Early Modern Musar
Emmy Noether-Program – DFG
Early Modern Musar
Early Modern Musar
German-Israeli Summer School "Fear of Sin"
8 June 2022
Photo: Anna Avlasovitch
We cordially invite you to the German-Israeli Minerva School "Fear of Sin in Jewish Literature," which will be held between June 27-29 at the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion at the University of Hamburg, organized jointly with the Department of Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan.
The notion that human beings are sinful creatures is one of the cornerstones of the Abrahamic religions. Consequently, strategies that offer coping mechanisms that counter the inevitability of sin take pride of place in these cultural systems. The minority status of Jews living under Christian and Muslim rule throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period provided yet another basis for utilizing fear and anxiety concerning transgressive conduct. These emotions served the social function, as a protection scheme of sorts, of maintaining the social order of the community. Because of this, religious leaders adopted the practice of exploiting the fear of sin as a powerful tool for encouraging compliance with Jewish law.
In contrast, however, scholars of Jewish studies, particularly in the field of Jewish thought, have highlighted antinomian tendencies, idealizing illicit acts as a holy requisite for transcendence. This fascination with what scholars have perceived as the anarchic, heretical, or heterodox dimension of Judaism has distorted the fact that both quantitatively and qualitatively, dismissive attitudes towards transgressive behavior were far more dominant in medieval and early modern Jewish culture than antinomian ones.
In contrast, however, scholars of Jewish studies, particularly in the field of Jewish thought, have highlighted antinomian tendencies, idealizing illicit acts as a holy requisite for transcendence. This fascination with what scholars have perceived as the anarchic, heretical, or heterodox dimension of Judaism has distorted the fact that both quantitatively and qualitatively, dismissive attitudes towards transgressive behavior were far more dominant in medieval and early modern Jewish culture than antinomian ones.
The German-Israeli Minerva School will be a first attempt in the field of Jewish studies to present a comprehensive historical account of the function of negative emotions and their development. It will serve as a point of departure for acknowledging the role of the fear of sin in medieval and early modern Jewish literature. Due to the lack of substantive studies on this matter, the workshop will aim to lay the theoretical and methodological foundations for mapping out the different categories, discuss the potential of new research questions, and share historical materials that deal with notion of fear and anxiety related to past as well as future wrongdoings.
For registration, please contact patrick.benjamin.koch"AT"uni-hamburg.de.
For the full programem, click here.