Tag: Judaism


Crafting a Warrior Idiom

roofline of Presidents Hall

By Daniel Levine. Anyone who’s taken REL 371 with me over the past three years – or has taken my Israel-Palestine course – will recall a persistent interest in fear: what it does to us, and the various means by which it is channeled to political ends.  Some of this work appeared in print for the first time last summer. One aspect of such ‘channeling’ comprises the use of ‘private languages’ to mark off particular fearful experiences: by soldiers and […]

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Constructing Judaism and Claiming Christianity: Modern Jewish Philosophy in an Age of Theory

Robert Erlewine is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University where he teaches courses related to philosophy of religion and Judaism. He is the author of two monographs, Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010) and Judaism and the West: From Hermann Cohen to Joseph Soloveitchik (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). In recent years, in the academic study of religion there have been rather public disputes about the nature of religious […]

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13th Annual Aronov Lecture with Dr. Shaul Magid

Dr. Shaul Magid of Indiana University, Bloomington, this year’s Aronov Lecturer. Named after the late Aaron Aronov–the founder of Aronov Realty for whom the Department’s endowed chair in Judaic studies is also named–the annual Aronov Lecture series was established in 2002.  This year’s event will feature Dr. Shaul Magid (Indiana University, Bloomington) presenting his lecture “After Multiculturalism: Postethnicity and the Future of Judaism in America.” […]

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Identifying Funny

Those interested in studying identity as a historical, and thus changeable, creation, should watch the recent documentary “When Jews Were Funny,” paying particular attention to the relationship between the off-camera interviewer and filmmaker, Alan Zweig, and his interviewees — especially the older comedians, such as Shelly Berman, pictured above (b. 1925; known more recently to some as Larry David’s father on “Curb Your Enthusiasm”), whose appearances frame the film. […]

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Backstory: Prof. Steve Jacobs

“Backstory” is a series that asks the REL Faculty to tell us a little bit about themselves, to explore how they became interested in the academic study of religion and their own specialty, elaborating on their current work both within and outside the University. From where do you hail? I was born in Baltimore, MD., grew up in Silver Spring, MD, just outside of Washington, DC, and lived ~ 7 minutes from the University of Maryland, which is why I […]

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Survey Says…?

Have you seen this new Pew Foundation survey on being Jewish in America? Like all surveys it raises some interesting questions, such as whether it simply describes an already existing object of study (one that nicely divides into a variety of easily and clearly distinguishable sub-types) or whether the questions, categories, and sub-divisions actively constitute an object of study. What’s more, who is doing that constitution: group members themselves or the people who study them? For a survey such as […]

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