Books by Don Seeman
This book is the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Ethnography called “Jewish Cultures o... more This book is the inaugural volume in a new series on Jewish Ethnography called “Jewish Cultures of the World,” edited by Matti Bunzl and Jeffrey Shandler.
Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity and are today clamoring for the right to ‘Return to Judaism’ and claim citizenship in the State Israel. It focuses on the lived experience of these refugees and on the complex moral and political controversy over their ongoing cultural and religious transformation. This is the first ethnography ever devoted to this group, or to the cultural politics of Ethiopian Judaism. I argue that epistemological limitations in the study of religious experience ought to be taken into account by Israeli policy makers who decide “who is a Jew” based on uncritical assumptions about the nature of religious conversion. I also use the ‘Feres Mura’ dilemma to raise broader questions about the nature of Jewishness and the political role of academic scholarship.
Special Issues by Don Seeman
Ethos: Journal of Psychological Anthropology, Mar 2012
""In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in... more ""In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like 'culture,' which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of 'experience' has generated its own interpretive literature, competing schools of analysis, and internal resistances. We propose that the anthropology of experience has achieved a degree of recognition and maturity that renders genealogical reflection, stocktaking, and agenda setting both possible and necessary.
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for naıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls 'the inclusive integrity of "experience."’ This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions." [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]""
Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, 2010
Despite the explosion of interest in Jewish mysticism in recent decades, scholars have only rec... more Despite the explosion of interest in Jewish mysticism in recent decades, scholars have only recently begun to explore in any depth how mystical texts function as literature. This includes not just literary readings of Jewish mystical texts, but also extends to questions of mystical and literary efficacy. In other words, what kinds of strategies are employed in Jewish mystical writing to convey mystical content and ethos, to shape religious subjectivity in distinctive ways, or even to influence the cosmos through specialized acts of writing and reading (i.e., producing and consuming literature)? Moreover, how do these literary and mystical projects intersect, reinforce, and possibly even place limits upon one another in different textual settings? Finally, how might consideration of these topics change the way we think about Jewish literary studies more broadly?
Practical Matters, 2010
This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theolo... more This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theological inquiry. The following round table between theologians, anthropologists and scholars of religion asks each participant to reflect on the limitations of their own major field of inquiry
Papers by Don Seeman
Abraham Isaac Kook
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (b. 1865–d. 1935) is considered one of the most important moder... more Rabbi Abraham Isaac Ha-Cohen Kook (b. 1865–d. 1935) is considered one of the most important modern Jewish thinkers and shaper of some of the most significant trends in Religious Zionism. He was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine and the founder of the institutional state rabbinate, as well as an influential yeshiva known as Mercaz Ha-Rav. Rabbi Kook was known for the breadth and depth of his scholarship across all the branches of traditional Jewish scholarship, including law, philosophy, and Kabbalah as well as his appreciation for contemporary science and non-Jewish philosophy. Witnessing the disaffection or rebellion of Jewish youth from tradition, particularly among the Zionist pioneers in the Land of Israel, he devoted himself with special fervor to the attempted reconciliation of modernity with Orthodox Judaism. To this end, he developed a series of dialectical responses that often seemed to accord spiritual dignity to the characteristic features of modern consciousness—such as burgeoning nationalism and evolutionary historicism—while simultaneously subordinating them to his understanding of Jewish theological imperatives. Though he aroused suspicion and controversy among both secularists and traditionalists, Rabbi Kook was often able to gain their respect and serve as a rare bridge between their communities. Ultimately, his thought contributed to the rise of a distinctively Zionist Religious community dedicated to traditional learning and observance as well as commitment to the Zionist state building project. Though Rabbi Kook himself died in 1935, before either the Holocaust or the establishment of the State of Israel, his thinking remains a vibrant source of inspiration and controversy to this day, and is the subject of voluminous secondary literature. Rabbi Kook’s primary writings included many letters and essays published during his lifetime, but some of his most famous and influential works are the result of significant editing by various disciples, some of which took place posthumously. For a variety of reasons, R. Kook’s original notebooks were not available to scholars until the last few decades, and are now gradually leading to revisions in our understanding of his creative legacy. Despite the intellectual and political vicissitudes of classical “religious Zionism” associated with his name, popular and scholarly interest in R. Kook has only burgeoned in recent years through a spate of academic research, publication of new, more accessible Hebrew versions, and translations primarily into English. His views on prophecy, Jewish law, state building, ethics, and metaphysics remain both provocative and generative today.
Sensational Moviesand the anthropology of religion: towards a comparative moral imaginary
Religion, Jul 27, 2016
This article examines the significance of Birgit Meyer’s work on the ‘moral imaginary.’ The first... more This article examines the significance of Birgit Meyer’s work on the ‘moral imaginary.’ The first part of the article argues that Meyer has more in common with phenomenological anthropologists than she admits and endorses her approach to the current debate between ‘ontological’ and ‘cultural constructivist’ approaches. The second section invokes the moral psychology of Maimonides along with contemporary debates in the anthropology of Islam to argue that Meyer’s work should stimulate a broadly comparative approach to the whole topic of moral imagination. Do filmic media, for example, inevitably favor a dualistic conflict between personifications of good and evil over other, more monistic, religious positions? And how might the study of medieval moral psychologies enrich the contemporary ethnography of religion?
Ethnography and Theology: A Critical Round Table Discussion (Practical Matters Vol. 3 2010)
This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theolo... more This third volume of Practical Matters is devoted entirely to questions of ethnography and theological inquiry. The following round table between theologians, anthropologists and scholars of religion asks each participant to reflect on the limitations of their own major field of inquiry
Ethos, Feb 22, 2012
In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in p... more In recent decades, human experience has become focus or frame for a wide variety of projects in psychological anthropology and beyond. Like "culture," which it arguably seeks to either qualify or displace, the concept of "experience" has generated its own interpretive literature, competing schools of analysis, and internal resistances. We propose that the anthropology of experience has achieved a degree of recognition and maturity that renders genealogical reflection, stocktaking, and agenda setting both possible and necessary. Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly
14. Ethnography, Exegesis, and Jewish Ethical Refl ection: The New Reproductive Technologies in Israel
Berghahn Books, Dec 31, 2022
Martyrdom, Emotion and the Work of Ritual in R. Mordecai Joseph Leiner's Mei Ha-Shiloah
Ajs Review-the Journal of The Association for Jewish Studies, Nov 1, 2003
Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner of Izbica (18001853) has been described as the most radical of the... more Rabbi Mordecai Joseph Leiner of Izbica (18001853) has been described as the most radical of the Jewish mystics and as a religious anarchist.1 Some scholars have wondered how he managed to resist the antinomian pull of his own doctrine, and to suffer the chaotic ...
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Nov 1, 1998
T.N. Madan made the study of comparative moral systems into an important mainstay of Indian socio... more T.N. Madan made the study of comparative moral systems into an important mainstay of Indian sociology. In this essay, we will be using the idea of 'moral practice' to compare notions of efficacy in psychotherapy and various forms of religious healing. We argue that the realm of 'the moral' in ethnographic analysis consists not of abstract rules or ideologies, but of whatever has overwhelm- ing practical relevance in the lives of the people and communities we study. Both psychotherapy and religious healing systems define efficacy in terms of culture-specific understandings of personhood and moral order; these, however, are mediated by the irreducible contingencies of social position, political strategy, and life histories of both sufferers and healers, as well as by large scale economic and political forces. Healing efficacy emerges from this study as a shifting, multi-vocal, and sometimes unattainable value. By turning our attention from the language of moral concepts to that of moral stakes, therefore, we are attempting to accommodate a concern with the concrete experience of suffering and healing as they are embedded in lived worlds of human experience.
“Where is Sarah Your Wife?” Cultural Poetics of Gender and Nationhood in the Hebrew Bible
Harvard Theological Review, Apr 1, 1998
William Robertson Smith wrote in 1885 that the biblical convention whereby aman is said to “go in... more William Robertson Smith wrote in 1885 that the biblical convention whereby aman is said to “go in” to his bride represents a linguistic trace ofonce widespread “beenamarriage,” in which men joined the natal households of the women who took them as husbands. It was an error of literalist reductionism, but one that lent support to an imposing infrastructure of systematic kinship theory and evolutionism that continues to excercise an influenceon some contemporary scholars. Another way of saying this is that Robertson Smith failed to recognize a significant biblical metaphor—that of men enteringwomen's tents—when he saw one. This misapprehension of biblical poetics has had important consequences for the way in which he and his successors have interpreted the Hebrew Bible.
Apostasy, Grief, and Literary Practice in Habad Hasidism
Prooftexts, 2009
In the year 1820, Rabbi Menahem Mendl Schneerson's youngest son Moshe converted to Christian... more In the year 1820, Rabbi Menahem Mendl Schneerson's youngest son Moshe converted to Christianity. Seven years later, Moshe's older brother Dov Ber (who had by now become leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement) devoted the last public discourse of his life to the ...
The Question of Kinship: Bodies and Narratives in the Beta Israel-European Encounter (1860-1920)
Journal of Religion in Africa, Feb 1, 2000
The London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (also known as the LJS, or LondonJ... more The London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews (also known as the LJS, or LondonJewish Society) established a mission to the Beta Israel (Falasha)' in 1860, just five years after the corona-tion of Tewodoros II as King of Kings of Ethiopia brought the tur-bulent ...
Circles of Exclusion: The Politics of Health Care in Israel by Dani Filc
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Dec 1, 2012
Being Human: The Problem of Agency
Common Knowledge, 2003
I referred to this book in my contribution to the winter 2002 number of Common Knowledge and wrot... more I referred to this book in my contribution to the winter 2002 number of Common Knowledge and wrote an essay about it for another journal (Raritan). My reason for calling attention to it yet again is simply that its important message should, I believe, be brought to as wide an audience ...
Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a West Papuan Place
Common Knowledge, Sep 1, 2010
A friend of mine took her young son to a museum where he encountered a depic-tion of the crucifix... more A friend of mine took her young son to a museum where he encountered a depic-tion of the crucifixion for the first time. Looking at the image of Mary weeping beside the bleeding body of her son, the boy said: I don't understand. If she's his mother, why's she standing there crying? ...
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Books by Don Seeman
Synopsis: “One People, One Blood” is an ethnographic study of Ethiopian Jews whose ancestors converted to Christianity and are today clamoring for the right to ‘Return to Judaism’ and claim citizenship in the State Israel. It focuses on the lived experience of these refugees and on the complex moral and political controversy over their ongoing cultural and religious transformation. This is the first ethnography ever devoted to this group, or to the cultural politics of Ethiopian Judaism. I argue that epistemological limitations in the study of religious experience ought to be taken into account by Israeli policy makers who decide “who is a Jew” based on uncritical assumptions about the nature of religious conversion. I also use the ‘Feres Mura’ dilemma to raise broader questions about the nature of Jewishness and the political role of academic scholarship.
Special Issues by Don Seeman
Although the anthropology of experience, like experience itself, does not (and perhaps should not) lend itself to easy definition as a singular or unified theoretical paradigm, it does involve a fluid constellation of themes shared by what are traditionally regarded as parallel or divergent lines of inquiry: what might be glossed imperfectly as the phenomenological and psychoanalytic schools within sociocultural anthropology. Here we aim neither for naıve synthesis nor a mathematical sum of parts, but for more adequate ways of depicting and making sense of what Dewey calls 'the inclusive integrity of "experience."’ This will require more concerted attention to the sources of ethnographic inquiétude—the gaps, silences, limits, and opacities—that either preoccupy or remain overlooked within both traditions." [experience, subjectivity, intersubjectivity, phenomenological anthropology, psychoanalytic anthropology, inquiétude]""
Papers by Don Seeman