WHAT'S NEW?

"Leadership" Workshop on the 1st-2nd of May!
For a full program click here! 

                           
April 17th, Colloquium with Dr. Daniella Talmon-Heller, a senior fellow of the MBSF

Reciting the Qurʾān and Reading the Torah: Muslim and Jewish Attitudes and Practices in a Comparative Perspective 

Over the past several decades there has been a steadily growing interest in the variety of devotional practices by which individuals and communities engage with their holy texts. This paper offers a comparative study of the performative and ritualistic aspects of the recitation of scripture by Jews and Muslims, as shaped in the medieval Middle East. It shows striking similarities in attitudes and practices, as well as interesting disparities.
Verses of Torah and Qurʾān are incorporated into statutory and supererogatory prayers, communal services, talismanic practices, rites of passage and social gatherings of Jews and Muslims. In both traditions correct pronunciation is held to preserve the authentic voice of the revelation and to incur powerful benevolent effects. In Islam, the recital of the memorized text, or parts of it, is the privileged practice; in Judaism – public reading of weekly consecutive portions is ceremoniously performed from special Torah scrolls. While the Qurʾān is absolutely dominant in Muslim liturgy and piety, texts other than the Torah constitute the lion's share of daily liturgical reading and expressions of piety of Jews.




We are happy to announce that the Kuratorium of the MBSF has approved the choices made by the Academic Committee in mid-March and confirmed the appointments of 10 new Fellows for the next academic year. There is a wide disciplinary and inter-disciplinary mix and a very exciting contingent of new Fellows. They are:

From Israel:
Yonatan Moss, Late Antiquity
Orit Gazit, Sociology/Anthropology
Samuel Thrope, Iranian Studies
Nitzan Rotem, Sociology
Ron Dudai, Criminology/History

From Germany:
Joses Maria Sanchez de Leon, Philosophy
Eva Bischoff, Modern History
Antonios Kalatzis, Philosophy
Ellinor Morack, Modern History, Ottoman studies
Katharina Kraus, Philosophy

We congratulate the new fellows and look forward to a new inspiring and creative academic year! 



         March 13th, Colloquium with Prof. Ursula Lehmkuhl, a senior fellow of the MBSF

Narrative Tropes as a Transatlantic Bonding Instrument: Political Liberalism and the “Revolutionsnarrativ” in the Letters of the German Bohn family, 1852 to 2005

Based on a letter series of more than 200 letters written in the period from 1852 to 2005 this presentation discussed the content and function of political narratives as a bonding factor and a discursive instrument to create and stabilize family cohesion in an extended transatlantic family network over a time span of more than 150 years.
Johann Heinrich Carl Bohn emigrated in 1852 from Remptendorf, Thuringia to Ohio together with his wife and five children and the family of his sister Caroline Meisgeier. Johann Heinrich Carl Bohn was a supporter of the 1848 revolution and fought for freedom and a liberal political order in the Prussian dominated Dukedom Reuss, Thuringia. His political opinions and beliefs created major problems with the local government in Thuringia, so that he - “the Revolutionary” - decided to immigrate to the “land of the free”. His two eldest sons fought during the Civil War in the Union army to support “the cause of freedom” and to fight against slavery and serfdom. The two youngest sons, Frank and William E. Bohn, became active in the American socialist movement at the turn of the century. Frank Bohn was a founding member of the “Industrial Workers of the World” and he served as “National Secretary” of “The Socialist Labor Party of America”. Roland Wehrmann, the husband of a Bohn relative who remained in Germany and the still living owner of the letter collection, for reasons of political liberalism and freedom refused to become a member of the SED party after the SPD was forced to merge with the new “unitary” party of the GDR in 1949. He in turn lost his position as the mayor of Remptendorf and was compelled to work as a land laborer in one of the newly created state-owned farming cooperatives in Thuringia.
The family history is narrated by different kinds of historical documents: the letters, the family histories of which we have two, a German version written by Roland Wehrmann and an American version, compiled by Duane Mason, accounts about the family reunions which took place on a regular basis since 1907, visits in Germany by American family members, short stories about the history of Remptendorf, the history of the 1848 revolution in Remptendorf, memories of stories told by the immigrant about his political role in the 1848 revolution and reminiscences about the character and behavior of their father by five of his sons.
The historical documents construct the story of Johann Heinrich Carl being a “Red ‘48er” via temporally interrelated ways of remembering. The core narrators of Johann Heinrich Carl’s life story are members of the second, third and even fifth generation. In this interesting case of life history, the life story is not predominantly constructed by the memory of the person concerned but by the memories of the later generations who construct the life story of the immigrant by remembering the stories he repeatedly told his children when they were young. The conspicuous repetition of the narrative trope “Johann Heinrich Carl – the Revolutionary” in these diverse documents gives a telling example about how narratives serve as a bonding instrument by creating a political family identity bridging time and space.



                              

The Martin Buber Society congratulates Prof. Yoram Bilu, our senior fellow, for receiving the 2013 Israel Prize in the field of sociological and anthropological research!
 

On February 27 the Fellows gathered for a dinner followed by a lecture by Professor Aron Shai, the Rector of Tel Aviv University, on the subject of the "Abandoned Villages"-- that is, the several hundred Palestinian villages that were abandoned during the 1948 war, and whose remnants were effaced by government decision during the 1950's and 1960's. Professor Shai is the world's expert on this topic. As easily happens in Israel, during the questions and answer period the historical discussion turned into hot debate on more recent issues (perhaps a litle too hot for comfort). History, as all historians know, is more about the present than the past.

Once a year you get to see the true face of the administration (Purim, 24.02.13)...

On February 19 the Rector, Professor Asher Cohen, joined us for coffee and met the Buber Fellows. He knows the program well and strongly supports it, but this was the first time he was introduced to the Fellows personally. He knows what it's like to be a post-doc-- both the exhilarating experience of having time to work, think, and write, and the sometimes agonizing uncertainty about finding a permanent appointment somewhere. His advice: "Despite the uncertainty, enjoy these years, they may be the best in your lives!"

February 13th, Colloquium with Dr. Sarit Paz, a fellow of the MBSF

The Caucasian Connection: Diaspora and Identity in the 3rd Millennium BCE

January 23rd, Colloquium with Dr. Michael Ebstein, a fellow of the MBSF

In his lecture entitled “No God but AllÁh? A Surprising Cosmogonic Myth in Islamic Mysticism”, Michael Ebstein presented a cosmogonic myth found in the writings of the famous Muslim mystic from al-Andalusia, Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-‘Arabi (1165-1240). The myth which appears in four different versions in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s works tells the story of how God’s names and attributes created the world. In his discussion of this myth, Michael Ebstein raised various questions pertaining to the problem of unity versus multiplicity in the Divine world, in the Abrahamic religions in general and in Islamic mysticism in particular.

 

 

Hearty congratulations to our Buber Fellow Laura Jockusch for winning the National Jewish Book Award 2012 for the Holocaust category!

http://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/2012-national-jewish-book-award-winners
 

Workshop "Home" on January 13th
For a full program and a description click here and here!

 
January 9th, Colloquium with Dr. David Horst, a fellow of the MBSF

What is Autonomy?

Dr. Horst:
According to Immanuel Kant’s famous definition, autonomy is “the will’s property of being a law to itself.” That is, the decisions and actions of an autonomous will are governed by reasons that are its own and, thus, are self-determined. Moreover, Kant claims that a free will is autonomous. Thus, being free is being determined in a particular way, namely to be self-determined. In my talk, I offered an interpretation and defense of both of Kant’s claims.
In the first part, I argued for the claim that being free is being self-determined by contrasting it with a libertarian conception of freedom according to which freedom is the ability to act for or against any given reason. This view, I argued, is untenable because, ultimately, it collapses the distinction between freedom and mere randomness. To avoid this, being free must be consistent with being determined, in some way; the conception of freedom in terms of self-determination meets this condition, which is why it is a promising candidate for an adequate conception of free will.
In the second part of my talk, I tried to spell out the relevant idea of self-determination in more detail. An act of will is self-determined if it is determined by a reason that is in some sense one’s own. Thus, to understand the relevant idea of self-determination one has to understand what it is for a reason to be one’s own. According to a widespread view, a reason is one’s own if it owes its normative force to an independent act of acknowledgement, identification, or choice. This view, however, gives rise to a dilemma, wherefore it must be abandoned. Instead, I argued that, in the fundamental case, a reason is one own if it is a principle that is constitutive of one’s will itself. Acting on such a principle, one’s act is self-determined in that it is determined by nothing that is not contained in one’s own nature as an agent. I concluded the talk by a brief sketch of how I think such a constitutivist account of autonomy is to be developed further.

 

January 8th, a guest lecture by Dr. Uri Hasson from Princeton University, followed by a dinner.

Face to Face, Brain to Brain: Exploring the Mechanisms of Dyadic Social Interactions

Dr. Hasson:
Cognition materializes in an interpersonal space. The emergence of complex behaviors requires the coordination of actions among individuals according to a shared set of rules. Despite the central role of other individuals in shaping our minds, experiments typically isolate human or animal subjects from their natural environment by placing them in a sealed quiet room where interactions occur solely with a computer screen. In everyday life, however, we spend most of our time interacting with other individuals. In the talk I argue in favor of a shift from a single-brain to a multi-brain frame of reference. I present a new analysis tool, in which we compute the “functional connectivity” between the brain responses in a seed area in one subject and the responses in other subjects’ brains. While at rest we see no correlations in the responses across subjects, during the processing of real life stimuli the brain responses in one brain are coupled to the responses in another brain. Such neural coupling is mediate via the transmission of a signal (stimulus-to-brain coupling) through the environment. When the transmitted signal is speech signal which was produced by another brain, the inter-subject functional analysis exposes a shared neural substrate that exhibits temporally aligned response patterns across the speaker and the listener. The recording of the neural responses from two brains opens a new window into the neural basis of interpersonal communication, and may be used to assess verbal and non-verbal forms of interaction in both human and other model systems.

December 19th, Colloquium with Dr. Rebecca Weil, a fellow of the MBSF

In and Out of Control:
When We Can't Help but Being Consistent

Dr. Weil:
In 1958 Fritz Heider proposed the theory of cognitive balance. According to this theory people prefer a pattern of interpersonal relations that can be described as balanced triads: People tend to like individuals who are liked by their friends, but they dislike individuals who are disliked by their friends. Likewise, people dislike individuals who are liked by their enemies, but like individuals who are disliked by their enemies. We investigated whether people are in control of cognitive balancing when they express their evaluations toward persons. Our results demonstrated that expressed evaluations toward targets were cognitively balanced although participants were instructed to control cognitive balancing. However, people are in control of expressing the strength of cognitive balance and can prevent expressing balanced evaluations when they have access to an alternative evaluation pattern. Still, balanced triads seem to be represented in memory irrespective of a motivation to control cognitive balancing.

Workshop in the Lower Galilee December 6-7th
For photos click here!


December 5th, Colloquium with Dr. Yifat Monnickendam, a fellow of the MBSF

When Did Roman Culture Invade the East?
Betrothal Customs as a Test Case

Dr. Monnickendam:
     The Syro-Roman Lawbook, written in Greek and translated to Syriac at the end of the fifth century, is perceived as one of the early representatives of Roman influence on Syriac Christianity. Nevertheless, tracing the roots of two customs documented in this composition shows earlier influence of Roman law in the Christian east. According to the Syro-Roman Lawbook, a kiss and earnest are both given during the process of betrothal in order to strengthen its validity. Even though both customs are well attested in Roman law and Latin Christian sources, they are also found in non-legal Greek writings as early as the third century, and non-legal Syriac writings as early as the fourth century. These findings show that the influence of Roman law on the Christian east in general and the Syrian east in particular, is not only earlier than thought but also more profound. The non-legal sources show that these legislations were neither introduced to Syriac Christians through the Syro-Roman Lawbook, nor imposed as new legislations, but rather were known and practiced by the fourth century if not earlier.

 

 

            November 21tst, Colloquium with Dr. des. Lutz Greisiger, a fellow of the MBSF
 
Eschatological Inclusivism:
Patterns of Interaction between Heterodox Protestants and Jews in 17th/18th Century Central Europe.

Dr. des Greisiger:
In this talk I presented a central issue of my current research, an attempt to typologize eschatological expectations and their effect on inclusivist attitudes towards other religions, intended for desribing recurrent patterns in the history of the Abrahamic religions. To exemplify this working model I chose the perceptions of the Other among 17th and 18th century German Pietist Christians and Shabbatean Jews who both cherished imminent messianic/millennarian expectations and were both concerned with the question of how the redemptive process would affect the relationship of their own to the respective other religious community. More precisely I tried to demonstrate that in the eschatological discourses of both communities distinct scenarios become manifest that can be subsumed under the same categories. The first of these is marked by a concept of redemption as a gradual development, culminating in the advent of the Messiah or the return of Christ, whereas the other conceives of redemption as a process only to be initiated by that appearance. Since redemption was also to be accompanied by a major conversion (either of the adherants of the other to one’s own or of all mankind to a new, as yet to be revealed religion) the assumed schedule of eschatological events induced missionary or conversional activism among representatives of the first or passive expectancy in proponents of the second type of messianism/millenarianism.
Those Pietists who are commonly counted among the “moderates” usually expected the millennium to become manifest gradually and the return of Christ to be the concluding event of the redemptive process, accordingly tended to engaging in or actively supporting missionary endeavors, whereas the so-called “radicals,” waiting for the Second Coming to bring about redemption, were sceptical towards or opposed to missionary activities. Likewise for “moderate” Shabbateans who expected the mission of Shabbetai Zvi to be completed only at his return, the conversion of non-Jews were of little concern, while “radical” messianists who viewed his ministry as actually having ushered in the messianic era―in the paradoxical way so characteristic of Shabbatian thought and practice―converted in several successive waves to Islam and Christianity, in order to collect the divine sparks in preparation for the conversion of mankind to the new, ‘trans-sectarian’ religion.
Inclusivism, I claimed in this talk, so alien to the Abrahamic religions as it is usually conceived of, not only proves to be an essential feature of these very religions, but can be analyzed and categorized according to a scheme that is applicable to all the different traditions of the Abrahamic ‘family.’

 

November 7th, Colloquium with Dr. Shai Secunda, a fellow of the MBSF

iTalmud: Digitization, Hypertext, and the Theorization of the Talmud 

 

Dr. Secunda:
In my talk I shared some preliminary thoughts on the digitization of the Talmud, what it means for the way Talmud is studied in the present age, and most significantly from my perspective, what it can tell us about the Talmud ‘itself’. Since the late 1970’s, rabbinic texts have undergone digitization so that they are easily manipulated in study and presentation, searchable, and hyperlinked. The rise of the smartphone and networked computers in even more recent times has created a level of media saturation frequently bemoaned in the public square; yet this phenomenon has interesting analogues in traditional societies – like rabbinic study culture – that for many years have celebrated the constancy and portability of texts in oral and printed form.
The new digital reality of talmudic texts can also help inform the critical theorization of the Talmud and the culture that produced it. After digging up some early attempts to apply Marshal McLuhan’s theories of media to the ‘classic’ Vilna edition of the Talmud, I questioned the uncomplicated use of this thinking given the fact that the Vilna edition is but one iteration in a long history of media evolutions. A recent Talmud app for iPad created by Artscroll-Mesorah Publications, an Orthodox Jewish publishing house based in Brooklyn New York, actually attempts to bring the reader back to (a virtual version of) the Vilna page. This testifies both to the way the Vilna page signifies the aura of tradition and also reflects the anxiety about the loss of an original Talmud ‘object’ which, actually, never existed in the first place.

The digitization of the Talmud and its concomitant virtuality strips away the Talmud’s numerous media iterations (including oral performance and transmission, manuscript, and printed book) and helps us hone in on the object itself. Here, we can accept a view that emphasizes the non-linearity of the Talmud as a key to understanding what it ‘is’. Similarly, even for understanding what the Talmud was before the printing press, we might (or might not) still make use of McLuhan’s term, “COOL”, to describe the way the Talmud simultaneously engages multiple faculties that attempt to render it meaningful. And in all this, it pays to listen to recent efforts to move beyond thinking of the Talmud as a ‘book’, and instead look at it as a ‘practice’ (with a particular articulation). Finally, we can use the digitization of the Talmud to reconsider the relationship between the virtual disembodied text, and the culture that produced it.

 

 

Workshop II "Forgetting"
27-30th October 2012 in Jerusalem
For a full program and pictures click here and here!






We will publish our new Call for Applications for the academic year 2013-2014 in the beginning of October!


Workshop I "Forgetting"
10-13th June 2012 in Konstanz
Read about Kim's and Nira's experience and take a look at our photos!
 

 

From Body to Politic: Trust between Self and Other

Workshop on Tuesday 15th of May
for further information click here and here!

On April 29 The Martin Buber Society of Fellows' met with Prof. Dr. Sabine Kunst, the Minister of Science, Research and Culture of Brandenburg. Prof. Kunst is also a board member of the MBSF. The meeting took place in the magnificent atmosphere of the Botanical Garden at the Hebrew University. The participants heard a short introduction to the garden followed by a lecture of Dr. Uri Gabbay on the Cuneiform Tablet no. 254. 

   
Prof. Kunst with the Buber Fellows                                     Dr. Uri Gabbay 
 
 

Prof. Markschies: 

In my talk I offered an epitome of a book on “God’s Body in Antiquity” which I am writing at the moment. The talk was divided into three parts: In a first, introductory section I discussed the question why “History of the Body”-research has completely neglected the subject of God’s Body over the last twenty years or more. The subject is far from trivial; indeed, it touches on fundamental issues in the early history of Christianity and in Late Antiquity. In a second section I argued against the widespread prejudice that only simpleminded rural (Egyptian) monks imagined God as having a body, and I sought to drew a line from non-metaphorical biblical texts to Christian theologians like Tertullian and Melito of Sardes, who wrote about God’s body and the necessity to conceptualize him as fully embodied. In a third section Jewish texts were discussed, especially the so called Shiur Qoma-Tradition from early Byzantine-period Babylonia together with Christian parallels. The idea that God’s body, though immense, can actually be measured is a second line of argument, prominent in Late Antiquity, about God’s specific materiality. Finally we turned to the struggle that took place in Alexandria at the end of the fourth century and to the motifs of the so-called Anthropomorphists.

It is by now quite clear that long before the sharp critique of Anthropomorphism by medieval thinkers such as Maimonides and Thomas of Aquinas, many learned and sophisticated Jewish and Christian thinkers conceived of God as having a very specific, light, divine body of which the human body is an image (in accordance with Genesis 1:26-27).

 Appearance and Distinction: Images and Self-Images of Jews
 
Workshop on Sunday 22nd of April
For further information click here and here!
 


Orpheus between myth and theology

Sibylle Schmidt and Gadi Sagiv write about their first month in the Buber Society. Click here to read! 

On 26th of January the Buber fellows and the new fellows of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center met for a mutual academic activity in Tel Aviv. Dr. Adreas Kraft gave a lecture: "No longer...at home in the world": Resentments and the essayistic writing  of Jean Améry", followed by a discussion at the Goethe Institut, and a visit to the Anselm Kiefer's new exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum.


 

 

 

 

                                             

 

 

 

 Prof. Yfaat Weiss and Dr. Adreas Kraft                                                        In front of the Tel Aviv Museum

 

Repetition Workshop 15th of January
(click here to see the program) 

 

December 13th, Colloquium with Dr. Wiebke- Marie Stock, a fellow of the MBSF

The function of Imagery in Plotinus’s Theory of the Soul

 

December 13th, Colloquium with Mrs. Kim Wuenschmann, a doctoral fellow of the MBSF
Enforcing the Enemy Category: Jewish Prisoners in the Early Camps 1933/34

        

Workshop in Ginosar 8-9 December 2011


 

 

November 29th, Colloquium with Prof. Yoram Bilu, a senior fellow of the MBSF
"We Want to See our King": Making the Absent Rabbi Present in Messianic Habad  
Greetings by Prof. Avner De-Shalit, Dean of the Faculty of Social