The chapter addresses the question of the definition of a Jewish collectivity as it was formed in Hellenistic and Roman times by Jews. Having a single Hebrew term to designate themselves, Bney Israel (“the sons of Israel”), Jews had to do without concepts such as ethnos, genos, laos, dēmos, populus, natio, polis, and civitas when referring to themselves as a collective group. The chapter examines the notions that Jews used in order to refer to themselves as an entity, and shows that the definition of Judaism by Jews was modeled in view of different concepts of other entities that were predominant in the Greco-Roman world and was influenced by the tension between political, geo-ethnic, historical, juridical and civic definitions. Each type of collective definition served a different realpolitik and was conditioned by different political circumstances, which determined the way in which Jews demarcated themselves as a group. The chapter aims to reveal the evolution that the definition of Judaism underwent in a period of great changes and focuses in particular on the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

This chapter examines the dangers of utopian hope and strategies to limit them. It builds on the idea, emphasized throughout this study, that ideal theory shares overlooked features with apocalyptic thought. One long-standing worry with apocalyptic thought is that it promotes violence. Notably, both apocalyptic thought and ideal theory can fall victim to false confidence regarding their ability to identify and achieve utopia. Purported knowledge of the path to utopia has justified all kinds of bloodshed and cruelty throughout history, yet the ideal never comes. Partly in response to the explosive potential of apocalyptic belief, strands of Jewish and Christian thought stress the radical nature of human ignorance regarding what the ideal society looks like, how to bring it about, and when it might come. By pairing utopian hope with epistemic humility, the apocalyptic tradition – at least parts of it – suggests an approach that ideal theory would be wise to imitate.

If the Jews were the target of the Nazis’ extermination project, we must ask: Why the Jews? Who are the Jews? What makes them Jews? One premise for this investigation, as already stated, is that Judaism is the key to the connections between antisemitism and the Holocaust that it spawned. Therefore these reflections on the connections among Judaism, antisemitism, and the Holocaust begin with the Judaism that makes Jews Jewish, which is the focus of the first chapter. The key to the matter of who is a Jew is Judaism. Whether a particular Jew is reform, orthodox, or atheist, his or her identity as a Jew ultimately stems from Judaism, from the Covenant of Torah: Without the Torah, there would be no Jews. The Covenant of Torah comes with certain categories of thought, beginning with the categories of creation, revelation, and redemption. It comes with a certain teaching and testimony concerning God, world, and humanity. The Jewish people signify that teaching and testimony by their very presence in the world.

This chapter examines the metaphysical origins of antisemitism, what drives the phenomenon, and what exactly antisemitism is anti-. Antisemitism, it is argued, cannot be reduced to a form of racism or bigotry. The Nazis, for example, were not antisemites because they were racists; rather, they were racists because they were antisemites: They had to establish an antisemitic premise in order to arrive at a racist outlook. Antisemitism is not a form of racism; rather, racism is a form of antisemitism. The Why of antisemitism is to be found in a fundamental opposition to a fundamental teaching from Judaism concerning the sanctity of the other human being, particularly the stranger. It lies in an ascent to the divine Throne of Judgment on the part of the antisemite, who now determines truth and lie, good and evil, salvation and damnation. Thus the Why of antisemitism lies in succumbing to the most ancient of temptations, the temptation to be like God.

The introduction opens with the claim that essence of Jew hatred is critical to an understanding of the extermination of the Jews. If the Jews were the target of the Nazis’ extermination project, we must ask: Why the Jews? Who are the Jews? What makes them Jews? What, exactly, were the Nazis attempting to annihilate in the extermination of the Jews? If the Event is driven by antisemitism, what is antisemitism anti-? It explains that the investigation is guided by the categories of Jewish thought. It explains the the book begins with Judaism as the key to making connections between antisemitism and the Holocaust. The introduction also states how this book differs from others, and contains a brief summary of each of the chapters.

Starting from the position that Celsus’ Jew is a real Jew and that he is (probably) quoting from a Jewish anti-Christian tract produced in Alexandria in the mid-second century CE, this essay explores the sources of Celsus’ knowledge of Judaism, not only the LXX but non-biblical sources as well, and assesses what Celsus might tell us about the Jewish community in Alexandria after the revolt under Trajan, and its relationship with emerging Christianity in the same city. It questions the standard claim that the Jewish community in Alexandria was obliterated when the Romans suppressed the revolt.

Chapter 2 introduces Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and offers an analysis of his account of the story of the Fall from Genesis. Here Hegel develops his discussion of alienation, since the Fall is a story about how humans are alienated from themselves. It shows that alienation is a fundamental fact of human existence and not just something contingent. The chapter also introduces Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of History and presents his analysis of the alienation that was characteristic of the Roman Empire. Hegel points out that the schools of Roman philosophy—Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism—can all be seen as reactions to this. An account is given of Hegel’s analysis of Christianity, which he sees as overcoming this alienation. At the end of his lectures, Hegel claims that his own time in the 1820s has certain elements in common with the Roman Empire, when the world of culture had lost its meaning and people fell into a state of alienation and despair. Later thinkers were generally dissatisfied with Hegel’s view that it was sufficient simply to understand the nature of the contemporary crisis. They demanded a more active approach to the world.

This chapter explores the relationship between religion and “the novel” by focusing on a cross-section of religious questions having to do with belonging (domestic, national, global) and identity. It begins with a consideration the Evangelical Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1809), moves to a cluster of novels that contemplated domestic religious differences in the form of Catholics and Jews, and concludes with a shift outside the geographical boundaries of the United Kingdom and Ireland to examine early novelistic responses to overseas missionary movements, which raised challenging questions about empire, race, and religious community.

Judaism in Britain during the Romantic era shaped tradition to suit the requirements of modernity and the challenges of “Englishing” an ancient religion. Jewish novelists, poets, and theologians promoted emancipation and mutual understanding with a Christian-majority society. David Levi, Hyman Hurwitz, and Grace Aguilar made especially important contributions.

This chapter explores the portrayal of Chicago in the fiction of Saul Bellow, examining the conflict between materialism and visionary idealism that lies at the heart of his work. Starting from the stereotypical characterization of Chicago as the home of brute matter, cynical pragmatism, and the mass production of commodities and physical things, the chapter traces Bellow’s autobiographical search for hidden spiritual truths, connecting this to the Jewish notion of being exiled in a foreign land, vestiges of the soul or the spirit disguised among the quotidian ugliness of industrial America. This conflict between things and ideas, matter and spirit, morality and “the hustle” of economic life, draws on both the conflicts of Bellow’s early life and the wider patterns of Jewish immigration and assimilation. Chicago appears in Bellow’s work as both an overwhelming physical presence and a metaphysical absence, linked to the emptiness of the prairies and haunted by the Jewish-Russian past of Bellow’s family. These contradictions and paradoxes are traced through a close reading of Bellow’s short fiction, as well as his major novels The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Humboldt’s Gift.

The chapter addresses the question of the definition of a Jewish collectivity as it was formed in Hellenistic and Roman times by Jews. Having a single Hebrew term to designate themselves, Bney Israel (“the sons of Israel”), Jews had to do without concepts such as ethnos, genos, laos, dēmos, populus, natio, polis, and civitas when referring to themselves as a collective group. The chapter examines the notions that Jews used in order to refer to themselves as an entity, and shows that the definition of Judaism by Jews was modeled in view of different concepts of other entities that were predominant in the Greco-Roman world and was influenced by the tension between political, geo-ethnic, historical, juridical and civic definitions. Each type of collective definition served a different realpolitik and was conditioned by different political circumstances, which determined the way in which Jews demarcated themselves as a group. The chapter aims to reveal the evolution that the definition of Judaism underwent in a period of great changes and focuses in particular on the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Chapter 5 evaluates the role of education in China’s rapid growth. In 1980, China was one of the poorest countries in the world, but the average years of schooling of its adult population was already near that of a middle-income country. This relatively high educational level was an advantage for China’s economic development. However, this advantage all but disappeared by 2005. China’s greatest advantage turns out to be in the quality rather than quantity of education. According to the cognitive skills index produced by Eric Hanushek and his coauthors, who use it as a measure of a country’s educational quality, China ranks the best among all developing nations. This factor alone may explain a very significant 4 percentage point difference in GDP per capita growth between China and developing countries such as Peru and South Africa. It is shown that China’s advantage in the quality of schooling is not due to more investment in education by the government. Instead, it is the traditional Confucian culture that has made people in China and other East Asian economies influenced by the culture value of education more than people in most other developing countries.

Shortly before his death in 2007, in an interview for Nextbook Reader, Mailer was asked what role Judaism had played in his body of work. His response was “An enormous role.” Raised in a Jewish family, Mailer himself never accepted the traditional Judaism practiced by his parents, and (with the possible exception of The Naked and the Dead), his work does not address the lives of Jewish Americans as explicitly as some contemporary Jewish writers like Saul Bellow or Philip Roth. Yet Mailer himself insisted that the religious and spiritual aspects of Judaism as well as the experience of Jewish identity were central to his work, and this chapter provides an overview of those influences, also acknowledging how they factor into his decision to pen novels about both Jesus Christ (The Gospel According to the Son) and Adolf Hitler (The Castle in the Forest).

The purpose of the discussion in this chapter is to suggest some cardinal changes to the practice of male circumcision in order to make it more humane and less painful to its subjects. Balancing between group rights and the rights of the child, it is essential to avoid unnecessary suffering. It is one of the liberal state’s obligations to protect the best interests of vulnerable third parties. The chapter opens with some preliminary data about male circumcision and then explains its importance in Judaism and in Islam. It examines the medical reasons for male circumcision and the risks involved in the practice; subsequently, it discusses the critique of male circumcision. The discussion also highlights the points of agreement and disagreement between those supporting and opposing the ritual and insists that male circumcision should be performed by using anaesthesia. The final part of the discussion includes a proposal for humane male circumcision that considers religious sentiments and the rights of the child, aiming to strike a reasonable balance between competing interests. The hope is that the proposal will be debated in parliaments in the Western world.