Word: judaisms
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...Judaism, Christianity and Muhammadanism are male dominant, and Robbins seems to feel -- though this and much else are not clear -- that worship of the goddess Astarte in early times was gentler. His novel's heroine is an Astarte- Venus-Jezebel figure, a young artist named Ellen Cherry. Her husband Boomer, a lame, redneck welder, appears to represent the lame god Vulcan in this strange jumble of myths...
...leaders better appreciated what makes Israel special, Hartman's mission might not have been necessary. "Our founders saw religion as the enemy of progress," says Hartman. "They wanted to create an indigenous, secular Israeli. Religious concerns were ceded to the ultra-orthodox, who have never understood the need for Judaism to incorporate democratic values." Because Israeli society failed to develop a compelling spiritual option to replace the victim-oriented philosophy of the East European ghetto, Labor's present leaders are constantly beholden to a religious perspective antithetical to all they value. As a result, they regularly lose both religious...
Hartman's ally is Judaism's oral tradition, the Talmud, which itself mediates, or "corrects," biblical literalism. But then the question becomes, Who says what the tradition is? The answer is, Anyone who can make his interpretations stick. Too often authority is gained through raw political power, or compelled by blind allegiance to a religious sect. But sometimes, as in Hartman's case, interpretive validity is achieved through the simple force of intellect...
...belief that if a people does not have everything (i.e., all the land), it has nothing. The issue for him is whether Jews can say grace without being totally satisfied. Even more important, the question is whether religious loyalty requires believing that there is only one way. Or does Judaism affirm that no human community has access to the total truth? In responding to these questions, says Hartman, "the most profound Jewish values are at stake. Israel cannot claim the allegiance of Jews everywhere if the spiritual content of Israeli life is not what a Jew living anywhere would want...
Reality -- or "facts on the ground," as Ariel Sharon would say -- has , mellowed Hartman. Impatient by nature, he now knows that his hopes for a radical change in national attitudes will require decades, perhaps centuries to be realized. But unless Judaism, Islam and Christianity discover new foundations for pluralism in their respective traditions, a paper peace will offer scant solace. The shabby state of Israeli-Egyptian relations teaches that a treaty grounded in political calculation rather than moral awakening is worth little (and can be abrogated easily). "If an Egyptian-style peace is all we ever get," says Hartman, then...