bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Restabilizing Dynamics: Construction and Constraint in the History of Walrasian Stability Theory
Authors: Hands D. Wade
Published: October 2009

InStabilizing Dynamics(1991) Roy Weintraub provides a history of stability theory from the work of Hicks and Samuelson in the late 1930s to the Gale and Scarf counterexamples in the 1960s. Unlike his earlier work in the history of general equilibrium theory (1979, 1985, 1988) this recent contribution is not an attempt to fit the Walrasian program into the narrow framework of some particular philosophy of natural science (such as Lakatos's methodology of scientific research programs). Rather, the theme inStabilizing Dynamicsis broadly social constructivist. Simply put, the constructivist view of science is “that scientific knowledge itself is constructed socially, in communities of scientists: Knowledge is constructed, not found” (p. 9).
The cost-effectiveness of Maze procedures using ablation techniques at the time of mitral valve surgery
Authors: Quenneville Stéphane P. , Xie Xuanqian , Brophy James M.
Published: October 2009

Background:The classic cut and sew surgical Maze procedure has been shown to reduce atrial fibrillation (AF), and recently newer surgical ablation techniques with reduced technical complexity have been introduced. This study sought to systematically review the efficacy and safety of these newer techniques and to evaluate their long-term cost-effectiveness at the time of scheduled mitral valve (MV) surgery.

Methods:A systematic literature search and meta-analysis was performed to generate the most reliable efficacy and safety parameter estimates for a Markov decision analysis model comparing MV surgery alone to MV surgery plus an ablation Maze procedure. Both basic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted.

Results:Based on the six randomized controlled trials (RCTs) identified, the pooled 1-year estimate of AF after surgery alone was 71 percent (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 64 percent to 78 percent). The pooled risk ratio of AF after surgical ablation treatment at the time of mitral valve surgery relative to valve surgery alone was 0.33 (95 percent CI, 0.19 to 0.55). The pooled analyses showed that no statistical significant increases in operative mortality, permanent pacemaker implantation, and postoperative bleeding with the ablative Maze procedures. An ablation-based Maze procedure at the time of mitral valve surgery had an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of $4,446CAD ($3,850US) per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) compared with valve surgery alone. Specifically costs were an extra $900CAD but with improved clinical outcomes (0.20 QALYs), including a prolonged life expectancy of 0.10 life-years. In one-way sensitivity analyses, survival time after MV surgery had the largest impact on ICER. Other variables influencing the ICER included the risk ratio of AF, utility, and cost estimates. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis suggests that 58.1 percent, 73.9 percent, and 89.3 percent of the simulations of the Maze strategy are cost-effective at willingness to pay thresholds of $20,000, $50,000, and $100,000CAD per QALY gained, respectively.

Conclusions:Our meta-analysis suggests that a Maze surgical ablation procedure at the time of MV surgery is associated with a reduced postoperative AF risk. Our economic model further suggests that the surgical ablation strategy at the time of mitral valve surgery is likely a cost-effective intervention, provided patients have a good long-term postsurgical prognosis.
The Description of Formative Judaism: The Social Perspective of the Mishnah's System of Civil Law and Government
Authors: Neusner Jacob
Published: October 2009

Mishnah's division of Damages presents a complete and systematic account of a theory of Israelite civil law and government. While drawing on diverse materials of earlier ages, beginning, of course, with the diverse Mosaic codes themselves, Mishnah's system came to closure after the Bar Kokhba War. Like its account of the Temple and its cult, Mishnah here speaks of nonexistent institutions and prohibited activities. There being no Israelite government, Mishnah's legislation for a high priest and Temple, a king and an army, speaks of a world which may have been in times past (this is dubious) but did not exist at the time of the Mishnaic discourse on the subject. The division of damages is composed of two subsystems which fit together logically, one on the conduct of civil society—commerce, trade, real estate, the other on the institutions of civil society—courts, administration. The main point of the former subsystem is that the task of society is to maintain perfect stasis, to preserve the status quo, and to secure the stability of all transactions. In the interchange of buying and selling, giving and taking, torts and damages, there must be an essential equality of exchange. No one should come out with more than he had at the outset. There should be no sizable shift in fortune or circumstance. The stable and unchanging economy of society must be preserved. The aim of the law is to restore the antecedent status of a person who has been injured. When we ask whose perspective is represented in a system of such a character and such emphases, we turn to examine the recurrent subject-matter of the division's cases. The subject of all predicates, in fact, is the householder, the small landholder. The definition of the problems for Mishnah's attention accords with the matters of concrete concern to the proprietary class: responsible, undercapitalized, overextended, committed to a barter economy (in a world of specie and currency), above all, aching for a stable and reliable world in which to do its work.
The Freethinker, the Jews, and the Missionaries: George Houston and the Mystery ofIsrael Vindicated
Authors: Sarna Jonathan D.
Published: October 2009

In 1820, a volume entitledIsrael Vindicated, written by "An Israelite," was published in New York City. It was the first Jewish polemic composed in response to the founding of a missionary society, the American Society for Meliorating the Condition of the Jews, and it remained influential throughout the nineteenth century. The author of this work, however, has never been identified. Nor has the volume itself received the attention it deserves. This article attempts to fill both of these lacunae.

Section one describes and analyzesIsrael Vindicated. It places the work within the context of its times, and compares it to other, more traditional anti-Christian polemics. Section two outlines the postpublication history ofIsrael Vindicated. Soon after it appeared, some New Yorkers attempted to have the work banned, and its author exposed and punished. Later, the work was variously invoked by Jews and Judeophobes alike, though, of course, for different purposes. In section three, the author ofIsrael Vindicatedassumes center stage. A review of old and new evidence leads to the conclusion that the work flowed from the pen of freethinker George Houston, assisted probably by his Jewish printer, Abraham Collins. Finally, section four analyzes the motivations of George Houston and his Jewish supporters. As is shown, this was far from the first time that Jews joined forces temporarily with other, sometimes hostile minority groups in pursuit of self-interest. Adversity makes strange bedfellows.
On the History of the Interdiction against the Study of Kabbalah before the Age of Forty
Authors: Idel Moshe
Published: October 2009

The paper reviews briefly the relevant views on the age of forty as found in the Talmud and in the Arab tradition, views which are the background of the later development in the Middle Ages. Afterwards the philosophical discussions on the age of forty found in the writings of Moses ibn Ezra, Jehuda ibn Abbas, Shem Tov Falaquera, Levi ben Abraham, Nissim of Marseilles, Prat Maimon and Isaac Aboab are analyzed. The views of authors like Falaquera and ibn Abbas might have influenced the first kabbalistic restrictions against divulging secrets to students who had not yet reached the age of forty. Such restrictions occur in a work of R. Moses ben Simeon of Burgos and in the school of Abraham Abulafia. Special emphasis on the interdiction against revealing certain kabbalistic secrets can be found in the works of R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon who related it to his teacher R. Solomon ibn Adret. A number of kabbalists of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries knew about this interdiction and it was influential also among pupils of R. Isaac Luria. Two last important occurrences of the subject discussed above appear in a document dictated by a court of the rabbis of Frankfurt to R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto and signed by him, during the polemics against the Frankists.

The appendix deals with some kabbalistic commentaries on the talmudic dictum “Restrain your children from higgayon” (Berakhot 28b).
Simeon Bar Megas: A Jewish Poet in Byzantine Palestine
Authors: Yahalom Joseph
Published: October 2009

No hint of the existence of this poet was evident until Menahem Zulay discovered his poetry some forty years ago among remnants of the Cairo Geniza MSS. Because his work consists of weekly liturgical compositions written in accordance with the triennial cycle followed in Palestine in ancient times and because Byzantium is the ruling government mentioned in his poetry, Zulay considered him to be Yannai's “mate.” As shown in this study Simeon must indeed have known Yannai's work and even followed his example. However, Simeon himself introduced some structural developments in the form of the ‘Amidah composition known as Qedushta. Most interesting is the fifth poem in his Qedushta to Gen. 44:18 on the theme of Joseph and his brothers. In his dramatic exposition he even outdoes that of Yannai, his master, intended for the same week. A full critical edition of Simeon's poetry based on about fifty Geniza MSS which is now in print (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities) will be of importance for a better understanding of ancient Palestinian poetry and spiritual life. His poems are of great significance also in that they contain the oldest known parallels to ancient Palestinian midrash literature.
On the πύργoς as a Farm Building
Authors: Sperber Daniel
Published: October 2009

In Hermes, LIV (1919), F. Preisigke discussed the term πύργoς, suggesting inter alia, that it bears the meaning of a “farm building” on the basis of papyrological sources. In the following year in the same journal, E. Meyer supported this contention, pointing out the suitability of such a meaning for such NT passages as Mark 12:1 = Matthew 21:33 (and, to a lesser extent, Luke 14:20). The discussion was succinctly summarized in Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. πύργoς.
The Nasi of Narbonne: A Problem in Medieval Historiography
Authors: Cohen Jeremy
Published: October 2009

In his introduction to A Study of History, Toynbee observed that “in modern Western historical research, as in modern Western industry, the quantity and location of raw materials threaten to govern the lives of human beings.” In an inability to manufacture his own sources and yet with a reluctance to overlook any means for brightening an obscure picture of the past, the historian may at times allow insufficient evidence to support interpretations that gain acceptance merely for lack of anything better. Such an occupational hazard inevitably plagues all branches of historiography, but it is more prevalent in the efforts to unravel the mysteries of “darker” epochs, like those of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. Not only does scanty source material limit the historian's treatment of this period, but the peculiar interests, motivations, and backgrounds of medieval writers restrict the legitimate use of the few documents which do exist. The medievalist's eye must be at once discerning and critical, careful not to overlook any evidence but wary so as not to misuse it, even if no other sources point to contradictory conclusions.
Three Trousseaux of Jewish Brides from the Fatimid Period
Authors: Goitein Shelomo Dov
Published: October 2009

Trousseau lists in the hundreds, complete or fragmentary, have survived in the Cairo Geniza. Normally they are included in marriage contracts, rarely in engagement settlements, and many have been preserved separately, bearing only the names of the bride and the groom with or without date, and often lacking even these pieces of information. This happened when the extant sheet had originally formed part of a larger document, or when the trousseau was listed in a record book of the community.
Reading Medieval Hebrew Love Poetry
Authors: Kozodoy Neal
Published: October 2009

In a work of moral philosophy which first appeared in the year 1168, Moses Maimonides finds that human speech, when considered from the standpoint of religion, is divisible into five categories: the prescribed; the cautioned-against or prohibited; the rejected; the desired; and the permitted. For each classification he provides appropriate examples, then he stops to observe a difficulty that may seemingly be posed for this entire scheme by one highly particular form of speech, which is poetry. Maimonides begins to resolve the difficulty as follows:

Know that poetical compositions, in whichever language they may be, should be examined with regard to their themes in order to determine whether they follow a manner of speech which we classified. Indeed, I explain this even though it is clear, inasmuch as I have seen elders and saintly men of our coreligionists when they are at a wine banquet, such as a wedding or some other occasion, and were a man to wish to recite an Arabic poem, even if the theme of that poem were the praise of courage or generosity, of the category of the desired, or the praises of wine, of the category of the permitted, they would protest it with every manner of protest, for in their opinion it is not permitted to listen to it. However, were the bard to recite any manner of Hebrew poem, they would not protest it, and it would not be evil in their sight despite there being in those words themes that pertain to the categories of the cautioned-against or the rejected.
The Hebrew First Crusade Chronicles: Further Reflections
Authors: Chazan Robert
Published: October 2009

In a previous article, I studied the short and anonymous Hebrew First Crusade chronicle. The choice of text S as the starting point for an investigation of the three surviving records of Jewish suffering and heroism in 1096 was a natural one. The text, as it now stands, constitutes a wellorganized and coherent unit, broken off suddenly during the depiction of the destruction of Mayence Jewry. While it is certain that the chronicler did not witness personally all the events which he described, he did integrate his written and oral sources into an account which exhibits a broad and consistent grasp of the unfolding of the First Crusade and the related violence which inundated Rhineland Jewry.

L, the longest of the Hebrew First Crusade chronicles, is more difficult to analyze, partly because of the length of the text, partly because of its poor state of preservation, and partly because the awkwardness of the chronicler has left tantalizing hints regarding the process of editing. Like S, L is based on a series of written and oral sources. The editor of L, however, was less adroit than the editor of S in fusing his sources into a satisfying unit. Because of this lack of grace, the hand of the editor is more apparent in L, although the precise dimensions of his role cannot be fully clarified on the basis of the texts currently available. While the problems associated with L are vexing, its richness of detail and its power necessitate an effort to clarify some of these problems and to suggest tentative solutions. Many of our conclusions will be speculative; the state of the text and its sister texts will allow no more.
Can Halakhic Texts Talk History?
Authors: Soloveitchik Haym
Published: October 2009

Not how halakhic texts tell stories about other things, but how they tell stories about themselves is our concern here. Confronting us is not the problem of extracting evidence regarding trade or communal organization from law, but the question of how one cracks the colorless and highly impersonal mold into which the thought of the medieval period was cast to reveal a world of individuality, development, and ambivalence. Can the fragmentary and recalcitrant halakhic texts be made to talk history?
A Minor for Zimmun (Y. Ber. 7:2, 11c) and Recensions of Yerushalmi
Authors: Bokser Baruch M.
Published: October 2009

The literary and historical study of rabbinic literature increases our understanding of rabbinic texts and enables us to isolate different stages in the history of traditions. Amoraic teachings, in particular, have undergone a complex process of enunciation, interpretation, transmission, adaption, and application prior to their incorporation into their present contexts. They have likewise received literary enrichment and suffered recasting in the course of their integration into wider units and of the overall compilation of gemara. Accordingly, the extant versions may not reflect the most fundamental or original use and import of a tradition. Once aware of these processes we can, moreover, better appreciate the concerns which elicited and shaped the early stages of the teachings as well as the later ones which may have contributed to the transformations.
Guenzburg, Lilienblum, and the Shape of Haskalah Autobiography
Authors: Mintz Alan
Published: October 2009

Haskalah autobiography, as S. Werses has surveyed it, is a wide field which includes such well known figures as I. S. Reggio, S. D. Luzzatto, M. H. Letteris, A. Gottlober, S. Y. Fuenn, J. L. Gordon, M. A.Guenzburg, and M. L. Lilienblum. The fact that these names are well known—and known to us from works other than their autobiographies—is significant. Most of these works are accounts of the author's literary and cultural activity, and they interest us now, if they do at all, as portals to a more complete comprehension of that activity. Reggio, for example, describes his call to Jewish learning and the progress of his career as a scholar; in provoking detail in the pages of Ha-maggid, Luzzatto gives an authorized version of the canon of his works; Letteris and Fuenn offer not so much portraits of themselves as reminiscences of such famous figures from the milieu in which they worked as Rappaport and Krochmal; and Gottlober deflects attention from himself in another way by confining himself to an ethnographic account of the Volhynia and Podolia of his youth.
Trends in the Study of Medieval Hebrew Literature
Authors: Pagis Dan
Published: October 2009

The vast body of premodern Hebrew literature is usually termed “medieval“—a somewhat misleading term, partly based on the assumption that in most countries the Jewish Middle Ages lasted until the Emancipation in the eighteenth century. However, as is well known, this literature was by no means monolithic. It comprised such disparate schools and styles as portions of the liturgy dating back to late Roman times, the Palestinian and Eastern piyyut (liturgical poetry) of the Byzantine and Moslem periods, the famed Hebrew-Spanish school and its ramifications or parallel schools in Provence, North Africa, Turkey, and the Yemen, other important centers like Germany and France, and an entire millennium of Hebrew poetry in Italy whose later stages coincided with, and were influenced by, the Renaissance and the Baroque. Israel Davidson's monumental bibliography, entitled in English Thesaurus of Hebrew Mediaeval Poetry, actually spans more than a millennium and a half, or, as its Hebrew title states, “from the canonization of the Bible to the beginning of the period of Enlightenment” (in the late eighteenth century). Alternative terms to “medieval” seem scarcely clearer; “postbiblical” tacitly and misleadingly excludes the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while “premodern” includes the Bible.
Ketiah Bar Shalom
Authors: Jacobson Howard
Published: October 2009

As far as we know, the rabbis were not well acquainted with Latin, but there are occasional examples in rabbinic literature of their ability to formulate or understand bilingual (Hebrew-Latin) puns. In Midrash Tanḥuma, for instance, there is a play on Latin corona/Hebrew qeren, and, according to an observation attributed to Yehoshua Guttman, at B.T. Ta‘anit 29a on Latin nasi (nasus)/Hebrew nasi. The talmudic anecdote quoted below can be best understood when we perceive the Latin wordplay on which it is built.
Alienated Intellectuals in the Camp of Religious Reform: The Frankfurt Reformfreunde, 1842–1845
Authors: Meyer Michael A.
Published: October 2009

A minor historical movement which never assumes mass proportions, which arises and passes from public view in a brief period of time, and which leaves behind no residue of specific lasting effect would seem to possess only the most limited scholarly interest. Its intensive study can be justified only if such research points beyond its immediate subject to broader objective trends and subjective attitudes which it crystallizes or foreshadows. Yet even a small and transient grouping of similarly minded individuals may bring to focus external influences and motivational patterns which are considerably more widespread and which exist over a far longer period of time. This study will focus on a tiny, evanescent phenomenon: the first religiously radical grouping to arise within German Judaism. While not disregarding the specifics of its history, it will seek to indicate how its subject reflects currents and tendencies of considerably broader measure and of longer duration.
On the Classification of Judaic Laws in theAntiquitiesof Josephus and the Temple Scroll of Qumran
Authors: Altshuler David
Published: October 2009

Yigael Yadin's publication of the Temple Scroll (ts) from Qumran is a pioneering work of scholarship that will stimulate a generation of further research. At this relatively early date, most attention naturally will focus on understanding the scroll itself and its place within Qumran literature. Alongside these concerns, however, are many tantalizing prospects for comparative study, through which the literature and life of Qumran might illumine the larger context of Judaism in late antiquity. Clearly, for example, the way TS treats biblical law is of both intrinsic and comparative significance. This study is a preliminary contribution to a fertile area for future investigations.
In Search of the “Book of Figures”: Medicine and Astrology in Montpellier at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century
Authors: Shatzmiller Joseph
Published: October 2009

The exchange of letters between Abba Mari of Montpellier (fl. 1300) and Rabbi Solomon Ibn Adret of Barcelona (ca. 1235–1310), collected in the book Minfiat qena'ot [Zealous Offering], opens with a controversy over medical astrology. While the outcome of this controversy, the ban issued in the summer of 1305 in Barcelona against premature study of philosophy, constitutes a well-known event in Jewish history, it is not at all that clear why Abba Mari chose to attack his adversaries, the students of philosophy, by raising the issue of their alleged medical-astrological practices. The data in his first letters to Ibn Adret hint at what might have been the extent of these practices in Montpellier of 1300 as well as who the personalities that he had in mind might have been.From the very first letter we learn that at the source of all the trouble were some Jewish physicians in Montpellier–the name of Isaac de Lattes is specifically mentioned–who employed an astrological talisman which was supposed to bring relief to an ailing right kidney. To his great astonishment, Abba Mari came to learn in about the year 1300 that Ibn Adret was not ready to condemn such a practice and that he actually approved of it, while Abba Mari considered it to be straightforward idolatry.
The Drama of Narration: Y. H. Brenner'sIn Winter
Authors: Fleck Jeffrey
Published: October 2009

In her book,Transparent Minds, Dorrit Cohn reminds us that one of the special powers of fiction lies in its ability to reveal the normally hidden inner life of people other than ourselves. Writers of fiction can, if it fits their purposes, place before our scrutiny the most intimate and private thoughts, feelings, motives, fears, and passions of their imagined characters, and can do so with a variety of techniques which, especially in twentieth-century fiction, take account of the complex, overdetermined, and largely unconscious processes of the human psyche. In modern Hebrew literature, no novelist has exploited this aspect of fiction with more passion and technical inventiveness than Y. H. Brenner. From the very outset of his career, Brenner's ability to make transparent the minds of his characters drew special attention and praise. Responding to his first collection of short stories, M. Y. Berdyczewski, for example, marveled that Brenner's characters had only to speak and they “stand before us naked, revealing all that is within.” And even Bialik, who was troubled by Brenner's fiction on other grounds, had to admit his impatience with literary theories when, as he put it, he was able to “see a living soul.”
Averroes and Narboni on the Material Intellect
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: October 2009

Questions regarding the human intellect haunted Averroes throughout his philosophic career; no less than seven of his preserved works treat the human intellect formally, while others, naturally enough, also do so incidentally. Here I shall point out that the seven aforementioned works fall into a sequence, that a recently published text of Averroes' has its place within the sequence, and that Moses Narboni misread Averroes for reasons to be explained.
Cultural Ethnicity in Israel: The Case of Middle Eastern Jews' Religiosity
Authors: Shokeid Moshe
Published: October 2009

National myths and public policies in Israel long assumed that the country's diverse Jewish immigrant groups would all eventually, and indeed within a short span of time, be absorbed and fused into a unified social, economic, political, and cultural entity, but this expectation is now giving way to widespread doubts as to its feasibility. Some of these doubts were expressed during the 1970s in a series of studies which demonstrated not only that there were still gaps between Israelis of Middle Eastern and North African extraction (often called Sephardim or Oriental Jews) and those of European extraction (Ashkenazim), as regards occupational and residential mobility, income and educational achievements, political representation and social prestige, but that the gaps were widening.1 The growing disillusionment on the part of Middle Eastern Jews (North Africans included) was dramatically revealed in the 1981 general elections by the emergence of a new ethnic party, Tami, which seemed to have better prospects of success and survival than any previous ethnic party. Moreover, the results at the polls obtained by most of the other parties seemed to reflect an intensifying ethnic polarity.
Changing Views of Passover and the Meaning of Redemption according to the Palestinian Talmud
Authors: Bokser Baruch M.
Published: October 2009

Gershom Scholem points out that within Judaism the concept of redemption does not merely consist of an abstract feeling but entails a belief in a concrete physical redemption, publicly visible in this world and taking place on the stage of history and within the community. However, it projects the realization of this hope to the future, therefore making Jewish life provisional, incomplete, and unfulfilled—a “life lived in deferment.” The history of the Passover seder illustrates how both aspects of this outlook became expressed in a specific time and place. But it also indicates that the hope was not always projected into the future, for we find people who both believed in a physical redemption and at the same time tried to internalize redemption in their own lives.
The Metamorphosis of Narrative Traditions: Two Stories from Sixteenth-Century Safed
Authors: Wineman Aryeh
Published: October 2009

A storehouse of narratives can be found within the literature which emerged from and gave expression to the spiritual developments in sixteenth-century Safed. These include legends, moral tales and exempla, anecdotes, and parables which can be garnered from the volumes of the kabbalistic ethical works and other literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries. In this study we shall seek to explore two such narratives of that period, stories which, while quite different from one another in character, both draw upon much earlier narrative traditions which have been subtly but radically remolded. The immediate aim of tracing the prehistory of these two stories and their routes of metamorphosis and of comparing the Safed stories with the sources which lie behind them is to clarify the literary and historical significance of the two narratives in the precise form which they acquired in the Safed experience. On a broader scale, such exploration might serve to exemplify the transformation of narrative traditions under the impact of a worldview and a cultural-spiritual milieu.
Jewish Religious Thought in Early Victorian London
Authors: Singer Steven
Published: October 2009

Religious thought and observance almost never exist in a self-contained vacuum but are rather influenced, to a greater or lesser extent, by their social and ideological surroundings. A study of the spiritual life of early Victorian Jewry provides a good example of this law of history and shows how a Jewish community's religious beliefs and actions can be shaped and even dominated by the influence of its Gentile host society. An analysis of early Victorian Judaism is really an investigation into the social dynamics of the London community and a study of how the endeavors of its various factions to adapt to the mid-nineteenth-century English world affected its religious life.
Mishnaic Literary History and the History of a Mishnaic Idea: On the Formation of the Mishnah's Theory of Intention, With Special Reference to tractateMa' aserot
Authors: Jaffee Martin S.
Published: October 2009

The Mishnah is preserved in a web of exegetical texts—the Tosefta, the alakhic midrashim, and the Talmuds—which have accompanied it iroughout its history of transmission. A common problem in mishnaic:xtual criticism, therefore, is to clarify the extent to which elements of the Mishnah's exegetical tradition have become part of the the text itself. It is for this reason that a question most appropriate to other literary texts is so difficult to answer for the Mishnah: at what point does the history of the text's creation end and the history of its transmission and interpretation begin? In a certain respect, of course, in the mishnaic case this question is conceptually flawed. By posing an absolute distinction between the redactionand transmission-history of the Mishnah, one reifies processes which, in fact, are most difficult to distinguish. Epstein in particular has shown that the text of the Mishnah, in the recension of Rabbi (Judah the Patriarch), remained relatively fluid for some centuries after its promulgation, ca. 200 C.E. Thus, the mishnaic text-types now available are in a very real sense no less the creations of the Mishnah's later students (the amoraim, or “explainers”) than they are the work of the Mishnah's authors.
Providence as Consequent upon the Intellect: Maimonides' Theory of Providence
Authors: Raffel Charles M.
Published: October 2009

Julius Guttmann, in his classic work on the history of Jewish philosophy, summarizes his understanding of Maimonides' theory of divine providence:

Divine providence does not, therefore, mean interference with the external course of nature, but is transferred to the inner life of man, where it is founded on the natural connection between the human and the divine spirit.… Intellectual and not ethical factors are decisive for the role of divine providence.
The Religion of Traditional Ashkenazic Women: Some Methodological Issues
Authors: Weissler Chava
Published: October 2009

What does it mean to study women's religion? How are we to define our subject matter? How are we to understand the relationship of the history of women's religious life and practice to the history of particular religious traditions? I shall explore these questions within the context of a very specific topic: the religious life of Ashkenazic (Central and Eastern European) Jewish women in the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, as seen through the popular religious literature of the period. This literature, which was addressed primarily to women, was in Yiddish, the vernacular of Ashkenazic Jews, rather than in Hebrew, the sacred language, understood almost exclusively by men. My thinking about the different approaches one could take to this material, and the different uses to which it could be put, was stimulated by a lecture given by Joan Scott on the study of women's history. Using a framework of analysis suggested in part by Scott's work, I will distinguish between three general approaches to the study of women's religion: (1) those that add an account of women's religious lives to an already existing history of Judaism; (2) those that consider women's Judaism within the framework of other groups usually omitted from the history of Judaism; and (3) those that seek to transform our understanding of Judaism through the incorporation of the perspective gained from the study of women's religion.
Judaism and the Obligation to Die for the State
Authors: Levey Geoffrey B.
Published: October 2009

Dying in the state′s behalf, and at its request, is a matter that one might expect to be of obvious concern to the Jews throughout their history. Twice in bygone eras (roughly, 1000–586 B.C.E. and 140–63 B.C.E.) they have been ensconced in their own sovereign land faced with preserving that sovereignty against hostile neighbors and ambitious empires. Elsewhere, in the diaspora, they have been forced to define their relations and responsibilities to the host powers under whose authority they have variously been classed as aliens, residents, and citizens. And now, again, they are reestablished in their own sovereign state of Israel, in whose short history the call to arms has been unfortunately all too frequent. Yet the obligation to die for the state is not a question which enjoys especial treatment or ready resolution in Jewish sources.In part, this is because the Jewish tradition is not in nature a philosophical tradition, given to abstract systematic treatises in the manner of the ancient Greeks, to whom Western thought has ever since been indebted. It is, rather, a legal tradition, given over to the interpretation and application of legal minutiae in keeping with divine edict. Still, it would be wrong to conclude that Judaism and the Jewish tradition lack a coherent position on there being (or not being) an obligation to die for the state. Such, anyway, is what I wish to argue in this essay.
Sholem Aleichem: Mythologist of the Mundane
Authors: Roskies David G.
Published: October 2009

What could be more obvious for a writer who called himself How–Do– You–Do than to place folklore and folk–speech at the center of his work? After all, it was his childhood friend Shmulik who had inducted him into the world of storytelling; ever since then, the celebrated author could have mined the treasures of Jewish myth and legend as his natural legacy. But Shmulik′s formative role in From the Fair was as much a fiction as the name Sholem Aleichem itself, which masked the true beginnings of a typical Russian–Jewish maskil named Rabinovitsh. Everything in the program of the Haskalah, as in Sholem Rabinovitsh's early career, militated against the discovery of folklore: the overwhelming antipathy of the Jewish Enlightenment to fantasy, superstition, and folk custom;2 Rabinovitsh's concern for fostering a highbrow literary culture in Yiddish based on the realistic portrayal of poverty, on social satire and stylistic discipline;3 and, perhaps most importantly, the young writer's adulation for the arch-maskil Abramovitsh- Mendele, who embodied this new critical standard.4 When, along with other of his contemporaries, Sholem Aleichem finally overcame these formidable obstacles and negotiated his way back to the folk, readers were so taken by his reinvention of Jewish folklore that they mistook it for the real thing.
“A Word for My Blood”: A Reading of Kadya Molodowsky's “Froyen Lider” (Vilna, 1927)
Authors: Hellerstein Kathryn
Published: October 2009

In her autobiography, My Great-Grandfather′s Inheritance, the Yiddish poet Kadya Molodowsky (1893/94–1975) recalled her feeling upon publishing her first book of poetry, Kheshvandike nekht (“Nights of Heshvan”) in 1927.
Ghost-Writing: Philip Roth's Portrait of the Artist
Authors: Kartiganer Donald
Published: October 2009

In writing a trilogy of novels on the life and times of Nathan Zuckerman, American Jewish Writer, Philip Roth has waded manfully into a tradition even more thickly and brilliantly populated than the one he selected as literary background for The Breast. If the grotesque metamorphosis of David Kepesh into a six–foot, one–hundred–and–fifty–pound female breast compels us to compare Roths novel with some of the great texts of Kafka and Gogol, in Zuckerman Bound Roth invokes the more formidable context of James, Proust, Joyce, Lawrence, Mann, and Gide (to mention only a few), several of whose artist–portraits are identified in the trilogy and all implied. Roth has said in an interview that the novelty of this particular portrait is that it describes the comedy that an artistic vocation can turn out to be in the U.S.A.1 The comedy pertains not only to the career of Zuckerman himself, a series of zany encounters with writers, readers, and critics, whose responses to one Zuckerman fiction become the action of the next, but also to Roths typical strategy of challenging and recreating any prior tradition or convention, however sacrosanct. The crux of Rothian comedy is to expose, embarrass, and ridicule, to break bonds and boundaries, pieties and platitudes.
The Struggle Over Religious Reform in Nineteenth-Century Vienna
Authors: Rozenblit Marsha L.
Published: October 2009

In 1871, the board of the Jewish community of Vienna attempted to reform Sabbath and holiday services in the two synagogues under its official jurisdiction. Following the guidelines established by the Leipzig Synod in 1869, the board decided to remove from the liturgy all prayers that called for a return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and for the restitution of the ancient sacrificial system of worship. In addition, Vienna's Jewish leaders announced that the introduction of an organ, the symbol of the Reform movement, was a good idea. The board never implemented these radical reforms. An enormous protest from Vienna's Orthodox community, as well as from numerous individuals who professed no particular commitment to religious Orthodoxy but who preferred to pray in the traditional manner, forced the leaders of the community to back down from these ideological reforms and to implement only a few, relatively minor “modifications” in the services in the temples. Viennese Jews rejected the ideological changes which were gaining in popularity in German Jewish communities in the last third of the nineteenth century.
Lawrence Perlman's “Buber's Anti-Kantianism”: A Reply
Authors: Katz Steven T.
Published: October 2009

The essential argument of Lawrence Perlman's critique of my essay “Martin Buber's Epistemology: A Critical Appraisal” is that I have misunderstood Buber insofar as I claim that his dialogical philosophy is largely Kantian in structure. In response it must be said that Perlman has worked hard to make his case—but finally it is unconvincing, even seriously misleading, because it rests on a triple misunderstanding, i.e., a misunderstanding of Kant, of Buber, and of Katz.
New(s) Poems: Y. L. Teller'sLider fun der Tsayt(ung)
Authors: Frieden Ken
Published: October 2009

Y. L. Teller's poetry underwent radical transformations in the 1930s, and its shifting forms were representative of the age. Influenced by the introspectivists, Teller excluded proper names, identifiable places, and definite time from his early poems. By the end of the decade, however, he had developed a style that drew heavily from news reports. The relationship between poetry and journalism became a matter of dispute in American Yiddish literature during these years, when Arn Glants-Leyeles and Yankev Glatshteyn were among the leading poets who dirtied their hands with news-print.
Babylonian Baraitot in the Tosefta and the “Dialectology” of Middle Hebrew
Authors: Elman Yaakov
Published: October 2009

It has long been a truism that the Tosefta serves as a major source of tannaitic material for both Talmuds. One corollary of this view is that the toseftan versions of baraitot (hereafter, “toseftan baraitot”)1 are, barring the usual vagaries of transmissional difficulties, closer to the original tannaitic texts than those found in the Yerushalmi, and certainly the Bavli.Linguistically speaking, this understanding of the place of the Tosefta in early rabbinic literature underlies the assignment (without much analysis!) of the Tosefta, along with the Mishnah, to the earlier stratum of Middle Hebrew (= Mishnaic Hebrew), mhe1 (= Middle Hebrew A).
The Contribution of Professor Salo W. Baron to the Study of Ancient Jewish History: His Appraisal of Anti-Judaism and Proselytism
Authors: Feldman Louis H.
Published: October 2009

A few years ago, a committee, of which I was a member, was asked to select, for a prize awarded byMoment magazine, the greatest living man and woman scholars in the field of Jewish studies. There was immediate consensus as to the former: who else but Professor Salo W. Baron? It is indicative of his almost legendary range of knowledge, of both primary and secondary sources, in the dozen or more languages in which he was fluent, of the general literature in the fields of the humanities and the social sciences, and of his prodigious productivity that a question frequently asked about him was whether he had assistants in the composition of his numerous works. The answer to that question was a resounding no! His only assistant was his late wife. His unflagging industry was matched only by the independence of his critical judgment.
Maimonides on the Science of the Mishneh Torah: Provisional or Permanent?
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: October 2009

What was Maimonides' attitude toward the typically medieval description of the universe presented at the beginning of his great law code, the Mishneh Torah? Was that account of the physical universe meant only as a statement of the best description of nature available at the time (and thus radically distinct from the halakhic matters which make up the bulk of the Mishneh Torah), or was it meant to be a description of the true nature of the universe as it really is, not subject to revision in the light of new paradigms or new models (and thus essentially similar to the halakhic matters in the text)?
Voltaire on Judaism and Christianity
Authors: Arkush Allan
Published: October 2009

Voltaire's voluminous writings on religion contain, as is well known, a large number of attacks on the Jewish people and Judaism. Historians have offered a variety of explanations for this sustained animosity on the part of a great rationalist and proponent of religious toleration toward a people and a religion which continued, in his own day, to be victimized by unjust persecution. While much remains in dispute, there does seem to be general agreement that Voltaire attacked Judaism at least in part because its most sacred texts constituted the foundation of Christianity, the religion he wished to destroy.
Suicide and the World-to-Come
Authors: Shapiro Marc B.
Published: October 2009

In 1880 the Jewish community of Iraq was forced to confront a sharp increase in antisemitic persecution. Not all of the country's Jews were prepared for this new phenomenon and the result was a number of suicides. The Iraqi rabbinate, both shocked and determined to put an end to the needless taking of life, declared from all the synagogue pulpits that those who commit suicide have no share in the world-to-come. This idea was certainly not unknown to either the masses or the rabbis, who probably believed it to be found somewhere in talmudic literature. However, although it does not appear there, the rabbinic maxim is very well known. Since this notion has played a central role in many rabbinic discussions about the status of suicides, it is worthwhile to trace its origin.
Between Metaphysical and Liberal Pluralism: A Reappraisal of Rabbi A. I. Kook's Espousal of Toleration
Authors: Ross Tamar
Published: October 2009

Much has been said and written about the unique position regarding toleration that was adopted by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. Its uniqueness within Jewish tradition is not open to doubt. The question I would like to explore here is the extent to which his version of toleration is compatible with the toleration that has become part of the modern secular outlook. In order to accomplish this task, I begin by setting up a typology of two basic varieties of toleration, relating one to the skepticism of the relativist who espouses liberal pluralism, and the other to religious systems with absolutist claims for truth. In the second part of the article, a sketch of the history of toleration in Judaism, this typology is confirmed. The third part of the article is a review of R. Kook′s notion of toleration, which seems at first to conform to the type of toleration generally associated with liberalism, but, when translated into practical policy, displays some significant aberrations. The fourth part suggests that these aberrations are not evidence of inconsistencies or anomalies, but rather an indication of the fact that no attitude of toleration, even that of the most liberal pluralist, can completely evade the necessity for intolerance at some point; and that different views regarding the point where toleration should be limited reflect different epistemological positions, each of which is associated with a different societal ideal which serves as the criterion for limiting toleration.
The Quest for the Historical Beruriah, Rachel, and Imma Shalom
Authors: Ilan Tal
Published: October 2009

Beruriah, reputedly the greatest Jewish woman scholar of all times, has figured prominently in anthologies describing the lives and deeds of Jewish sages, and in particular in books and collections dedicated to Jewish women. Most of these presentations are no more than paraphrases of the sources on which they are dependent, accepting their judgments at face value and thus giving an idealized description of the woman Beruriah.
He Said, She Said: A Woman Teacher in Twelfth-Century Cairo
Authors: Melammed Reneé Levine
Published: October 2009

Rabbinic responsa can at times furnish an entree into the private and public lives of individuals involved with the judicial system. The case under discussion provides an in-depth portrait of a marriage in twelfth-century Cairo and of a woman's life–in this instance, a woman struggling to maneuver within the strictures of Jewish law and contemporary Judeo-Arabic society.1 The original Judeo-Arabic of the two responsa under discussion, as well as the Hebrew translations, are, no doubt, well known to Judeo-Arabic, Geniza, and Maimonidean scholars alike, as are the basic details to some English readers. Nevertheless, the case is certainly worthy of a separate study of the text in conjunction with a detailed analysis.