01588--RaSHI, Rabbi Shlomo son of Isaac

RaSHI, Rabbi Shlomo son of Isaac (1040–1105).

Born in Troyes, France, and is most well known for his running commentary on the Talmud and TaNaKH. In his commentary on the TaNaKH, he usually selected and condensed earlier Rabbinic understandings of the text. His commentary was the first published Jewish work, even before the TaNaKH itself. His commentary is studied along with the TaNaKH in traditional communities down to today.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01587--Nachmanides, Moses

Nachmanides, Moses (1194–1270). Also known as RaMBaN (Rabbi Moses ben Nachman); lived in Gerona, Spain, north of Barcelona, and died in the Land of Israel. RaMBaN is the earliest biblical commentator to include Kabbalistic hints. Like RaMBaM, with whom he frequently disagreed, RaMBaN was a doctor. He was also a Talmudist and leader of the Jewish community. He represented the Jews in disputations with the Christian community in 1263, his account of which has been dramatized in The Disputation, a BBC production. Shortly after his participation in the disputation, he left for the Land of Israel.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01586--Maimonides, Moses

Maimonides, Moses (1138–1204). Also known as RaMBaM (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon); born in Spain and lived in Egypt. Maimonides was a doctor to the sultan and for the Jewish community of Fostat, Old Cairo. His two greatest works are the Mishneh Torah (1180), a comprehensive summation of Rabbinic law, and the Guide of the Perplexed (1190), a text that brings together Rabbinic Judaism and Aristotelian philosophy. Maimonides was a controversial writer, and the true meaning of his Guide is still hotly debated. Maimonides’s influence on both the development of halachah and Jewish philosophy cannot be overestimated. Although it is possible to disagree with the RaMBaM, one cannot ignore him.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01585--Luria, Isaac

 Luria, Isaac (1534–1572). Also known as the Holy Lion. He led a group of Kabbalists in Tzfat in the north of the Land of Israel. Luria developed the Kabbalah he inherited into a far more elaborate system involving four different worlds within the supernal realm. He also innovated a creation myth that involves tsimtsum, or divine withdrawal to create a space that is not divine in order to create the world. In the subsequent process of creation, there was a shattering of vessels containing divine energy; our task is to repair (tikkun) those shattered vessels through the performance of the commandments with the proper intention. Lurianic Kabbalah was influential for centuries.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01584--Leibowitz, Yeshayahu

Leibowitz, Yeshayahu (1903–1994). One of the most controversial figures in Israel until his death. Although deeply committed to halachah, he nevertheless felt that Jewish law had to adapt to the new reality of a Jewish state. Leibowitz considered himself to be a disciple of Maimonides and the rationalism that the latter represented. On the question of chosenness, Leibowitz denies that the Jews were chosen. He reconceptualizes the traditional notion by arguing that Jews were commanded to be the chosen people, and the Jews may or may not respond to that divine demand. But, for Leibowitz, as for all Jewish rationalists, there is no intrinsic difference between Jews and Gentiles.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01583--Kook, Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen

 Kook, Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen (1865–1935).

The first Ashkenazi chief Rabbi of Palestine. Born to a Hassidic mother and a Mitnagdic father, Rav Kook combined Talmudic and halachic scholarship with the mysticism of the Kabbalah. Rav Kook’s inspirational writings, poetry, and works of halachah served as the ideological foundation for many religious Zionists. He is widely perceived to be a bridge between the religious and secular worlds because he expressed admiration for the secular Zionists who were doing God’s work, albeit unknowingly. His son, Tzvi Yehudah Kook, has become a central figure in the Israeli settler movement, which sees the State of Israel as the beginning of messianic redemption. A good digest of his writings can be found in The Lights of Penitence.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01582--Kaplan, Mordecai

Kaplan, Mordecai (1881–1983). Taught at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary for more than half a century. Kaplan is also the founder of the fourth denomination in American Jewish life, Reconstructionism. Kaplan maintained that traditional Judaism gets a vote, not a veto, on how contemporary Jews express their Jewish commitments. Kaplan promoted the idea that Judaism is a civilization and American Jews should strive to live in both the Jewish and American civilizations. Toward that end, Kaplan was an early supporter of the idea of Jewish community centers, where Jews could congregate for purposes other than religion. On matters religious, Kaplan was a forceful advocate of updating traditional rituals and ideas where possible and abandoning those that could not be updated, such as the idea of the chosen people.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01581--Judah the Prince, Rabbi

Judah the Prince, Rabbi (c. 135 C.E.–c. 219). Redacted the Mishnah, the first literary work of Rabbinic Judaism. He was both an outstanding scholar and the political leader of the community, representing Jewish interests to Rome. In Rabbinic literature, he is often simply referred to as “Rabbi.” He led the Sannhedrin, the supreme Jewish legislative and judicial body, from Tzippori and Bet She’arim. He is buried in Bet She’arim in northern Israel in a restored archaeological site.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01580--Hirsch, Samson Raphael

Hirsch, Samson Raphael (1808–1888). Considered to be the father of Modern (or Neo-) Orthodoxy. He was a staunch opponent of Reform and its acceptance of biblical criticism. Hirsch advocated certain “external” reforms dealing with dress, language, and even education, but he was steadfast in his opposition to halachic change. Although he could not tolerate changes to the traditional liturgy calling for the reestablishment of a Jewish state, he did believe that one should demonstrate patriotism toward the country of one’s citizenship. Hirsch opened the first Jewish day school in 1853 that combined Jewish and secular studies. 

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01579--Hirsch, Emil G. Hirsch, Emil G.

Hirsch, Emil G. (1851–1923). The son of a prominent Reform ideologue, Rabbi Samuel Hirsch. Upon returning from Germany with ordination and a doctorate, the younger Hirsch served as an editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia, professor of Rabbinics at the University of Chicago, and a congregational Rabbi. He was responsible for bringing the Social Gospel into Reform Judaism and featuring it in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01578--Heschel, Abraham Joshua

Heschel, Abraham Joshua (1905–1972). A scion of a Hassidic dynasty and one of the leading Jewish theologians in the United States in the 20th century. He was twice invited to the White House to speak on issues of social justice and was a friend and ally of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His scholarship touched on every facet of Jewish thought. The Sabbath and God in Search of Man are representative of his style and religious thought.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01577--Herzl, Theodor

Herzl, Theodor (1860–1904). Best remembered as the father of political Zionism. He was an assimilated Jew from Budapest who was educated in Vienna. He served as a reporter for the trial of Alfred Dreyfus and became convinced that the only solution for the Jewish problem in Europe was a national home. He wrote The Jewish State in 1896 and presided over the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897. There, he said that in 50 years, a Jewish state would exist in Palestine. His words proved prophetic.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01576--Geiger, Abraham

Geiger, Abraham (1810–1874). A founding father of the Reform movement in Germany. Geiger was also one of the outstanding scholars from the second generation of Jewish studies. He applied his scholarly research, which emphasized the human authorship of the Torah and demonstrated the progressive nature of Jewish law, to the reforms he hoped to institute in his own day. He served as a pulpit rabbi for 35 years and was instrumental in the establishment of the first Reform rabbinical seminary in Berlin in 1870.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01575--Frankel, Zecharias

Frankel, Zecharias (1801–1875). The founder of Conservative Judaism in Germany. At the time, it was called “Positive Historical Judaism.” The original name reflects the idea that Judaism is a historical religion unfolding over time and that historical unfolding is positive because it allows Jewish law to maintain its relevance in each generation. Frankel accepted certain reforms but was dedicated to the binding nature of Jewish law as a whole. He was also opposed to the linguistic acculturation of Reform and insisted on preserving Hebrew in the prayer services. In 1854, he was named the director of a rabbinical seminary (Juedisch-Theologisches Seminar), which became the model for modern seminaries that combine critical scholarship and traditional Jewish study.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01574--Dreyfus, Alfred

Dreyfus, Alfred (1859–1935). An assimilated Jew and captain in the French Army. He was falsely convicted of treason in 1895. Dreyfus was demoted and sent to Devil’s Island off the coast of South America. His brother worked tirelessly to exonerate him. Finally, in 1906, a court of appeals pronounced his innocence. In the interim, his case garnered international attention. One of the reporters covering the initial trial was Theodor Herzl, who was inspired to question whether assimilation was a viable solution for European Jews. Herzl subsequently outlined his vision of a Jewish national independence.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01573--Bar Kochva, Shimon

Bar Kochva, Shimon (d. 135 C.E.). The military leader of the final rebellion against the Romans in the Land of Israel that began in 132. Although Rabbi Akiva believed him to be the messiah, Bar Kochva made no such claim. Bar Kochva based himself in the south of the country, where documents and coins have been unearthed testifying to his reign.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01572--Ba’al Shem Tov, Israel

Ba’al Shem Tov, Israel (1700–1760). The inspiration for Hassidism, a religious renewal movement that swept through Eastern Europe from 1750 through the 19th century. The Ba’al Shem Tov maintained that the study of Talmud was not the exclusive way to serve God. One could serve God through all commandments and all human activities as long as one’s awareness was so directed. He had a small group of followers who spread his teachings throughout Eastern Europe. These tzaddikim, or righteous ones, lent their own style and personality to the message of the Ba’al Shem Tov.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01571--Akiva son of Joseph

Akiva son of Joseph (50–135 C.E.). One of the leading figures of Rabbinic Judaism in the decades after the destruction of the Second Temple. In some ways, “Judaism” could just as easily be named “Akivaism.” He was largely responsible for the traditions recorded in the Mishnah. He was also believed to engage in mystical practices. He maintained that the most important principle in the Torah was to show love to your neighbor, although he simultaneously held that study was greater than deeds. He promoted the Rabbinic doctrine that the entire Torah was given by God at Mount Sinai. Akiva was flayed to death by the Romans toward the end of the Bar Kochva Revolt.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01570--Adler, Felix

Adler, Felix (1851–1933). The son of prominent Reform Rabbi Samuel Adler. Growing up in America, the younger Adler finished his rabbinic and secular education in Germany. On his return, he advocated abandoning the particularistic elements of Judaism to focus exclusively on universal ethics. In 1876, Adler founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

Courtesy: Professor Shai Cherry

01569--analepsis

Analepsis is a form of anachrony by which some of the events of a story are related at a point in the narrative after later storyevents have already been recounted. Commonly referred to as retrospection or flashback, analepsis enables a storyteller to fill in background information about characters and events. A narrative that begins in medias res will include an analeptic account of events preceding the point at which the tale began. See also prolepsis.

01568--anagogical

Anagogical  revealing a higher spiritual meaning behind the literal meaning of a text. Medieval Christian exegesis of the Bible  reinterpreted many episodes of Hebrew scripture according to four levels of meaning: the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. Of these, the anagogical sense was seen as the highest, relating to the ultimate destiny of humanity according to the Christian scheme of universal history, whereas the allegorical and moral senses refer respectively to the Church and to the individual soul. Anagogy or anagoge is thus a specialized form of allegorical interpretation, which reads texts in terms of  eschatology.  

01567--anagnorisis

Anagnorisis  (plural -ises) is the Greek word for 'recognition' or 'discovery', used by Aristotle in his Poetics to denote the turning point in a drama at which a character (usually the protagonist) recognizes the true state of affairs, having previously been in error or ignorance. The classic instance is Oedipus' recognition, in Oedipus Tyrannus, that he himself has killed his own father Laius, married his mother Jocasta, and brought the plague upon Thebes. The anagnorisis is usually combined with the play's peripeteia or reversal of fortunes, in comedy as in tragedy. Similarly, the plots of many novels involve crucial anagnorises, e.g. Pip's discovery, in Great Expectations, that Magwitch rather than Miss Havisham has been his secret benefactor. 

01566--anadiplosis

Anadiplosis  (plural -oses) is a rhetorical figure of repetition in which a word or phrase appears both at the end of one clause, sentence, or stanza, and at the beginning of the next, thus linking the two units, as in the final line of Shakespeare's 36th sonnet:

As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.

01565--anacrusis

Anacrusis is the appearance of an additional unstressed syllable or syllables at the beginning of a verse line, before the regular metrical pattern begins.

01564--Anacreontics

Anacreontics is verses resembling, either metrically or in subject-matter, those of the Greek poet Anacreon (6th century BCE) or of his later imitators in the collection known as the Anacreontea. Metrically, the original Anacreontic line combined long (-) and short (w) syllables in the pattern uu-u-u--. It was imitated in English by Sir Philip Sidney. More often, though, the term refers to the subject-matter: the celebration of love and drinking. 

01563--anacoluthon

Anacoluthon is a grammatical term for a change of construction in a sentence that leaves the initial construction unfinished: 'Either you go—but we'll see.' Adjective: anacoluthic.

01562--anachrony

Anachrony is a term used in modern narratology to denote a discrepancy between the order in which events of the story occur and the order in which they are presented to us in the plot. Anachronies take two basic forms: 'flashback' or analepsis, and 'fiashforward' or prolepsis. Adjective: anachronic. 

01561--anachronism

Anachronism is the misplacing of any person, thing, custom, or event outside its proper historical time. Performances of Shakespeare's plays in modern dress use deliberate anachronism, but many fictional works based on history include unintentional examples, the most famous being the clock in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Adjective: anachronistic.

01560--amphimacer

Amphimacer is a Greek metrical foot, also known as the cretic foot. The opposite of the amphibrach , it has one short syllable between two long ones (thus in English verse, one unstressed syllable between two stressed, as in the phrase 'bowing down'). 

01559--amphibrach

Amphibrach is a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable between two unstressed syllables, as in the word 'confession' (or, in quantitative verse, one long syllable between two shorts). It is the opposite of the amphimacer. It was rarely used in classical verse, but may occur in English in combination with other feet.

01558--amoebean verses

Amoebean verses is a poetic form in which two characters chant alternate lines, couplets, or stanzas, in competition or debate with one another. This form is found in the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil, and was imitated by Spenser in his Shepheardes Calender (1579); it is similar to the debat, and sometimes resembles stichomythia.

01557--American Renaissance

American Renaissance is the name sometimes given to a flourishing of distinctively American literature in the period before the Civil War. As described by F. O. Matthiessen in his influential critical work American Renaissance (1941), this renaissance is represented by the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, H. D. Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman. Its major works are Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville's Moby-Dick (1851), and Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855). The American Renaissance may be regarded as a delayed manifestation of Romanticism, especially in Emerson's philosophy of Transcendentalism.

01556--ambiguity

Ambiguity means openness to different interpretations; or an instance in which some use of language may be understood in diverse ways. Sometimes known as 'plurisignation' or 'multiple meaning', ambiguity became a central concept in the interpretation of poetry after William Empson, in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), defended it as a source of poetic richness rather than a fault of imprecision. 

01555--allusion

Allusion is an indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader's familiarity with what is thus mentioned. The technique of allusion is an economical means of calling upon the history or the literary tradition that author and reader are assumed to share, although some poets (notably Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot) allude to areas of quite specialized knowledge. 

01554--alliterative revival

Alliterative revival is a term covering the group of late 14th-century English poems written in an  alliterative metre similar to that of Old English verse but less regular (notably in Langland's Piers Plowman) and sometimes—as in the anonymous Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—using rhyme and elaborate stanza structure. This group may represent more a continuation than a revival of the alliterative tradition.

01553--alliterative metre

Alliterative metre is the distinctive verse form of Old Germanic poetry, including Old English. It employed a long line divided by a  caesura into two balanced half-lines, each with a given number of stressed syllables (usually two) and a variable number of unstressed syllables. These halflines are linked by alliteration between both (sometimes one) of the stressed syllables in the first half and the first (and sometimes the second) stressed syllable in the second half. 

01552--alliteration

Alliteration (also known as 'head rhyme' or 'initial rhyme') is the repetition of the same sounds—usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables—in any sequence of neighbouring words: 'Landscapelover, lord of language' (Tennyson). Now an optional and incidental decorative effect in verse or prose, it was once a required element in the poetry of Germanic languages (including Old English and Old Norse) and in Celtic verse (where alliterated sounds could regularly be placed in positions other than the beginning of a word or syllable). Such poetry, in which alliteration rather than rhyme is the chief principle of repetition, is known as alliterative verse; its rules also allow a vowel sound to alliterate with any other vowel. 

01551--allegory

Allegory is a story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visible meaning. The principal technique of allegory is personification, whereby abstract qualities are given human shape—as in public statues of Liberty or Justice. An allegory may be conceived as a metaphor that is extended into a structured system. In written narrative, allegory involves a continuous parallel between two (or more) levels of meaning in a story, so that its persons and events correspond to their equivalents in a system of ideas or a chain of events external to the tale: each character and episode in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), for example, embodies an idea within a pre-existing Puritan doctrine of salvation. Allegorical thinking permeated the Christian literature of the Middle Ages, flourishing in the Morality Plays and in the Dream Visions of Dante and Langland.

 

01550--alienation effect or A-eff ect

Alienation effect or A-eff ect is the usual English translation of the German Verfremdungseffekt or V-effekt, a major principle of Bertolt Brecht's theory of epic theatre. It is a dramatic effect aimed at encouraging an attitude of critical detachment in the audience, rather than a passive submission to realistic illusion; and achieved by a variety of means, from allowing the audience to smoke and drink to interrupting the play's action with songs, sudden scene changes, and switches of role. Actors are also encouraged to distance themselves from their characters rather than identify with them; ironic commentary by a narrator adds to this 'estrangement'. By reminding the audience of the performance's artificial nature, Brecht hoped to stimulate a rational view of history as a changeable human creation rather than as a fated process to be accepted passively. 

01549--Alexandrine

Alexandrine is a verse line of twelve syllables adopted by poets since the 16th century as the standard verse-form of French poetry, especially dramatic and narrative.

01548--Alexandrianism

Alexandrianism is the works and styles of the Alexandrian school of Greek poets in the hellenistic age (323 bce-31 bce), which included Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Theocritus. The Alexandrian style was marked by elaborate artificiality, obscure mythological allusion, and eroticism. it influenced Catullus and other roman poets.

01547--aleatory or aleatoric

Aleatory  or Aleatoric is dependent upon chance. Aleatory writing involves an element of randomness either in composition, as in automatic writing and the cut-up, or in the reader's selection and ordering of written fragments, as in B. S. Johnson's novel The Unfortunates (1969), a box of loose leaves which the reader could shuffle at will.

01546--Alcaics

Alcaics is a Greek verse form using a four-line stanza in which the first two lines have eleven syllables each, the third nine, and the fourth ten. The metre, predominantly Dactylic, was used frequently by the Roman poet Horace, and later by some Italian and German poets, but its quantitative basis makes it difficult to adapt into English—although Tennyson and Clough attempted English Alcaics, and Peter Reading has experimented with the form in Ukelele Music (1985) and other works.

01545--agon

Agon is the contest or dispute between two characters which forms a major part of the action in the Greek Old Comedy of Aristophanes, e.g. the debate between Aeschylus and Euripides in his play The Frogs (405 BCE). The term is sometimes extended to formal debates in Greek tragedies. Adjective: agonistic.

01544--agitprop

Agitprop is a Russian abbreviation of 'agitation and propaganda', applied to the campaign of cultural and political propaganda mounted in the years after the 1917 revolution. The term is sometimes applied to the simple form of didactic drama which the campaign employed, and which influenced the Epic Theatre of Piscator and Brecht in Germany.

01543--afflatus

Afflatus is a Latin term for poetic inspiration.

01542--affective

Affective means that which is pertaining to emotional effects or dispositions (known in psychology as 'affects'). Affective criticism or affectivism evaluates literary works in terms of the feelings they arouse in audiences or readers . It was condemned in an important essay by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley (in The Verbal Icon, 1954) as the affective fallacy, since in the view of these New Critics such affective evaluation confused the literary work's objective qualities with its subjective results

01541--aesthetics

Aesthetics is the philosophical investigation into the nature of beauty and the perception of beauty, especially in the arts; the theory of art or of artistic taste. 

01540--Aestheticism

Aestheticism is the doctrine or disposition that regards beauty as an end in itself, and attempts to preserve the arts from subordination to moral, didactic, or political purposes. The term is often used synonymously with the Aesthetic Movement, a literary and artistic tendency of the late 19th century which may be understood as a further phase of romanticism in reaction against Philistine bourgeois values of practical efficiency and morality. 

01539--adynaton

Adynaton is a figure of speech related to hyperbole that emphasizes the inexpressibility of some thing, idea, or feeling, either by stating that words cannot describe it, or by comparing it with something (e.g. the heavens, the oceans) the dimensions of which cannot be grasped.