Naomi Janowitz's Books

Acts of Interpretation

Ancient Religious Semiotic Ideologies and Their Modern Echoes

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Acts of Interpretation

Ancient Religious Semiotic Ideologies and Their Modern Echoes

By: Naomi Janowitz

Ancient authors debated proper verbal and non-verbal signs as representations of divinity. These understanding of signs were based on ideas drawn from language and thus limited due to a their partial understanding of the multi-functionality of signs. Charles S. Peirce’s semiotics, as adapted by anthropological linguists including Michael Silverstein, better explains the contextual linkages ("performativity") of ancient religious signs such as divine names. Sign meaning is always dependent on processes of interpretation and is always open to reinterpretation. Focusing on these processes permits a more detailed analysis of the ancient evidence. Examples are drawn from ancient Israelite verbal and non-verbal divine representation, the apostle Paul’s linguistic letter/spirit model, Christian debates about the limits of language to best represent the deity, Josephus’ aniconic advertisement of Jewish rites, the multi-layered divine representations in the Dura-Europos synagogue, the diverse "performativity" of Jewish ascent liturgies, and—the single modern example—the role of art at Burning Man. Divine representation is the basis for ritual efficacy even as sign meaning is a constant source of contention.

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170

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published Date

ISBN 10

3110768607

ISBN 13

9783110768602

The Poetics of Ascent

Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text

By: Naomi Janowitz

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The Poetics of Ascent

Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text

By: Naomi Janowitz

This book represents the first English translation of Maaseh Merkabah, which is part of a body of early Jewish mystical texts known as palace (hekhalot) or chariot (merkabah) texts. Through a complex dialogue, a rabbi-teacher reveals to his student the techniques of ascent, methods for traveling up through the heavens by means of recitation of hymns. The teacher gives vivid descriptions of the heavenly realm, filled with flaming chariots and a chorus of angels engaged in praising the deity. The emphasis in the text is on language, on the correct recitation of the words to achieve the ritual. The particular focus is on the divine Name, which can be employed in unusual ways. The author relates the structures of the text to the linguistic idealogies. The complex structures of the text begin to unfold in light of the theories about the ritual function of language. The hymns include praise of the deity and voces magicae, words that have no semantic meaning, but draw attention to sounds of letters in God's name. Since God's name is used to create the world, the sounds of the name are creative, but the Name cannot be spoken. The hymns create a multiplicity of Name-equivalents, words that have the functional status of the divine Name and which can be employed in ritual. Voces magicae are not so much nonsense as they are logical extensions of the linguistic theory. The final chapter surveys recent theories of ritual language and then uses the conclusions from the study to refine the general issue of the relationship between the semantic meaning of words and their ritual efficacy. The dialogic structure of the text permits the reader to become the next student in a chain going back to the deity by means of Moses.

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173

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438407793

ISBN 13

9781438407791

Icons of Power

Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Icons of Power

Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity

By: Naomi Janowitz

Janowitz sifts through the polemics to make sense of the daunting mosaic of religious belief and practice in Late Antiquity. Janowitz reveals how ritual practitioners held common assumptions about why their rituals worked and how to perform them. Icons of Power makes an important contribution to our understanding of society in Late Antiquity.

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194

Publisher

Penn State Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0271047917

ISBN 13

9780271047911

The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

By: Naomi Janowitz

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The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

By: Naomi Janowitz

Centering on the first extant martyr story (2 Maccabees 7), this study explores the "autonomous value" of martyrdom. The story of a mother and her seven sons who die under the torture of the Greek king Antiochus displaces the long-problematic Temple sacrificial cult with new cultic practices, and presents a new family romance that encodes unconscious fantasies of child-bearing fathers and eternal mergers with mothers. This study places the martyr story in the historical context of the Hasmonean struggle for legitimacy in the face of Jewish civil wars, and uses psychoanalytic theories to analyze the unconscious meaning of the martyr-family story.

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Page Count

155

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1315464314

ISBN 13

9781315464312

Magic in the Roman World

Pagans, Jews and Christians

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Magic in the Roman World

Pagans, Jews and Christians

By: Naomi Janowitz

Using in-depth examples of 'magical' practice such as exorcisms, love rites, alchemy and the transformation of humans into divine beings, this lively volume demonstrates that the word 'magic' was used widely in late antique texts as part of polemics against enemies and sometimes merely as a term for other people's rituals. Naomi Janowitz shows that 'magical' activities were integral to late antique religious practice, and that they must be understood from the perspective of those who employed them.

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Page Count

168

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

113463367X

ISBN 13

9781134633678

Science on a Mission

How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean

By: Naomi Oreskes

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Science on a Mission

How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean

By: Naomi Oreskes

A vivid portrait of how Naval oversight shaped American oceanography, revealing what difference it makes who pays for science. What difference does it make who pays for science? Some might say none. If scientists seek to discover fundamental truths about the world, and they do so in an objective manner using well-established methods, then how could it matter who’s footing the bill? History, however, suggests otherwise. In science, as elsewhere, money is power. Tracing the recent history of oceanography, Naomi Oreskes discloses dramatic changes in American ocean science since the Cold War, uncovering how and why it changed. Much of it has to do with who pays. After World War II, the US military turned to a new, uncharted theater of warfare: the deep sea. The earth sciences—particularly physical oceanography and marine geophysics—became essential to the US Navy, which poured unprecedented money and logistical support into their study. Science on a Mission brings to light how this influx of military funding was both enabling and constricting: it resulted in the creation of important domains of knowledge but also significant, lasting, and consequential domains of ignorance. As Oreskes delves into the role of patronage in the history of science, what emerges is a vivid portrait of how naval oversight transformed what we know about the sea. It is a detailed, sweeping history that illuminates the ways funding shapes the subject, scope, and tenor of scientific work, and it raises profound questions about the purpose and character of American science. What difference does it make who pays? The short answer is: a lot.

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Page Count

749

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022673241X

ISBN 13

9780226732411

I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You

A Book of Her Poems & His Poems Collected in Pairs

By: Naomi Shihab Nye,Paul B. Janeczko

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I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You

A Book of Her Poems & His Poems Collected in Pairs

By: Naomi Shihab Nye,Paul B. Janeczko

An award-winning anthology of paired poems by men and women. In this insightful anthology, the editors grouped almost 200 poems into pairs to demonstrate the different ways in which male and female poets see the same topics. How women see men, how boys see girls, and how we all see the world—often in very different ways, but surprisingly, wonderfully, sometimes very much the same.

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294

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1439116156

ISBN 13

9781439116159

An Unorthodox Match

A Novel

By: Naomi Ragen

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An Unorthodox Match

A Novel

By: Naomi Ragen

An Unorthodox Match is a powerful and moving novel of faith, love, and acceptance, from author Naomi Ragen, the international bestselling author of The Devil in Jerusalem. California girl Lola has her life all set up: business degree, handsome fiancé, fast track career, when suddenly, without warning, everything tragically implodes. After years fruitlessly searching for love, marriage, and children, she decides to take the radical step of seeking spirituality and meaning far outside the parameters of modern life in the insular, ultraorthodox enclave of Boro Park, Brooklyn. There, fate brings her to the dysfunctional home of newly-widowed Jacob, a devout Torah scholar, whose life is also in turmoil, and whose small children are aching for the kindness of a womanly touch. While her mother direly predicts she is ruining her life, enslaving herself to a community that is a misogynistic religious cult, Lola’s heart tells her something far more complicated. But it is the shocking and unexpected messages of her new community itself which will finally force her into a deeper understanding of the real choices she now faces and which will ultimately decide her fate.

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Page Count

350

Publisher

St. Martin's Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

125016124X

ISBN 13

9781250161246

Icons of Power

Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Icons of Power

Ritual Practices in Late Antiquity

By: Naomi Janowitz

In the waning years of the Roman Empire, Jews, Christians, and pagans alike used rituals to bridge the gap between the human and the divine. Depending on one&’s point of view, however, such rituals could be labeled negatively as &"magic&" or positively as &"theurgy.&" This has led to numerous problems of interpretation, including marginalizing certain ritual practices as magic or occult while privileging others as genuine or orthodox. In Icons of Power, Naomi Janowitz sifts through the polemics to make sense of the daunting mosaic of religious belief and practice in Late Antiquity. From rabbis who ascended to heavenly places, to sorcerers seeking to harm enemies with spells, to alchemists working metals to purify the soul, Janowitz reveals how ritual practitioners held common assumptions about why their rituals worked and about how to perform those rituals. Indeed, such assumptions were so much a part of the inherited mentality of the age that they were, for the most part, never explained&—and this is precisely what Janowitz accomplishes in Icons of Power. By shifting the discussion out of the rhetoric of &"magic&" or &"mysticism&" and describing the mechanisms of ritual with semiotic terms, she moves us beyond the value-laden terminology of ancient polemicists and modern scholars so that we can better see how these rituals worked and how they affected the social identities of their followers. Janowitz recovers a lost world of religious expression that has been clouded by misinterpretation for many centuries. In the process, Icons of Power makes an important contribution to our understanding of society in Late Antiquity.

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161

Publisher

Penn State University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0271021470

ISBN 13

9780271021478

The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

By: Naomi Janowitz

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The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

By: Naomi Janowitz

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of classical works -- Introduction -- The terminology of martyrdom -- The ancient theologies of martyrdom -- 1 The psychoanalytic study of martyrdom -- The psychoanalytic analysis of political power -- The specific family romance of Second Maccabees -- 2 The family romance as victory story -- Second Maccabees as triumphalist history -- Persecution as a triumphalist strategy -- 3 Theologies of martyrdom recast authority and cult -- The problem of too many kings -- Temple cult in Second Maccabees: hierarchies of sacredness and power -- 4 Rereading sacrifice: human blood as a sign -- How did blood become a sign? -- 5 The martyr's new sacrifice: solving the Maccabean sacrifice crisis -- Killing within the family: reworking priestly taboos -- 6 The happy ending of two wishes fulfilled -- Wish #1: Male mothers and child-bearing fathers -- Wish #2: The family reunites -- Conclusions -- Appendix 1: 2 Maccabees 7 :1-6, 20-42 -- Appendix 2: A speculative note on displacing women in religious myths and rites -- Bibliography -- Index

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Page Count

111

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1315464322

ISBN 13

9781315464329

Magic in the Roman World

Pagans, Jews and Christians

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Magic in the Roman World

Pagans, Jews and Christians

By: Naomi Janowitz

A lively volume exploring the use and abuse of the word 'magic' in late antique texts.

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Page Count

161

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1134633688

ISBN 13

9781134633685

The Poetics of Ascent

Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text

By: Naomi Janowitz

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The Poetics of Ascent

Theories of Language in a Rabbinic Ascent Text

By: Naomi Janowitz

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173

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1438407793

ISBN 13

9781438407791

Acts of Interpretation

Ancient Religious Semiotic Ideologies and Their Modern Echoes

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Acts of Interpretation

Ancient Religious Semiotic Ideologies and Their Modern Echoes

By: Naomi Janowitz

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Solve jigsaw puzzle

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Page Count

161

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published Date

ISBN 10

3110768623

ISBN 13

9783110768626

Book's by Naomi Janowitz

Acts of Interpretation

Acts of Interpretation

The Poetics of Ascent

The Poetics of Ascent

Icons of Power

Icons of Power

The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

Magic in the Roman World

Magic in the Roman World

Science on a Mission

Science on a Mission

I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You

I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You

An Unorthodox Match

An Unorthodox Match

Icons of Power

Icons of Power

The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

The Family Romance of Martyrdom in Second Maccabees

Magic in the Roman World

Magic in the Roman World

The Poetics of Ascent

The Poetics of Ascent

Acts of Interpretation

Acts of Interpretation

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