Search results for ""Author Ori Z. Soltes""

Crossing the goal line, with the football tucked safely in his arms, the NFL star falls on one knee, bows his head, crosses himself and utters a prayer of thanksgiving to God, giving one more example of the ever expanding connection between sports and religion.At least it seems to be expanding. The question is: was there truly a notable surge in that relationship between sports and religion. And if there has been a surge, is it unique in history, or merely part of an ongoing ebb and flow?This book, now in a revised edition, offers a concise yet detailed account of this multifaceted association —and its implications for the ongoing game (the ultimate sport!) of trying to understand what we humans are as a species. Sports is one among many areas where religion and its concerns have played a role, and the interweave between sports and religion is as old as sports and as continuous as religion.Contemporary instances are different from what one finds in Greek and Latin literature where gods are actively on the “playing field,” and directly leads to the first athletic competitions The discussion of biblical “athletes” offers a different religious connotation: the stories of Samson are religious in part simply because they are biblical.The question of Islam and sports, or of Jewish success in the Olympics, or of how both Jews and Muslims manage to maintain aspects of their faiths when the athletic competitions in which they engage don’t leave space for that—or of the attitude of Judaism or Islam or Christianity to sports and physical accomplishment in general—is diverse. The discussion of Native American sports with origins in religious ritual is different still.Moreover, “sports and religion” keeps intersecting—from different angles—sports and warfare, sports and politics, religion and politics, religion and warfare; and all these combinations intertwine aspects of art. It becomes clear that sport, in combination with religion is a major theme throughout the history of mankind.

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From the Gospel account of Jesus' trial and punishment to medieval Blood Libels, from the notorious Dreyfus Affair to the story of Leo Frank's trial and eventual lynching, and from the State of Israel's trial and execution of Nazi Adolph Eichmann to Jonathan Pollard's closed-door trial and ongoing incarceration, it seems that the Jew, one way or another, is always on trial in the courtroom of journalistic and historiographic examination, whether as the accused, the accuser, the jury or the judge. Unique and provocative, this volume begins by asking when and how law became separate from religion in the Israelite-Judaean world before considering how we might evaluate and understand the Gospel s narrative of Jesus' trial and punishment in light of information found within Judaean, pagan Roman and early Jewish literature. Regardless of the details that favor or disfavor the Gospel account, many generations of Christians accept it as unequivocally true, which has shaped their relations with Jews over the past two millennia. In Jews on Trial, Ori Soltes delivers a concise and extensive review of the history of Christian-Jewish relations that examines that relationship from a legal and quasi-legal perspective and adds significantly to the discourse. There is no other comprehensive text so broadly conceived, yet focused on such an important aspect of human history through a specific lens of religion, law and justice.

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