- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Translators’ Note
- Introduction
-
Part I The First Mirror -
1 Waking the Dead—Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar -
2 Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World -
3 Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past -
4 ‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science -
5 Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture -
6 The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity -
7 Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities -
8 Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts -
Part II The Second Mirror -
9 The Nature of the Hellenistic Mirror -
10 Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and Alexandria: Two Models of a National and Cultural Encounter -
11 Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages -
Part III Athens in Jerusalem -
12 Back to History: The Secularization of the Ancient Jewish Past -
13 The Children of Japheth (Aryans) and the Children of Shem (Semites): Race and Innate Nationalism -
14 The People and its Land: Country, Landscape, and Culture -
15 A ‘Polis’ in Jerusalem: The Jewish State -
16 The New Jewish Culture: Ideal and Reality - Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Introduction
- Chapter:
- (p.1) Introduction
- Source:
- Athens in Jerusalem
- Author(s):
Yaacov Shavit
, Chaya Naor, Niki Werner- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
This introductory chapter briefly deals with the question of a dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem. More specifically, it aims to approach the issue by considering how Athens, with its associations of classical antiquity and Hellenism, might have any impact on modern Jewish culture. Both sides of this dichotomy, as this chapter shows, are quite different and distinct from one another. Indeed, they represent seemingly contradictory worlds. For the Jews, Athens represented Western culture as a whole. It was ‘modern’ and ‘secular’. A cultural value or trait was identified as ‘Greek’ in order to approve of it or, conversely, to attach a stigma to it. Some Jewish writers have also argued that ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem’ signify the two forces of a primal duality (Urzwet) that have been contending with each other in Judaism since its inception, creating within it a tension, as well as a dynamic and enriching multiplicity. However, as this chapter shows, duality also creates a disintegrating tension, or one which in the final analysis causes the totality and the unity to alter their nature.
Keywords: Athens, Jerusalem, classical antiquity, Hellenism, Greek influences, Western culture, modern Jewish culture
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Translators’ Note
- Introduction
-
Part I The First Mirror -
1 Waking the Dead—Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar -
2 Hellenism and Hebraism: The Two Poles of the World -
3 Israel and Greece: Reviving a Legendary Past -
4 ‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science -
5 Japheth in the Tents of Shem: The Reception of the Classical Heritage in Modern Hebrew Culture -
6 The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity -
7 Worlds without Compromise: Reconstructing the Disparities -
8 Have Jews Imagination? Jews and the Creative Arts -
Part II The Second Mirror -
9 The Nature of the Hellenistic Mirror -
10 Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and Alexandria: Two Models of a National and Cultural Encounter -
11 Homeric Books and Hellenistic Culture in the World of the Sages -
Part III Athens in Jerusalem -
12 Back to History: The Secularization of the Ancient Jewish Past -
13 The Children of Japheth (Aryans) and the Children of Shem (Semites): Race and Innate Nationalism -
14 The People and its Land: Country, Landscape, and Culture -
15 A ‘Polis’ in Jerusalem: The Jewish State -
16 The New Jewish Culture: Ideal and Reality - Conclusion: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
- Bibliography
- Index
