On Time

Barak, On

doi:10.1525/9780520956568

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…There is still much more to be done, however, in the realm of time and technology in ancient Judaism and in Jewish studies. Scholarship on the ways in which technological developments impacted traditional time-keeping and religious rituals and practices, such as calendrical calculations or the determination of prayer times or notions of temporal accuracy and punctuality, has flourished in the study of technology and the history of science, particularly in studies of the importation of European mechanical clock and other technologies to Ottoman and colonial Egypt and Tokugawa Japan ( Barak 2013;Wishnitzer 2015;Stolz 2018;Frumer 2018). What might we learn from writing similar 'histories of science' and 'histories of technology' about ancient or medieval time-keeping technologies/devices and their impact on Jewish practice and thought?…”

Section: Avenues For Further Exploration In Ancient Judaism and Jewismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

Gribetz

Kaye

2019

Currents in Biblical Research

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Despite the apparent finality of Heschel’s pronouncement, in 1951, that Judaism is a ‘religion of time’, the past two decades have seen renewed scholarly interest in the relationship between time, time-keeping, and forms of temporality in Jewish culture. This vibrant engagement with time and temporality in Jewish studies is not an isolated phenomenon. It participates in a broader interdisciplinary examination of time across the arts, humanities and sciences, both in the academy and beyond it. The current article outlines the innovative approaches of this ‘temporal turn’ within ancient Judaism and Jewish studies and reflects on why time has become such an important topic of research in recent years. We address a number of questions: What are the trends in recent work on time and temporality in the fields of ancient Judaism and Jewish studies? What new insights into the study of Judaism have emerged as a result of this focus on time? What reasons (academic, historiographical, technological and geopolitical) underpin this interest in time in such a wide variety of disciplines? And finally, what are some new avenues for exploration in this growing field at the intersection of time and Jewish studies? The article identifies trends and discusses key works in the broad field of Jewish studies, while providing more specific surveys of particular developments in the fields of Second Temple Judaism, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic literature, and some medieval Jewish sources.

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Section: Avenues For Further Exploration In Ancient Judaism and Jewismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

Gribetz

Kaye

2019

Currents in Biblical Research

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“…As late as the 1870s, a British engineer who worked on the Ottoman railways commented on the care and deliberateness with which a "Turk" would remove a watch from the many layers of clothing, bag, and case within which it rested, only to find that it was not working, or working only approximately: "so to learn the time of day within an hour or so a quarter of an hour will be wasted." 78 Although this account is evidently part of an essentializing discourse through which Victorians imagined the "time-mindless Oriental" in the 19th century, 79 we can also read it as implying that watches had value apart from their utility as instruments of precise timekeeping-which is surely correct. 80 The vogue of clocks and watches in the Ottoman court, in particular, was in large part a function of their value as objects of curiosity, art, and what White has called "power projection."…”

Section: F Ro M O B J E C T I N T O I N S T Ru M E N Tmentioning

confidence: 98%

Positioning the Watch Hand: ʿulamaʾ and the Practice of Mechanical Timekeeping in Cairo, 1737–1874

Stolz¹

2015

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

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This article explores the role of the ulama in shaping the use of mechanical timepieces in Cairo in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ottoman interest in new technologies in this period is often understood in relation to the emergence of modernization projects and new scientifically trained actors, with a corresponding decline in the status of the ulama . However, the vogue of mechanical timepieces in Cairo allowed ulama trained in the very old tradition of mīqāt (astronomical timekeeping) to make their knowledge speak in new ways to new audiences. Based on several manuals and tables that such scholars wrote "on the position of the watch hand," this article shows how ulama not only facilitated distinctively Ottoman timekeeping conventions, but also furthered an understanding of watches as instruments of precision. The article builds on a growing literature on Ottoman temporality, while expanding our historical view of ulama and their authority, of the material culture of Cairo, and of science and technology in an Islamic context. Daniel A. Stolz is a Postdoctoral Fellow in

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“…The new fossil fuel, in turn, helped win a war that created a severe crisis in the coal sector, a crisis felt with doubled intensity at the importing parts of the system. 98 At the start of World War I, the Ottoman central government, as well as provincial governments (including that of Egypt, then formally a British protectorate), sought alternatives to coal and at the same time resumed exploration and intensification of internal resources. Regarding alternative fuels, these included cottonseed for machinery, wood for the railway, and olive pulp for the production of gas.…”

Section: Oa L -L a P S Ementioning

confidence: 99%

Outsourcing: Energy and Empire in the Age of Coal, 1820–1911

Barak¹

2015

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

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During the long 19th century, British coal proliferated throughout the Ottoman Empire in increasing quantity, rapidity, and regularity via junctions and political arrangements that became evermore stable and dominant. The British used coal export to project their power elsewhere, offshoring the Industrial Revolution by building an infrastructure that could support it overseas and connect it to existing facets of the imperial project. Examining this “outsourcing” and the importance of foreign coal markets to industrialization helps provincialize the steam engine and anchor it in a global context. It also allows us to explore the impact of fossil energy on the Middle East and the ways coal both set the stage for the arrival of oil and informed the possibilities for translating carbon power into politics. Coal, the article suggests, animated political participation in England while reinforcing authoritarian tendencies in the Middle East.

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On Time

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

The Temporal Turn in Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies

Positioning the Watch Hand: ʿulamaʾ and the Practice of Mechanical Timekeeping in Cairo, 1737–1874

Outsourcing: Energy and Empire in the Age of Coal, 1820–1911

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