Ahuvia Goren | Ben Gurion University of the Negev (original) (raw)
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Papers by Ahuvia Goren
Common scholarly notions describe the reception of early modern scientific ideas in Jewish though... more Common scholarly notions describe the reception of early modern scientific ideas in Jewish thought as enabled by a novel general attitude demanding the separation of the spheres of natural philosophy and theology. According to this view, the syncretism between Jewish sources and Aristotelian and Platonic sources offered by the medieval Jewish philosophers had collapsed, and early modern Jewish thinkers, like many protestant thinkers realized these bodies of knowledge should be handled separately – with scripture conceived as describing matters concerning the spiritual realms and natural philosophy describing the experienced world.
This essay argues that the moment of 'separation' in the reception histories of early modern ideas in Jewish thought was far less central than frequently described. Through a study of the thought of rabbi Moshe Chefetz and some of his contemporaries, it is shown that the 'Separation Thesis' does not explain notable acts of translation and knowledge transfer of early modern scientific knowledge into Jewish works. Early modern scholars in England and Italy were much interested in Physico-Theology, an early modern synthesis between biblical interpretation and philosophy of the natural world. Similarly, and with familiarity with some of their world and ideas, Chefetz's work is shown to be an attempt to introduce the Jewish reader to Gassendian atomism, Cartesian optics, and new theories about the tides. He did so through the presentation of these ideas as the genuine meaning of biblical verses and a solution to many burning philosophical question of the time, raised by contemporary skeptics. This work and its influence show that the path of interpretation, the reading scientific ideas into the religious sources and vice versa was a prevailing source for the embracement of early modern scientific ideas into Jewish theological works.
The article ends by arguing that the prevailing separation thesis should be viewed as part of a wider 'disenchantmet' narrative of modernity, and that further research on the reception of scientific and philosophical ideas in Jewish works should consider the broader discussion about the notion of secularization and its critics, in order to offer a more nuanced narrative.
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Goren, Ahuvia. "The Lulav: Early Modern Polemical Ethnographies and the Art of Fencing" Religions 12: 493 , 2021
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
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ToC Studia Rosenthaliana 2020, Vol. 46, No. 1/2, 2020
Table of Contents of 'The Jewish Bookshop of the World; Aspects of Print and Manuscript Culture i... more Table of Contents of 'The Jewish Bookshop of the World; Aspects of Print and Manuscript Culture in Early Modern Amsterdam,' guest edited by Theodor Dunkelgrün.
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This article considers the halakhic work Orot Hamivot (1753) of Benyamin Dias Brandon, and its po... more This article considers the halakhic work Orot Hamivot (1753) of Benyamin Dias Brandon, and its posthumous co-editor, Isaac Cohen Belinfante. The article situates this publication in the intellectual Portuguese-Jewish milieu of eighteenth-century Amsterdam and the kinds of scholarship and ideals of erudition that were fostered in its Ets Haim yeshiva. More specifically, the article shows how Brandon’s and Belinfante’s work contributed to a wider tradition of literature, flourishing in the early eighteenth-century, that combined halakhic arguments with polemical defenses of rabbinic authority. This literature built on seventeenth-century precedents, but it also broke new ground by incorporating developments in natural science, such as theories of atomism, into halakhic thought.
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THE USE OF FUNCTIONAL TESTS IN FITNESS FOR WORK ASSESSMENTS IN THE RESPONSA LITERATURE]., 2018
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Talks by Ahuvia Goren
עיון מחדש במסורות משותפות: יהדות ואסלאם במבט פוסט-חילוני, 2023
הסדנה מבקשת לשוב למושג "המסורת", ובאופן ספציפי, למסורות יהודיות ומוסלמיות מנקודת מבט ביקורתית ופו... more הסדנה מבקשת לשוב למושג "המסורת", ובאופן ספציפי, למסורות יהודיות ומוסלמיות מנקודת מבט ביקורתית ופוסט-חילונית, המתנגדת לתפיסה המשותפת לנאורות ולמדעי האדם, שביקשו להתבונן במסורת כעבר שחלף, או שראוי היה לו לחלוף. נקודת המוצא של הסדנה מניחה שהמסורות השונות, היהודיות והמוסלמיות, ממשיכות לעצב את ההווה שלנו ומזמנות תנועה במסלול דו-כיווני בין עבר להווה, דרך אנדלוסיה של ימי הביניים, ארצות
האסלאם בעת החדשה, וישראל ופלסטין של ימינו.
בסדנה נלמד על ביקורת חילונית דרך נקודות מפגש בין האסלאם ליהדות ועל הרלוונטיות של מפגש זה למחקר האקדמי ומעבר לו. בין היתר נבקש להבין כיצד קונפליקטים עכשוויים הנוצרים בין "דת", "חילוניות" ו"מסורת" בהקשר יהודי ומוסלמי קשורים בטבורם למדינת הלאום המודרנית, ולתהליכים קולוניאליים ופוסט-קולוניאליים.
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Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Common scholarly notions describe the reception of early modern scientific ideas in Jewish though... more Common scholarly notions describe the reception of early modern scientific ideas in Jewish thought as enabled by a novel general attitude demanding the separation of the spheres of natural philosophy and theology. According to this view, the syncretism between Jewish sources and Aristotelian and Platonic sources offered by the medieval Jewish philosophers had collapsed, and early modern Jewish thinkers, like many protestant thinkers realized these bodies of knowledge should be handled separately – with scripture conceived as describing matters concerning the spiritual realms and natural philosophy describing the experienced world.
This essay argues that the moment of 'separation' in the reception histories of early modern ideas in Jewish thought was far less central than frequently described. Through a study of the thought of rabbi Moshe Chefetz and some of his contemporaries, it is shown that the 'Separation Thesis' does not explain notable acts of translation and knowledge transfer of early modern scientific knowledge into Jewish works. Early modern scholars in England and Italy were much interested in Physico-Theology, an early modern synthesis between biblical interpretation and philosophy of the natural world. Similarly, and with familiarity with some of their world and ideas, Chefetz's work is shown to be an attempt to introduce the Jewish reader to Gassendian atomism, Cartesian optics, and new theories about the tides. He did so through the presentation of these ideas as the genuine meaning of biblical verses and a solution to many burning philosophical question of the time, raised by contemporary skeptics. This work and its influence show that the path of interpretation, the reading scientific ideas into the religious sources and vice versa was a prevailing source for the embracement of early modern scientific ideas into Jewish theological works.
The article ends by arguing that the prevailing separation thesis should be viewed as part of a wider 'disenchantmet' narrative of modernity, and that further research on the reception of scientific and philosophical ideas in Jewish works should consider the broader discussion about the notion of secularization and its critics, in order to offer a more nuanced narrative.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Goren, Ahuvia. "The Lulav: Early Modern Polemical Ethnographies and the Art of Fencing" Religions 12: 493 , 2021
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
ToC Studia Rosenthaliana 2020, Vol. 46, No. 1/2, 2020
Table of Contents of 'The Jewish Bookshop of the World; Aspects of Print and Manuscript Culture i... more Table of Contents of 'The Jewish Bookshop of the World; Aspects of Print and Manuscript Culture in Early Modern Amsterdam,' guest edited by Theodor Dunkelgrün.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
This article considers the halakhic work Orot Hamivot (1753) of Benyamin Dias Brandon, and its po... more This article considers the halakhic work Orot Hamivot (1753) of Benyamin Dias Brandon, and its posthumous co-editor, Isaac Cohen Belinfante. The article situates this publication in the intellectual Portuguese-Jewish milieu of eighteenth-century Amsterdam and the kinds of scholarship and ideals of erudition that were fostered in its Ets Haim yeshiva. More specifically, the article shows how Brandon’s and Belinfante’s work contributed to a wider tradition of literature, flourishing in the early eighteenth-century, that combined halakhic arguments with polemical defenses of rabbinic authority. This literature built on seventeenth-century precedents, but it also broke new ground by incorporating developments in natural science, such as theories of atomism, into halakhic thought.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
THE USE OF FUNCTIONAL TESTS IN FITNESS FOR WORK ASSESSMENTS IN THE RESPONSA LITERATURE]., 2018
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
עיון מחדש במסורות משותפות: יהדות ואסלאם במבט פוסט-חילוני, 2023
הסדנה מבקשת לשוב למושג "המסורת", ובאופן ספציפי, למסורות יהודיות ומוסלמיות מנקודת מבט ביקורתית ופו... more הסדנה מבקשת לשוב למושג "המסורת", ובאופן ספציפי, למסורות יהודיות ומוסלמיות מנקודת מבט ביקורתית ופוסט-חילונית, המתנגדת לתפיסה המשותפת לנאורות ולמדעי האדם, שביקשו להתבונן במסורת כעבר שחלף, או שראוי היה לו לחלוף. נקודת המוצא של הסדנה מניחה שהמסורות השונות, היהודיות והמוסלמיות, ממשיכות לעצב את ההווה שלנו ומזמנות תנועה במסלול דו-כיווני בין עבר להווה, דרך אנדלוסיה של ימי הביניים, ארצות
האסלאם בעת החדשה, וישראל ופלסטין של ימינו.
בסדנה נלמד על ביקורת חילונית דרך נקודות מפגש בין האסלאם ליהדות ועל הרלוונטיות של מפגש זה למחקר האקדמי ומעבר לו. בין היתר נבקש להבין כיצד קונפליקטים עכשוויים הנוצרים בין "דת", "חילוניות" ו"מסורת" בהקשר יהודי ומוסלמי קשורים בטבורם למדינת הלאום המודרנית, ולתהליכים קולוניאליים ופוסט-קולוניאליים.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact