Transforming Identity

The Ritual Transition from Gentile to Jew - Structure and Meaning
Erscheinungsjahr 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8264-9672-0
Verlag: Continnuum-3PL

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 488 g

Reihe: The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library of Judaic Studies

Of all Judaic rituals, that of giyyur is arguably the most radical: it turns aGentile into a Jew - once and for all and irrevocably. The very possibility of such a transformation is anomalous, according to Jewish tradition, which regards Jewishness as an ascriptive status entered through birth to a Jewish mother. This book provides a close reading of primary halakhic texts as a key to the explication of meaning within the Judaic tradition.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Sagi, Avi

Zohar, Zvi

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien Jüdische Studien: Kult, Riten, Zeremonien

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

Part I: The Proselyte's Motivation as a factor in Giyyur

Prologue
Chapter One: The Proselyte's Motivation in Talmudic Sources
Chapter Two: The Proselyte's Motivation in Post-Talmudic Sources up to the Sixteenth Century
Chapter Three: The Motivation for Giyyur in Modern Halakhic Sources:

Adaptivist Positions
Chapter Four: The Motivation for Giyyur in Modern Halakhic Sources:

Rejectionist and Transformationist Positions
Part II: The Giyyur Ritual
Introduction
Chapter Five: Giyyur as a Voluntaristic Normative Commitment in Talmudic Literature
Chapter Six: Giyyur as a Bodily Ritual in Talmudic Literature
Chapter Seven: Chapter Seven: The Canonical Formulation of the Ritual of Giyyur
Chapter Eight: The Yevamot Paradigm in Medieval Halakha
Chapter Nine: The Ritual of Giyyur: Aspects of the Demai Paradigm in Medieval Halakha
Chapter Ten: The Two Paradigms of Giyyur -- from the Arba’ah Turim to the Shulhan ‘Arukh
Chapter Eleven: The Hermeneutical Controversy Regarding Rabbi Caro’s Position – and its Significance

Part III: The Polyphonic Meaning of Acceptance of the Commandments in Halakhic Literature

Introduction
Chapter Twelve: Acceptance of the Commandments as a Formal Declaration
Chapter Thirteen: Acceptance of the Commandments as Subjective Intent
Chapter Fourteen: Ex post facto Annulment of Giyyur
Part IV: The Meaning of Giyyur
Introduction
Chapter 15: Giyyur and Jewish Identity
Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Avi Sagi is a member of Bar-Ilan University’s Department of Philosophy and is founder and director of that university’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies. He is Senior Research Fellow at Shalom Hartman Institute. He has written and edited numerous books and articles in Jewish and general philosophy, among them Religion and Morality (with Daniel Statman, New York: 1995) and the recently released Judaism: Between Religion and Morality (Tel Aviv: 1998) and Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (New York: 2002).

Zvi Zohar is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Sephardic Law and Ethics at Bar Ilan University, where he teaches in the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Jewish Studies. At the Shalom Hartman Institute, Dr. Zohar heads the Alan A. and Laraine Fischer Family Center for Contemporary Halakha. He has published over 50 scholarly articles in Hebrew, English and French, as well as several book-length studies in Hebrew, including: Tradition and Change: Halakhic Responses of Middle Eastern Rabbis to Legal and Technological Change; Giyyur and Jewish Identity (with Avi Sagi); The Luminous Face of the East – Studies in the Legal and Religious Thought of Sephardic Rabbis of the Middle East; and A Socio-Cultural Drama in Aleppo in the French Mandatory Period.