Conceptual Considerations
The Biblical Conception of Plagues View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bina Nir
As the COVID-19 virus spread, we witnessed different economic, political, and social aspects of the pandemic. Besides questions of public health, it became impossible to ignore the cultural implications of the pandemic. Attitudes to the body, pain, and sickness are all influenced by culture. The coverage of the pandemic, from its beginning, has presented events as approaching an apocalypse. In my study, I reveal the roots of this foundational narrative, along with other narratives that constitute the cultural attitude to plagues and pandemics in Western culture. Utilizing a genealogical methodology, I evaluate the cultural sources of the attitudes to plague, disease, and the body as they are found in a foundational text of Western culture, the Bible. Genealogy is a method that delves into the past with the goal of understanding and critiquing the present. Modes of thinking and cultural norms can be revealed by examining the religious doctrines of a culture. Plagues are understood in the Bible as a form of collective punishment. The Hebrew word for plague, magefa, is derived from the verb root n.g.f, meaning hit or strike. In the Bible, religious action is required to stop a plague. In addition, the biblical approach to the body is mainly materialist. Revealing the sources of biblical narratives about plagues makes possible a reevaluation of the values and positions relevant to this topic in the Western culture in general and in Judaism in particular.
Jewish Participation in the Temple of Religion at the New York World’s Fair of 1939
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Naomi Yavneh Klos
Created for the New York World’s Fair of 1939, the “Temple of Religion” was designed to be a symbolic representation of American religious freedom that also avoided privileging or even recognizing the specificity of any one faith tradition. This paper explores the “Temple” in the context of its historical moment on the cusp of World War II, considering parallels with, and implications for, our own contemporary challenges with increasing polarization, xenophobia and intolerance. A focus on the “unity” and “brotherhood” of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews was deemed especially important in the context of political unrest and religious persecution in Europe; in particular, the Jewish community was grappling with increasingly dire reports from Europe, and severe limitations on the number of refugees permitted to immigrate to the United States. My presentation will focus on Jewish participation, which met multiple challenges, including the Temple’s calendar, designed to accommodate Christian praxis without consideration either for the Jewish sabbath (observed each week from sundown Friday to one hour past sundown on Saturday) or the multiple Jewish holidays that fell during fair season. Yet, despite this lack of what would now be termed “cultural competence,” archival correspondence suggests Jews of all denominations were eager to participate. I argue this enthusiasm stemmed from a desire both to encourage a positive view of Judaism during a time of rising antisemitism, and to draw attention to the increasingly ominous plight of Jews in Nazi Germany and Europe in general.
A Faith-Based Epistemology: An Insecure Hope or Certain Knowledge? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jacob Tubbs
Since at least the Medieval period a distinction has been drawn between reason and faith, where reason was seen as the epistemology for knowing factual, earthly knowledge, and faith was seen as the epistemology for finding spiritual knowledge. The Enlightenment solidified this dichotomy by contrasting faith with the certainty of empiricism. Faith, thus, became seen as being when one believes in something that cannot be known with certainty. This dichotomy relegated fatih to secondary status as a less valid, less true epistemology. This paper traces this understanding of faith from its historical origins to the modern day to show how it has permeated our modern understanding of what it means to have faith. It will then be argued that faith can instead be seen as a form of knowledge and knowledge seeking that is just as valid as rational argument and sensory experience. To make this case, various treatises on faith from the Book of Mormon will be analyzed, under the premise that religious texts can carry philosophical heft. These texts show that an understanding of faith is possible where faith is not merely belief in something that cannot be known for certain, but rather an epistemology based on undeniable phenomenological experience that is uniquely suited to gaining knowledge of people, relationships, and the divine, as opposed to rational and empirical knowledge. The importance of this faith-based epistemology is evident in how it can raise religious knowledge from its secondary status to equal standing with other forms of knowledge.
