When Marilynne Robinson Reads Genesis

[...] Robinson should be an ideal reader of Genesis, of its richly compacted human stories and their sharp details: Noah, drunk and naked in his tent, his state witnessed by his son Ham, although not by his two other sons, who walk into his tent backward to avoid the filial shame; or Jacob, tricking his elder brother, Esau, out of his birthright and winning his father’s blessing (“Do you have only one blessing, my father?” Esau cries on discovering what’s happened. “Bless me, too, my father!”); or the long story of Joseph and his envious brothers ... James Wood, The New Yorker

il nuovo libro di Marilynne Robinson si intitola Reading Genesis ed è uscito da Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

An Academic Is Fired Over a Medieval Painting of the Prophet Muhammad

The dismissal of an instructor at Hamline University on baseless charges of 'Islamophobia' raises concerns about freedom on campus.

[...] Through conflation or confusion, Hamline has privileged an ultraconservative Muslim view on the subject that happens to coincide with the age-old Western cliche that Muslims are banned from viewing images of the prophet. This Muslim traditionalist and American Orientalist “echo chamber” is not just simplistic and counterfactual; it also muzzles all other voices while potentially endangering rare and precious works of Islamic art. Christiane Gruber, New Lines Magazine

una discussione molto interessante sul bigottismo ora in corso in molte università americane. Spesso purtroppo l'ignoranza porta ad appoggiare posizioni retrive.

Syllabus: Myth in the Hebrew Bible

Myth in the Hebrew Bible is a complex and controversial topic, depending on how one defines myth and sometimes on one’s religious orientation. In everyday usage today, myth carries a meaning of something untrue, a fable, a fiction, or an illusion. That usage has a long history, traceable back to certain Greek philosophers. Anthropologists and historians of religion, however, use the term “myth” with a quite different meaning. For them myth refers to a traditional story, usually associated with the time of origins (e.g., creation or some important institution) that has paradigmatic significance for the society in which the story is operative. In this latter meaning, myth is characteristic of every traditional society; some would argue that myth continues to be operative even in modern, scientific society, camouflaged under other terms, including science itself (e.g., the big bang theory). Persons who hold that the Bible has been infallibly revealed by God and those who consider myth as something untrue may well find it offensive to posit that myth is present in the Bible. By contrast, those who see myth as one of the ways that a traditional society expresses it most profound truths may find inspiration in seeing biblical narratives as myth. Oxford Bibliographies

Syllabus: Women and Gender in the Bible and the Ancient World

This course will study in depth some of the narratives of female characters of the Bible, reading closely and considering a variety of perspectives, including historical, literary, theological and ideological approaches. Students will have the opportunity to engage in close reading of selected texts from different divisions of the Bible’ relate biblical texts to a variety of religious and secular contexts; discuss feminism and gender theory and their applications in biblical scholarship; becomes familiar with a range of theoretical interpretative approaches to texts. The course will explore intersections of gender, sex, race, ethnicity and class across the stories of women in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. University of Glasgow, Humanities

Syllabi. Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament

Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), or ‘Old Testament,’ played a formative role in the development of the religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This course provides an overview of the diverse genres of literature contained within the Hebrew Bible as well as an introduction to its modern critical study. Representative passages drawn from the mythological, imaginative, prophetic, and cultic strata of the Bible are examined in some detail, with emphasis laid upon acquiring a nuanced understanding of the significance of these passages within their historical and literary contexts. UNC Charlotte, Religious Studies

Syllabi. Defining the Moral Body: Sex, Race, and Gender in Religion

What is the ideal, moral body in a given culture? How does it perform? What does it look like? How does it survive in a pluralistic, global religious society? Are there multiple and/or shifting ideals? In this course, we will consider the ways religious discourses and practices have been used to assign meanings to the body and its activities. Through an exploration of varied religious contexts across historical time, we will interrogate how specific religious cultures have defined the boundaries of moral bodies via regulations concerning "appropriate" sexual, gendered, and racial performance. By examining the relationship between religious vocabularies--such as immorality, primitivism, and divine imperative--the racialization and gendering of bodies in the modern era, social taboos, and more, we will access broader questions regarding how religious discourses dictate and regulate the moral body. Stanford University, Religious Studies

quest'estate farò una ricerca di syllabi interessanti su valori/miti/narrazioni fondativi della nostra cultura.  Ogni suggerimento è benvenuto!

Why Cemeteries Matter

As Americans increasingly opt out of burial, cemeteries very well may become obsolete. It’s worth asking, then, especially at a time of year when graveyards loom large in our cultural imagination, what purpose do they serve? Aside from the practical need to dispose of corpses in a sanitary way, do they serve any higher good for the community? Rachel K. Alexander, Tablet

Amo molto passeggiare per i cimiteri, soprattutto quelli americani, o quelli monumentali. L'idea che stiano scomparendo mi turba molto.

Scompaiono anche le città? 

Can you hear the death rattle of the skyscraper? It’s the sound of the free candyfloss cart being wheeled past the rows of empty desks, and the lonely drip of the beer-keg tap by the water cooler. In a desperate attempt to lure employees back to their offices, companies are laying on all manner of novelty treats, from monogrammed water bottles to personalised notebooks. It is hoped that these perks might convince people to leave the house, get on packed trains and jostle for the lifts, all in the name of teamwork and productivity. Oliver Wainwright, The Guardian

A Secret History of Confession

 

 

John Cornwell, The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession: Confession in the Catholic Church (Profile Books). "John Cornwell’s history of confession is preoccupied with sex, which always helps the pages riffle past. ... the reason why The Dark Box (his sizzling title) dwells on such matters is because they’ve always been an obsession in the Church". Thomas W. Hodgkinson su spectator.

La rabbina italiana

Tablet dedica un interessante articolo a Barbara Aiello, l'unica rabbina italiana.
"When Rabbi Barbara Aiello founded the synagogue Ner Tamid del Sud six years ago in Serrastretta, a mountain town of 3,600 in Italy’s Calabria region, there weren’t many self-identified Jews around. The closest congregation was in Naples, a four-hour drive away.
But Aiello—an Italian-American whose father was born in Serrastretta, and who moved from Florida back to her ancestral village in 2006—suspected many locals had Jewish roots, even if they didn’t know it. ... 
As Aiello traveled throughout the region, she was astounded to discover that many local Catholic families kept Jewish traditions: candles lit on Friday night, mirrors covered for mourning, a red string tied around a baby’s wrist to ward off evil—a Kabbalistic ritual. To her, it was evidence that despite centuries of persecution, mass conversion, and forced exile, Judaism had managed to survive in Italy". tablet.

Il primo libro d'America

Il primo libro stampato in inglese d'America è "The Whole Booke of Psalmes". Alla fine di novembre una delle undici copie rimaste è stata venduta all'asta da Sotheby's a Manhattan per 14.2 milioni di dollari. A comprarla è stato David Rubenstein. "Rubenstein, a co-founder of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, whose worth Forbes has estimated at $2.5 billion, has given away tens of millions, if not more, in philanthropy, and is famous for buying important copies of iconic documents such as the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation and loaning them to branches of the federal government". huffingtonpost.

I racconti hasidici di Woody Allen

Negli anni '70 Woody Allen scrisse per il New Yorker una serie di parodie dei racconti hasidici di Buber. Ora David Remnick le ripropone, e vale veramente la pena leggerle. "Buber has been criticized for romanticizing Hasidism, for failing to confront what critics see as its obscurantism, but his service to the literature is immense. Also, his scholarly work led to a sublime bit of parody: Woody Allen’s re-telling and parody of those knotty, earthy, enigmatic stories—“Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar”—was engaged with their zaniness and the deadpan tone of interpretation", new yorker.

For Passover

Edgar M. Bronfman, The Bronfman Haggadah (Rizzoli). Bronfman said that he wrote his version of the Haggadah, the text that guides the Passover meal while telling the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, with children in mind. “I was thinking that their ears would be open that night if you tried to gently teach them what Judaism is all about,” he said in a short speech. “I don’t believe in God,” he said later. “I do believe in Judaism. I believe in ethics, morals. Our gifts to humanity are enormous. I remind everybody that the Sabbath was the Jewish gift to civilization.” newyorker.

King James Bible

La King James Bible compie 400 anni. "King James’s offer to commission a new Bible translation had been made quite casually at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604, chiefly, it seems, to console the Puritans for their failure to secure any other changes to the religious settlement. To many contemporaries, it seemed little more than a royal vanity project. In the preface to the first edition of 1611, the translators admitted that many people saw no need for a new translation at all ..." TLS.