Judaism In Biological Perspective

Author : Rick Goldberg
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2015-12-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317257165

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Judaism in Biological Perspective by Rick Goldberg Pdf

Can there be rational examples of the compatibility between natural science and Judaism? This book offers a strikingly novel perspective on traditional and contemporary Judaic practices. For those with some Judaic knowledge, there are biological explanations in these chapters not seen elsewhere. For those well-versed in evolutionary theory, the authors' perspectives suggest new approaches to the scientific study of religion. Topics include the monistic tendency, biblical polygyny, biblical family conflict, circumcision and proselytes, sacrificial-ritualistic mitzvot (obligations), periodic conjugal separation, Judaic traditionalism, male and female reproductive strategies, and the relationship between costly signaling and prestige.

Author : Rick Goldberg
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2015-12-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317257158

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Judaism in Biological Perspective by Rick Goldberg Pdf

Can there be rational examples of the compatibility between natural science and Judaism? This book offers a strikingly novel perspective on traditional and contemporary Judaic practices. For those with some Judaic knowledge, there are biological explanations in these chapters not seen elsewhere. For those well-versed in evolutionary theory, the authors' perspectives suggest new approaches to the scientific study of religion. Topics include the monistic tendency, biblical polygyny, biblical family conflict, circumcision and proselytes, sacrificial-ritualistic mitzvot (obligations), periodic conjugal separation, Judaic traditionalism, male and female reproductive strategies, and the relationship between costly signaling and prestige.

Author : David Shatz,Joel B. Wolowelsky
Publisher : KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0881257923

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Mind, Body and Judaism by David Shatz,Joel B. Wolowelsky Pdf

Sovereignty over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is one of the most difficult problems in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although it is a present-day bone of contention, its roots go back into the distant past. Israelites, Christians, and Muslims had fought over this holy site, and built on it a succession of shrines. The book leads the reader into the intricate history, geography, and politics of this unique site. It relates the roots of its holiness, describes the succession of temples built on it, and explains how in the twentieth century its sanctity become interwined with the national aspirations of both Jews and Arabs. It explains why the Temple Mount is considered the holiest site for the Jews, and how it became holy also to the Muslims. The book also explores the role of evangelical Christians, who, alongside a segment of the Jewish population, see the Temple Mount as the center of messianic aspirations, fed by the myriad of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legends and myths which evolved around it. The book is richly illustrated with photographs, sketches, maps, and plans.

Author : Raphael Falk
Publisher : Springer
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2017-07-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783319573458

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Zionism and the Biology of Jews by Raphael Falk Pdf

This book offers a unique perspective on Zionism. The author, a geneticist by training, focuses on science, rather than history. He looks at the claims that Jews constitute a people with common biological roots. An argument that helps provide justification for the aspirations of this political movement dedicated to the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. His study explores two issues. The first considers the assertion that there is a biology of the Jews. The second deals with attempts to integrate this idea into a consistent history. Both issues unfolded against the background of a romantic national culture of Western Europe in the 19th century: Jews, primarily from Eastern Europe, began to believe these notions and soon they took the lead in the re-formulation of Jewish and Zionist existence. The author does not intend to present a comprehensive picture of the biological literature of the origins of a people and the blood relations between them. He also recognizes that the subject is emotionally-loaded. The book does, however, present a profound mediation on three overlapping questions: What is special or unique to the Jews? Who were the genuine Jews? And how can one identify Jews? This volume is a revised and edited English version of Tzionut Vehabiologia shel Hayehudim, published in 2006.

Author : Elliot N. Dorff,Laurie Zoloth
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 480 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780827612242

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Jews and Genes by Elliot N. Dorff,Laurie Zoloth Pdf

Of the science of stem cell research / Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth -- Applying Jewish law to stem cell research / Elliot N. Dorff -- Divine representations and the value of embryos : god's image, god's name, and the status of human nonpersons / Noam J. Zohar -- "Like water" : using Genesis to formulate an alternative Jewish position on the beginning of life / Yosef Leibowitz -- Reasonable magic : stem cell research and forbidden knowledge / Laurie Zoloth -- Summary of the science of genetic mapping and identity / Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth -- Folk taxonomy, prejudice, and the human genome / Judith S. Neulander -- What is a Jew? The meaning of genetic disease for Jewish identity / Rebecca Alpert -- Yearning for the long-lost home : the lemba and the Jewish narrative of genetic return / Laurie Zoloth -- Summary of the science of genetic testing / Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth -- Genetic testing in the Jewish community / Paul Root Wolpe -- Jewish genetic decision making and an ethic of care / Toby l. Schonfeld -- Summary of the science of genetic intervention / Elliot N. Dorff and Laurie Zoloth -- Some Jewish thoughts on genetic enhancement / Shimon Glick -- Curing disease and enhancing traits : a philosophical (and Jewish) perspective / Ronald M. Green -- Genetic enhancement and the image of god / Aaron l. Mackler -- "Blessed is the one who is good and who brings forth goodness" : a Jewish theological response to the ethical challenges of new genetic technologies / Louis E. Newman -- Jewish reflections on genetic enhancement / Jeffrey H. Burack -- Mending the code / Robert Gibbs -- Religious traditions in a postreligious world : does halakhah have insights for nonbelievers? / John Lantos -- How the unconscious shapes modern genomic science / Robert pollack -- To fix the world : Jewish convictions affecting social issues / Elliot N. Dorff.

Author : Harry Lionel Shapiro
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 84 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1960
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:180882878

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The Jewish People. A Biological History by Harry Lionel Shapiro Pdf

Author : von Verschuer /. Fischer
Publisher : Blurb
Page : 68 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2018-07-25
Category : History
ISBN : 1388201712

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The Racial Biology of the Jews and the Racial Origin and Earliest Racial History of the Hebrews by von Verschuer /. Fischer Pdf

New edition, completely reset and contains the complete text of these two essays which first appeared in the pages of the Forschungen Zur Judenfrage series of volumes. Written by two of Germany's most prominent biologists, the essays analyze the origin and nature of the Jewish people from a historical and biological perspective. Drawing heavily upon racial anthropology, the authors conclude that the Jews are a composite race, although always still strongly showing a common genetic base. Fischer shows how the Jews were created in Palestine from four sources: the Orientalid race as its main component, the Mediterranean race as an admixture, the Near Eastern race as a strong second component, and Nordic elements mixed in now and then. Verschuer provides a detailed anthropological description of Jews, including susceptibility to disease, mental traits (Jews are twice as likely to be schizophrenics), and other psychological traits-such as for example, their much lower drug and alcohol addiction rates. Verschuer also discusses the evidence for negroid admixture among Jews, and ultimately agrees with Fischer's analysis, pointing out that the consistency of the mix creates certain dominant traits "which are the inherent chief components of the racial mixture." Finally, Verschuer points out that the selective process to which Jews were subjected "stamped a whole, particular race with quite specific racial traits of a physical as well as mental-psychological kind."

Author : Joel Yehudah Rutman
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Evolution
ISBN : 0853038589

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Why Evolution Matters by Joel Yehudah Rutman Pdf

Why Evolution Matters examines the concept of evolution in relation to Judaism, showing that far from something to be avoided within the religion, evolutionary thought deepens an understanding of classic areas of Jewish concern, including free will, moral behavior, suffering, and death. The book presents a novel interpretation of biological evolution in which convergences, self-organization, constraints, and progress are seen as components of the divinely intended world. Why Evolution Matters confronts some major questions that are leveled at the Jewish religion: How can God have created the world when evolution says everything just happened? How can we believe in the truth of Genesis when it conflicts with the facts of evolution? How did we evolve and why does it matter? The book explains how Genesis and evolutionary cosmology and biology reinforce, rather than contradict, one another. Author Joel Yehudah Rutman, an experienced pediatric neurologist, draws on his own practical experience in a branch of medicine in which our evolutionary past is much in evidence. Why Evolution Matters is a 'must-read' for scientists, religious studies scholars, and anyone with an interest in religion. *** "...thoughtful and very well-researched, with extensive notes, bibliography, and index. This book will fit into collections on Jewish thought and philosophy, especially those that already have material on Judaism and science." -- AJL Reviews, Vol. V, No. 4, November/December 2015 [Subject: Evolution, Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, Philosophy]

Author : Jay R. Feierman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 325 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2009-06-08
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780313364310

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The Biology of Religious Behavior by Jay R. Feierman Pdf

Offers a fresh and detailed take on the evolution of religious behavior from a biobehavioral perspective, promoting a new understanding that may help build bridges across the religious divide. There has been much recent interest in the study of religion from the perspective of Darwinian evolution. The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion offers a broad overview of the topic, written by internationally recognized experts. In addition to its primary focus on religious behavior, the book addresses other important aspects of religion, such as values, beliefs, and emotions as they affect behavior. The contributors approach the evolution of religion by examining the behavior of individuals in their everyday lives. After describing various religious behaviors, the contributors consider the behaviors with reference to their evolutionary history, development during the lifetime of the individual, proximate causes, and adaptive value. Happily, this foray into understanding religion from a biobehavioral perspective demonstrates that, at the biological and behavioral levels, what unites the different religions of the world is far greater than what divides them.

Author : Alain F. Corcos
Publisher : Lehigh University Press
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0934223793

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The Myth of the Jewish Race by Alain F. Corcos Pdf

As a youth, the author, who had two Jewish grandparents, was defined as a Jew by Vichy France; his parents, however, refused to register the family as Jews. (In March 1944 Corcos and his brother fled to Spain and joined the Allied Forces in North Africa.) States that antisemites consider Jewishness to be inherited and to embody inferior, evil traits. This view is based on two false biological premises: that there are pure races of humans, and that some races are superior to others. Rejects these premises by considering modern biology and Jewish history. The latter indicates that the Jews cannot be a race, due to their lack of sexual isolation; diversity among Jews is a result of both intermarriage and proselytism. Sees the Spanish "limpieza de sangre" statutes and the Inquisition as precursors of Nazi racism. Observes that sometimes Jews have joined antisemites in accepting biological determinism. Intermarriage in countries such as China, India, and the USA has led to considerable biological diversity among Jews and to the reduction of diversity between Jews and non-Jews, if such diversity existed at all. Stresses that if antisemites have worried about "contamination" of their "race" by the Jews they have already missed the boat since Jews have mixed with non-Jews for many centuries.

Author : Eckart Voland,Wulf Schiefenhövel
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2009-08-12
Category : Science
ISBN : 9783642001284

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The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior by Eckart Voland,Wulf Schiefenhövel Pdf

In a Darwinian world, religious behavior - just like other behaviors - is likely to have undergone a process of natural selection in which it was rewarded in the evolutionary currency of reproductive success. This book aims to provide a better understanding of the social scenarios in which selection pressure led to religious practices becoming an evolved human trait, i.e. an adaptive answer to the conditions of living and surviving that prevailed among our prehistoric ancestors. This aim is pursued by a team of expert authors from a range of disciplines. Their contributions examine the relevant physiological, emotional, cognitive and social processes. The resulting understanding of the functional interplay of these processes gives valuable insights into the biological roots and benefits of religion.

Author : Jay Geller
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Page : 527 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : History
ISBN : 9780823233618

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The Other Jewish Question by Jay Geller Pdf

This book examines how modernizing German-speaking cultures, undergoing their own processes of identification, responded to the narcissistic threat posed by the continued persistence of Judentum (Judaism, Jewry, Jewishness) by representing "the Jew"'s body--or rather parts of that body and the techniques performed upon them. Such fetish-producing practices reveal the question of German-identified modernity to be inseparable from the Jewish Question. But Jewish-identified individuals, immersed in the phantasmagoria of such figurations--in the gutter and garret salon, medical treatise and dirty joke, tabloid caricature and literary depiction, church fa ade and bric-a-brac souvenir--had their own question, another Jewish Question. They also had other answers, for these physiognomic fragments not only identified "the Jew" but also became for some Jewish-identified individuals the building blocks for working through their particular situations and relaying their diverse responses. The Other Jewish Question maps the dissemination of and interrelationships among these corporeal signifiers in Germanophone cultures between the Enlightenment and the Shoah. Its analyses of ascribed Jewish physiognomy include tracing the gendered trajectory of the reception of Benedict Spinoza's correlation of Jewish persistence, anti-Semitism, and circumcision; the role of Zopf ("braid") in mediating German Gentile-Jewish relations; the skin(ny) on the association of Jews and syphilis in Arthur Dinter's antisemitic bestseller Sin against the Blood and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf; as well as the role of Jewish corporeality in the works of such Jewish-identified authors as Rahel Levin Varnhagen, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Max Nordau, Franz Kafka, and Walter Benjamin, as well as such "Jew"-identifying writers as Ludwig Feuerbach and Daniel Paul Schreber. The Other Jewish Question portrays how Jewish-identified individuals moved beyond introjection and disavowal to appropriate and transform this epidemic of signification to make sense of their worlds and our modernity.

Author : Efraim Sicher
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 398 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2013-05-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780857458933

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Race, Color, Identity by Efraim Sicher Pdf

Advances in genetics are renewing controversies over inherited characteristics, and the discourse around science and technological innovations has taken on racial overtones, such as attributing inherited physiological traits to certain ethnic groups or using DNA testing to determine biological links with ethnic ancestry. This book contributes to the discussion by opening up previously locked concepts of the relation between the terms color, race, and "Jews", and by engaging with globalism, multiculturalism, hybridity, and diaspora. The contributors-leading scholars in anthropology, sociology, history, literature, and cultural studies-discuss how it is not merely a question of whether Jews are acknowledged to be interracial, but how to address academic and social discourses that continue to place Jews and others in a race/color category.

Author : Patrick McNamara Ph.D.,Wesley J. Wildman
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 1039 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2012-07-19
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9798216142294

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Science and the World's Religions by Patrick McNamara Ph.D.,Wesley J. Wildman Pdf

This trio of volumes contains essays that explore vital existential, moral, or metaphysical issues surrounding the relationship between the sciences and the world's religions. In Science and the World's Religions, experts with scientific and religious backgrounds explore vital existential or practical issues, drawing on whatever sciences are relevant and engaging at least two religious traditions. The multidisciplinary essays exhibit rigorous intellectual, scholarly thinking but are written to clearly communicate to educated adult lay readers. The first volume addresses questions about the origins and purpose of the cosmos and the human project. The second volume investigates the roles of religion and spirituality in human existence, considering issues ranging from the brain and religious experience to the human life cycle. The third volume tackles controversies in which both religion and science are stakeholders, showing how both can deepen understanding and enrich human experience. Together, these three books present readers with powerful tools that enable them to think through the challenge of integrating science with their religious beliefs and spiritual practices.

Author : Thomas Kazen
Publisher : BoD - Books on Demand
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2021-12-02
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789188906168

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Issues of Impurity in Early Judaism by Thomas Kazen Pdf

While Jesus and Purity (2002, corrected reprint 2010, 2021) aimed to present an unfolding argument, this volume does not aspire at such coherence. It consists of articles and papers on various issues of impurity in early Judaism. A few of these have been previously published, the rest not. Some chapters develop and further expand on topics discussed in Jesus and Purity and much focus lies on questions of the impurity of discharges and the practice of hand-washing before meals. Both literary and historical methods are used, as well as approaches based on cognitive science. The analysis covers texts from the Pentateuch, Qumran, the New Testament, and some Jewish Hellenistic authors. By bringing these articles together, they are made available and can be easily found by potential readers. Together with the recently published collection Impurity and Purification in Early Judaism and the Jesus Tradition (SBL Press, 2021), Issues of Impurity represents Kazen's continuous work on purity issues through two decades. The reader of both volumes will see how the author's views have gradually evolved through the years.