Tel Aviv University Professor of Religious Studies, Ithamar Gruenwald, here contributes to the theory of ritual a variety of cases and problems deriving from the data of Judaism, with emphasis on antiquity. He focuses on rituals ‘as behavioral expressions of the human mind, regardless of any ideology or pre-existing symbolism… rituals in their own performative content’. He sidesteps ‘the usual textual, historical, or theological perspective’. He argues that rituals are autonomous expressions of the mind, focusing attention on what is done.
He distinguishes rituals from theology: the rite is in the doing (Chapter One). He proceeds to take up the ‘ethos as a way of life’ with emphasis on economic systems; what brings economics and religious ethos together is rituals (Chapter Two). He proceeds to address the relevance of myth in understanding ancient Judaic ritual (Chapter Three). The climax of the exposition comes with his ‘in quest of new perspectives in religious studies: Halakhah and the study of rituals: what do Halakhic rituals do? Intention and intentionality in the doing of Halakhic rituals’, regarding rituals as a form of language (Chapter Four). The concluding chapters address ‘sacrifices in biblical literature and ritual theory’, with special attention to Hubert and Mauss, Jacob Milgrom on Leviticus, and ‘the ‘Lord's supper and ritual theory’, the study of the Pauline letters in light of the study of rituals. Here he addresses van Gennep, Stanley Tambiah, and other theorists of ritual (Chapter Five). He ends with an analysis of 1 Corinthians 10–11 and concludes with remarks on Bruce Kapferer's views on sacrificial rituals (Chapter Six). The bibliography is comprehensive, the notes economical and instructive.
Gruenwald has now integrated the academic study of Judaism into the academic study of religion, treating Judaism as a source of illuminating cases and problems of general interest and intelligibility. Few have attempted what he has succeeded in doing, and in these pages the academic study of Judaism has come of age. He here joins the principal theorists of religion of our times.
