Zoom
“Between Nationalism and Violence: Confessions of a Jewish ultra-Orthodox Pacifist” | Shaul Magid
This talk is a part of “Religion and Just Peace | A Series of Public Online Conversations“, co-sponsored with Religion and Public Life and HarvardX.
In this session, Shaul Magid will look at a few of the texts of Aaron Shmuel Tamares (1869-1931), an enigmatic ultra-Orthodox rabbi from Belarus who developed a theory of pacifism over the course of the first Russian revolution, the Young Turk revolt, and the Great War.
Tamares’s theory was founded on the principle that nationalism was a recipe for perpetual violence and destruction. Reading his pacifist theory back through the two failed Jewish commonwealths in antiquity, Tamares offers a fascinating traditional Jewish notion of peacemaking, which rejects the nationalist frame and proposes “exile” as a moral positionality whereby collectives can thrive by viewing themselves as partners in creation, without the force of redemptive politics.
Magid will engage with this particular Jewish notion of peacemaking and help us decipher its potential for our day.
Shaul Magid is a Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. His area of expertise are Jewish Thought, Kabbalah, Hasidism, and American Jewish Culture.
What contributions can the study of religion bring to definitions and practices of just peacebuilding?
Harvard Divinity School will host a series of online public conversations in which five featured faculty members present a case study from their individual areas of expertise that considers the above question. Consider the relationship between religion and just peacebuilding along with these scholars and explore what an expansive understanding of religion can provide to this work.
Hosted by Diane L. Moore, Associate Dean for Religion and Public Life.