President Scholarship

Research subject: Epistemic bridges between different levels of explanation in the study of consciousness - a data driven approach

Supervisor: Prof. Ran Hassin

Abstract: Using data-driven methods we are constructing high-dimensional models of the preferences of the human unconscious. Using these models we seek to directly compare the results of different methods of measuring conscious experience and its neural correlates, thus constructing bridges between sometimes disparate methods, anchored in different levels of explanation - biological and psychological.

Bio: I study high-dimensional models of selection for consciousness, hoping to understand the basic priorities of human cognition, and learn about the mechanism behind emergence of content into consciousness.

 Publications:

Abir, Y., Sklar, A. Y., Dotsch, R., Todorov, A., & Hassin, R. R. (Under review). Determinants of conscious experience – a data-driven approach.

Presidential Stipend 2017/18

Supervisor: Dr. Paweł Maciejko

Abstract: For inveterate eighteenth century opponent of Sabbateanism Rabbi Jacob Emden, skeptical, rationalist worldviews on the one hand and Sabbateanism on the other, constituted the opposite faces of theological heresy that threatened to undermine religious foundations and topple traditional Jewish society. Emden was right. While the God of the philosophers was fettered to the rationalist mechanism of the universe, hidden from the world and indifferent to its fate, ‘the God of Sabbatai Zvi’ was very personal, capricious and unpredictable. He cancelled his Law at a sweep and commanded his messiah to convert. In any case, the old world was crumbling away. Jacob Frank (1726-1791) who is considered to be the most radical Sabbatean representative in the eighteenth century, tried to bring ‘a new thing to the world’ by crushing all the laws and religions including the Sabbatean tradition from which he emerged and Christianity into which he disappeared with his followers. The Book of the Words of the Lord (Zbiór Słów Pańskich), a collection of Frank’s sayings, is a unique reflection of the rupture in Jewish society at turn of the modern era, and a fascinating attempt at religious renewal. 

Words of the Lord is the main Frankist source and of the utmost importance for the movement’s history after the Frankists converted to Christianity in 1759, and detailed documentation of their doctrine at its climax. A manuscript in three recensions, it is no ordinary work. Lacking a distinct plot and with no consistent rationale, it is a mixture of fables, dreams, tirades and memories from different times. It is also a stew of different traditions: Be they, rabbinical and Zoharic exegesis or elements of Catholic rite, Polish Kabbalah or Turkish Sabbateanism, Sufi narratives or Slavic folklore. The syncretistic nature of Words of the Lord and the ethos of novelty that echoes constantly throughout, is also expressed in its language. The source is written in Polish inlaid with Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Ladino and Turkish. Its 'iconoclastic' content, use of ‘liminal’ linguistic means, such as multi-lingual puns, and finally, its rejection of the holy tongue in favour of the ‘seventy tongues’ of the nations – all this comprises the new language that Frankists sought to adopt on their twisted path towards the secret gnosis of Edom and the true God. In Frank’s words: ‘When you come to the sun, you must talk like the sun and dress in the same robes as the sun, and when you come to the moon, wear the same robes as the moon and talk in moon language. 

 While research on Words of the Lord has mainly focused on the Kabbalistic and Sabbatian roots of Frankist doctrine, my research will analyse its philological, literary and theological aspects, while taking the wider historical context of the early modern period into account. Baroque phenomena such as the tension between external façade and hermetic internal content, positioning personal religion based on non-traditional reading of the scriptures, abandonment of God and God’s abandonment of the world, the obsession with dreams, etc. – all these are important features of Words of the Lord which need to be considered. In this way, for the first time, a detailed and inclusive picture of the source will emerge. I aim to shed new light on the creation of the anthology, its contacts with various literary and religious traditions, its hermeneutics and finally, also on the inner world of Jacob Frank and his disciples at the turn of the modern era.

Presidential Stipend 2014/15

Supervisor: Prof. Elhanan Yakira, Dr. Tatiana Karachentseva

Abstract: The work analyses the notion of rationality presented in Hermann Cohen's "System der Philosophie" (1902-1912). In contrast to the customary view, I show that his rationalism is grounded in an intensional theory of conceptuality, taken in the Leibnizian sense. Such a theory comprehends the concept as an expression of the intelligibility of an individual being, an expression of its being a rational possibility, rather than a general-formal relation. The work demonstrates that a reading of Cohen's "logic of origin"  on the base of the principles of a Leibnizian intensional theory of concepts clarifies the internal logic of Cohen's arguments and provides means for evaluating the problematics of rationality placed at the core of the system. I show that Cohen's system attempts to present an intensional rationalism without the (dogmatic) presupposition of the compete rationality of the actual. In that, it represents a unique and philosophically valuable notion of rationality.  

I am interested in rationalism (both as a philosophical tradition and as a philosophical stance), Kant, German Idealism and Neo-Kantianism. My research so far has dealt with Cohen's system, with the notion of rationality it embodies, and with the manner in which this notion influences Cohen's ethical, cultural, theological, and political views.   

Publications:

Amir, Roy. Messianism and the Possibility of knowledge in Cohen and Benjamin, Paradigmi. Rivista di critica filosofica (2017:1), pp. 61-78. 

Rotenstreich Scholarship 2015/2016

Presidential Stipend 2013/2014

Supervisor: Dr. Amos Goldberg & Professor Hillel Cohen

Abstract: The media arena is perceived as a key site for the distribution and reproduction of cultural significances, as well as social patterns, thereby reflecting perceptions, standpoints and values. The Israel Arabic press is a tool for shaping the character of the Arab-Palestinian society between two identities: national and civil. The Israel Arabic press has a key role in examining identity-associated dilemmas: parallel trends- The Holocaust memory in Israel and the Arab discourse into this memory can be examined through the cultural approach to media research. The journalistic act serves to expose ideological mechanisms, and so the media at large, particularly the press, construct and shape national narratives among an imaginary community whose individuals have a sense of shared fate.The Arabic press’ choice of highlighting, or ignoring, Holocaust discussions also has its roots in cultural national contexts. In order to discuss the Holocaust’s role in shaping the collective memory of the Arab society in Israel, one can employ the term of naturalisation, coined by Roland Barthes.2 This construction or the lack thereof attests to the ideological view held by the Arabic press in regards to this sensitive issue. It therefore follows that the significances of journalistic texts are constructed by means of symbolic representation systems that make up the cultural-media discourse. The constructs and significances of the Holocaust memory framing are examined using two major perspectives: the narrative, shaped from a cultural or personal point of view, and the constructivist one, whereby knowledge is a product of human construction, not necessarily a reflection of an “objective” reality exposed.

Bio: I analyzed the Arab press with different political orientations and demonstrated the changes of Arab newspaper coverage relating to the Holocaust discourse. I took into account that in the Eighties there was a dramatic increase in publication of new popular Arab media.

New publications such as “Panorama” a weekly tabloid which dealt with not only political issues but also popular culture. On the other hand the Northern communist party paper
“Al Etihad” (The United) and “Sout el Hak” ( The voice of Truth and Justice) which belongs to the Israeli Islamic movement are more extreme newspapers than the moderate Panorama.

Publications:

Shaping of the Holocaust in Arab Newspapers

Presidential Stipend 2016/17

Research subject: Posthuman Intimacy: Birds in the Discourse of Love of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford

Supervisor: Dr. Ruben Borg

Abstract: In my doctoral dissertation I look at how early 20th-century British writers employ bird imagery to define love. Using three points of focus - bird song, bird movement, and nesting - I examine how D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and Ford Madox Ford renounce romantic conventions in favor of a "nonhuman love" inspired by bird courtship rituals and behaviors. By working at the intersection of literary modernism, critical animal studies, ornithology, and philosophies of love, I hope to gain a fresh perspective on these canonical writers, which feeds into contemporary discourse both on the posthuman and on the dissolution of the Victorian courtship plot in modernist fiction.     

President Stipend 2017/18

Supervisor: Prof. Danny Fox and Dr. Luka Crnič

Publications:

• “A unified existential semantics for bare conditionals” with Itai Bassi (2016). To appear in Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21.
• “De re tenses and Trace Conversion” (2015). In S. D’Antonio, M. Moroney and C.R. Little (eds.), Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 25, pp. 184–203.
• “Hebrew kol: a universal quantifier as an undercover existential” with Daniel Margulis (2014). In U. Etxeberria, A. Fălăuş, A. Irurtzun and B. Leferman (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 18, pp. 60–76.

Presidential Stipend 2015/16

Supervisor: Hannan Hever

Abstract: My research project is devoted to the Mizrahi Israeli writer Ronit Matalon. Despite her canonic status in contemporary Israeli literature, her work has not to date been adequately studied by scholars and critics. Through close readings of her fiction and non-fiction publications over the last three decades, the research examines the process whereby Matalon has become a major Mizrahi intellectual and writer in Israeli culture. Besides Matalon’s own Bildung the project examines a parallel process experienced by her protagonists: all young Mizrahi women going out into the world and establishing their identities as educated, women writers.

Presidential Stipend 2012/13