Cultural pluralism generally signifies three things:

1. 1) the fact of cultural plurality, considered as the co-existence of cultures which, in principle at least, belong to different geographical areas;

2. 2) the acknowledgement of the fact of this plurality;

3. 3) the affirmation that this plurality is a good thing, and the desire to make something of it in one way or another, either by preserving the various cultures in an individual sense in order to avoid any kind of reciprocal contamination, or, conversely, by organising between them a kind of peaceful dialogue, with a view to their mutual enrichment.

Reading and study were among the central values of traditional Jewish society. Indeed, it is impossible to explain the continuity of the Jewish people without reference to the unique status of the book. Any analysis of contemporary Israeli culture, therefore, must look first to the fate of the book as it is affected by the weight of tradition and of modernity. This task is attempted here. It is part of a comprehensive national study of the sociology of Israeli culture in the ‘70s.

In traditional Jewish society, the book refers, of course, to the Holy Scriptures and the body of rabbinic literature that was built upon them throughout the ages. The Jews came to be called the “People of the Book” by virtue of living according to the rules of the Book with which they were so preoccupied.

Since it received the name linguistics, the science of language has undergone changes which are rather difficult to summarize. As a foreword, I would like to recall, without going too far back, that scholars and philosophers in the 18th century were investigating the origins of language without applying any systematic method, but more or less relying on those ideas which occurred to them. An essay by J. J. Rousseau should be mentioned in particular with regard to this method. An era closed with the resolution of 1868 by the newly created Linguistic Society of Paris, to restrict all study on the origins of language.

Modem scholarship has fairly succeeded in rescuing the term ‘scholasticism’ from its pejorative connotations. But it has not yet attempted, it seems to me, to situate the phenomenon of scholasticism in an overall anthropological setting. A comparative study of eastern and western scholasticisms may help us to acquire a better understanding of the nature of scholasticism and ultimately of the nature of man himself.

Scientific astronomy began with the Greeks. The background for it was a knowledge which the Greeks had in common with older peoples such as the Babylonians and Egyptians of certain celestial regularities: the apparent daily movement of the sun from East to West, the apparent annual motion of the sun in the foreground of different constellations of stars and around the earth, the apparent nightly movement of the moon and visible stars from East to West, the periodic waxing and waning of the moon, and the different periodic displacements of the visible planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All of this antecedent astronomical knowledge and more was knowledge that was sought, acquired, classified, transmitted, and improved because it had practical importance or was deemed to have practical importance, as for calendar-making, time-keeping, and advice to rulers of society concerned about making state decisions under auspicious conditions.