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State University of New York Press - Aaron W. Hughes

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125 pages

English

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The relationship between Jewish studies and religious studies is a long and complicated one, full of tensions and possibilities. Whereas the majority of scholars working within Jewish studies contend that the discipline is in a very healthy state, many who work in theory and method in religious studies disagree. For them, Jewish studies represents all that is wrong with the modern academic study of religion: too introspective, too ethnic, too navel-gazing, and too willing to reify or essentialize data that it constructs in its own image. In this book, Aaron W. Hughes explores the unique situation of Jewish studies and how it intersects with religious studies, noting particular areas of concern for those interested in the field's intellectual health and future flourishing. Hughes provides a detailed study of origins, principles, and assumptions, documenting the rise of Jewish studies in Germany and its migration to Israel and the United States. Current issues facing the academic study of Judaism are discussed, including the role of private foundations that seek inroads into the academy.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Authenticity, Identity, Scholarship

2. Encountering Tradition: The Search for a Jewish Essence

3. Imagining Judaism: Scholar, Community, Identity

4. Take Ancient Judaism for Example: Five Case Studies

5. Private Foundations Encounter Judaism

6. Future Prospects

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

Tertiary education

Judaism

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	04 septembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438448633
Langue	English

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The Study of Judaism
The Study of Judaism
Authenticity, Identity, Scholarship

Aaron W. Hughes
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Jenn Bennett Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hughes, Aaron W., date The study of Judaism : authenticity, identity, scholarship / Aaron W. Hughes. pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-4861-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Judaism. I. Title. BM45.H84 2013 296.071—dc23
2012049545
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the loving memory of my father William Hughes
(April 11, 1927–June 2, 2013)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One Authenticity, Identity, Scholarship
Chapter Two Encountering Tradition: The Search for a Jewish Essence
Chapter Three Imagining Judaism: Scholar, Community, Identity
Chapter Four Take Ancient Judaism for Example: Five Case Studies
Chapter Five Private Foundations Encounter Judaism
Chapter Six Future Prospects
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
This volume owes its genesis to a set of issues and methodologies supplied by my colleagues in the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR). Often critical of the status quo, this organization’s raison d’être is the investigation of that which brings data constructed as “religious” into existence. The focus, in other words, is on what is commonly called “metastudies.” I would accordingly like to thank my colleagues in that organization for their patience and good humor: William E. Arnal, Herbert Berg, Willi Braun, Matthew Day, Craig Martin, Russell McCutcheon, and Donald Wiebe. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues working in Jewish Studies who are sympathetic to my argument and have offered encouragement: Zachary Braiterman, Sergey Dolgopolski, Jeremiah Haber, Dana Hollander, Martin Kavka, Shaul Magid, Randi Rashkover, and Elliot R. Wolfson.
Finally, I would like to thank Jennifer Hall for her constant support and companionship. Her patience in talking things through, both intellectual and otherwise, means a tremendous amount to me. I am also grateful to senior acquisitions editor Nancy Ellegate at SUNY Press for her encouragement and for seeing this project through to the light of day.
Introduction
In 2007 I published a slim and what I hoped would be a provocative volume entitled Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline. This work functioned as a genealogical and analytic exploration of the study of the study of Islam. What, for example, are the various assumptions, ideological agendas, and political implications involved in those who have studied and continue to study Islam professionally? These manifold processes, I argued, are what ultimately make the discipline—its written and unwritten rules—possible. Russell McCutcheon, the editor of the series in which that book appeared, encouraged me at the time to try to do something similar for Jewish studies, my other and primary disciplinary home. His exposure to Jewish studies had been primarily negative, thinking—not incorrectly—that Jewish studies tended to be peopled largely by Jews who studied their own religious tradition in a rather self-congratulatory and apologetic manner. The result, according to him, is that Jewish studies has largely established itself as a fortified ethnic enclave within larger departments of religious studies, becoming, as it were, a problematic subfield within a larger and equally problematic discipline.
For the past five years I have thought extensively about his assessment of the field. My natural reaction was to argue with him, to make the case that Jewish studies was a healthy discipline that studied, analyzed, quantified, and qualified data from the length and breadth of Jewish history (spanning from ca. 1000 BCE to the present). In the meantime, a number of conversations happened that led me to question some of my own assumptions. I recall being early for a panel at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) and finding myself part of a conversation in which the panelists and some audience members—all roughly my own age—reminisced about the same Jewish summer camp they used to go to—their shared songs, counselors, and so on. Having grown up in a non-Jewish environment, I felt uncomfortable and unable (and unwilling) to enter their conversation of “Jewish geography” (i.e., who knows whom or is related to whom). Several months later, I was having lunch with a friend and fellow non-Muslim Islamicist, and for some reason, our conversation turned to whether he had ever thought of moving institutions. He informed me that he had, but that he now worried that Islamic studies was becoming too much like Jewish studies in the sense that soon no one who was not a Muslim would be wanted to teach Islamic studies. The politics of identity so clearly on display in Jewish studies, for him, risked becoming the status quo in the scholarly study of Islam (and for that matter of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and so on). That is, my friend implied that Islamic studies as a discipline would soon purge itself of non-Muslims in the same manner that Jewish studies is today largely bereft of non-Jews. (The great paradox, however, is that the majority of students taking Jewish studies courses in American universities—at least beyond the East Coast corridor—are non-Jews.)
And then there is Israel. What is the nature of the relationship of Jewish studies to the State of Israel? Is it the goal of the scholar of Judaism in America to identify with it and to defend it at all costs, even if one has real problems with the political actions that its right-wing politicians take? I recall once giving a lecture at an area synagogue about the “Arab Spring” and the Muslim Brotherhood, wherein I argued that perhaps one of the places in the Middle East where democracy was most under threat was in Israel on account of the illiberal attitudes of many in the Haredi or ultra-Orthodox community and the government. An audience member got up and berated me, saying that, although I may be correct, he hoped that I was not lecturing about such matters in my classes at the university because it had the potential to make Jews and Israel look bad in the eyes of non-Jews!
This Israel-good/Arabs-bad binary—including its alternative, the Israel-bad/Arabs-good binary—is an unfortunate reality on many North American campuses. And unfortunately the scholar of Judaism (not unlike the scholar of Islam) can find him- or herself caught in the middle of such ideological battles. Is it part of this individual’s job description to offer him- or herself as the de facto defender of Zionist causes and protector of Jewish students on campus? 1 Certainly the community and administrative expectations differ depending upon the campus in question. Large programs or departments such as NYU’s Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies or Stanford’s Taube Center certainly allow for a greater amount of diversity on such matters than in those places where there is only one Jewish studies faculty member in largely Christocentric religious studies departments in, say, the Midwest. However, because roughly 95 percent of scholars of Judaism are ethnically and religiously Jewish, it is perhaps inevitable that they become metonymically identified, whether willingly or not, with either or both Israel and something that is frequently referred to as “the Jewish people.”
There exist, in other words, real minefields in how Judaism is situated in the current moment. What I, an insider to the field, think Jewish studies is in my own mind and what someone like Russell McCutcheon, an outsider, considers it to be based on his own experiences is certainly not easily reconcilable. For me, at least on good days, Jewish studies represents the interdisciplinary study of Jewish peoples across time and geography. For him, including many of my other friends and colleagues from the more theoretically sophisticated North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR), Jewish studies represents all that is wrong with the academic study of religion: too introspective, too ethnic, too navel-gazing, and too willing to reify or essentialize data that it not unproblematically constructs as “Jewish.”
The present volume is an attempt to reflect on these tensions, 2 if for no other reason than to clarify or at least taxonomize them in my own mind and for those experiencing a similar dissonance. It is perhaps worthwhile, I believe, to step back and ask such basic questions as, What is Jewish studies? How does it relate to the academic study of religion? My goal in asking these and related questions is twofold. First, to convince my colleagues working in theory and method in religious studies that Jewish data, and its theorizing, should be considered an important part of their conversations. Second, to try to convince my colleagues in Jewish studies that some of the theoretical and methodological concerns of religious studies can be useful in making Jewish studies, well, a tad less “ethnic.”
Let me take a few paragraphs to clarify what I mean by religious studies. The history of the academic study of religion, as I have argued elsewhere (e.g., Hughes 2007, 2010a, 2012), is predicated on a set of largely Western and Christocentric categories that are subsequently