Download or read book Jews and Human Rights written by Michael Galchinsky and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2008 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of human rights is intricately intertwined with the history of Jews. Drawing inspiration from their tradition and history, Jews have played a role in the human rights drama as victims, advocates, violators, and judges. Whether working to free persecuted Jews, prevent and intervene in genocides, defend Israel in human rights forums, or strengthen Israel's democracy, Jews have stood for_and stood up for_human rights. In Jews and Human Rights: Dancing at Three Weddings, Michael Galchinsky states that Jews around the world have tried simultaneously to 'dance at three weddings, ' celebrating their commitments to international human rights, Jewish nationalism, and domestic civil rights. After World War II, all three of these commitments seemed to be aligned, but now many Jews perceive them as distinct, or even opposed. Michael Galchinsky investigates the contributions of Jewish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the formation of international human rights, analyzing how they responded to the emerging tensions among their political commitments. He explores the cooperation and conflict among elite and grassroots organizations, the relationships among Jewish governmental officials and Jewish human rights activists, and examines the goals, strategies, and scope of Jewish human rights activism. Making extensive use of previously unknown archival documents and interviews with key activists, Galchinsky recounts how Jews' initial optimism about human rights turned to pessimism and ambivalence--and argues that a reverse process may still be possible. Jews and Human Rights: Dancing at Three Weddings is intended for scholars, students and general readers of: modern Jewish history, Israeli international/transnational studies, human rights activists, diplomats, and international lawyers, history and politics, international law, UN history, cultural sociology, and genocide studies.

Download or read book Human Rights in Deuteronomy written by Daisy Yulin Tsai and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-10-14 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The humanitarian concerns of the biblical slave laws and their rhetorical techniques rarely receive scholarly attention, especially the two slave laws in Deuteronomy. Previous studies that compared the biblical and the ANE laws focused primarily on their similarities and developed theories of direct borrowing. This ignored the fact that legal transplants were common in ancient societies. This study, in contrast, aims to identify similarities and dissimilarities in order to pursue an understanding of the underlying values promoted within these slave laws and the interests they protected. To do so, certain innovative methodologies were applied. The biblical laws examined present two diverse legal concepts that contrast to the ANE concepts: (1) all agents are regarded as persons and should be treated accordingly, and (2) all legal subjects are seen as free, dignified, and self-determining human beings. In addition, the biblical laws often distinguish an offender’s “criminal intent,” by which a criminal’s rights are also considered. Based on these features, the biblical laws are able to articulate YHWH’s humanitarian concerns and the basic concepts of human rights presented in Deuteronomy.

Download or read book What Are Biblical Values written by John J. Collins and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does the Bible actually say about many of today's most contentious moral issues? "For drawing attention to the relevant scriptures and for guidance in recognizing what are and aren't valid interpretations of them, Collins' pertinent brief is beyond praiseworthy."--Booklist (starred review) "Collins pours a lifetime of scholarship into this study of what the Bible says about controversial ethical topics. It's highly readable, and it's honest."--Jane McBride, Christian Century Many people today claim that their positions on various issues are grounded in biblical values, and they use scriptural passages to support their claims. But the Bible was written over the course of several hundred years and contains contradictory positions on many issues. The Bible seldom provides simple answers; it more often shows the complexity of moral problems. Can we really speak of "biblical values"? In this eye-opening book, one of the world's leading biblical scholars argues that when we read the Bible with care, we are often surprised by what we find. Examining what the Bible actually says on a number of key themes, John Collins covers a vast array of topics, including the right to life, gender, the role of women, the environment, slavery and liberation, violence and zeal, and social justice. With clarity and authority, he invites us to dramatically reimagine the basis for biblical ethics in the world today.

Download or read book A Call to Action written by Jimmy Carter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the highly acclaimed bestselling A Call to Action, President Jimmy Carter addresses the world’s most serious, pervasive, and ignored violation of basic human rights: the ongoing discrimination and violence against women and girls. President Carter was encouraged to write this book by a wide coalition of leaders of all faiths. His urgent report covers a system of discrimination that extends to every nation. Women are deprived of equal opportunity in wealthier nations and “owned” by men in others, forced to suffer servitude, child marriage, and genital cutting. The most vulnerable and their children are trapped in war and violence. A Call to Action addresses the suffering inflicted upon women by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare. Key verses are often omitted or quoted out of context by male religious leaders to exalt the status of men and exclude women. And in nations that accept or even glorify violence, this perceived inequality becomes the basis for abuse. Carter draws upon his own experiences and the testimony of courageous women from all regions and all major religions to demonstrate that women around the world, more than half of all human beings, are being denied equal rights. This is an informed and passionate charge about a devastating effect on economic prosperity and unconscionable human suffering. It affects us all.

Download or read book Judaism and Human Rights written by Carlos Ripoll and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Areligion or a culture like Judaism, at least three thousand years old, cannot be expected to be all of one piece, homogeneous, self-contained, consistent, a neatly constructed system of ideas. If Judaism were that, it would have died centuries ago and would be a subject of interest only to the historian and archaeologist. Judaism has been a living force precisely because it is a teeming, thundering, and clamoring phenomenon, full of contrary tendencies and inconsistencies. Although there are no words or phrases in Hebrew Scriptures for "human rights," "conscience," or "due process of law," the ideals and values which these concepts represent were inherent in the earliest Jewish texts.This volume begins with four essays on the concept of man's being born "free and equal," in the image of God. The underpinning of this concept in Jewish law is explored in Section 2, entitled "The Rule of Law." Section 3, "The Democratic Ideal," traces the foundations of democracy in the Jewish teachings in the Bible and the Talmud, which in turn influenced the whole body of Western political thought. Relations between man and man, man and woman, employer and employee, slave and master are all spelled out. Section 4 presents essays analyzing man's freedom of conscience, and his God-given rights to dissent and protest. Section 5 deals with aspects of personal liberty, including the right of privacy. Section 6, entitled "The Earth is the Lord's," deals with the Jewish view of man's transient tenancy on God's earth, his obligations not to destroy anything that lives or grows, and to share the earth's bounty with the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. Section 7 delivers an analysis of the "end of days" vision of Micah and man's continuing need to strive for peace and not for war. The volume concludes with three new essays, dealing with contemporary issues: "In God's Image: The Religious Imperative of Equality under Law"; "The Values of a Jewish and Democratic State: The Task of Reaching a Synthesis"; and "Religious Freedom and Religious Coercion in the State of Israel."This enlarged edition is accessibly written for a general and scholarly audience and will be of particular interest to political scientists, historians, and constitutional scholars.

Download or read book Jewish Bible Theology written by Isaac Kalimi and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011-12-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, the first of its sort, takes issue with scholars who believe that the terms biblical theology and Jews contradict rather than approximate each other. Without saying so, they automatically confirm Otto Procksch’s assertion that “alle Theologie ist Christologie.” In recent decades, however, there is increasing interest in earlier and current Jewish biblical theologies. A new generation of Jewish scholars demonstrate great interest in and actively engage in Hebrew Bible theology. They strive to make Jewish biblical theology a legitimate subdiscipline of biblical studies and develop it separately and independently from the Christian theology. Also, many Christian scholars are interested in understanding the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament and its various themes from Jewish theological perspectives. Thus, in response to continual interest from all sides, Isaac Kalimi presents this volume for the benefit of all. Jewish Bible Theology comprises a number of essays that raise substantial, methodological, and historical questions, while others focus on particular topics from the Torah, Prophets, and Writings. Altogether, they reflect fresh and current thinking on important issues in Jewish religious and intellectual world views.

Download or read book Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible written by Mira Morgenstern and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the Enlightenment readings of Hebrew biblical texts generated in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Mira Morgenstern's Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible goes beyond the pioneering interpretations of various biblical texts penned by such noted Bible students as Spinoza, Rousseau, and Angelina Grimké to present an introduction to the Hebrew Bible as a whole from the perspective of a modern-day political theorist. In doing so, it offers a brilliant thematic guide to the Hebrew Bible's most politically salient passages, complete with text and commentary. Morgenstern's account of the significance of these ancient yet strangely modern texts will fascinate students of both ancient and modern political theory—as well as all readers of the Hebrew Bible itself.

Download or read book Human Rights on Common Grounds written by Kirsten Hastrup and published by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. This book was released on 2001-11-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 9. Limits to universality: Questions from Asia, Hatla Thelle.

Download or read book The History of Human Rights written by Micheline Ishay and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2008-06-02 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ishay recounts the struggle for human rights across the ages, from the Mesopotamian Codes of Hammurabi to the era of globalization. She illustrates how the history of human rights has evolved from one era to the next through texts, cultural traditions, & creative expression.

Download or read book Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible written by Saul M. Olyan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does the Hebrew Bible ascribe an implicit form of legal personhood or legal rights to animals? If so, which animals--domesticated or wild, or both--receive which rights, and for what purpose? Scholars have been slow to consider these questions, and animal-oriented research as a whole, in the field of biblical studies. For the first time, author Saul M. Olyan addresses these questions in detail and explores how the evidence of the Hebrew Bible might contribute to contemporary debates about animal rights in the academy, in the courts, in the public square, and in religious communities. In this book, Olyan demonstrates that seven different biblical texts extend both legal personhood and rights to animals. The rights conferred upon them are mainly specific and situational, and the legal personhood associated them is in most cases best characterized as limited. Nonetheless, he argues that the animal rights described by these texts are genuine because they are not contingent on the needs or demands of others, they do not disappear or give way because of conflict with the interests of another legal person, and they may not be violated with impunity. Finally, Olyan considers how the biblical texts examined in his analyses might be used to extend or strengthen the arguments of those advocating for animals in judicial, academic, political, or religious settings.

Download or read book John Locke s Political Philosophy and the Hebrew Bible written by Yechiel M. Leiter and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Locke, whose ideas helped give birth to the United States, predicated his political theory on the Hebrew Bible. Why?

Download or read book Human Rights and Human Dignity written by John Warwick Montgomery and published by New Reformation Publications. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one is against human rights. It is obviously a good thing-until one starts to think about the meaning of the term and its implications. Then it shows itself to be an idea that polarizes, encouraging uncritical support and also extreme reaction from both secularists and religionists. John Warwick Montgomery, who is both a lawyer and a theologian, is uniquely qualified to address the question of human rights. In clear, easily understood language, he analyzes what human rights are and addresses the crucial question, "How can human rights, properly understood, be legitimated?" Montgomery shows that is there is a foundation for human rights, it must be sought in a transcendent perspective, in the revelational content of the Bible.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible written by Susanne Scholz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible brings together 37 essential essays written by leading international scholars, examining crucial points of analysis within the field of feminist Hebrew Bible studies. Organized into four major areas - globalization, neoliberalism, media, and intersectionality - the essays collectively provide vibrant, relevant, and innovative contributions to the field. The topics of analysis focus heavily on gender and queer identity, with essays touching on African, Korean, and European feminist hermeneutics, womanist and interreligious readings, ecofeminist and animal biblical studies, migration biblical studies, the role of gender binary voices in evangelical-egalitarian approaches, and the examination of scripture in light of trans women's voices. The volume also includes essays examining the Old Testament as recited in music, literature, film, and video games. The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible charts a culturally, hermeneutically, and exegetically cutting-edge path for the ongoing development of biblical studies grounded in feminist, womanist, gender, and queer perspectives.

Download or read book The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible written by J. David Pleins and published by Westminster John Knox Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. David Pleins presents a sociological study of the Hebrew Bible, seeking to uncover its social vision by examining biblical statements about social ethics. He does this within the framework provided by Israel's social institutions, the social locations of its actors, and the historical struggles for power and survival that are reflected in the transmission of the texts.

Download or read book The Ten Commandments and Human Rights written by Walter J. Harrelson and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ten Commandments and Human Rights sets out to evaluate the importance of the Ten Commandments for the life of faith today. The general thesis is that the commandments are immensely important not only for Jews and Christians, but for all persons seeking to find or to reaffirm a moral foundation for their life and for the life of their children, their religious community, and their society.The fact that the commandments are put negatively is immensely important, for it means that the community that claims these commandments and builds on them has to work out for itself the positive import of not having other gods, not worshipping idols, not profaning the sabbath, not killing and stealing, and committing adultery. Put negatively, these commitments become the groundwork for a humanly free and responsible search for the will of God for individual, family, and corporate life today and in any day.It is true that the commandments originate in ancient Israel, are central to the faith of prophets, priests, and sages, and are claimed and made foundational by Jesus for the Christian community. But these commandments also share much with, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been presented by the United Nations for adoption by all the nations of earth.The Ten Commandments and Human Rights seeks to show how to avoid moralistic use of the Ten Commandments in religious life today while still affirming that there are absolutely foundational prohibitions that can and must guide the moral life of all peoples. The Ten Commandments need very little revision in order to become such a foundation for a free and responsible life today.

Download or read book Human Dignity Human Rights and Responsibility written by Yechiel Michael Barilan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-09-14 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel and multidisciplinary exposition and theorization of human dignity and rights, brought to bear on current issues in bioethics and biolaw. “Human dignity” has been enshrined in international agreements and national constitutions as a fundamental human right. The World Medical Association calls on physicians to respect human dignity and to discharge their duties with dignity. And yet human dignity is a term—like love, hope, and justice—that is intuitively grasped but never clearly defined. Some ethicists and bioethicists dismiss it; other thinkers point to its use in the service of particular ideologies. In this book, Michael Barilan offers an urgently needed, nonideological, and thorough conceptual clarification of human dignity and human rights, relating these ideas to current issues in ethics, law, and bioethics. Combining social history, history of ideas, moral theology, applied ethics, and political theory, Barilan tells the story of human dignity as a background moral ethos to human rights. After setting the problem in its scholarly context, he offers a hermeneutics of the formative texts on Imago Dei; provides a philosophical explication of the value of human dignity and of vulnerability; presents a comprehensive theory of human rights from a natural, humanist perspective; explores issues of moral status; and examines the value of responsibility as a link between virtue ethics and human dignity and rights. Barilan accompanies his theoretical claim with numerous practical illustrations, linking his theory to such issues in bioethics as end-of-life care, cloning, abortion, torture, treatment of the mentally incapacitated, the right to health care, the human organ market, disability and notions of difference, and privacy, highlighting many relevant legal aspects in constitutional and humanitarian law.

Download or read book Human Rights and the Common Good written by Katrine Evans and published by Victoria University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A range of contributors discuss biblical and theological interpretations of human rights issues and consider the "radical critique provided by liberation theology".