Download or read book Lubavitchers as Citizens written by Jan Feldman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lubavitchers are active in the civic life of their communities and so should be considered good citizens by advocates of participatory democracy. However, their obviously nonliberal worldview tends to elicit rancor in precisely those quarters. The notion that democratic political institutions require the support of a democratic political culture is pervasive in political theory. Many scholars treat democratic virtues and liberal values as synonymous. As a result, nonliberal groups are viewed with suspicion: if they reject liberal values, they are also seen as rejecting democratic ones. Jan Feldman focuses on a subset of Chassidic Judaism known as Lubavitch, or ChaBad, to explore this assumption.Lubavitchers make an excellent test case, she explains, because they are informed, politically active, and democratic on the one hand, yet embrace nonliberal values on the other. Unlike the Amish or Hutterites, they do not rely on rural isolation for group survival but function remarkably well in secular, urban settings. They embrace rather than withdraw from political life. Although they do not use the state to promote their worldview to a wider audience, their entry into the public realm often generates hostility and fear.Feldman does not claim that liberal values are irrelevant to democracy nor does she argue that all nonliberal groups are equally benign. "What Lubavitchers allow us to investigate," she writes, "is the common assumption that liberal and democratic attitudes are inextricably linked." Through numerous interviews in the centers of Lubavitch life in Montreal, New York, and Washington, D.C., she not only illuminates a group fascinating in its own right but also provides insights into long-held assumptions about the relationship between liberal and democratic values.

Download or read book Citizenship Faith Feminism written by Jan Lynn Feldman and published by UPNE. This book was released on 2011 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to examine religious feminist activists in Israel, the U.S., and Kuwait

Download or read book Lubavitcher Messianism written by Simon Dein and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1994 the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson, died leaving no successor. For many years his followers had maintained that he was Moshiach -the Jewish Messiah and would usher in the Redemption. After his death Lubavitch divided into two opposing groups. While some messianists hold that the Rebbe died but is to be resurrected as the messiah, others hold that he is still alive, but concealed. The anti-messianists maintain that the Rebbe could have been Moshiach if God had willed it, but they disagree vehemently that as such he could come back from the dead. Using ethnographic data obtained by the author through twenty years of fieldwork, this book presents a social-psychological account of Lubavitcher Messianism and moves beyond the typical scholarly preoccupation with 'belief' and 'dissonance' to examine the role of rhetoric, religious experience and ritual in maintaining counterintuitive convictions. Through examining the parallels between early Christianity and messianism in Lubavitch this book provides a comprehensive perspective for examining messianism generally

Download or read book The Liberal Conscience written by Lucas Swaine and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bold work offers solutions to the seemingly irreconcilable divide between liberal society and theocracy by reasserting the importance of the liberty of conscience and principles of religious toleration.

Download or read book Open Secret written by Elliot R. Wolfson and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-10-21 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

Download or read book Political Theory and Architecture written by Duncan Bell and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can political theory teach us about architecture, and what can it learn from paying closer attention to architecture? The essays assembled in this volume begin from a common postulate: that architecture is not merely a backdrop to political life but a political force in its own right. Each in their own way, they aim to give countenance to that claim, and to show how our thinking about politics can be enriched by reflecting on the built environment. The collection advances four lines of inquiry, probing the connection between architecture and political regimes; examining how architecture can be constitutive of the ethical and political realm; uncovering how architecture is enmeshed in logics of governmentality and in the political economy of the city; and asking to what extent we can think of architecture-tributary as it is to the flows of capital-as a partially autonomous social force. Taken together, the essays demonstrate the salience of a range of political theoretical approaches for the analysis of architecture, and show that architecture deserves a place as an object of study in political theory, alongside institutions, laws, norms, practices, imaginaries, and discourses.

Download or read book Holy Ignorance written by Olivier Roy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Olivier Roy, world-renowned authority on Islam and politics, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and socio-cultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate, emotional access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture. The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to fundamentalist faiths, such as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism. These religions either reconnect adherents to their culture through casual referents, like halal fast food, or maintain their momentum through purification rituals, such as speaking in tongues, a practice that allows believers to utter a language that is entirely their own. Instead of a return to traditional religious worship, we are now witnessing the individualisation of faith and the disassociation of faith communities from ethnic and national identities. Roy explores the options now available to powers that hope to integrate or control these groups; and whether marginalisation or homogenisation will further divide believers from their culture.

Download or read book The Rebbe s Army written by Sue Fishkoff and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2009-04-22 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Excuse me, are you Jewish?” With these words, the relentlessly cheerful, ideologically driven emissaries of Chabad-Lubavitch approach perfect strangers on street corners throughout the world in their ongoing efforts to persuade their fellow Jews to live religiously observant lives. In The Rebbe’s Army, award-winning journalist Sue Fishkoff gives us the first behind-the-scenes look at this small Brooklyn-based group of Hasidim and the extraordinary lengths to which they take their mission of outreach. They seem to be everywhere—in big cities, small towns, and suburbs throughout the United States, and in sixty-one countries around the world. They light giant Chanukah menorahs in public squares, run “Chabad houses” on college campuses from Berkeley to Cambridge, give weekly bible classes in the Capitol basement in Washington, D.C., run a nonsectarian drug treatment center in Los Angeles, sponsor the world’s biggest Passover Seder in Nepal, establish synagogues, Hebrew schools, and day-care centers in places that are often indifferent and occasionally hostile to their outreach efforts. They have built a billion-dollar international empire, with their own news service, publishing house, and hundreds of Websites. Who are these people? How successful are they in making Jews more observant? What influence does their late Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who some thought was the Messiah), continue to have on his followers? Fishkoff spent a year interviewing Lubavitch emissaries from Anchorage to Miami and has written an engaging and fair-minded account of a Hasidic group whose motives and methodology continue to be the subject of speculation and controversy.

Download or read book Jewish Book World written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lubavitcher Women in America written by Bonnie J. Morris and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lubavitcher Women in America offers a rare look at the world of Hasidic women activists since World War II. The revival of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in the second half of the twentieth century has baffled many assimilated American Jews, especially those Jewish feminists hostile to Orthodox interpretations of women's roles. This text gives voice to the lives of those Hasidic women who served the late Lubavitcher Rebbe as educators and outreach activists, and examines their often successful efforts to recruit other Jewish women to the Lubavitcher community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Central to this book is how Lubavitcher women have "talked back" to American feminist thought. Arguing that American feminism cannot liberate Jewish women—that a specifically Jewish spirituality is more appropriate and fulfilling—Lubavitcher women have helped to swell the ranks of their Rebbe's followers by aggressively promoting the appeal of traditional, structured Jewish observance. The book thus offers a unique look at female anti-feminist religious rhetoric, articulately presented by Jewish "fundamentalists."

Download or read book Index to Jewish Periodicals written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 1044 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An author and subject index to selected and American Anglo-Jewish journals of general and scholarly interests.

Download or read book Who s who in Lubavitch written by Chaim Dalfin and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Religions in Practice written by John R. Bowen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religions in Practice provides a comprehensive and primarily theme-based overview for students of the anthropology of religion. Whilst covering traditional topics such as magic, witchcraft, and spiritual healing, the book addresses key contemporary subjects including migration, transnationalism, nationalism, secularism, and law. It offers an issues-oriented perspective on everyday religious behaviors and examines small-scale societies as well as major, established religions. Throughout the text Bowen engages with ongoing debates concerning the place of religion in public life. He successfully balances the presentation of theory and concepts with rich case study examples, integrating theoretical discussion with a wide range of cross-cultural ethnographic material. This seventh edition has been updated throughout. The opening section now focuses more clearly on the question of what is ‘religion’ and on approaches to studying religion. There is more on materiality as well as a new final chapter on religious mobilizing and violence. Further resources are available via a comprehensive companion website.

Download or read book The Responsive Community written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Revenge of God written by Gilles Kepel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kepel traces the resurgence of religious belief in the modern world, focussing on radical movemnets within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

Download or read book Israel Has a Jewish Problem written by Joyce Dalsheim and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long-standing debate about whether the State of Israel can be both Jewish and democratic raises important questions about the rights of Palestinian Arabs. In Israel Has a Jewish Problem, Joyce Dalsheim argues that this debate obscures another issue: Can the Jewish state protect the right to be Jewish, whatever form that "being" might take? Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, she investigates that question by looking at ways in which Jewish citizens of Israel struggle to be Jewish within the confines of a Jewish state. She focuses on everyday experiences, on public interpretations of the possibilities of being Jewish in the context of state policy, and on media representations of conflicts between Jewish citizens over social, religious, and political issues. Despite Israel's claim that every religious community "is free, by law and in practice, to exercise its faith, observe its holidays ... and administer its internal affairs," Israel is foundationally a Jewish state. It privileges Orthodox regulation of who will be considered a Jew, of marriage and family law, and of conversion. This arrangement, and the constant tensions it has produced over the years, is often understood as a compromise between secular and religious political factions. But this religious-secular framing conceals broader patterns inherent in nationalist projects more generally. Using insights from Franz Kafka's writing as a theoretical lens through which the ethnographic data can be viewed, Dalsheim interrogates the relationship between nationalism and religion, asking what kinds of liberation have been achieved by Jews in the Jewish State. Ultimately the book argues, in a Kafkaesque reversal of the liberatory promise of national sovereignty, that national self-determination involves collective self-elimination.

Download or read book Music in Lubavitcher Life written by Ellen Koskoff and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000-11-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music in Lubavitcher Life illuminates the world of the Lubavitcher Hasidim, a community of ultra-orthodox Jews centered in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. Drawing primarily on twenty years of close study of the Lubavitcher community, Ellen Koskoff combines lively anecdotes with historical background and musical analysis to reveal music making among the Lubavitchers as a gateway to their ideas about the nature of human spirituality, human social interaction, and God._x000B_Lubavitcher music centers on the nigunim, a body of paraliturgical, folk, and popular melodies that Lubavitchers regard as a primary form of spiritual communication with the divine. For a song to be included in the repertory of nigunim, it must conform to Hasidic religious and aesthetic principles. If brought in from the outside, it must be purified: stripped of its coarse outer shell (usually the text) and recomposed in accordance with coded musical structures (including certain melody types, ornamentation, and formal organization). Performance of nigunim adheres, among other things, to a process associated with the spirituality of the great Hasidic leaders of the past._x000B_Along with vivid descriptions of musical performance in religious contexts and private gatherings, Koskoff details the musical sounds and structures that symbolize Lubavitcher social relations. In particular, she examines the differences between Lubavitcher women's and men's music making and the underlying beliefs and assumptions that give rise to gendered musical behaviors, such as the dictum that prohibits men from hearing a woman sing._x000B_An insightful portrait of a distinctive community's musical and religious life, Music in Lubavitcher Life is also a candid view of ethnographic research and of fieldwork's illusory objectivity._x000B__x000B_