Jewish Messianism

This paper argues that the healing ministry of Yahusha is not primarily a series of compassion demonstrations or power exhibitions. It is a sequence of multi-layer covenant restoration events, each of which simultaneously activates multiple structural layers of the Seven-Layer Covenant Architecture: Temple Pattern, Moedim Cycle, Sinai Lawsuit, Eden Arc, Jubilee Release Pattern, Covenant Pulse Mathematics, and Codex Axes.

The paper establishes this claim in four moves. First, it shows that the Levitical purity system that classified the conditions Yahusha healed was itself a covenant-architectural system, not a mere hygienic or religious code. Second, it analyzes seven specific healing accounts through all seven architectural layers simultaneously, demonstrating that each healing is a complete multi-layer covenant transaction. Third, it addresses the Sabbath healings specifically, arguing that they are Moedim-layer declarations rather than Sabbath violations. Fourth, it draws the Christological implication: the healing accounts are not merely evidence of Yahusha's power but evidence of his direct operational access to the covenant architecture itself.

The paper concludes that no prior reading framework has produced this level of structural analysis of the healing accounts because no prior framework possessed the multi-layer covenant architecture required to see what the accounts are actually doing.

The text, a MS at the St. Petersburg National Library, Firkovich Collection, Series A 293, is a copy of the Vision of Daniel, written in Hebrew in a Byzantine script, and made in the fourteenth century 2 . The beginning is fragmentary, and its content is suggested to be reconstructed herein based on a detailed comparison with another vision attributed to Daniel, similar in many respects to this Vision. After the Vision, the copyist of this manuscript copied a story about a child and the Book of Genesis (three pages) 3 and a chapter on the fast days (seven pages) 4 . They await publication in two different works that I hope to complete.

Judaism is the oldest continuously practiced monotheistic faith and serves as the historical, theological, and covenantal foundation from which Christianity emerged. Understanding Judaism is therefore essential for biblical interpretation, Christian theology, apologetics, and effective evangelism. Yet many Christians possess only a limited understanding of Jewish history, beliefs, practices, and messianic expectations, often viewing Judaism primarily through the lens of later Christian developments. This study provides a historical, theological, and cultural introduction to Judaism using a steelman approach that seeks to represent Jewish beliefs accurately and fairly before offering a Christian evaluation. The paper examines the origins and development of Judaism, its sacred texts and traditions, its understanding of God, humanity, sin, covenant, ethics, and the afterlife, as well as the diversity that exists within modern Jewish communities. Particular attention is given to the role of historical memory, including exile, diaspora, persecution, and the Holocaust, and how these experiences continue to shape Jewish identity and perspectives toward Christianity. The study also explores Jewish messianic expectations and the central theological differences between Judaism and Christianity concerning the identity of Jesus of Nazareth. Finally, it offers practical guidance for contextualizing the gospel among Jewish people by emphasizing shared biblical foundations, addressing common misunderstandings, and encouraging faithful, informed, and compassionate engagement. By understanding Judaism as Jews understand themselves, Christians are better equipped to communicate the gospel with both conviction and love.

The relationship of the West to the figure of the Arab is not so
much about Arabs themselves as it is about the West—and its
frailties & anxieties.

The fourteenth-century Arab intellectual Ibn Khaldun is one of the
great contributors to the history of social thought. Despite his
relative invisibility in the tradition, Khaldun could stake out a claim
to being one of sociology’s inventors. In his nearly seven-hundred-
year-old text, the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”), Khaldun develops
the concept of asabiyya, or tribalism, to explain what holds
societies together. In so doing, he prefigured by half a millennium
the French nineteenth-century sociologist Émile Durkheim’s
concern with social solidarity as the emotional basis for cohesive
societies. […]

https://www.daftar.afikra.com/articles/the-figure-of-the-arab-body

This article focuses on the centrality of the soul in Sabbatean theological discourses, as expressed in the writings of Abraham Miguel Cardoso (1627–1706), Nehemiyyah Hayoun (1650–1730), and R. Jonathan Eybschutz (1690–1764). While these three important figures were previously discussed in scholarship, their thought was not examined comparatively as expressing basically the same intellectual orientation. As a hitherto neglected subject in scholarship, a focus on Sabbatean perceptions of the soul will allow me to situate later developments in Sabbatean thought in its Jewish and Christian European contexts, issues that have recently received scholarly attention. I will argue that the Sabbatean theology and ideology of the ‘Secret of Divinity,’ according to which the God of Israel was forgotten by his people and must be rediscovered, was interpreted in these writings as a search for the soul of Divinity—and indeed the soul of the Jewish religion—identified with the true faith that had been forgotten, leaving behind a lifeless ‘body.’ As such, Sabbatean theology expresses a deep consciousness of crisis in relation to the traditional anchors of religious certainty. I will examine the Sabbatean theology of the soul in relation to its textual sources and argue that it was shaped by complex relations of affinity and opposition to the writings of the Safedian kabbalists, R. Moshe Cordovero and R. Isaac Luria, in which one can find an extensive preoccupation with the soul and the necessity of discovering the soul of the Torah. I will show that in addition to the significant contribution of the Cordoverean and Lurianic corpora in shaping the theological language of these Sabbatean writers, the Sabbateans also brought a fundamental change: while the Safedian kabbalists were troubled by the question of how to present the hidden soul through the overt and physical performance of the commandments, and presented a harmonious ideal, the Sabbateans expressed a thoroughly divided, conflicted view: they identified the soul with the secret of faith, the forgotten and inward ‘true religion,’ a forgetfulness through which the keeping of the commandments, identified with the body of the Torah, lost its meaning. In this way, the Sabbateans created a rift between the inner ‘religion of the heart’ and the outer ‘religion of the law.’ I examine the Sabbatean ‘religion of the heart,’ which divides between inside and outside, in relation to contemporary intellectualspiritual enterprises in Christian Europe, which were also motivated by the deep crisis of authority and religious certainty that emerged in the traditional religious establishments.

This article deals with the notion of sexual difference in Jacques Derrida's writings entitled Geschlecht dedicated to the interpretation of Martin Heidegger's thought. According to Derrida, Heidegger, while emphasizing the sexual neutrality of Dasein, does not reject sexual difference, but only one form of it that is based on a binary opposition. Derrida proposes to think of sexual difference as a spectrum of multiple forms of sexuality. In this respect, his position is consistent with the queer studies. The deconstruction of sexual difference as a binary opposition is fundamental for Derrida because it is the sine qua non for a critique of the assumptions of Western metaphysics.

Is there a "Jewish" cultural model of friendship? How did it change over time? Could the study of Jewish friendships shed new light on the Jewish past? 13 scholars gathered together to present their research on Jewish amical practices, sociability, intimacy, familiarity and spiritual friendship.

Terry Winograd's 1972 schema demonstrated how pronoun resolution requires realworld context rather than just syntactic rules. While AI researchers rely on contrived, laboratory examples to test this phenomenon, a real-world, cross-lingual equivalent has lain unrecognized within medieval Islamic historiography. This note presents a specific passage from al-Shahrastānī's al-Milal wa al-Nihal that serves as a perfect historical Winograd schema, mirroring a textual misunderstanding that famously misled historical scholarship-from the medieval historian Ibn al-Athīr to the modern era-and, as demonstrated here, continues to trap modern static machine translation tools. While six of these static engines replicated the centuries-old error by defaulting to statistical proximity, interactive Large Language Models (LLMs) proved amenable to a holistic, multi-passage analysis that exposed the underlying chronological and textual pattern. This case study illustrates a vital frontier in computational linguistics: the transition of AI from a syntactic word-matcher to a contextual logic engine.

This text was originally written as a contribution to an edited volume on the role of minorities in early modern history. Unfortunately, the book was never published. However, I am currently writing a monograph on the subject based on this article.

Marranos – History of a Global Minority
Abstract

Much research into the centuries-long and transnational history of the Marranos or New Christians is heavily shaped by the personality and scholarly orientation of the individual observer; yet rarely has the development of baptized Iberian Jews been presented in its entirety. The present article, too, offers an interpretation of Marrano history; above all, however, it aims to examine the development comprehensively, thereby shedding light on interconnections and aspects that elude a merely partial analysis.
The broad approach demonstrates how closely the historical trajectory of the New Christians linked the realities of the various Iberian lands, while a comparative perspective clarifies why Portuguese Marranos—unlike their Spanish counterparts—managed to preserve a distinct religious and ethnic identity across generations. A diachronic analysis, in turn, reveals that the dissolution of religious boundaries gave rise to new, biologically defined barriers; yet the developments of the late medieval and early modern periods also expose the idiosyncrasies and limitations of this pre-modern form of racism.
The discrimination—but, above all, the self-assertion—of the New Christians allowed Iberian Judaism to persist subterraneously within their “nation”. Persecution by the Inquisition and subsequent migration drove this development forward. Leveraging their international networks, the New Christians attained extraordinary economic prominence in the 17th century—a status fostered by the cooperation between the minority and the Spanish Habsburgs. Concurrently, Marranos increasingly reverted to the faith of their ancestors, contributing decisively to an upsurge of European Jewry. Ultimately, in the 18th century, the process of religious reconversion and cultural assimilation brought about the dissolution of the New Christian “nation”.

Marranen – Geschichte einer globalen Minderheit
Zusammenfassung

Viele Forschungen zur jahrhundertelangen und länderübergreifenden Geschichte der Marranen oder Neuchristen sind stark geprägt von der Persönlichkeit und wissenschaftlichen Ausrichtung des Betrachters, kaum je aber wurde die Entwicklung der getauften iberischen Juden in ihrer Gänze dargestellt. Auch der vorliegende Artikel bietet eine Deutung der marranischen Geschichte, vor allem aber möchte er diese umfassend in den Blick nehmen und damit Zusammenhänge und Aspekte beleuchten, die sich einer partiellen Betrachtung entziehen.
Der weite Zugriff zeigt, wie stark die historische Entwicklung der Neuchristen Realitäten der verschiedenen iberischen Länder verband, die komparative Perspektive verdeutlicht, warum sich die portugiesischen Marranen im Gegensatz zu den spanischen über Generationen eine religiöse und ethnische Identität bewahrten. In der Diachronie wiederum wird sichtbar, dass ein Verschwinden religiöser Grenzen neue, biologisch definierte Barrieren zur Folge hatte; die spätmittelalterliche und frühneuzeitliche Entwicklung zeigt aber auch Idiosynkrasie und Grenzen dieses vormodernen Rassismus.
Die Diskriminierung, vor allem aber die Selbstbehauptung der Neuchristen ließ in ihrer »Nation« das iberische Judentum untergründig fortleben. Inquisitionsverfolgung und Migration trieben die weitere Entwicklung voran. Auf der Grundlage ihrer internationalen Netzwerke erlangten die Neuchristen im 17. Jahrhundert eine außergewöhnliche ökonomische Bedeutung, die geprägt wurde von der Kooperation zwischen der Minderheit und den spanischen Habsburgern. Zugleich traten Marranen zunehmend zur Religion der Vorfahren über und trugen entscheidend zu einem Aufschwung des europäischen Judentums bei. Rekonversion und Assimilation führten schließlich im 18. Jahrhundert zum Ende der neuchristlichen »Nation«.

This paper focuses on the way, in the 10 th century Baghdad, Saadia Gaon attempted to keep at bay those he viewed as heretics and extremists among Jews by attacking directly their inspiring source, namely the Ismaili philosophy. In order to achieve this objective, Saadia had to spiritualize the messianic discourse and provide it with an eschatological narrative. Rav Saadia Gaon found in the Aristotelian thought the best resource for a complete philosophical spiritualization and the suitable method to oppose Ismaili Neo-Platonism. In order to preserve dogma, Saadia's extreme boldness drove him to the point of not only resorting to Mu'tazila's doctrines, but even standing just a few millimeters away from heresy within Talmudic Judaism.

The Gospel of John's engagement with the Book of Exodus has been interpreted primarily through Moses-Christ typology: Jesus as the new Moses who surpasses his predecessor. This study proposes a different reading. The governing principle of John's Exodus hermeneutics is not Moses-Christ correspondence but YHWH-Christ identification: in each major Exodus correspondence, Jesus occupies the structural position Exodus assigns to YHWH, not Moses. The study proposes the term mnemosynic identification for this hermeneutical move, derived from µνηµóσυνoν (Exod 12:14 LXX), the word designating the Passover as Israel's perpetual memorial. John does not cite Exodus as a prophetic text pointing forward to Jesus; within the community's living re-enactment of Exodus, he discloses the identity of the divine protagonist at its centre. This identification is ontological, grounded in the pre-existence established by the Prologue, but its disclosure is sequential, enacted across the ministry and reaching its fulfilment in the glorification. Correspondences are established by three criteria: narrative position, role distribution, and lexical precision. They run from the Prologue to the resurrection commission, encompassing the Passover framework, wilderness episodes, and Sinai covenant. Throughout, Moses appears as mediator and witness but never as the figure whose position Jesus assumes. That position belongs to God.

The "False Messiah" Sabbatai Zevi in Ulcinj, In: František Šístek, The Jews of Montenegro: From Invisibility to a Community, Cetinje: Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature; Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2024, pp. 49-104.

Popular resurrection apologetics often treats sincerity as the decisive issue. The disciples had no motive to lie; therefore, the resurrection must have occurred. This paper argues that the framing is too narrow. Sincerity excludes deliberate fabrication, but it does not exclude grief experience, cognitive dissonance, expectation repair, scriptural reinterpretation, visionary conviction, and communal reinforcement. The earliest Easter belief is better modeled as a process of postdiction under failed messianic expectation than as a simple choice between fraud and fact. The argument is psychological and historical rather than primarily numerical. It complements, but does not duplicate, a Bayesian variable analysis of the resurrection. Here the focus is on how human communities respond when identity-defining expectations collapse. Festinger’s work on failed prophecy, cognitive dissonance theory, research on bereavement experiences, and scholarship on memory and early Christian development all make the resurrection tradition intelligible without imputing dishonesty to the first believers. I propose a process model: expectation E, disconfirmation D, dissonance C, reinterpretation R, grief or visionary experience V, communal reinforcement S, and stabilized tradition T. The model predicts many features of the Gospel evidence: scriptural rereading, delayed narrative elaboration, variation among accounts, conversion through meaning, and conviction without fabrication. The conclusion is not that every resurrection claim is psychologically explained in detail. It is that the apologetic slogan “no motive to lie” fails because lying is not the main alternative.

The conjunction of “hermeneutics” and “revelation” points to an impossibility that has long haunted theology and via theology, also philosophy. If revelation indicates transcendence breaking into immanence, it cannot but mark a limit to what can be meaningfully understood. Drawing systematically on Eric Santner‘s cross-reading of psychoanalytic linguistics and Jewish philosophy of religion as well as on the apocalyptic thought of Jacob Taubes, the following essay aims to show how a proper dialectical elaboration of this negativity at the centre of hermeneutical understanding is the seam that cuts across the fabrics of theology and critical theory.
By the same token, it should become clear that what otherwise sets them out against each other is intimately tied to theology‘s investment in the economy of meaning-production against all odds and to how this also amounts to the production of socio-political legitimacy1. Against this temptation of a hermeneutical theology of revelation, the following seeks to establish that the integration of revelation into a mythological economy of meaning or into a subjective economy of identity is a symptomatic defense against the hermeneutical rift which is paradigmatically articulated in the theology of revelation and which generates the possibility of historical subjectivity, falling out of any totalising order.

The article analyses the theological motifs of Leo Lipski's work, particularly those present in the micronovel Piotruś. Instead of focusing on the gestures of profanation and blasphemy -already well recognized by commentators -it follows the dynamics of the messianic traces hidden in this work, which the writer derives both from Christian and Judaic tradition. The key model of messianic linguistic activity in Piotruś is the diminutive, already identified in the title. The secret matrix on which Lipski constructs the novel is, in turn, the idea of "exodus" as a potentially universal experience motivated by the promise of emancipation of a peculiar and particular life. Terms of distorted and heretical theology (the novel's subtitle calls it "apocrypha") seem to serve here as autobiographical cryptography by means of which a writer hidden under the pseudonym "Lipski" encrypts the experience of his own disability, aphasia, and permanent mourning. In this way he lays the foundations for what I call "aphasic theology", in which fideistic contents articulate only through strange stutters.

When evaluating the structural transition between the Old and New Testaments, contemporary biblical scholarship frequently contrasts the traditional English canonical ordering (Malachi → Matthew) with the ancient Hebrew arrangement (Chronicles → Matthew). While the Malachi transition offers a compelling prophetic runway that anticipates John the Baptist as the returning Elijah, this article argues that the Hebrew canonical sequence provides a superior theological, structural, and Christological bridge. By concluding the Hebrew Bible with the books of Chronicles, the canon positions Matthew's opening genealogy not as an abrupt historical preamble, but as the immediate, direct resolution to the suspended Davidic monarchy, the unresolved Babylonian exile, and the unfulfilled cosmic promises of creation. This study examines this canonical transition across four critical dimensions: structural continuity, covenantal architecture, narrative horizon, and Christological precision, demonstrating that the Chronicles → Matthew sequence constitutes the Christian Bible's truest and most robust interpretive seam.

This essay explores R Jonathan Sacks' view of hope as journey of small and courageous steps. Human beings are called to freedom by confronting and integrating conflicting interests, rather than merely existing in 'tension' between them. For Sacks, hope must be renewed in every context and generation, inviting people to take responsibility for a shared future.

The present paper is being posted as a continuation of several symbolic and hermeneutical trajectories opened in my earlier discussion paper, From My Flesh I Will See God (Can Ritual Know More Than Its Participants). Some of the more novel possibilities explored there — particularly those concerning embodiment, circumcision, textuality, and revelation — appeared to gesture toward a deeper and more structurally unified symbolic logic than the earlier essay was able to fully unfold. What follows therefore remains exploratory in character and attempts to pursue several of those implications further, especially concerning the relation between primordial textuality, sexual differentiation, oral Torah, inscription, and the body understood as a semiotic structure.

Much of the symbolic terrain explored here has, of course, already been engaged with extraordinary depth and sophistication in the work of Elliot R. Wolfson, whose writings on embodiment, textuality, circumcision, and the semiotic body form an indispensable backdrop to the present investigation. The present essay nevertheless proceeds from the supposition that certain openings latent within Wolfson’s own symbolic framework may allow some of his most profound insights to unfold toward additional theological and hermeneutical horizons not yet fully explored.

As a case in point, this paper proposes a reversal of one of the most deeply embedded assumptions governing symbolic, textual, and sexual metaphysics within both Western thought and traditional mystical imagery: namely, the assumption that the masculine principle functions as the sole originary source of inscription, intelligibility, and generative meaning. Drawing upon the symbolic framework of Wolfson, the paper argues instead that the primordial Torah may be understood as already containing within itself a latent and undifferentiated consonantal plenitude prior to differentiation, articulation, and vocalization. In this reading, the feminine textual body is no longer imagined as passive receptacle awaiting masculine inscription from without, but as the concealed repository of latent intelligibility itself.

The masculine principle therefore undergoes a profound symbolic reconfiguration. Rather than functioning as absolute ontological origin creating meaning ex nihilo, it becomes associated with differentiation, articulation, sequencing, accentuation, and transmissibility. The ta’amim and niqqudot are consequently interpreted not merely as grammatical devices, but as symbolic expressions of division and exteriorization through which the latent continuity of the primordial textual body becomes communicable knowledge. The essay suggests that this symbolic relation mirrors the developmental logic of the human body itself, where masculine differentiation emerges from an antecedent androgynous continuity later forgotten once visible sexual polarity becomes dominant.

From this perspective, ritual circumcision becomes less a merely legal or ethnic act than a form of somatic exegesis through which concealed structures beneath visible differentiation are partially disclosed. Circumcision, oral Torah, cantillation, Moses striking the rock, blood and semen, inscription and speech, written and oral transmission, and the ritual movement of metzitzah are all reread as participating in a deeper symbolic drama concerning the fragmentation of primordial continuity into differentiated forms and the partial recovery of that concealed unity through revelation, articulation, and embodied transmission.

The paper ultimately argues that many oppositions traditionally treated as fixed — male and female, written and oral Torah, inscription and life, body and text, seed and blood — may preserve traces of a more primordial conjunction concealed beneath the differentiated structures of embodiment, textuality, and history themselves.

Ce travail de Bachelor en Ancien Testament propose une étude narrative et exégétique du personnage de Banayahu ben Yehoyada dans les livres de Samuel, des Chroniques et des Rois. Souvent relégué au second plan parmi les « braves » de David, Banayahu apparaît pourtant comme une figure complexe dont le parcours suit une dynamique croissante : de chef des mercenaires crétois et philistins à membre de la garde personnelle de David, puis chef de l’armée sous Salomon. À partir d’une analyse approfondie de la péricope de 2 Samuel 23, 20-23, cette recherche met en lumière les caractéristiques symboliques, théologiques et narratives de ce personnage.

L’étude montre que Banayahu n’est pas seulement un héros guerrier, mais un personnage construit en miroir de David. Ses exploits — la mise à mort des deux Ariel de Moab, du lion dans la citerne et du guerrier égyptien — révèlent une structure narrative « en crescendo » qui prépare sa proximité avec la royauté davidique. Le travail analyse également la question de la violence dans l’Ancien Testament, en distinguant la violence biblique, comprise comme lutte contre le mal et défense de l’alliance divine, d’une violence idéologique ou idolâtrique.

Enfin, cette recherche interroge la nature même du personnage biblique : Banayahu est-il simplement un personnage littéraire ou un « masque » au sens du prosôpon grec, porteur d’une réalité plus profonde ? L’hypothèse défendue est que Banayahu fonctionne comme une figure emblématique et messianique, reflétant discrètement les traits de David et participant à la théologie royale de l’Ancien Testament. À travers lui, le texte biblique développe une réflexion sur la fidélité, l’obéissance, la médiation royale et la manifestation de la souveraineté divine dans l’histoire.

The Day Kosher Slaughter Was Saved -Commentary Magazine commentary.org/articles/baruch-sterman/rabbi-herzog-saved-kosher-slaughter-ireland The recent ruling by the European Union Court of Justice allowing member countries to ban ritual slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat is just one in a long line of such measures dating back at least as far as 1893, when Switzerland voted to outlaw the practice. That prohibition continues to be in effect, while the ban on kosher slaughter in Nazi Germany was rescinded after World War II. Numerous countries and governments have deliberated the issue, including the United States, with some actually adopting the prohibition. Faced with these challenges, Jewish proponents have mounted various defenses of the ritual slaughter known as shechita. But none was more cogent and persuasive than the petition that was argued nearly 90 years ago by a young rabbi before the Seanad Éireann-the Irish Senate. The presentation was exhaustive in the sweeping scope and depth of its content, compelling in its eloquence and passion, and remarkable in the singular and extraordinary personality delivering the address. His name was Isaac Halevy Herzog, and he would later become the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel. When he rose to defend kosher slaughter in 1934, Herzog had already made a practice of defending controversial opinions. Although raised in England, he himself strongly sympathized with the Irish Nationalists, the Sinn Féin, and he counted their leader, Éamon de Valera, among his close friends. Of the rabbi, de Valera once said, "from the moment I met him, I felt in the presence of a good and holy man." Ireland was still in political turmoil in 1934. Officially the country was named Saorstát Éireann, the Irish Free State, and it had the status of Dominion of

The exhaustive comparative analysis of Jesus of Nazareth and Engineer Pearl Bipin Pulickal
reveals a fascinating, unprecedented evolution of messianic paradigms, tracking the shift from
the historical and material to the techno-theological and cybernetic.

As editors, we decided to not fight the obscurity of “Fate and Character” but work with it, in its spirit. Thus, rather than solicit standard research essays, we invited a wide range of scholars from across the humanities to write short, essayistic pieces. The goal was to produce theory in a different register—free-wheeling, consciously essayistic, eagerly associative, and, yes, “digressive”—in which a cast of concepts and characters serves
to guide the issue’s organization, in the hope to deliver a set of readings that are at once legible, digestible, and surprising in their different styles and approaches.