis Ababa," in July 1992, a year after the "Feres Mura" dilemma "burst onto Israeli public consciousness" with the Operation Solomon airlift, Seeman introduces the reader to the "purity, authenticity, suffering, and a sense of belonging to a people and a nation" (p. 40). In Chapter Two, "The Question of Kinship," he gives a good historical overview of life in Ethiopia since the mid-1800s. Special attention is given to Abba Mahari, a leader of the Beta Israel in Ethiopia, who, in 1862, was among the leaders of a disastrous attempted exodus to the "Holy Land" of Israel because he believed that God was ready to gather diaspora Jews back to the land of their fathers. …
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... Volume 9, Issue 1, Winter 2003. E-ISSN: 1538-4578 Print ISSN: 0961-754X. Return to Article. Being Human: The Problem of Agency (review). Seeman, Don. ... Seeman, Don. "Being Human: The Problem of Agency (review)." Common... more
... Volume 9, Issue 1, Winter 2003. E-ISSN: 1538-4578 Print ISSN: 0961-754X. Return to Article. Being Human: The Problem of Agency (review). Seeman, Don. ... Seeman, Don. "Being Human: The Problem of Agency (review)." Common Knowledge 9.1 (2003): 167-168. Project MUSE ...
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Research Interests: Gender Studies, Jewish Studies, Autobiography, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Literature, and 15 moreMemoir and Autobiography, Religion and Literature, Literature and Religion, Modern Jewish History, Modern Judaism, Social Construction of Sex and Gender, Modern Jewish Thought, Orthodox Judaism, Cultural Studies and Literatures, Gender and Judaism, Misnagdim, Anthropology of Religion, Lithuanian Jewry, Rabbinic Textuality, and Volozhin
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Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner of Izbica (18001853) has been described as the most radical of the Jewish mystics and as a religious anarchist.1 Some scholars have wondered how he managed to resist the antinomian pull of his own doctrine,... more
Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner of Izbica (18001853) has been described as the most radical of the Jewish mystics and as a religious anarchist.1 Some scholars have wondered how he managed to resist the antinomian pull of his own doctrine, and to suffer the chaotic ...
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This chapter contends that while anthropological kinship theory has historically been rooted in church institutional practices that distinguish between consanguineal, affinal, and spiritual kinship, this division has proved inadequate to... more
This chapter contends that while anthropological kinship theory has historically been rooted in church institutional practices that distinguish between consanguineal, affinal, and spiritual kinship, this division has proved inadequate to analytic and comparative purposes. The idea of spiritual kinship encodes not just an anti-Jewish polemic, for example, but a deep structural opposition between spirit and flesh that simply cannot be presumed in other settings. As an alternative, I suggest that spiritual kinship is just one variation on a much broader attempt by the Abrahamic communities to reconcile genealogical and non-genealogical grounds of relatedness. Readings in contemporary ethnography as well as Aristotle and Maimonides are marshaled to support the idea of kinship as an ethical relation.
Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Anthropology of Christianity, Anthropology of Kinship, and 15 moreAristotelianism, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Ancient Kinship, Abraham, Anthropology of Ethics, Beta Israel, Biblical Covenants, Anthropology of Morality, Biblical Abraham narrative, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Anthropology of Religion, Book of Levit, Anthropology and Ethnography of Judaism and Jewish Peoples, and Anthropology and Theology
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (b. 1889–d. 1943), otherwise known as the Piaseczner Rebbe, was a creative mystical thinker and an important Hasidic leader. The scion of a minor Hasidic dynasty, he went on to found one of the most... more
Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (b. 1889–d. 1943), otherwise known as the Piaseczner Rebbe, was a creative mystical thinker and an important Hasidic leader. The scion of a minor Hasidic dynasty, he went on to found one of the most important Hasidic educational institutions in interwar Poland. He is best known for his sermons in the Warsaw Ghetto, but his many writings, most of which were published posthumously, offer rich depictions of the inner life, the nature of spiritual fellowship, and the revitalization of religion in the wake of secularism. Study of Shapira’s writings mediate against any claim that later Polish Hasidism as a whole had stagnated, was uninterested in the project of spiritual self-renewal, or had essentially given up on the potential for ecstasy and mystical experience. Shapira’s works have engendered a significant and growing body of scholarly research on 20th-century Hasidism, and of course, the history of the Holocaust and religious responses thereto. Though f...
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Amid growing interest in mindfulness studies focusing on Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices, this article argues for a comparative and ethnographic approach to analogous practices in different religious traditions and to their... more
Amid growing interest in mindfulness studies focusing on Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices, this article argues for a comparative and ethnographic approach to analogous practices in different religious traditions and to their vernacular significance in the everyday lives of practitioners. The Jewish contemplative tradition identified with Chabad Hasidism is worth consideration in this context because of its long-standing indigenous tradition of contemplative practice, the recent adoption of ‘mindfulness’ practices or terminology by some Hasidim, and its many intersections with so-called Buddhist modernism. These intersections include the personal trajectories of individuals who have engaged in both Buddhist and Hasidism-derived mindfulness practices, the shared invocation and adaptation of contemporary psychology, and the promotion of secularized forms of contemplative practice. We argue that ‘Hasidic modernism’ is a better frame than ‘neo-Hasidism’ for comparative purposes, a...
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Research Interests: Anthropology, African Diaspora Studies, Anthropology of Food, African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Critical Medical Anthropology, and 15 moreAnthropology of Christianity, Anthropology of Ethiopia, Cultural Anthropology, African Diasporic Religions, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Anthropology of Experience, Beta Israel, American Ethnologist, Anthropology of Jewish communities, African pentecostalism, Ethiopian, Anthropology of Religion, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopian Christianity, and Anthropology of Jews and Judaism
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Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Aristotle, Contemplative Pedagogy, Aristotelianism, and 15 moreBiblical Interpretation, Contemplative Prayer, Contemplative education, Ancient Contemplative Practices, Contemplative Practice, Contemplation, COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS LAWS, Aristotelian Ethics, Al Andalus, Anthropology of Religion, Constructing a Theory of Halakhah, Contemplative Political Philosophy, Contemplative Practice Pedagogy, Contemplative Practices, and Aristotle on Virtue
... Health Care in Israel Dani Filc This paper is posted at DigitalCommons@ILR. http://digitalcommons. ilr.cornell.edu/books/50 Page 2. CIRCLES OF EXCLUSION The Politics of Health Care in IsraelDANI FILC, MD WITH A FOREWORD BY QUENTIN... more
... Health Care in Israel Dani Filc This paper is posted at DigitalCommons@ILR. http://digitalcommons. ilr.cornell.edu/books/50 Page 2. CIRCLES OF EXCLUSION The Politics of Health Care in IsraelDANI FILC, MD WITH A FOREWORD BY QUENTIN YOUNG, MD ...
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Research Interests:
Within public health and medical anthropology research, the study of women’s agency in reproductive decision making often neglects the role of religion and women’s spirituality. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at... more
Within public health and medical anthropology research, the study of women’s agency in reproductive decision making often neglects the role of religion and women’s spirituality. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at a shelter for homeless (mostly African American) mothers in the southeastern United States. We explore the inadequacy of rational choice models that emphasize intentionality and planning, which our research shows are in tension with the vernacular religious and moral ethos of pregnancy as a ‘blessing’ or unplanned gift. Our findings confirm that young and disadvantaged women may view pregnancy and motherhood as opportunities to improve their lives in ways that mediate against their acceptance of family planning models. For these women, the notion of ‘blessing’ also reflects an acceptance of contingency and indeterminacy as central to the reproductive experience. We also question the increasingly popular distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituali...
Research Interests: Abrahamic Religions, Anthropology, Anthropology of Gender, Anthropology of Reproduction, American Religion, and 15 moreAnthropology of Christianity, Agency Theory, African American Religions, African American Studies, Anthropology of Experience, Agency, American Christianity, African American Religious Studies, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Anthropological Theory, Anthropology of Sexuality, Anthropology of Religion, Blessing, Anthropology of Homelessness, and Anthropology and Theology
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Amid growing interest in mindfulness studies focusing on Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices, this article argues for a comparative and ethnographic approach to analogous practices in different religious traditions and to their... more
Amid growing interest in mindfulness studies focusing on Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices, this article argues for a comparative and ethnographic approach to analogous practices in different religious traditions and to their vernacular significance in the everyday lives of practitioners. The Jewish contemplative tradition identified with Chabad Hasidism is worth consideration in this context because of its long-standing indigenous tradition of contemplative practice, the recent adoption of ‘mindfulness’ practices or terminology by some Hasidim, and its many intersections with so-called Buddhist modernism. These intersections include the personal trajectories of individuals who have engaged in both Buddhist and Hasidism-derived mindfulness practices, the shared invocation and adaptation of contemporary psychology, and the promotion of secularized forms of contemplative practice. We argue that ‘Hasidic modernism’ is a better frame than ‘neo-Hasidism’ for comparative purposes, and that Hasidic modernism complicates the taxonomies of secularity in comparable but distinctive ways to those that arise in Buddhist-modernism contexts.
Research Interests: Religion, Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Jewish Studies, and 15 moreMindfulness, Jewish Mysticism, American Religion, Contemplative Studies, Buddhist Psychology, Ethnography of Religion, Hasidism, Religious Studies, Judaic Studies, Mindfulness Meditation, Mindfulness & CBT, Buddhist Meditation, Chabad, Anthropology of Religion, and Contemplative Practices
This chapter juxtaposes the "Mystical Sociology" of Philip Wexler and Chaim Miller's Biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's radical program of inclusion, "Turning Judaism Outward." It raises some questions about Wexler's approach from an... more
This chapter juxtaposes the "Mystical Sociology" of Philip Wexler and Chaim Miller's Biography of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's radical program of inclusion, "Turning Judaism Outward." It raises some questions about Wexler's approach from an ethnographic and anthropological standpoint and suggests that there may be critical issues of lived experience and social context that Wexler has not yet addressed. It also reflects upon the new situation in which some researchers of Hasidism now work in parallel to, and in partnership with, Chabad Hasidim who consume, contribute to and comment upon academic research in increasingly significant ways.If indeed the shift towards Mystical Sociology that Wexler identifies is underway, we need to understand its broader social and religious contexts as well as its potential for both desirable and undesirable outcomes.
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This paper represents a detailed analysis of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook's evolutionary understanding of taamei hamitzvot ("reasons for the commandments"), which he invokes to bridge modernity and tradition, philosophy and Jewish mysticism,... more
This paper represents a detailed analysis of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook's evolutionary understanding of taamei hamitzvot ("reasons for the commandments"), which he invokes to bridge modernity and tradition, philosophy and Jewish mysticism, halakha and aggadah. I explore R. Kooks reliance on medieval thinkers like Maimonides and Ibn Paquda as well as the classical kabbalah and explore his writing in the context of other contemporary Jewish thinkers.
Research Interests: Religion, Jewish Studies, Jewish Mysticism, Jewish Thought, Ethics and Religion, and 15 moreReligion and Modernity, Modern Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Maimonides, Religious Zionism, Moses Mendelssohn, Religious Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Orthodox Judaism, Rav Kook, Abraham Isaac Kook, Evolution and Religion, Religion and Human Evolution, and HIstory of Zionism and Jewish Nationalism
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Jewish Studies, Practical theology, Jewish Mysticism, and 40 moreReligious Ethics, Jewish Ethics, Émmanuel Lévinas, Moral Theology, Levinas, Jewish Thought, Ethics and Religion, Jewish Ethics, Maimonides, Judaism, Hasidism, Jewish Cultural Studies, Émmanuel Lévinas on ethics and the other, Modern Judaism, Religious Studies, Comparative Religious Ethics, Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Immanence, Hillel Zeitlin, Israel Baal Shem Tov, Mussar, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Hasidism, Izbica, Kotsk, Jewish Theology, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Chassidism, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Lithuanian Jewry, Acosmism, Transcendence/immanence, Hasidic Judaism, The Besht, Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Asidic-Mitnaggedic Polemics, Israel Salanter, Neo Hasidism, Ethical Experience, Musar, Musar Movement, and Chasidut
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Birgit Meyer's Sensational Movies brings together some of the signal themes that have defined her scholarly career at the intersection of Pentecostalism in Africa and the material mediation of religious life. Her ethnographic study of the... more
Birgit Meyer's Sensational Movies brings together some of the signal themes that have defined her scholarly career at the intersection of Pentecostalism in Africa and the material mediation of religious life. Her ethnographic study of the burgeoning Ghanaian film industry focuses on the ways in which film not only reflects the local moral imagination at a time of social change but also helps to shape and literally produce new forms of imagination that combine, for example, the dualistic Pentecostal ethos with self-conscious stylistic modernism and contested nostalgia for the rural African past. Meyer carefully details both the market forces that constrain film-makers to produce certain kinds of films and the contested cultural politics of African self-representation. The result is a model ethnography for dealing with the complexities of modern cultural production while managing to avoid the all-too-easy collapse into fashionable postmodern solipsism. Meyer does not ignore the films or the filmic imaginary, but she pays attention to the people and sociopolitical contexts behind film production as well. This is crucial, because it allows Meyer to weigh in on some of the major theoretical issues running through today's anthropology of religion. Sensational Movies is the work of a mature scholar who has learned to cut through the Gordian knots of protracted scholarly debate in just a few elegant sentences. While she clearly is interested in the lived experience that transcends mere interpretation of cultures, for
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Film Studies, and 22 moreAfrican Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Anthropology of Christianity, Anthropology of Media, African Religions, Anthropology of the Senses, Pentecostalism, African cinema, Maimonides, Anthropology of Film, Film and Media Studies, Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Experience, Anthropology of Imaginary, African Traditional Religions, Christianity and African Indigenous Religion, African traditional religion, Media and Cultural Studies / Cultural Theory / Imaginary of Political Violence / Film, Propaganda and Violence / Cuban Culture, Anthropology of the Senses; Anthropology of Religion; Aesthetics, Anthropology of Religion, Religious Aesthetics, and Social Anthropology of Africa
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Christianity, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, and 78 moreAnthropology, Medical Anthropology, Philosophy Of Religion, Social Anthropology, Social Sciences, Theology, History of Religion, Ethnography, Practical theology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Vernacular Religion, Spirituality, Anthropology of Gender, Fieldwork in Anthropology, Phenomenology, Anthropology of Reproduction, American Religion, Anthropology of Christianity, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Ethnographic Fieldwork (Anthropology), African American Religions, Theology and Culture, Intentionality, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Spirituality & Mysticism, Medical Anthropology/ antropología médica, Ethnographic fieldwork, Cultural Anthropology, Health experiences, Religious Experience, Ethnography of Religion, Ethnographic Methods, Existential Anthropology, Practical (empirical) theology, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of Health and Illness, Comparative Religions, Religious Studies, Comparative study of religion, Anthropology of Experience, Medical Sociology / Anthropology, Experience, Comparative Inter-Religious Theology, Religious anthropology, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Motherhood, Sociology and Anthropology, Anthropology of Islam, Comparative Religious Studies, Humanities and Social Sciences, Social Suffering, Comparative Study of World Religions, .Medical Anthropology, Divinity, Theology and Religious Studies, Sociological and anthropological theory, Theology and Religion, Conceptions of divinity, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Religion and Public Health, Vernacular Theology, Anthropological Theory, Anthropology of Sexuality, Field of Comparative Religion, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnography, Anthropology, History of Religions, Practical Theology, Arthur Kleinman, Blessing, Social and Religious Anthropology, Comparative Philosophy and Religion, Anthropology of Homelessness, Social Science, Vernacular Religions, Theology and Ethnography, African American Religions and Spirituality, Anthropologie Existentiale, and Anthropology and Theology
Abstract: Establishing a plausible model of women’s agency in reproductive decision making is crucial to both public health and medical anthropology research. The role of religion and women’s spirituality is one crucial and sometimes... more
Abstract: Establishing a plausible model of women’s agency in reproductive decision making is crucial to both public health and medical anthropology research. The role of religion and women’s spirituality is one crucial and sometimes neglected component of such decisions. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted at a shelter for homeless, mostly African American mothers in the Southeastern United States. Methods included fourteen months of intermittent participant observation that included conversations with residents and staff members and participation in mandatory educational programming and on-site focus groups, one researcher-initiated focus group, and a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with sixteen shelter residents aged 18-37. Our research, which constitutes one module of an interdisciplinary study involving anthropologists, public health researchers and religion scholars, demonstrates the inadequacy of rational choice models that emphasize intentionality and planning, but are at odds with the vernacular ethos of pregnancy as a “blessing” or unplanned gift. Our findings confirm previous research that shows young and disadvantaged women may view pregnancy and motherhood as opportunities to improve their lives in ways that mediate against acceptance of family planning models. We also argue that women’s agency may be shaped by religious or spiritual idioms that mediate against a public health ideal of full human control over reproductive outcomes. We suggest that a broader ethnography of women’s reproductive agency should locate “blessing” along a continuum of constructs of indeterminacy (cf. Jackson 2013: 31-33) that also include “luck,” “fate,” and some women’s recognition that agentive capacities are not always realistically concentrated in their hands. With this phenomenological approach in mind, we also question the widespread distinction between “religion” and “spirituality” in contemporary public health discourse.
Keywords: Agency, Contraception, Unintended Pregnancy, Spirituality/Religion, Homelessness, African American Women, Public Health
Keywords: Agency, Contraception, Unintended Pregnancy, Spirituality/Religion, Homelessness, African American Women, Public Health
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Christianity, Medical Sociology, Sociology of Religion, and 88 moreGender Studies, Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Philosophy of Agency, Social Anthropology, Theology, Sexual and Reproductive Health, Ethnography, Religion in America, Practical theology, Religion and Sexuality, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Contraception, Contemporary Spirituality, Spirituality, Women's Health, Homelessness, Anthropology of Gender, Fieldwork in Anthropology, Critical Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Reproduction, History of Public Health, American Religion, Prayer, Anthropology of Christianity, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Agency Theory, African American Religions, Intentionality, Reproductive Ethics, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Spirituality & Mysticism, Gender and Health, African American Studies, Public Health, Medical Anthropology/ antropología médica, Social Determinants Of Health (Anthropology), Christian Spirituality, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Experience, Ethnography of Religion, Existential Anthropology, Sociology of religion (Religion), Anthropology/Sociology of Pregnancy, Kinship and Relatedness (Anthropology), Theology of Suffering and Evil, Sense of agency, Teenage Pregnancy, Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Maternal and Child Health, Anthropology of Experience, Medical Sociology / Anthropology, Moral Luck, Agency, Reproductive health, Violence and social suffering, Feminist Anthropology, Unwanted pregnancy and abortion, Critical Public Health, American Christianity, African American Religious Studies, Health risk, health and illness, medical anthropology, health promotion, qualitative research, mixed methods, and public health, Poverty Studies, Research and writing on Black and Womanist theologies, Black and Womanist spirituality, African American Religion (s( and spirituality, the Catholic Church and racism, issues of Christianity and race, class, and ender, world religions in the US, Social Suffering, Suffering, Social Suffering and Structural Injustice, Contingency, Family Planning, .Medical Anthropology, Divinity, Poverty, Homlessness, Classism, Theology and Religious Studies, Unplanned Pregnancy, Religion and Public Health, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Anthropology of gender and sexuality; youth, production and reproduction, Anthropological Theory, Human Suffering, Anthropology of Sexuality, Anthropology of Religion, Practical Theology, Blessing, Religion In the African American Community, Anthropology of Homelessness, and Anthropology and Theology
This is a draft of an article that will appear with some further revisions in American Ethnologist. Please seek permission before citing or distributing this draft, as there may be a more updated version to share.
Research Interests: Religion, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Culture, Sociology of Religion, African Studies, and 87 moreAnthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Ethnography, Israel Studies, Black/African Diaspora, Ethiopian Studies, Religion and Politics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Vernacular Religion, African Diaspora Studies, Coffee, Anthropology of Food, Cultural Theory, Africa, Identity (Culture), African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Critical Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Christianity, Culture, Religious Conversion, Culture Studies, History of Religions, Jewish - Christian Relations, Pentecostal Theology, African Diaspora, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Diaspora Studies, African Religions, Pentecostalism, Spirit Possession (Anthropology), Anthropology of Ethiopia, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Experience, Ethnography of Religion, African Diasporic Religions, Neo-Pentecostalism, Existential Anthropology, Phenomenology of Religion, Jewish Cultural Studies, Israel, Theology of Suffering and Evil, Africana Studies, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Religion and Addiction, Religion and Culture, Religious Studies, Charismatic Christianity, Anthropology of Experience, Cultural Phenomenology, Judaic Studies, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Diabolic Possession, Anthropology of Ethics, Addiction Behaviour, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Pentecostalism and Charismatics, Spirit Possession, Humanities and Social Sciences, Social Suffering, Christianity and African Indigenous Religion, African Charismatics, Theology and Religious Studies, Coffee Culture, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Interreligious Studies, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Zar Possession, African pentecostalism, Pentecostal studies, Global Pentecostalism, Ethiopian, Anthropology of Religion, Ethiopian Jewry, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Ethiopia. Anthropology, Spirit Posession and Witchcraft, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethiopian Christianity, Caffeine Addiction, Messianic Jewish Studies, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, and Existential/Phenomenological Anthropology
What is the relationship between friendship and human flourishing? This is a central topic in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one to which Maimonides also returned throughout his career. Despite the relative neglect of this topic in... more
What is the relationship between friendship and human flourishing? This is a central topic in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and one to which Maimonides also returned throughout his career. Despite the relative neglect of this topic in recent scholarship, I argue that friendship (philia) was an important link between moral and intellectual perfection for Maimonides. He identified Aristotle’s virtue friendship with the love between students and teachers and also interpreted many of the divine commandments as efforts to promote both family and virtue friendship among the Jewish people. Friendship was aligned thematically in Maimonides’ writings with topics like kinship and sexuality, circumcision, and the ethics of speech, all of which point in different ways to the unresolved tension between rational and sensual aspects of our human condition. This article therefore contributes to the investigation of the relationship between Maimonides’ legal and philosophical writing on social themes. While Aristotle clearly influenced his reading of biblical and rabbinic texts for example, I will also argue that Maimonides’ religious and communal commitments helped to push his reading of Aristotle in a broadly inclusive direction— both with respect to the range of different goods that are appropriate to an ideal human life as well as the potential accessibility of those goods to different classes of persons. I offer this article as a corrective to the exaggerated focus on seclusion and solitary contemplation that has characterized academic scholarship on Maimonides.
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Jewish Law, Political Philosophy, and 131 moreEthics, Medieval Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Jewish Studies, Comparative Philosophy, Theology, Aristotle, History of Religion, Practical theology, Philosophical Theology, Medieval Studies, Religion and Politics, Kinship (Anthropology), Virtue Ethics, Ritual, Male Circumcision, Islamic Philosophy, Jewish Ethics, Kinship (History), Friendship Studies, History of Religions, History of Sociability, Islamic Studies, Contemplative Studies, Al-Andalus, Arabic Philosophy, Political Theology, Medieval Kinship, Friendship Theory, Philosophy Of Friendship, History of the Family, Rationalism (Religion), Anthropology of Kinship, Marriage Transactions (Anthropology of Kinship), Islamic Political Thought, Jewish Thought, History of Religion (Medieval Studies), Moral Philosophy, Moral Education, Jewish Philosophy, Friendship, Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Aristotle's Commentators, Moral emotions, Politics and Friendship, Aristotelianism, Anthropology of Friendship, Social and Political Philosophy, Jewish Ethics, Maimonides, Ritual Theory, Social Practice, Nicomachean Ethics, Judaism, Judeo-Arabic, Aristotle's Ethics, Medieval Political Theory, Medieval Political Thought, Maimonides, Moral and Political Philosophy, Gender and Etnicity (Anthropology of Friendship), Philosophy of Solitude, Kinship and Relatedness (Anthropology), Aristotle's Politics, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Kinship, Ibn Bajjah (Avempace), Religious Studies, Ritual Studies, Islamic and Jewish Studies, Joseph Shem Tov, Ancient Greek Philosophy / Aristotle, Medieval Aristotelianism, Medieval Arabic Philosophy, Ancient and Medieval Political Thought, Virtue theory, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Judaic Studies, Solitude, Abraham, Alfarabi, Medieval Jewish Studies, Rituals, Marriage and Kinship, Judaica, Friendship Relation, Moral Education and Religion, Halacha, Islamic intellectual history, medieval political thought,Islamic philosophy and mysticism, Eudaimonia, Medieval Political Philosophy, Kinship and Family Studies, History of Medieval Philosophy, Mishneh Torah, Kabbalah and Jewish Philosophy, History of Halakhah, Theology and Religious Studies, Philia, Theology and Religion, Contemplation, Reception of Aristotelian philosophy in the Middle Ages, Philosophy and Comparative Religions, Neo-Aristotelianism, Ritual Practices, Civic and Moral Education, Jewish Theology, Aristotelian Ethics, Maimonides' Guide of Perplexed, Medieval Political Theology, Medieval Aristotelian Tradition, Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Rambam, Islamicate Jewish and Mizrahi Studies, Ibn Bajja, Mishnah Avot, Philosophy of halakhah, Commandment in Jewish Thought, Jewish Religion and Thought, eudaimonia, Aristotle' Ethics, History of Philosophy, Practical Theology, Jewish political thought, Eudaimonic Well-Being, Kinship and Theology, Philosophy and Sociology of Human/animal Relations, Islamic Thought and Theology, Guide for the Perplexed, Medieval Judaica, Aristotle on Virtue, Ta'amei Ha Mitzvot, Muslim philosophy and thought, and Moreh Nevuchim
In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like “culture,” which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of “experience” has... more
In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like “culture,” which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of “experience” has generated its own interpretive literature, competing schools of analysis, and internal resistances. We propose that the anthropology of experience has achieved a degree of recognition and maturity that renders genealogical reflection, stocktaking, and agenda setting both possible and necessary.
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for na¨ıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls “the inclusive integrity of ‘experience.’” This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions. [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for na¨ıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls “the inclusive integrity of ‘experience.’” This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions. [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]
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The volume "New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties Across the Abrahamic Religions," edited by Todne Thomas, Asiya Malik and Rose Wellman, undertakes a comparative analysis of "spiritual kinship" (such as God-parenthood) in... more
The volume "New Directions in Spiritual Kinship: Sacred Ties Across the Abrahamic Religions," edited by Todne Thomas, Asiya Malik and Rose Wellman, undertakes a comparative analysis of "spiritual kinship" (such as God-parenthood) in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. My chapter, "Kinship as Ethical Relation," starts by questioning the usefulness of spiritual kinship as a category for the understanding of Judaism and expands that critique into an alternate model that might be more useful for comparative purposes. I argue that the idea of "Spiritual Kinship" emerges precisely from an a set of Christian taxonomies that are often implicitly or explicitly anti-Jewish (kinship of the flesh vs. kinship of the spirit, the letter and the spirit of the law, etc.) which makes it unsuitable as an "Abrahamic" category. Moreover, the specific ways in which it is unsuitable for comparative purposes actually demonstrate the importance of this category for understanding of Christianity and of the anthropological kinship categories (affinal, consanguineal and fictive) that were in large measure adapted from European Christian sources. Viewing kinship as a set of ethical relations, by contrast, does indeed allow for useful comparison across these religious divides and makes better sense of the ethnographic and textual data. Examples are brought from both modern and medieval Jewish life.
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, and 87 moreJewish Law, Anthropology, Historical Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Philosophical Anthropology, History of Religion, Ethnography, Practical theology, Kinship (Anthropology), Social and Cultural Anthropology, Spirituality, History of Anthropology, Early Christianity, Male Circumcision, Jewish History, Kinship (History), Anthropology of Christianity, History of Religions, Jewish - Christian Relations, Rabbinics, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Medieval Kinship, Anthropology of Kinship, Marriage Transactions (Anthropology of Kinship), Jewish Thought, Ethics and Religion, Rabbinic Literature, Religious Studies (Theory And Methodology), Aristotelianism, Cultural Anthropology, Jewish Ethics, Maimonides, Religious History, Aristotle's Ethics, Interreligious Dialogue, Jewish Cultural Studies, Maimonides, Gender and Etnicity (Anthropology of Friendship), Kinship and Relatedness (Anthropology), Anthropology of ethics and morality, Kinship, Religious Studies, Ancient Kinship, History of Jewish Law, Legal Philosophy, Semiotics of Law, Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations in the Middle Ages, Judaic Studies, Abraham, Interreligious Polemics, Jewish-Christian Polemics, Marriage and Kinship, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Inter Religious Studies, Anthropology of Ethics, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Marshall Sahlins, Judaica, Biblical Covenants, Kinship and Family Studies, Research Medieval Judaism and Jewish Christian relations in Late Antiquity and Medieval age., Anthropology of Morality, Social and Culture Anthropology, Ritual kinship and godparenthood, Biblical Abraham narrative, Spiritual Kinship, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Jewish Theology, Maimonides' Guide of Perplexed, Interreligious Studies, Political and Moral Anthropology, Rambam, Jewish Religion and Thought, Kinship and Religion, Anthropology of Religion, Moral Anthropology, Jewish peoplehood, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, medieval islam and Judaism, Kinship and Theology, Fictive Kinship, Sociology and Social Anthropology of Kinship, Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity, Book of Levit, Interpretations of Maimonidean Halakhah, Anthropology and Ethnography of Judaism and Jewish Peoples, and Anthropology and Theology
In this issue of Cambridge Anthropology, Joel Robbins argues from his fieldwork among Arapmin Christians that anthropologists need to better theorize the extinction of religious traditions and the circumstances under which those occur. My... more
In this issue of Cambridge Anthropology, Joel Robbins argues from his fieldwork among Arapmin Christians that anthropologists need to better theorize the extinction of religious traditions and the circumstances under which those occur. My invited commentary insists that categories of continuity and change are themselves evaluative and that anthropologists cannot take for granted their meaning without attending to the moral significance of change in local terms. I also draw on my own research among Ethiopian Beta Israel to illustrate this point. I will be happy to send copies of this publication on request.
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, and 44 moreSocial Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Philosophical Anthropology, History of Religion, History of Christianity, Kinship (Anthropology), Social and Cultural Anthropology, Spirituality, Anthropology of Christianity, Religious Conversion, Theological Anthropology, History of Religions, Anthropology of Kinship, Jewish Philosophy, Pentecostalism, Papua New Guinea, Anthropology of Ethiopia, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography of Religion, Judaism, Phenomenology of Religion, Jewish Cultural Studies, Kinship and Relatedness (Anthropology), Anthropology of ethics and morality, History of Religious Studies, Comparative Religions, Kinship, Religious Studies, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Pentecostalism and Charismatics, Kinship and Family Studies, Comparative Study of World Religions, Theology and Religious Studies, Anthropology of Mission and Conversion, Spiritual Kinship, Pentecostal studies, Anthropology of Religion, Fictive Kinship, Sociology and Social Anthropology of Kinship, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, Ethnography of Jewish Communities, and Anthropology and Theology
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Jewish Law, Philosophy, and 95 moreMedieval Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Jewish Studies, Aristotle, History of Religion, Virtue Ethics, Ritual, Jewish Mysticism, Law and Religion, Contemplative Pedagogy, Jewish History, History of Religions, Contemplative Studies, Al-Andalus, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Literature, History of Religion (Medieval Studies), Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Love, Moral Education, Jewish Philosophy, History of Moral Philosophy, Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Aristotelianism, Medieval Jewish History, Jewish Ethics, Maimonides, Ritual Theory, Religious Experience, Biblical Interpretation, Nicomachean Ethics, Al Andalus (Islamic History), Judaism, Aristotle's Ethics, Religion and the Law, Islamic Thought & Philosophy, Jewish Cultural Studies, Medieval Political Thought, Maimonides, Moral and Political Philosophy, Practical Reasons and Rationality, Religious Studies, Ritual Studies, Islamic and Jewish Studies, Medieval Aristotelianism, Religion and Law, Judaic Studies, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Medieval Jewish Studies, Saadya Gaon, Contemplative Prayer, Judaica, Moral Education and Religion, Halacha, Eudaimonia, Contemplative education, Mishneh Torah, Ancient Contemplative Practices, Contemplative Practice, Contemplation, Reception of Aristotelian philosophy in the Middle Ages, Neo-Aristotelianism, COMPARATIVE RELIGIOUS LAWS, Medieval Jewish-Islamic science (Medicine); medieval Arabic-Hebrew medical terminology, Aristotelian Ethics, Maimonides' Guide of Perplexed, Medieval Aristotelian Tradition, Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Rambam, Philosophy of halakhah, Jewish Religion and Thought, Anthropology of Religion, History of Philosophy, Torah Study, Moral Character in Education, Constructing a Theory of Halakhah, Contemplative Political Philosophy, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, medieval islam and Judaism, Philosophical Religions, Contemplative Practice Pedagogy, Philosophical Contemplation, Contemplative & Reflective Practice, Divine Wisdom, Guide for the Perplexed, Contemplative Practices, Medieval Judaica, Aristotle on Virtue, Hebraic and Judaic Studies, Ta'amei Ha Mitzvot, Muslim philosophy and thought, Taamei Hamitzvot, Sefer Hamitztvoth\, Moreh Nevuchim, Reception of Aristotelian Virtue Ethics, and Greek Theoria -- Roman Contemplation -- Modern Minfulness
Research Interests: Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Ethnography, and 37 moreExistential Phenomenological Psychotherapy, Social and Cultural Anthropology, History of Anthropology, Phenomenological Psychology, Phenomenology, Critical Medical Anthropology, Phenomenological Research Methodology, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Phenomenology of the body, Ethnographic fieldwork, Cultural Anthropology, Alfred Schutz (Sociology), Psychological Anthropolgy, Religious Experience, Phenomenology of the Body (Philosophy), Existential Anthropology, Phenomenology of Religion, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Psychoanalytic Anthropology, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, contemporary continental philosophy, axiology (theories and applied research on values), philosophical and cultural anthropology, diversity managment, gender studies, intercultural communication, and translations studies, Anthropology of Experience, Cultural Phenomenology, Medical Sociology / Anthropology, Experience, Ethos, Critical Ethnography, Existential phenomenology, Cultural Antrhropology, Socio-Cultural Anthropology, Cultural and Social Anthropology, Social Suffering, Suffering, .Medical Anthropology, Alfred Schutz, Anthropology of Religion, and Arthur Kleinman
Research Interests: Religion, Comparative Religion, Cultural Studies, Social Theory, Sociology of Culture, and 120 moreSociology of Religion, Anthropology, Ethics, Philosophy Of Religion, Social Anthropology, Cultural Sociology, Jewish Studies, Social Sciences, Practice theory, History of Religion, Practical theology, Religion and Politics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ritual, Theories of Meaning, History of Social Sciences, History of Anthropology, Identity (Culture), Theodicy, Culture Studies, Émmanuel Lévinas, History of Sociology, Levinas (Research Methodology), Émmanuel Lévinas (Research Methodology), History of Religions, Contemporary Social Theory, Phenomenological Sociology, Levinas, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Jewish Thought, Symbolic Anthropology (Anthropology), Jewish Philosophy, Ritual (Anthropology), Max Weber (Philosophy), Philosophy of Pain, Cultural Anthropology, Ritual Theory, Religious Experience, Social Practice, Philosophy of Human Suffering, Hasidism, Existential Anthropology, Sociology of religion (Religion), Phenomenology of Religion, Jewish Cultural Studies, Émmanuel Lévinas on ethics and the other, Theology of Suffering and Evil, Theologies of Suffering and Evil, Phenomenological Anthropology, Talal Asad, Anthropology of ethics and morality, History of Religious Studies, Max Weber, Religious Studies, Ritual Studies, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, contemporary continental philosophy, axiology (theories and applied research on values), philosophical and cultural anthropology, diversity managment, gender studies, intercultural communication, and translations studies, Anthropology of Experience, Judaic Studies, Clifford Geertz, Modern Jewish Thought, Violence and social suffering, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Representation of distant suffering, Rituals, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Sociology and Anthropology, Anthropology of Ethics, The Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Weber, Max Weber (Sociology), Social Suffering, Suffering, Social Suffering and Structural Injustice, Esh Kodesh, Geertz, Theology and Religious Studies, Theology & Religious Studies, Weberian social theory, Emmanuel Levinas and Judaism, Ritual practice, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Medicalization of Suffering, Ritual Practices, Meaninglessness, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Emanuel Levinas, Theology of Suffering, Phenomenological Approach in Social Sciences, Clifford Geertz, Epistemology of Anthropology, History of Anthropology, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, neuroantropologia, Geertz, interpretacja, Anthropology and Philosophy, Human Suffering, Philosophy and anthropology, Anthropology of Religion, Clifford Geertz, Definition of Religion, Spirituality in Theodicy, Redemptive suffering, Critique of Culture Theory, Anti-Theodicy, Ethics of Alterity, Emmanuel Levinas, History of Anthropology and Anthropological Theory, Mediated Representations of Suffering, Phenomenological and Hermeneutical Approaches to Religion, Phenomenology of Religions, Max Weber Studies, Ethics (Levinas), Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Polish Hasidism, Modern and Contemporary Jewish Literature and Thought, Medical Anthropology Mental Health and Social Suffering, Theorist Clifford Geertz, Virtuoso Religion, Emmanuel Lévinas, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, Useless Suffering, Reluigion as a Cultural System Clifford Geertz Summary, Otherwise than Being, and Anthropology and Theology
Published in: Robert W. Jensen and Eugene Korn editors, Swords into Plowshares: Reflections on Religion and Violence (Essays from the Institute for Theological Inquiry). Center for Jewish and Christian Understanding and Cooperation... more
Published in: Robert W. Jensen and Eugene Korn editors, Swords into Plowshares: Reflections on Religion and Violence (Essays from the Institute for Theological Inquiry). Center for Jewish and Christian Understanding and Cooperation (Kindle Edition 2014).
ABSTRACT
Don Seeman, the author of the chapter
“Violence, Divine Honor and the State,” has published a number
of studies touching on the relationship between the idea of divine honor and religious violence in different Jewish intellectual settings and he has also written as an anthropologist on the relationship between honor and political violence in modern Israel. Here, for the first time, he offers a synthetic reading that attempts to account for the close relationship between the anthropological and theological registers and to account in a systematic way for differences in approach between Jewish thinkers as diverse as Maimonides, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Rav Kook, Moses Mendelssohn and Emmanuel Levinas. He begins with a phenomenological critique of the way honor and shame have been treated in recent
social science literature. He argues that honor and shame are “bridge concepts” that are applied in
classical conceptions to human beings as well as to God and that they therefore help to condition theological as well as political or anthropological conceptions of ethics and violence. After brief analyses of key biblical and rabbinic texts, Seeman argues that Jewish approaches to divine honor and violence can be divided into three dominant paradigms: vernacular, mystical and philosophical. The vernacular paradigm treats divine honor in anthropomorphic terms that are indistinguishable from those used to explain human social relations and recourse to violence. The mystical or kabbalistic paradigm builds, in a sense, on this robust vernacular sensibility, but adds a distinctive and subtle metaphysics of divine presence. This is the context in which the utter rejection of the vernacular sensibility by philosophical Judaism
—
exemplified by Maimonides and by modern thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn
—
takes on such importance. Seeman argues that the very shape of Jewish modernity has been conditioned by arguments over the nature of divine honor and by the political ramifications of those differences. The rejection of vernacular divine honor is a central theme of
Mendelssohn’s
Jerusalem
to which contemporary Jews are still implicitly or explicitly responding. We cannot understand the complex relationships between religion, violence and the state without a much better understanding of these dynamics.
"
ABSTRACT
Don Seeman, the author of the chapter
“Violence, Divine Honor and the State,” has published a number
of studies touching on the relationship between the idea of divine honor and religious violence in different Jewish intellectual settings and he has also written as an anthropologist on the relationship between honor and political violence in modern Israel. Here, for the first time, he offers a synthetic reading that attempts to account for the close relationship between the anthropological and theological registers and to account in a systematic way for differences in approach between Jewish thinkers as diverse as Maimonides, R. Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto, Rav Kook, Moses Mendelssohn and Emmanuel Levinas. He begins with a phenomenological critique of the way honor and shame have been treated in recent
social science literature. He argues that honor and shame are “bridge concepts” that are applied in
classical conceptions to human beings as well as to God and that they therefore help to condition theological as well as political or anthropological conceptions of ethics and violence. After brief analyses of key biblical and rabbinic texts, Seeman argues that Jewish approaches to divine honor and violence can be divided into three dominant paradigms: vernacular, mystical and philosophical. The vernacular paradigm treats divine honor in anthropomorphic terms that are indistinguishable from those used to explain human social relations and recourse to violence. The mystical or kabbalistic paradigm builds, in a sense, on this robust vernacular sensibility, but adds a distinctive and subtle metaphysics of divine presence. This is the context in which the utter rejection of the vernacular sensibility by philosophical Judaism
—
exemplified by Maimonides and by modern thinkers such as Moses Mendelssohn
—
takes on such importance. Seeman argues that the very shape of Jewish modernity has been conditioned by arguments over the nature of divine honor and by the political ramifications of those differences. The rejection of vernacular divine honor is a central theme of
Mendelssohn’s
Jerusalem
to which contemporary Jews are still implicitly or explicitly responding. We cannot understand the complex relationships between religion, violence and the state without a much better understanding of these dynamics.
"
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Jewish Law, Anthropology, and 91 moreMedical Anthropology, Philosophy Of Religion, Jewish Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, History of Religion, Ethnography, Literature, Practical theology, Israel Studies, Religion and Politics, Hebrew Bible, Jewish Mysticism, Violence (Anthropology), Émmanuel Lévinas, History of Religions, Political Violence, Biblical Theology, Scriptural Reasoning, Politics and Religion, Levinas, Religion, Conflict and Peacebuilding, Religion and Violence/Nonviolence, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Literature, Jewish Philosophy, Books of Samuel, Medieval Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Ethics, Maimonides, Modern Jewish Philosophy, Religious Experience, Ethnography of Religion, Religious History, Kabbalah, Judaism, Hasidism, Israelite Religion, Religion and Violence, Phenomenology of Religion, Jewish Cultural Studies, Comparative Theology, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East, Maimonides, Israel, Religious Zionism, HIV, Moses Mendelssohn, Israel and Zionism, Religious Fundamentalism, Religious Studies, Philosophy and Religion, Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism, Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Honor, Orthodox Judaism, Contemporary Kabbalah, Honor-Shame culture, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Judaica, Rav Kook, History of Kabbalah, Anthropology of Violence, Kabbalah and Jewish Philosophy, Universalism vs particularism in Judaism, Religious Zionism, Ethics, Religion, and Politics, Theology and Religious Studies, Culture of Honor, Comparative Politics, Orthodox Judaism, Religion and Politics, Jewish Theology, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Maimonides' Guide of Perplexed, Chabad, Jewish Thought and Philosophy, Rambam, Jewish Religion and Thought, Peace and Conflicts Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Moses Mendelshon, Emmanuel Levinas, Religious and Political Violence, Phenomenology of Religions, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Comparative Philosophy and Religion, Ethics (Levinas), Law, Religion and Violence, Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Theology of Violence, Israel Salanter, and Anthropology of Violence and Conflict
Research Interests: Jewish Studies, Israel Studies, Black/African Diaspora, Ethiopian Studies, Immigration, and 30 moreAfrican Diaspora Studies, African Religion in Africa and the Diaspora, Race and Ethnicity, Israel/Palestine, African Diaspora, Race and ethnicity (Anthropology), Anthropology of Ethiopia, Ethiopia, Ethnicity, History of Race and Ethnicity, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Jewish Cultural Studies, Horn of Africa, Judaic Studies, Horn of Africa Studies, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Jewish history and cultural studies, Anthropology of migration, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Ethnicity and National Identity, Immigration and Ethnicity, Ethiopian Jewry, Ethnicity and Identity Politics, Ethiopian Immigrants, Ethnicity and Nationality, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, Israeli studies, and Anthropology and Ethnography of Judaism and Jewish Peoples
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Literature, Anthropology, Jewish Studies, and 66 moreHistory of Religion, Literature, Sociology of Emotion, Jewish Mysticism, History Of Emotions, Eastern European and Russian Jewish History, Mysticism, Theodicy, Religious Conversion, Jewish - Christian Relations, Comparative Mysticism, Spirituality & Mysticism, Anthropology of emotions, Jewish Thought, Russian Religious Thought, Jewish Literature, Religion and Literature, Literature and Religion, Kabbalah, Judaism, Hasidism, Sacred Texts, Modern Jewish History, Jewish Cultural Studies, Theology of Suffering and Evil, Theologies of Suffering and Evil, Modern Judaism, Mystical Theology, Religious Studies, Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism, Judaic Studies, Zohar, Modern Jewish Thought, Violence and social suffering, Religious Conversions, Conversion, Orthodox Judaism, Russian Jewry, Hasidism, Jewish Traditional Society, Comparative Mystical Literature, Hebrew Chassidic, Social Suffering, Mystical experience, Mystical literature, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Religious Apostasy, Habad, Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, Cross cultural studies of grief, Chabad, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Anthropology of Religion, Kaballah,chassidut,jewish Misticism, Habad, Chassidism, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Hasidic Chabad, Mystical Psychology, Schools of Mystical Thought and Evolution of Them, Mediated Representations of Suffering, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Rabbinic Textuality, Chabad-Lubavitch, Dovber Schneuri (, Lubavitch Hasidism, Religion In Russia, Mysticism and Literature, and Intellectual History of Hasidism
We live in a time of extreme and increasing partisanship in American politics, and this may pose special challenges for rabbis and other public religious intellectuals. Should I eschew politics from the pulpit altogether as a pragmatic... more
We live in a time of extreme and increasing partisanship in American politics, and this may pose special challenges for rabbis and other public religious intellectuals. Should I eschew politics from the pulpit altogether as a pragmatic effort to serve a politically diverse community? Or should I feel called upon to adopt what some have labeled a " prophetic voice, " speaking forcefully in the name of Torah for a set of conclusions that may be more or less in line with those adopted by one of the warring factions of contemporary American civil life? As a personal matter, neither of these feels particularly authentic or useful. How can I self-righteously claim the authority of Torah for positions that can only be loosely accommodated, in the vast majority of cases, by the classical sources that define our tradition? And how, on the other hand, can a Torah divorced from the pressing issues of our day—refugees, national defense, taxation, and civil rights—be considered in any way a Torah of life? The pragmatic issues faced by rabbis in the field are real, but I want to take a more reflective approach to thinking about the different valences of Torah that we teach. What might a coherent philosophical account of the problem of " politics from the pulpit " look like?
Research Interests:
This short reflective essay on Malbim's (1845) commentary on the Biblical Book of Esther explores Malbim's "proto-feminist" approach to the analysis of genocide and misogyny in Megillat Esther. Grounded in classical midrash and close... more
This short reflective essay on Malbim's (1845) commentary on the Biblical Book of Esther explores Malbim's "proto-feminist" approach to the analysis of genocide and misogyny in Megillat Esther. Grounded in classical midrash and close reading of biblical texts, Malbim demonstrates the intersectionality of oppression and the need for more political sophistication in the way we read biblical texts.
Research Interests: Religion, Jewish Studies, Eastern European and Russian Jewish History, Feminism, Midrash, and 19 moreAntisemitism/Racisms, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Literature, Judaism, Jewish Cultural Studies, Intersectionality, Biblical Exegesis, Antisemitism, Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Book of Esther, Judaica, Old Testament Exegesis, Rabbinic Judaism, Jewish Feminism, The Book of Esther, Purim, Literary Study of Biblical Narrative, and Book of Esther Literary Analysis
R. Kalonymos Shapira at Torah in Motion, Toronto
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, New Religious Movements, Neuropsychology, Psychological Anthropology, and 71 moreMedical Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Theology, Practical theology, Material culture of religion, Mindfulness, Spirituality, Jewish Mysticism, Neuroanthropology, Psychology of Religion, Theory of Mind, Embodiment, Embodied Mind and Cognition, William James, Jewish History, Prayer, Science and Religion, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Metaphysics of Mind, Theology and Culture, Spirituality & Mysticism, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Materiality (Anthropology), Jewish Thought, Religious Studies (Theory And Methodology), Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Ethics, Maimonides, Psychological Anthropolgy, Ritual Theory, Religious Experience, Hasidism, Modern Jewish History, Existential Anthropology, History of Science and Religion, Jewish Cultural Studies, Embodiment Theory, Maimonides, Modern Judaism, Religion and Science, Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Healing and Religion, Radical empiricism, Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Materiality, Orthodox Judaism, Russian Jewry, Hasidism, Jewish Traditional Society, Spirituality and Prayer, Theology and Religious Studies, Theology and Religion, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Anthropology of Judaism, Religion and Theology, Hasidim, Maimonides' Guide of Perplexed, Chabad, Rambam, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, Anthropology of Religion, Habad, Chassidism, Religion and Materiality, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, James Williams, Hasidic Judaism, Hasidic Chabad, Chabad-Lubavitch, Lubavitch Hasidism, Neo Hasidism, and Chasidut
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Philosophy Of Religion, Jewish Studies, History of Religion, and 55 moreMaterial Culture Studies, Material culture of religion, Contemporary Spirituality, Spirituality, Jewish Mysticism, Embodiment, Prayer, Mysticism, History of Religions, Theology and Culture, Comparative Mysticism, Spirituality & Mysticism, Contemplative Studies, Epistemology Of Religious Experience, Jewish Thought, Jewish Philosophy, Material Religion, Religious Experience, Religious History, Judaism, Hasidism, Phenomenology of Religion, Jewish Cultural Studies, Modern Judaism, Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Contemplative Prayer, Embodiment and bodies, Russian Jewry, Hasidism, Jewish Traditional Society, Jewish Prayer, Comparative Mystical Literature, Spirituality and Prayer, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Contemplation, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Hasidim, Chabad, Contemplative Science, Anthropology of Religion, Hasidut, Kaballah,chassidut,jewish Misticism, Chassidism, Religion and Materiality, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Chassidus, Hasidic Judaism, Contemplative Practices, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Chabad-Lubavitch, Lubavitch Hasidism, and Chasidut
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, New Religious Movements, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, and 82 moreLiteracy, Jewish Studies, History of Religion, Religious Education, Material Culture Studies, Practical theology, Material culture of religion, Religion and Politics, Ritual, Jewish Mysticism, Psychology of Religion, Jewish History, American Religion, Prayer, Mysticism, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Culture Studies, History of Religions, Theology and Culture, Comparative Mysticism, Contemplative Studies, Faith, Jewish Thought, Jewish Philosophy, Material Religion, Messianism, Ritual Theory, Religious Experience, Religious History, Kabbalah, Judaism, Hasidism, Jewish Messianism, Modern Jewish History, Sociology of religion (Religion), Jewish Cultural Studies, Material Culture, Religious Studies, Textuality, American Judaism, Kabbalah, Christian Kabbalah, Jewish Mysticism, Judaic Studies, Modern Jewish Thought, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Orthodox Judaism, Contemplative Prayer, Belief, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Russian Jewry, Hasidism, Jewish Traditional Society, Jewish Prayer, Judaica, Orthodoxy, Religion and Public Life, Spirituality and Prayer, Theology and Religious Studies, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Ritual Practices, Habad, Shneur Zalman of Lyadi, Chabad, Anthropology of Religion, Torah Study, Hasidut, Kaballah,chassidut,jewish Misticism, Habad, Chassidism, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Musar Movement In Lithuania, Religion and Materiality, Hasidic Judaism, Hasidic Chabad, Material Culture and Religioin, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Modern Orthodox Judaism, Rabbinic Textuality, Chabad-Lubavitch, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, Lubavitch Hasidism, Neo Hasidism, Hafetz Hayim, Musar, Chassidic Philosophy, and Simple Faith
This is my contribution to a round table on Ethnography and Theology I convened for the online journal Practical Matters (volume 6), 2013. Ethnographic writing as a hard moral praxis.
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Social Anthropology, and 47 moreJewish Studies, Theology, History of Religion, Ethnography, Catholic Studies, Practical theology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, History of Anthropology, Anthropology of Christianity, Popular Culture and Religious Studies, Ethnographic Fieldwork (Anthropology), History of Religions, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Sociology of Religious Experience, Scriptural Reasoning, Ethnographic fieldwork, Cultural Anthropology, Religious Experience, Ethnographic Methods, Philosophy of Human Suffering, Hasidism, Existential Anthropology, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Theology of Suffering and Evil, Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Experience, Judaic Studies, Violence and social suffering, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Anthropology of Islam, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Cultural and Social Anthropology, Social Suffering, Suffering, Social Suffering and Structural Injustice, Anthropology of Violence, Anthropology of Traumatic Memory, Theology and Religious Studies, Anthropology of Judaism, Theology of Suffering, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Human Suffering, Anthropology of Religion, Practical Theology, and Medical Anthropology Mental Health and Social Suffering
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Practical theology, Anthropology of Christianity, and 16 moreEthnography (Research Methodology), Ethnography of Religion, Phenomenological Anthropology, Anthropology of ethics and morality, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Experience, Ethnographic Writing, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Anthropology of Islam, Social Suffering, Theology and Religion, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Anthropology of Religion, Moral Anthropology, and Theology and Ethnography
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Sociology of Religion, Ethnic Studies, American Studies, and 33 moreJewish Studies, Religion in America, Religion and Politics, Race and Ethnicity, Jewish History, American Religion, African American Religions, Ethnic and Racial Studies, History of Religions, Ethnic minorities, Ethnicity, Judaism, Modern Jewish History, Sociology of religion (Religion), Jewish Cultural Studies, Modern Judaism, American Religious History, Religious Studies, American Judaism, Reform Judaism, sociology of religion, Secularization, Judaic Studies, Liberal Judaism, Orthodox Judaism, ethnic studies – Jewish American identities, Ethnicity and Religion, Conservative Judaism, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnicity and Identity Politics, 20th Century American Judaism, American Jewish Studies, Secular Judaism, and Ethnography of Jewish Communities
Research Interests:
Based on ethnographic research I conducted as senior honors student, this paper examines the ways in which Ethiopians in Israel talk about race and color as elements of both distinction and shared identity in the context of meetings with... more
Based on ethnographic research I conducted as senior honors student, this paper examines the ways in which Ethiopians in Israel talk about race and color as elements of both distinction and shared identity in the context of meetings with African Americans, white Israeli and American Jews and Black Hebrews in Israel
Research Interests: Jewish Studies, Middle East Studies, Israel Studies, Ethiopian Studies, Race and Racism, and 12 moreRace and Ethnicity, Race and ethnicity (Anthropology), Israeli Society, Anthropology of the Horn of Africa, Judaic Studies, Ethiopian Jews, Beta Israel, Anthropology of Religion, Ethiopian Jewry, Ethiopian Immigrants, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, and Ethnography of Jewish Communities
Don Seeman and Daniel Reiser are hosting an international conference/workshop on the teachings of R. Kalonymos Shapira, author of the last known work of traditional Jewish scholarship written on Polish soil, in the Warsaw Ghetto. Our... more
Don Seeman and Daniel Reiser are hosting an international conference/workshop on the teachings of R. Kalonymos Shapira, author of the last known work of traditional Jewish scholarship written on Polish soil, in the Warsaw Ghetto. Our conference celebrates Reiser's publication of a new critical edition of R. Shapira's Ghetto sermons and highlights some of the new directions in scholarship on his work.
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Jewish Studies, Theology, and 85 moreHistory of Religion, Genocide Studies, Jewish Mysticism, Mysticism, History of Religions, Comparative Mysticism, Spirituality & Mysticism, Holocaust Studies, Polish Literature, Religion and Violence/Nonviolence, Phenomenology of the body, Jewish Thought, Jewish Philosophy, Suffering and Intimacy, Modern Jewish Philosophy, Hassidism, Ritual Theory, Religious Experience, Philosophy of Human Suffering, Kabbalah, Judaism, Hasidism, Religious Persecution, Poland, Problem of Evil, Religion and Violence, Existential Anthropology, Phenomenology of Religion, Theology of Suffering and Evil, Holocaust Literature, Mystical Theology, Phenomenological Anthropology, Jews in Poland, Polish Jewry, Religious Studies, Genocide, Anthropology of Experience, Judaic Studies, Post-Holocaust Theology, Modern Jewish Thought, Violence and social suffering, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Contemporary Kabbalah, Warsaw Ghetto, Evil in literature, Russian Jewry, Hasidism, Jewish Traditional Society, Comparative Mystical Literature, Judaica, evil and suffering, the Holocaust, hermeneutics and ethics, critical theory, and literature, Janusz Korczak, Social Suffering, Mystical experience, Suffering, Sacred Scripture, Violence, Suffering and Subjectivity, Kalonymus Shapiro, Theology and Religious Studies, Jewish Mysticism, Hasidism, Jewish Mysticism and Qabbalah, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Jewish Theology, Theology of Suffering, Anthropology of Violence and Suffering, Eastern European Jewish Studies, Anthropology of Religion, Hasidut, Kaballah,chassidut,jewish Misticism, Parshanut, Hasidic Judaism, Existential Phenomenology of Religion, Mystical Psychology, Schools of Mystical Thought and Evolution of Them, Jewish Mysticism/Kababalah, Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Jewish Mysticism/Quabbalah, Modern Jewish Biblical Exegesis, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, Mystical Experience In Judaism, Piaseczner Rebbe, Chasidut, Literature and mysticism, Warsaw ghetto artists and writers, and Oyneg Shabes (Ringelblum Archive)
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Sociology of Religion, Anthropology, and 24 moreJewish Studies, Ethnography, Buddhist Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology of Christianity, Islamic Studies, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Ritual Theory, Ethnography of Religion, Sociology of religion (Religion), Phenomenological Anthropology, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Experience, Hindu Studies, Sociology and Anthropology of Religion, Anthropology of Islam, Theology and Religious Studies, Christian Studies, Anthropology of Judaism, Anthropology of Jewish communities, Anthropology of Religion, Ethnography, Anthropology, History of Religions, Ethnography of Jewish Communities, and Anthropology of Indian Religion
Research Interests:
The Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University is pleased to announce a two day international workshop (March 18-19, 2015) convened by Prof. Don Seeman and Dr. Shlomo Guzmen: "Jews, Text and Ethnography." This workshop will... more
The Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University is pleased to announce a two day international workshop (March 18-19, 2015) convened by Prof. Don Seeman and Dr. Shlomo Guzmen: "Jews, Text and Ethnography." This workshop will address critical theoretical and methodological issues in the anthropology of Judaism as well as comparative issues raised by the anthropology of textuality in Christianity and Islam. Participants include Jonathan Boyarin (Cornell University) Philip Wexler (the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Ayala Fader (Fordham), Marcy Brink Danan (The Hebrew University), Don Seeman (Emory) Alan Brill (Seton Hall), Simon Dein (University College, London), James Bielo (Miami University) and Sam Cooper (Bar-Ilan). More Details to Follow.
Research Interests: Religion, Abrahamic Religions, Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Social Anthropology, and 39 moreJewish Studies, Ethnography, Practical theology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ritual, Jewish Mysticism, Anthropology of Christianity, Ethnography (Research Methodology), Scriptural Reasoning, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Literature, Jewish Literature, Cultural Anthropology, Literary study of the Bible, Biblical Interpretation, Anthropology of Education, Hasidism, Jewish Cultural Studies, Modern Judaism, Comparative Religions, Religious Studies, Ritual Studies, Textuality, Anthropology of Texts, Judaic Studies, Texts and textuality, Modern Jewish Thought, Anthropology of Islam, Cultural and Social Anthropology, Sacred Scripture, Comparative Study of World Religions, Chabad, Anthropology of Religion, Torah Study, Modern Jewish Thought and Theology, Rabbinic Textuality, Modern and Contemporary Jewish Literature and Thought, Anthropology of Jews and Judaism, and Ethnography of Jewish Communities
In 1970, Shlomo Pines argued on thematic and linguistic grounds that the 14 th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun probably had access to Maimonides' 12 th century Judeo-Arabic work Guide of the Perplexed. Pines minimized Maimonides'... more
In 1970, Shlomo Pines argued on thematic and linguistic grounds that the 14 th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun probably had access to Maimonides' 12 th century Judeo-Arabic work Guide of the Perplexed. Pines minimized Maimonides' influence on Ibn Khaldun to one brief passage in which Khaldun discusses aspects of Jewish or biblical history. Given the probability that Ibn Khaldun had access to the Guide, however, I argue that this philosophical work contributed significantly to Ibn Khaldun's theory of kinship solidarity (" group feeling ") or 'asabiyya upon which much of his Muqaddima turns. Three out of five of Ibn Khaldun's " premises " regarding kinship: the relationship between group feeling and agnatic lineage, the importance of desert life for promoting group feeling, and the importance of political rule by members of one's own lineage are all prefigured in Maimonides' account. I argue that Maimonides may have provide Ibn Khaldun with an important bridge between Arab kinship solidarity and Aristotelian philia. Beyond the claim of influence, this essay argues that both Maimonides' Guide and Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima may be better understood when read in juxtaposition. As exemplars of a broad medieval religious culture concerned with Aristotle, with kinship norms rooted in sacred scriptures and with arguments about historical causality, these are works that shed light on one another's most important themes. Maimonides reveals a missing intellectual context for Ibn Khaldun's 'asabiyya theory, which remains influential to this day; reading Ibn Khaldun helps to clarify Maimonides' neglected reflections on social theory and the centrality of kinship.
Research Interests:
Building on a 1970 essay by Shlomo Pines showing that Ibn Khaldun most likely read the Guide of the Perplexed I demonstrate that central features of Ibn Khaldun's theory of social solidarity ('asabiyya) are foreshadowed by Maimonides, and... more
Building on a 1970 essay by Shlomo Pines showing that Ibn Khaldun most likely read the Guide of the Perplexed I demonstrate that central features of Ibn Khaldun's theory of social solidarity ('asabiyya) are foreshadowed by Maimonides, and that this recognition helps to put both authors in a better interpretive context.
Bioethics has emerged as an academic discipline shaping the ways in which new reproductive technologies are used and conceptualized. While kinship and reproduction almost always raise implicit questions about... more
Bioethics has emerged as an academic discipline shaping the ways in which new reproductive technologies are used and conceptualized. While kinship and reproduction almost always raise implicit questions about ethics, the nature of personhood and the structure of cosmology, self-defined “religious bioethics” has done so in specially explicit and powerful ways. In recent years, moreover, the English language literature on first Christian and then Jewish bioethics has also burgeoned with attempts to create Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist bioethical accounts drawing on distinctive hermeneutic traditions and ethical strategies—each seeking a “seat at the table” - and the ability to help shape or enter into a conversation with the dominant biomedical (and avowedly secular) bioethical discourse. Yet while anthropologists have developed a significant literature engaging and critiquing the dominant biomedical discourse on reproduction, there has been far less explicit engagement with this emerging sacred bioethical literature. This chapter probes the relationship between avowedly sacred and secular bioethical discourses with respect to reproductive technology. It probes the relationship between the theologies and ethnographies of assisted reproduction and what these fields might learn from one another.
I argue that Saiman's beautifully written book is actually a work of practical theology rather than history or phenomenology of Jewish Law. This help's to explain the book's power, as well as its lacunae. Free and online at the journal of... more
I argue that Saiman's beautifully written book is actually a work of practical theology rather than history or phenomenology of Jewish Law. This help's to explain the book's power, as well as its lacunae. Free and online at the journal of Law and Religion until February 15, 2020!
