Below are the postings for the electronic discussion we will be conducting between Nov. 11-Nov 21.

Reli 204 Students,

Important Announcements:

1. Late Saturday afternoon you will find my on-line version of the Wednesday and Friday class discussion. It will be on the Lecture page under Nov. 12. This lecture is my own account of the course.

2. Some of the TAs have notified me of their dissatisfaction with the performance of a number of persons on paper #2. You should remember that 35% of your grade will be determined by my discussions with your TA about your work on papers, your participation in section conversations, your email and Forum assignments, etc. A word to the wise.

3. The information below is relevant to some of the things we have been discussing in class and which the TAs and I will continue to discuss on the Forum page. I will be posting on the Forum page something called Issue #1: Civil Judaism and Issue #2: Religion and the Study of Religion. The postings below in each category are the launching for this electronic discussion. At a minimum you are asked to (a) read the material below (b) consult the Forum page a few times during the week to follow our discussion and if you want (c) participate in the discussion.

Issue #1: Civil Judaism: A posting, a reply and a clarification.

a. It seems fairly clear to me that Civil Judaism is a religion, but I have some problems with it being defined as a Judaism. Where is the line drawn between a Judaism and a new religion? When a Judaism leaves out God and bases itself on a culture, why is it called a Judaism? In doing this, we seem to be calling one single culture(the Ashkenazi culture) THE Jewish culture. That would leave out many Jews, such as Sephardic Jews. When does a religion stop being a Judaism? I find it hard to call two religions Judaisms when one has a belief in God and the other does not.

A side question I would like to see discussed: Can civil Judaism successfully reproduce itself without a dependence on texts as Abrams suggests?

b. (reply) I think that just because civil Jews don't mention God, it doesn't necessarily mean anything about their beliefs. Civil Judaism certainly emphasizes culture more than beliefs, but does that mean that they don't believe in a higher power? I don't think that, because they emphasize culture, they "leave out God". Also, throughout this course we have talked about the importance of acknowledging that there are numerous Judaisms, not just one, so Civil Judaism's centrality in culture does not necessarily include Sephardic Jews. Not all Judaisms are relevant to all Jews. Hasidic Jews do not try to incorporate Reform Jews in their Judaism either. In addition, if we draw the line to say, "This is where Judaism ceases to be a religion," we are destroying many possibilities for the future of Judaism. One of the reasons it has survived is that it is adaptable to the situations in which it finds itself.

c. (Clarification) I think that my question was a bit misunderstood. I never supposed that civil Judaism is not a religion. I believe it to be one. I was questioning its being a Judaism. Also, the reasoning behind my saying that civil Judaism leaves out God is first, civil Judaism avoids talking about God, and second, in my TA discussion group we came to a consensus that most Jews who would classify themselves as civil or cultural Jews, do not believe in God.

Issue #2: Religion and the Study of Religion: Three postings.

a. I recently experienced the tension so often felt by Jewish scholars within the secular academy. In desiring to investigate Judaism(s) in a scholarly manner, I found it very interesting in the beginning of the semester when Prof. Zwelling introduced the prevalent idea that the Torah was written by the "Exiles" in around 586 BCE. This notion that the authors used an intentional rhetorical style shed light on the way in which the Bible was written. However, last week I attended the first meeting of the Kabbalah discussion group, organized by Peter Salzman. With an increased interest in strengthening my belief and incorporating more ritual practices into my life, I have been exploring the path of Jewish meditation and Kabbalah. But, as I was sitting in the Chaplain's lounge, discussing how the words of the Torah are not merely words, but tangible vessels for the "light" of G-d, I became very confused and distraught. Now I am feeling an intense conflict within myself. I was wondering if anyone else was feeling a similar type of conflict, or if anyone had any suggestions of how to "deal" with this conflict.

b. In his article, Cutter reiterates the statement that "the push to the study of Judaica must originate in the desire to explore personal identity"(p. 169) This statement is discouraging, but maybe there is some validity to it. In the panel discussion on Friday, I hope we may at least continue the discussion of how the religions of students in the class, effect their learning, and possibly talk about Cutter's statement.

c. In doing the reading for our paper I noticed that all of the authors seem to view Jewish studies as for Jews. Some of them used the terms "we" or "our religion" consistently. I have big problems with this. I don't feel that any academic discipline should be for only one group or should be used by a group for its own aims, which is how many of these authors seem to view Jewish studies. I see the academy to at least trying to be unbiased. The idea of the Jewish studies being somehow for the Jewish community, brought out particularly in the article "Howard's End", is one that I really dislike. I just thought this might be a good thing for the class to discuss.

GO TO THE FORUM PAGE FOR THE DISCUSSION ITSELF.

Revised Schedule, Paper Assignments, Final Exam: Oct. 30

2. In addition to the reduced readings in Prell (see sheet), the following changes in the readings should be noted:

b. For Nov. 10: Read only Mittleman and Abrams and skip the selections from Rheinharz.

3. Hypernews Students in Sections #2 (Reiss), #3 (Vazquez) and Yoon: Go to Keck Lab for a lesson on Tuesday, Nov. 4 at 7:00 p.m.

Hypernews assignment for these Sections: Between Nov. 5-12 all members should send to Hypernews a question or an issue that they think should be discussed. The TAs and Zwelling will choose one or two of these and we will carry on a discussion on Hypernews. Anyone else in the class will be free to join in the conversation.

All remaining Sections should go to Keck Lab on Nov. 11 at 7:00. Assignment to be announced.

4. Papers There will be two more papers due for the second half of the semester.

The next three-page paper will be due on November 12. For that day you will be reading various essays on Jewish studies within the University. For the paper you will be asked to read Yerushalmi, Cutter, Horowitz, and Green and then reflect on our course in light of the differing notions of Jewish studies advocated by these scholars. You might want to focus on any one (or some combination) of the following topics:

A final paper three page paper will be due on Dec 3. For this paper we want to take you beyond the classroom and the library. You have three choices: a. Go to some Jewish prayer service and write a brief ethnography in the style of such writings provided by Heilman and Prell. If you plan to go to services at the Bayit on a Friday night it would be useful to alert Rabbi Ilyse Kramer at 2278 some time early in the week to alert her. The evening includes a brief service, a study session embedded in the service, and a meal and singing after the meal. An ethnography would include the whole evening and all of these activities. b. A write-up of a visit to a Jewish Museum. Here one could do a number of things including (1) assessing how the material culture of Judaism is represented; (2) a kind of "visitor-response" piece; (3) an attempt to locate the ideology of the museum. c. Exploring Jewish resources on the Internet. There will be a special session for students interested in this option.

4. Final Exam The final exam will have a short take-home component that will be due in my box at 12:00 noon in the Religion department on the first day of finals. There will be some choices here including a. A TA announced question. b. A reflection on the notion of Judaism after having studied Judaisms. c. A group project: creating a website for the course.

HyperNews

This is a step by step guide on how to make yourself a member of the HyperNews Forum

1. Click on the "Forum" section in the left frame. This will take you to the HyperNews Page

2. Click on the Icon on the bottom of the page that says "Members". It looks like this: .

3. In the first field, enter a User ID for yourself. This ID should be your first initial and last name. For example, my user ID is azeller since my name is Adam Zeller.

4. Enter a password for yourself in the next field. Repeat this password in the field named "New Password Again"

5. In the next field, write your full name. In the field after that, type in your email password.

6. Now skip toward the bottom of the page. There will be a checkbox that says "Join or Change" Select it. It looks like this:

7. Now click on the "Do It" box next to it. You should now be a member.

Questions? Email me at azeller@wesleyan.edu

Oct. 12:

Two things to keep in mind when reading Heilman:

1. Heilman notes at one point (p. 79) that "...devotion, concentration, intension, and intensity has been hard to maintain even among the putatively pious." Rabbinic Judaism, we have noted, does attempt to heighten ones awareness of (even) the ordinary, though more often then not rituals are characterized by a kind of routinization. (Go to any service of Jews [and non-Jews], and you will see few persons if any in states of transport or intensive concentration. We will be distinguishing this Judaism from mystical Judaism with the new materail on enactments of Rabbinic Judaism (Talmud study in Heilman, prayer in Prell) by noting how just this routinization might be in some ways the goal of Rabbinic Judaism. What is sought is not the transport that is cultivated in mystical Judaism, a continuing sense of a universe electrically charged with the divine, but a much more modest, hovering awareness more fitting to leading an ordinary life. As you read along in the Heilman note how much more low-keyed and steady is the Judaism here as compared to the high-voltage life of the Kabbalist.

2. We will have much to say about Heilman's anthropological method and his theories (models of understanding, really) such as cultural performance and social drama. Note how he will punctuate his account by saying such things as (p. 72) "This is not to say that the participants are fully cognizant of what they are doing." An issue for us to be thinking about is just those sorts of things that an outsider migtht know about the persons he is observing that the insiders don't know about thmeselves. Keep an eye open for similar comments, and let us be reflecting on this matter of some things being so deeply embedded in a culture that they remain invisible to the insider. This matter of things taken-for-granted relates to the issue of how the socially constructed gets "naturalized." In reading Heilman we get a chance to see how some of these deeply embedded things get naturalized.

Sept. 29:

My apologies for not getting this to you earlier. A few things on the Boyarin.

1. Anaphora is a term for a repition, a substitute of one word for another that is missing, an absence that the reader fills in. An example: "Jane throws the ball better than John does" where the "does" substitutes for "throws". Another example: " I like long letters more than short ones," where "ones" substitutes for the repeated (and understood) letters.

2. deictic, deixis means a pointing, a showing, and in the way Boyarin is discussing things it means a presence, something that has to be there in order to be ppointed to.

Boyarin is interested in how an intertexually read midrash will make something absent (a past historical moment such as the divine revealtion at the Sea in ch. 15 of Exodus or at Sinai in ch. 19 of Exodus), how something absent can become present in and through the reading of midrash in the way he is suggesting.

Looking ahead to Sept. 24:

Constructing the Other outside (the non-Jew/Gentile) and the Other Within (Women): The making and marking of differences.

Looking ahead to Sept. 26 and Sept. 29: Bruns and Boyarin Readings, a Guide

A Guide to Reading Bruns and Boyarin:

Both authors are interested in describing exactly what kind of genre Midrash is and how it intends itself to be read. (Texts often not only mandate a way of reading--which we are at liberty of course to defy); they also interpret themselves. That is, as both Bruns and Boyarin argue, they themselves are examples of (a certain kind) of reading.

Below are some salient points about what each is saying. When you read the articles keep this in mind and use it as a filter for some of the dense prose and ideas in Boyarin especially.

1. Both B&B argue that the Midrash, like the Bible before it, are intertexts and must be read as such. An intertext is one in dialogue with itself. The text is self-referential. The Biblical text is not a reflection of the realities it is representing (the stormy history of Israel's relationship with its God), but is constantly referring back to itself. That is, parts of it are responding to and in conversation with other parts. This is what Bruns means when he says that the text is reflexive.

Often something that comes early gets interpreted later within the text (with the hopes that the reader outside the text will make a similar interpretation). An example in the Bible: You read many stories in Genesis about patriarchs wandering into the land, then being for whatever reasons being forced out of the land (Abraham and other patriarchs must descend to Egypt (always described as a dangerous place) because of famine; Jacob leaves because his brother Esau seeks to slay him; Joseph is sold into slavery). Only when we come to Exodus do we see that these stories are adumbrations--that is deliberate anticipations--of the whole people leaving the land (see the beginning chapter of Exodus) and descending into Egypt, slavery there, and then a return wandering towards home again. And only at the very end of the saga can we read the Exodus story as an adumbration of the final episodes of the history: exile from the land and then the return by the survivors. We can say that in this way that the different narratives, and often specific words in a narrative (do you recall how we matched the exact terms "exiles" and "survivors" in Ezra and in Genesis 45?) are in dialogue, and in this way the texts reads and interprets itself. A shorthand way of saying this is that the text enacts its own interpretation.

2. These two texts--Bible and Midrash--are purposely "gapped", as Boyarin will put it in a reading for next Monday. Things are left out, or the text will sometimes say something with much reserve, ambiguity is introduced, forcing the reader to interpret. And interpretation is an act of reading in which the gaps etc. are filled in order to make sense of the story. Now sometimes the reader might be filling the gaps along the way, and then, when the text enacts its own interpretation, that reading gets fulfilled. Other times, the reader does not get such confirmation, and must be willing to live with uncertainty about the meaning, or better, be willing to sustain many possible interpretations. Thus the Midrash will offer many interpretations by various rabbis, arguing quite explicitly that they all are valid.

An example: all the patriarchs leave the land except one, Isaac. The very absence of a narrative of leaving the land demands an interpretation. The good reader wants to know why he never leaves the land. Another example of a gap: For every day but one, Genesis 1 declares the act of creation on that day "good." Check and see on what day there is no such declaration. The interpretive reader will ask why and want to fill in some reasons. The gaps in the text are as much a part of the story as the words themselves. Such gaps and ambiguities invite interpretation, and that is exactly how these to sets of texts want to be read, this is, interpretively. Such an invitation to interpret establishes the conditions for replication, renewal, and for the production of new texts, more texts. The Bible gives birth to the Midrash we might say.

3. Midrash itself is another example of a reflexive, self-interpreting intertext, a case of reading itself like the Bible reads itself. In this sense it is a replication, a reproduction in kind. It is also a text that is reading another text, the Bible itself. In this sense it is a case of a new production, a new text. The Midrash is also a case--as Bruns would have it--of just how the Bible wants itself read, that is as a text that "takes a stand on the burning questions of the day, to guide the people and to strengthen their faith." The Bible wants itself to be available to constant renewal. (All the stories of the covenanting ceremony with which we began our reading in the Bible are ways in which the Bible announces just this need for renewal: Moses declares at he first remembering of what happened at Sinai: "The Lord made a covenant with us at Horeb [Sinai]. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us, who are all of us alive this day [Hebr. ha-yom=today]." Deut. 5:2-3

4.Finally, this notion of renewal, of "the burning questions of the day" of a new "today" to which the Biblical text makes itself available, brings us to the central point I want you to grasp in Boyarin: The Midrash is all these things that Bruns says its it (note how Boyarin favorably quotes Bruns), and it is also a text that must be read as kind of cultural intertext, that is, in conversation with other texts of its own period. Now to appreciate Boyarin 2 (the reading for next Monday) you must treat his new essay as an intertext, referring back to the first Boyarin. There he announces his new readings of all Rabbinic texts as a reading of a discourse. A discourse, more precisely a discursive formation, you recall, is "textsÉof very different genres [that] share the same cultural problematicsÉ(Carnal Israel, p. 15)." The texts are expressions often of the same code, all addressing certain cultural tensions, and they offer "utopian solutions to cultural tensions (p. 15). We identified some of the cultural tensions of the culture that produced the Bible (the only surviving text of that first Judaism), and we use a short hand for them: exile and return. The rabbis are likewise responding to a problem: exile, though no actual return, just the hope for one in some future redemption that keeps getting deferred. What to do while waitng for redemption when one is in an exile that makes one vulnerable to contamination is the problematic. With the rabbis we have many of their texts, and we will be reading selections from Mishnah, Gemarah, Midrash, the Prayerbook, and the Haggadah. All these texts, we will see, emerge out of a specific circumstance, all of them are part of a Rabbinic discourse, and all of them are also intertexts that read and interpret themselves and invite the readers' interpretation. As such they will set the scene for more replication, more renewal, and more texts

Sept. 22

Direct access to the on-line: click on Encyclopedia Britannica. You can use this as you are reading material to look up all sorts of terms. See what happens when you search for the term Tannaim or Tana or Mishnah.