Swimming against the Current comprises a collection of essays celebrating the career and achievements of Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, who served as Executive Director of Hillel at UCLA for forty years and continues to be an influential leader in the Los Angeles and wider American Jewish community. These articles, like the honoree, challenge intellectual convention and accepted wisdom by breaking new ground in how they approach their subjects. They are divided into four categories that hold special interest for Seidler-Feller: Bible and Talmud, Jewish Thought and Theology, Modern Jewish History and Sociology, and Zionism and Jewish Politics. The volume also includes a sketch of Seidler-Feller’s life and work, a bibliography of his publications, and tributes by students and colleagues.
Tabella dei contenuti
Table of Contents
Introduction: A Portrait of Chaim Seidler-Feller
Shaul Seidler-Feller and David N. Myers
Bibliography of Publications by Chaim Seidler-Feller
Part I. The Sources of the Tradition: Bible and Talmud
Order as Meaning: Juxtaposition in the Bible
Isaac Gottlieb
Behind Every Great Prophet Is a Woman: The Women in Exodus 2 in Talmudic Interpretation
Shana Strauch Schick
Study of Torah as a Discourse of Violence: Milhamtah shel Torah, Variations on a Theme
Aryeh Cohen
Discipleship in Rabbinic Literature
Moshe Halbertal
Secular Legal Paradigms and Talmudic Law: Rav Tsa‘ir on Legal Loopholes
Elana Stein Hain
Part II. Jewish Thought and Theology
Buber, Scholem, and the Me’or enayim: Another Perspective on a Great Controversy
Avraham Yizhak (Arthur) Green
On Not Finishing the Work: A Commentary on Avot 2:16 143
Michael Walzer
The Faith of Abraham
Howard Wettstein
The Ascent and Decline of the “Historical Jew”
Moshe Idel
Divine Command Theory in Jewish Law and Ethics
Elliot N. Dorff
Part III. Modern Jewish History and Sociology
Polio Season: Transformations of Philip Roth’s “Jewish Mother” from Sophie Portnoy to Marcia Steinberg
Sylvia Barack Fishman
Go to School, Work, Marry, Have Children, Be Jewish: Jewish Women and Jewish Men in the United States and Israel
Sergio Della Pergola
The Day of Reckoning: Max Radin and the Rule of Law in International War Crimes
Eugene R. Sheppard
Antisemitism: Reflections and Ruminations
Deborah E. Lipstadt
Part IV. Zionism and Jewish Politics
Sovereignty and Ethics in the Thought of Rabbi Ḥayyim David Halevi
Suzanne Last Stone
Rabbi Shlomo Goren on the Maimonidean Law of Siege: An Essay on the Ethics of Jewish Warfare
David Ellenson
Invoking the Indigenous, for and against Israel
Carole Goldberg
Jewish Folk Art and Ideology: The Śimhat Torah Flag through the Ages
Shalom Sabar
Student Tributes
Meira Wolkenfeld
Adam Greenwald
Mayim Bialik
Jonathan Jacoby
Colleague Tributes
Laurie L. Levenson
Edward Feld
David Berner
Saul Andron
List of Contributors
Circa l’autore
David N. Myers holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA, where he directs the Luskin Center for History and Policy. He is the author or editor of fifteen books in the field of Jewish history.