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Reconsidering Early Modern Jewry: Reflections on the Methodology of Legal History Jewish History Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Jay R. Berkovitz
This article seeks to clarify the methodology of Jewish legal history and illustrate how the historical examination of Jewish law serves as a valuable tool to discern the distinctive character of the early modern period. Principal elements of the analysis are the role of Jewish law in communal governance, its relationship to civil legislation, and its responsiveness to social and economic challenges
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Rav Hai Gaon’s Jurisprudential Monograph Kitāb Adab al-Qaḍā: A Reconstructed Text from the Cairo Genizah Jewish History Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Neri Y. Ariel
This essay presents the discovery of a previously almost entirely unknown treatise written in Judeo-Arabic by Rav Hai b. Sherira Gaon. This monograph, a manual for judges, is a Jewish instantiation of the well-established Muslim genre Adab al-Qāḍī (Duties of Judges). To date, only several indirect remnants translated into medieval Hebrew have been identified as part of this work; however, large parts
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A Hebrew Fragment in the Municipal Archive in Münster as a Witness to a Little-Known Ritual Practice Jewish History Pub Date : 2024-01-16
Abstract The Stadtarchiv in Münster, Germany holds a medieval Hebrew fragment with portions of the daily Shema Yisrael prayer. Measuring 510 mm in height, this fragment is but a quarter of a large-sized parchment sheet, which was designed to be hung on a wall. This study introduces the fragment and describes its material features and then suggests its possible function against the backdrop of talmudic
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Where to Turn? How One Italian Rabbi Understood Ashkenaz, ca. 1600 Jewish History Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Edward Fram
This study focuses on a member of the secondary rabbinic elite in northern Italy around the year 1600, Rabbi Jacob Heilbronn (d. 1625). Based on an examination of legal sources cited by Heilbronn in a responsum and a Judeo-German handbook of Jewish law that he prepared, the article argues that Heilbronn understood the notion of German, or Ashkenazic Jewry as a cultural construct that was independent
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Yiddish and Social Science at the YIVO Economic-Statistical Section, 1926–1939 Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Nicolas Vallois
The Yiddish Scientific Institute, known by its Yiddish acronym YIVO, was funded in Vilna in 1925. The institute had four sections: Philology, History, Psychology-Pedagogy, and Economics-Statistics. Its principal goal was not only to produce scholarship concerning Eastern European Jewish populations but also to promote Yiddish as a scientific language. This article analyzes the tensions associated with
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Our Small World: Hebrew Children’s Letters and Modern Upbringing in Czarist Russia Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-12-27
Abstract The historiography of modern Hebrew culture views early twentieth-century Russia largely through the lens of canonical literature. However, Hebrew played a role in many other aspects of Jewish society, prominent among them children’s literature. By examining readers’ letters published in four Hebrew children’s magazines, this article explores the spread and meaning of the language for different
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From Thieves to Martyrs: The Story of Two Jews from Early Modern Moravia Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Oren Cohen Roman, Daniel Soukup
This paper focuses on the story of two Jewish men who were convicted of theft and executed in Prostějov, Moravia, in the spring of 1684. Although the two were offered a pardon in exchange for converting to Christianity, they resolutely refused. Their story was recorded in a contemporaneous Yiddish song that serves as the basis for the current case-study. The informative layer of the text portrays an
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Protecting the Image: Was Rav Hayyim of Volozhin’s Portrayal of the Vilna Gaon an Altered Image? Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-07-03 Raphael Shuchat
Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman (1720–1797), known as the Vilna Gaon (the Gra), became an icon of Torah learning, saintliness, and devotion to Torah values, but beyond his inner circle he was not known well. After his passing, it was left to students and family members to curate the Gaon’s image and teachings. R. Hayyim of Volozhin, his leading disciple, was the first to create a narrative describing
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Praying in French in the Nineteenth Century: Religion and Identity Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-07-03 Yehuda Bitty
The many different prayer books published throughout the nineteenth century for the Jews of France mirror the changing identity of French Jews after the 1791 Emancipation. By examining what Genette called the paratext, this study presents a typology of pragmatic, conservative, reformist, and didactic models based on the way each chose to insert and use French translations to respond to the major issues
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Jews “Holding the Keys to the Church” and the Posthumous Career of Zelman Wolfowicz of Drohobych Jewish History Pub Date : 2023-06-23 Tomasz Wiślicz
At the end of the nineteenth century in the historiography and popular writing of the three nationalities living in what was then Habsburg Galicia—Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian—there was an ongoing debate about the motif of the alleged leasing of Orthodox churches by Jews in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The motif of the Jews “holding the keys to the church” was intended, in its own way
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Sacred Sororities: Devotion and Death in Early Modern Jewish Communities Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Debra Kaplan, Elisheva Carlebach
During the early modern period, pious confraternities and sororities evolved into formal associations with their own bylaws and record books. A trail of records from Amsterdam in the west to Moravia in the east enables us to examine the rich culture of women’s sororities, primary among them women’s burial societies. Sororities provided Jewish women with status and with formal roles in communal leadership
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Between Neighbors and Strangers: Representations of the Indigenous People of America and Construction of Jewish Identity in Early Modern Western Europe Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Limor Mintz-Manor
In a time when theological and scientific concepts of the New World were molded, European Jews, like their fellow Christians, were exposed to increasing knowledge about the discoveries in the western hemisphere and endeavored to understand and integrate it into their worldview. As Europe’s former Others for centuries, the Jews now had to define their attitudes towards Europe’s new Others, the indigenous
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Where Did Rav and Shmuel Preside? Lingering Institutional Assumptions in the Study of the Late Antique Rabbis Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Simcha Gross
The study of the late antique Babylonian rabbis has undergone a scholarly revolution over the last fifty years. The medieval rabbinic chronographies, which constituted the primary source about the rabbinic past for over a millennium, are now approached with extreme caution and skepticism. The clearest impact of this methodological shift is the wide acceptance that the Babylonian rabbis of the Talmudic
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Manuscript Marginalia in a Fourteenth-Century Torah Commentary and the History of Jewish Reading: Ephraim ben Shabbetai on Eleazar Ashkenazi’s Revealer of Secrets Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-12-29 Eric Lawee
This article explores marginal notations in a manuscript of a resolutely rationalist commentary on the Torah written by the barely known fourteenth-century Maimonidean, Eleazar Ashkenazi. The notations belong to Ephraim ben Shabbetai, who completed his codex in Venetian Crete in 1399. Though Ephraim’s comments are episodic and relatively few, study of them can serve as a vehicle for bringing the world
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Conflicted Disciples: Graetz Through the Eyes of Dubnow, Baron, and Scholem Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-06-17 J. J. Kimche
This essay analyses the twentieth century reception of the German-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz. Specifically, it traces the ways in which three of Graetz’s most significant intellectual and professional heirs—Simon Dubnow, Salo Baron, and Gershom Scholem—utilized, judged, conceived of, and measured themselves against Graetz’s historiographical oeuvre. The figure of Graetz loomed large in the writings
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Distant Relatives: Shklov Jews and Their Correspondence with the Ten Tribes from Bukhara Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-06-15 Yoel Marciano
An exceptional correspondence took place between the Jews of Bukhara and those of Shklov in 1802–03. Neither community had known of the other’s existence beforehand, and it was only due to geopolitical changes that they discovered each other. The Jews of Shklov were sure that those of Bukhara belonged to the ten lost tribes. This excited them immensely and prompted them to write a letter, extraordinary
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Accusation and Innuendo: Oligarchic Jewish Politics in Fourteenth Century Valencia Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-06-15 Mark D. Meyerson
This article offers an interpretation of oligarchic politics in the Jewish community of Valencia over the course of the fourteenth century through an analysis of archival documents that record the reciprocal accusations made by contending factions before the royal authorities. The article begins with a discussion of some of the methodological problems that such documents present. It suggests that the
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Imagination and History Converge: The Danites in the Middle Ages Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-06-14 David Malkiel
During the Middle Ages people identifying themselves as Danites, that is, members of the tribe of Dan, periodically appeared in the Jewish diaspora, mainly in the Mediterranean basin. An examination of the sources excavates the circumstances of these cases, suggesting a scenario that explains how these individuals came to emerge from the obscurity of their brethren. This scenario is then situated in
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The Distinction between Sage and Exilarch in Sassanian Babylonia: The Case of (Rav) Huna bar Natan Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-06-13 Barak S. Cohen
(Rav) Huna bar Natan is one of the Talmudic sages that has been the subject of significant research in the modern historical study of the Babylonian Talmud. It has been commonly assumed that this sage was already active in the fourth generation of Babylonian Amoraim, during the period of Rava and R. Naḥman b. Yitzḥak, and that he lived from the fourth until the sixth–seventh generation of Babylonian
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Remaking a Kabbalist: Manuscript and Print Cultures in Early Modern Italy Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-06-13 Eugene D. Matanky
The dissemination of Safedian Kabbalah in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy represents a critical turning point in the history of modern Kabbalah. Several scholars have discussed the place of Kabbalah in Italy from a wide range of perspectives, some more interested in broader intellectual-cultural shifts, while others were more intrigued by the internal development of Kabbalah—specifically
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Law and Spirituality in Jewish History: On the Contribution of Isadore (Yitzḥak) Twersky Jewish History Pub Date : 2022-01-15 Jay R. Berkovitz,Ephraim Kanarfogel
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Reading Against the Grain, Readings of Substitution: Catholic Books as Inspiration for Judaism in Early Modern Iberia Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-17 Mercedes García-Arenal
Forced conversion produced a large number of converts, many or at least some of whom sought to continue to practice their former religion. For many crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims, polemical literature was actually a source of knowledge about their old religion—sometimes the only source. It was not unusual for Iberian New Christians, lacking access to Jewish or Islamic books, to make use of Catholic
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Entangled Discourses of Dissent in Early Modern Spain Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-17 Miriam Bodian
For more than a century, scholars of early modern Spanish heterodoxy accepted the Inquisition’s categories of heresy as their own. The various types of heretics the Inquisition identified—judaizantes (judaizers), crypto-Muslims, alumbrados (illuminists), and luteranos (Protestant-leaning persons)—appeared in their research to have had little to do with one another, or with the broader population of
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Jews, Economic Metaphors, and the Healthy Body Politic: The Jewish Role in Christian Economic Narratives and the Birth of Modern Economics Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-17 Giacomo Todeschini
The linguistic structure of the Western Christian discourse about economics as resembling and symbolizing the entire logic of earthly government and order was closely connected to the shaping of the Christian discourse about Jews and Judaism as a religious and legal system as seen in the framework of the Christian “economy” of Salvation. Seeing the Christian representation of Jews and Judaism from
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Conversos, Moriscos, and the Eucharist in Early Modern Spain: Some Reflections on Jewish Exceptionalism Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-03 Glazer-Eytan, Yonatan
Sacrilegious attitudes toward the Eucharistic host are one of the most commonplace accusations leveled against Jews in premodern Europe. Usually treated in Jewish historiography as an expression of anti-Judaism or antisemitism, they are considered a hallmark of Jewish powerlessness and persecution. In medieval and early modern Spain, however, Jews and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity and
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A Sage of the Golden Age of Safed: Rabbi Moses Najara Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-02 Marciano, Yoel
Many studies have been devoted to the prominent scholars who lived in Safed, such as R. Joseph Karo and R. Isaac Luria, but these figures were exceptional and do not accurately reflect the reality of the more typical Safed sage. This study deals with R. Moses Najara (R. Israel Najara’s father), one of the sages during Safed’s Golden Age. The author of Leqaḥ Ṭov, he was also a member of the rabbinical
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The Conflation of Judaism and Islam in Hernando de Talavera’s Conversion Plan Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-02 Scotto, Davide
This article aims to show that Hernando de Talavera’s evangelization strategies toward Muslims and Muslim converts in Granada (1492–1507) cannot be fully understood without investigating his previous preaching activities from the late 1470s aimed at a group of Jewish converts in Seville whom he considered “judaizers.” By closely comparing the arguments against Jewish practices which Talavera outlined
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Introduction: Cultural and Religious Boundary-Crossing in Early Modern Spain Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-12-01 Miriam Bodian
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Rabbi Isaac of Rus’ and His Esoteric Teachings Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-09-10 Kulik, Alexander
The paper focuses on the enigmatic thirteenth-century figure of R. Isaac of Rus’. A case study in the reconstruction of early East European Jewish history, it tests an integrative approach that brings together different types of evidence and disciplinary methods, while involving some new or neglected sources. Also examined are connections between Rabbi Isaac’s esoteric teachings and those of Ḥasidei
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The Misadventures of Luis Méndez Chávez and the Origins of the Sephardic Colonization Movement Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-31 Hamm, Brian
This article examines the peculiar case of Luis Méndez Chávez, a Portuguese Jew who was prosecuted by the Cartagena Inquisition in 1648 for attempting to smuggle into colonial Venezuela a chest of Jewish books and liturgical items, together with a boat full of African slaves. This voyage was one of the earliest attempts by leading Jews in Amsterdam to expand directly into new economic and spiritual
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Walking the Even Tenor of Our Ways: Liberty and Tradition in Isaac Leeser’s Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-31 Katzir, Brandon
This article explores a collection of letters to the Philadelphia Gazette written by Isaac Leeser, a prominent nineteenth-century writer and American Jewish leader. In the letters, which were published in an 1841 book entitled Claims of the Jews to an Equality of Rights, Leeser argues for greater Jewish acceptance in American life, suggesting that the religious rights safeguarded by America’s founders
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Major Trends in the Historiography of European Ashkenazic Jews from the 1970s to the Present Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-23 Hödl, Klaus
This article focuses on shifts in Jewish historiography of Ashkenazic Jews in Europe of the pre-modern period. It describes the denouement of traditional historiography— which generally assumes that more often than not Jews and non-Jews lived separate from one another—and compares it to two trends that I denominate exchange and interaction historiography that have gained momentum from the last third
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“Polishing” the Jewish Masses: Personal Hygiene, Public Health, and Jews in Fin de Siècle Warsaw Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-23 Bauer, Ela
This article examines the efforts of Jewish physicians and social activists to improve the hygiene habits of Warsaw’s Jewish residents. Warsaw was the third largest city of the Russian Empire, a significant Polish national site, and home to the largest Jewish community in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Efforts to improve the hygiene of the city’s residents were undertaken by Jewish and
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The Architecture of Gender: Women in the Eastern European Synagogue Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-23 Levin, Vladimir
This article analyses the architecture of women’s sections in eastern European synagogues and argues that two profound changes took place, one in the eighteenth century and the second in the second half of the nineteenth century. The first was moving of the women’s section from an external (but not detached) annex into the main volume of the synagogue; the second was the introduction of women’s galleries
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The Lord’s Justice: Blood Libel, Legalism, and Neighborly Negotiation in an Eighteenth-Century Private Town Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-23 Murphy, Curtis G.
This article discusses a series of investigations from 1729 to 1730 into an alleged ritual murder in the town of present-day Niasvizh. In the eighteenth century, Niasvizh, then called Nieśwież, belonged to the Radziwiłłs, one of the wealthiest and most powerful families of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Unlike similar cases during this period, this ritual murder investigation did not follow the
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Maḥzor Vitry: A Study of Liturgical-Halakhic Compendia from Medieval Franco-Germany Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-08-18 Isserles, Justine
This article focuses on Maḥzor Vitry, a work considered the major source of the liturgical rite, laws, and customs of the lost Jewish communities of northern France and, more broadly, constituting a landmark of intellectual creativity in medieval Franco-Germany. Compiled sometime in the second half of the eleventh century by Simḥah ben Samuel of Vitry (d. 1105), one of Rashi’s (1040/1–1105) closest
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The Conversos of Valencia: Prosopography of a Socio-Religious Community (1391–1420) Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-06-18 Guillermo LóPez Juan
Since the nineteenth century, conversos have been among the most prolific lines of research for medievalists and early modern historians. The persecution they suffered at the hands of the Inquisition, the veracity of the claims that attributed to them a clear tendency to remain Jewish in secret long after they were baptized, and their role as cultural agents and active contributors to Spanish culture
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The Dreyfus Affair’s Forgotten Hero: Bernard Lazare and the First Modern Fight against Antisemitism Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-06-18 Lauren Gottlieb Lockshin
The historiography of the Dreyfus Affair has often neglected the crucial role played by Bernard Lazare as the first defender of the wrongly accused French army captain Alfred Dreyfus. Lazare authored three brochures, including the very first published work arguing Dreyfus’s defense, and pursued numerous lines of inquiry and advocacy to keep the Dreyfus case alive in the public sphere. In stark contrast
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Swaying in Three Directions: Ilya Galant in Russian/Ukrainian-Jewish Historiography Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-06-18 Brian Horowitz
This article explores the life and work of an important but little-known Jewish-Russian-Ukrainian historian and political liberal, Ilya Galant, and examines his vision of Jewish history in Ukraine. Galant wanted to legitimize the rights of Jews in Russia and “normalize” their presence in Ukraine. To accomplish this goal he interpreted history creatively, demonstrating Jewish-Ukrainian friendship as
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The Latin Inscription of Rabbi Jacob of Mérida: Dating and Contextualization Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-06-18 Raúl González Salinero
By examining the Latin inscription of Rabbi Iacob of Mérida (Lusitania, Spain) on the basis of historical and philological arguments we can establish its dating to the early eighth century, after the Arab invasion. This would confirm the survival of sages who had a leading role in the religious life of Jewish or formerly converted Jewish communities able to clandestinely maintain and preserve their
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Imitator of the Old Law/Advocate of Revealed Grace: Visualizing Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Regensburg Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-21 Adam S. Cohen
This article contextualizes Judah he-Ḥasid and the Sefer Ḥasidim by exploring the religious topography of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Regensburg, particularly through the lens of visual and architectural culture. The analysis complements work in economic and religious history that addresses the relationship between Jews and Christians in medieval Germany. The rich manuscript evidence from Bavaria’s
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West and East in Ashkenaz in the Time of Judah he-Ḥasid Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-20 Rainer Josef Barzen
The present study interprets and frames a long-standing question concerning Judah he-Ḥasid’s motivations in migrating to Regensburg against the social and geographical contexts of the Jews of Ashkenaz. By examining the use of Hebrew geographic terminology during the High Middle Ages (Loter, Ashkenaz, Ashkelonia), the article demonstrates that twelfth-century Jews perceived and were engaged in contemporary
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Old Prophesies, Multiple Modernities: The Stormy Afterlife of a Medieval Pietist in Early Modern Ashkenaz Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-14 Maoz Kahana
What was the role of the medieval pietistic heritage in the re-formation of eighteenth century’s Jewish cultures, consciousness, and identities? Rabbi Judah he-Ḥasid’s will, a short, vague, and enigmatic document, played an important role in the consolidation and crystallization of halakhic identities in the early modern era. This paper traces the document’s infiltration into the canonical halakhic
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Judah he-Ḥasid and the Tosafists of Northern France Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Ephraim Kanarfogel
Recent scholarship has suggested that teachings and practices of the German Pietists permeated Tosafist circles in the Rhineland and elsewhere in Germany. This study demonstrates that there were intellectual and methodological contacts between the Pietists and the Tosafists of northern France as well, in the areas of talmudic studies and Jewish law. Judah he-Ḥasid offered interpretations that were
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The Impact of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz in Northern France: The Evidence of Sefer Ḥasidut and Ḥayyei ‘Olam Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Judah Galinsky
This article examines several medieval pietistic works in northern France and Germany that shed light on the influence of Hasidei Ashkenaz. It also considers recent scholarship by Israel Ta-Shma, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Haym Soloveitchik, and Benjamin Richler. Ta-Shma and Kanarfogel have argued that the Tosafist school of Evreux was influenced by the religious ideals of the Ashkenazi pietists, whereas
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Who Was a Ḥasid or Ḥasidah in Medieval Ashkenaz? Reassessing the Social Implications of a Term Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-12 Elisheva Baumgarten
This article examines the use of the words ḥasid and ḥasidah in a wide variety of medieval texts, primarily from Germany, in order to question current scholarly understandings of Ḥasidei Ashkenaz as a social entity. The article outlines the appearance and contexts in which the term can be found in poems, on tombstones, lists of dead, and in stories. The final section of the article investigates possible
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Home and Away: The Opposition to Travel in Sefer Ḥasidim Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Ahuva Liberles
This paper examines R. Judah he-Ḥasid’s approach towards journeys to distant places, including pilgrimage to the land of Israel. Unlike other twelfth-century rabbinic authorities who did not object to travel for various purposes and, in certain cases, even encouraged it, R. Judah he-Ḥasid held a uniform, consistent approach that opposed almost any journey beyond the local area. Some scholars have suggested
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Was Judah he-Ḥasid the “Author” of Sefer Ḥasidim ? Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-09 David I. Shyovitz
Sefer Ḥasidim (The Book of the Pious) has long served as a crucial source for medieval Jewish historiography. Yet the dual question of who composed the anonymous text and how its varying recensions came into existence has been a contentious one among scholars of medieval Ashkenaz. In particular, opinions have been split on the issue of the book’s authorship. Ever since the 1538 publication of the editio
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Composing Arugat ha-Bosem : How Piyyut Commentary Became Associated with Ḥasidei Ashkenaz Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Elisabeth Hollender
Based on Ivan Marcus’s concept of “open book” and considerations on medieval Ashkenazic concepts of authorship, the present article inquires into the circumstances surrounding the production of Sefer Arugat ha-Bosem, a collection of piyyut commentaries written or compiled by the thirteenth-century scholar Abraham b. Azriel. Unlike all other piyyut commentators, Abraham ben Azriel inscribed his name
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Suspicion and Evidence: Manuscript Sources of the Hermeneutic Gates of German Pietism Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Daniel Abrams
This study presents a new manuscript witness for the hermeneutics gates that Eleazar of Worms apparently presented as the basis of the esoteric lore he received from his teacher, R. Judah he-Ḥasid. Eleazar of Worms has been widely acknowledged as the recipient of the secrets of German Pietism and the author of the library of texts that would represent the movement. Sefer ha-Ḥokhmah, the Book of Wisdom
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Assessing the Manuscripts of Sefer Ḥasidim Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Saskia Dönitz
This article examines the content and structure of the manuscripts of Sefer Ḥasidim, engaging with ideas concerning its production addressed in Ivan Marcus’s recently published book on Sefer Ḥasidim. Marcus has argued that the book was written piece by piece and not as an integral book and further suggested that each and every manuscript of Sefer Ḥasidim should be taken as a distinct edition of the
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Introduction: Sefer Ḥasidim—Book, Context, and Afterlife Jewish History Pub Date : 2021-04-09 Elisheva Baumgarten,Elisabeth Hollender,Ephraim Shoham-Steiner
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When the Rabbi’s Soul Entered a Pig: Melchiorre Palontrotti and His Giudiata against the Jews of Rome Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-07-07 Martina Mampieri
This essay analyzes an unpublished manuscript of a giudiata , a poem mocking Jewish funerals that was written and performed in Rome in the mid-seventeenth century. Melchiorre Palontrotti, the author of the composition, was a Roman polemist and author of other published works against Italian Jews, including, among others, the Venetian rabbi Simone Luzzatto, between 1640 and 1649. After furnishing information
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Towers and Lions? Identifying the Patron of a Medieval Illuminated Maḥzor from Cologne Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-07-01 Ephraim Shoham-Steiner
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When the Rabbi’s Soul Entered a Pig: Melchiorre Palontrotti and His Giudiata against the Jews of Rome Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-07-01 Martina Mampieri
This essay analyzes an unpublished manuscript of a giudiata, a poem mocking Jewish funerals that was written and performed in Rome in the mid-seventeenth century. Melchiorre Palontrotti, the author of the composition, was a Roman polemist and author of other published works against Italian Jews, including, among others, the Venetian rabbi Simone Luzzatto, between 1640 and 1649. After furnishing information
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The Emancipation of Slaves and the Auto-Emancipation of the Jews: The Impact of the American Civil War and the Abolition of Slavery on the Precursors of Zionism Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-06-17 Asaf Yedidya
Research on the Jews, the issue of slavery in the southern states, and the American Civil War has naturally focused on the Jews of the United States, who, as citizens, were reluctant to become involved in the debate that divided their country during those years. However, the attitude of the Jews in the Old World towards the events unfolding on a continent thousands of miles away has rarely been studied
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The Wars in Eastern Europe, the Jews of Jerusalem, and the Rise of Sabbateanism: The Shaping of the Jewish World in the Mid-Seventeenth Century Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-06-17 Adam Teller
This paper revisits the question of the connection between the wars in Eastern Europe (beginning with gezeirot taḥ ve-tat in 1648) and the rise of Sabbateanism. It argues that the key issue is the ways in which the Ashkenazi Jews of Jerusalem dealt with the collapse of Polish-Lithuanian Jewish funding for the Land of Israel in the wake of the wars. Following 1648, an extended transregional philanthropic
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The Hatam Sofer and the Land of Israel Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-06-17 Yosef Salmon
Scholarly assessments of Rabbi Moses Sofer (known as the Hatam Sofer) and his position on immigration to the Land of Israel have varied widely. Many scholars have called attention to his negation of the Diaspora and some, such as Ben Zion Dinur, have claimed that Sofer’s teachings led to the beginning of the Jewish national awakening. Owing to the wide-ranging nature of Sofer’s thought and writings
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The Emancipation of Slaves and the Auto-Emancipation of the Jews: The Impact of the American Civil War and the Abolition of Slavery on the Precursors of Zionism Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-06-17 Asaf Yedidya
Research on the Jews, the issue of slavery in the southern states, and the American Civil War has naturally focused on the Jews of the United States, who, as citizens, were reluctant to become involved in the debate that divided their country during those years. However, the attitude of the Jews in the Old World towards the events unfolding on a continent thousands of miles away has rarely been studied
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The Wars in Eastern Europe, the Jews of Jerusalem, and the Rise of Sabbateanism: The Shaping of the Jewish World in the Mid-Seventeenth Century Jewish History Pub Date : 2020-06-17 Adam Teller
This paper revisits the question of the connection between the wars in Eastern Europe (beginning with gezeirot taḥ ve-tat in 1648) and the rise of Sabbateanism. It argues that the key issue is the ways in which the Ashkenazi Jews of Jerusalem dealt with the collapse of Polish-Lithuanian Jewish funding for the Land of Israel in the wake of the wars. Following 1648, an extended transregional philanthropic