R. Kook is best-known today for his paradoxical embrace of secular Zionism as a covert harbinger and embodiment of the traditional messianic dream. Despite its considerable influence on the trajectory of modern Israeli politics, the practical conclusions that have (rightly or wrongly) been distilled from this understanding of the nature of contemporary Jewish nationalism are increasingly challenged by a more complicated political reality.Other more radical implications of this blurring of theological boundaries, however, which have their roots in modern offshoots of classical Kabbala and parallel tropes of German idealism, bear notions that are surprisingly relevant to more fluid and humanist notions of religious belief in a post-Kantian age. These bear the potential for revising our understanding of the concept of God and of the grounding of religious dogma at large.

In this paper, I present a range of contemporary Jewish theological approaches to revelation with the aim of highlighting an array of opinions for beginning a discussion of a Jewish theology of revelation. I use models in theology because a “models approach” helps one place the thinkers into conceptual rubrics loosely based on the models of the Catholic theologian Avery Dulles. We discuss seven different models of Jewish Revelation. (1) the historic event model (2) the dialectic model (3) the mystical model (4) the Verbal model (5) the human potential model (6) the negative theology model and the (7) Hermenutical model

This is a brief overview of the skills required to read medieval manuscripts, and synopses of the chapters

Approximately 300 Shakespeare films were made in the film industry’s silent era. They range from the filmed record of a theatre production to the film conceived as an autonomous work of cinema; the brief allusion to the full-blown drama; the narratively precise retelling of a play to a skittish borrowing from it; the historically placed production to the radical update. They emerged from production companies in Britain, the US, Italy, France, Germany and Denmark. Collectively, they are revealing both about the changing priorities of the film industry and of the broader history of Shakespeare on screen. This chapter considers the impulses that inspired them, what they achieved, how they were exhibited and received and the nature of their legacy. Moments selected for illustrative focus include the Herbert Beerbohm Tree King John (1899), The Tempest (1908), films of the Shakespeare Tercentenary (1916), Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet (1920), Emil Jannings’ Othello (1922), John Gielgud in the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene (1924) and the use of live lecturers. The chapter ends with the creative engagements silent Shakespeare films have recently prompted, including in the Kit Monkman Macbeth (2018).

The central theological questions raised for Jewish belief by the Holocaust concern the existence and nature of God. In this paper, I focus on four figures who addressed these theological questions in a serious way: Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, and Hans Jonas. I show that Jonas’s argument for a limited and changing God is the most radical of these theological responses and that the radical character of his response can best be appreciated by contrasting his approach with the other three theological accounts, especially in terms of how the problem of theodicy functions in those accounts.

This chapter considers the treatment of ethnic and cultural identity in adaptations of two plays in which they are an integral element, The Merchant of Venice and Othello.Complex characterization is in danger of being short-circuited by unconscious bias, pulling audiences back to racial stereotypes, dehumanizing Shylock and Othello despite the efforts of well-intentioned filmmakers. In The Merchant of Venice anti-Semitism and its consequences in recent and current politics unavoidably complicate a play whose romantic elements are already made uneasy by issues of patriarchal control and materialism. In Othello the challenges of representing ‘the Moor’ himself are not simply resolved by casting an actor of colour in the role. Productions also have to deal with the manner in which agency is wrested from the titular hero by a villain who can seem to have taken charge of way the audience perceives the action.

Biblical theology is the systematic theological interpretation of the Bible, and Jewish biblical theology is the systematic theological interpretation of the Jewish Bible (Tanak). The Jewish Bible appears in its uniquely distinctive form as the Tanak, which enables the Jewish Bible to function as the essential and foundational work of Jewish thought and practice. In order to provide an overview of Jewish biblical theology, this essay treats several fundamental concerns, viz., the unique form of the Jewish Bible in contrast to the distinctive forms of the Christian Bible; the dialogical character of the Jewish Bible in relation to itself and to the larger context of Jewish thought; the eternal covenant between G-d and the Jewish people; the construction of the Jewish people and its institutions, such as the land of Israel, the holy Temple, and the monarchy; and the problem of evil, particularly the exile and potential destruction of the Jewish people, that calls the eternal covenant between G-d and Israel into question.

Concentrating on adaptations of As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, this chapter argues that Shakespeare’s comedies on screen constitute a significant and cross-fertilizing body of work. Scriptwriters have pursued imaginative routes through the syntax of the comedies, and there has been considerable experiment in terms of updating Shakespeare’s language. Comedy is the genre where constructions of gender/sexuality are often expressed with filmmakers recognizing in Shakespeare’s comedies opportunities to explore agency, voice and embodiment. The comedies on screen anticipate many of the themes energizing recent criticism, and in this there is a pronounced self-consciousness. Harking back to earlier experiments, the most recent Shakespearean comedies showcase their own artifice along with strategies of revision dependent on a dense intertextuality.

When, where and why books were produced.

Though films on Shakespeare have been made in India since 1923, it is Vishal Bhardwaj’s tragic trilogy, Maqbool (2004), Omkara (2006) and Haider (2014) that has caught international critical attention. The essay examines Bhardwaj’s predilection for Shakespeare, the reception of his films and his auteur’s style of filmmaking and adaptation, which straddles both the global and the local. It argues that his remaking of Shakespeare deploys popular features of Bollywood cinema, e.g. adding back stories and songs, but adjusts them to enable the narrative of the plays to speak to the situations of today. His versions radicalise the women, intervene in Indian contexts and modify the tragic endings. They reflect a poetic sensibility that delves deep into Shakespeare to produce perceptive and layered cinematic visualisations of the plays.

The art historical component of the manuscript: how we can describe images; what materials and techniques were used; the limitations of facsimile and digital editions; and how images affect our perception of the manuscript and its contexts of production

This essay deals first with individual prayers of the daily liturgy that excel in distinctive theological affirmations followed by that of the Shema Liturgy as a whole. In discerning the theological patterns of the liturgy and the relationship between the whole and the parts, it focuses on the centrality of Divine kingship and the move from individual to community to humanity especially as expressed in hopes for redemption. It concludes with the peculiarities of a post-temple liturgy.