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A collection of essays focusing on myth in Judaism from biblical to modern times, this book offers a sense of the great diversity of the Jewish religion.
The Seductiveness of Jewish Myth offers a panorama of diverse definitions of myth, understandings of Judaism, and competing evaluations of the "mythic" element in religion.
The contributors focus on the problem of defining myth as a category in religious studies, examine modern religion and the role of myth in a "secularized" world, and look at specific cases of Jewish myth from biblical through modern times.
"This collection of learned and innovative essays focuses on a central problem in the interpretation of Judaism: What is the place of myth in Judaism? By focusing on the problem of myth, the collection invokes the reader to ponder the evolution of Jewish self-understanding, the expression of Jewish consciousness through narrative, the link between beliefs, narratives, and social conduct, and the secularization of Judaism in the modern period. Precisely because the authors do not share the same view of myth (i.e., its nature, function, and meaning) their essays compel the reader to reexamine the mythic dimension of Judaism from a variety of perspectives in order to articulate his/her views." — Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, Indiana University
Preface
Introduction
S. Daniel Breslauer
Part One: What is Jewish Myth?
The Mythology of Judaism
Howard Schwartz
Poetry, Allegory, and Myth in Saul Tchernichowsky
S. Daniel Breslauer
Can the Teaching of Jewish History be Anything but theTeaching of Myth?
Joel Gereboff
Part Two: Modern Uses of Myth in Judaism
The Invention of a Secular Ritual: Western Jewry and Nationalized Tourism in Palestine, 1922-1933
Michael Berkowitz
A Rustling in the Woods: The Turn to Myth in Weimar Jewish Thought
Steven M. Wasserstrom
Judeophobia, Myth, and Critique
David Norman Smith
Part Three: Case Histories on Myth in Judaism
The Poetics of Myth in Genesis
Ronald S. Hendel
Strange Bedfellows: Politics and Narrative in Philo
Deborah Sills
The Myth of Jesus in Rabbinic Literature
Richard A. Freund
Melchizedek: King, Priest, and God
James R. Davila
The Face of Jacob in the Moon: Mystical Transformations of an Aggadic Myth
Elliot R. Wolfson
Sabbatai Zevi, Metatron, and Mehmed: Myth and History in Seventeenth-Century Judaism
David J. Halperin
Contributors
Index