bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Development of Anti-Hasidic Criticism among the Maskilim of the Congress Kingdom, 1815–1830
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter traces the development of anti-hasidic criticism among the maskilim of the Congress Kingdom. From 1815, the ‘Jewish question’ was one of the main topics of public debate, preoccupying writers and statesmen throughout the whole constitutional period (1815–30) of the Kingdom of Poland. The state's most prominent politicians, such as Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, voiced their opinions on the status of the Jewish community and its reform. Representatives of the Jewish community also participated in the great debate, which lasted from 1818 to 1822. Moreover, other Polish maskilim were involved in a variety of activities aimed at ‘civilizing’ the Jewish people, such as attempting to establish new communal institutions representing Enlightenment values, or sending reports and memoranda to the state authorities. The most active of these maskilim included Antoni Eisenbaum, Jakub Tugendhold, Ezechiel Hoge, and Abraham Stern. The hasidic issue is either completely absent from their views, or features marginally. Only one Polish maskil, Abraham Stern, gave it prominence in his public activities. The chapter also looks at two reports written for the Voivodeship Commission in Kalisz in 1820, which provide an example of a reticent attitude towards hasidism. The Kalisz voivodeship authorities availed themselves of the services and opinions of Jewish modernizing circles, and invited them to co-operate with them in their attempts to ‘civilize’ the Jewish population.
Growing Interest, Growing Conflict, 1831–1860
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the growth of interest in hasidism among the Polish maskilim, which was marked by the publication in the late 1830s and the early 1840s of a number of texts discussing hasidic issues written by Polish maskilim. A very interesting, if somewhat isolated, example of the use of the hasidic motif in literature was the play written by the maskil Efraim Fishel Fischelsohn in the late 1830s or early 1840s and published posthumously: Teater fun khsidim (Theatre of the Hasidim). The growth of interest in the hasidim was also occasioned by the appearance of the first projects to reform Jewish society to take into account the existence of this movement. A memorandum concerning improvements to the situation of Jews in Poland was written at this time by the maskil Eliasz Moszkowski. The gradual growth of interest in the hasidim in Polish maskilic works appearing in the 1830s and 1840s had two main causes. The first was the growth of the importance of hasidism itself, and the second was the associated increase in the number of local conflicts between the supporters of the two groups. Jakub Tugendhold's attitude towards hasidism was innovative among modernizing Jews; he treated hasidism as one of the legitimate sectors of Judaism and persistently endeavoured to limit social tensions between all sectors of Jewish society.
The Twilight of the Haskalah and the Dawning of Integration
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter details how, with the growth of the modernizing camp in the 1850s and the 1860s, a clear division emerged within the camp. Three main groups were already distinguishable by the late 1850s. The first of these groups was made up chiefly of maskilim who wrote mainly in Hebrew, had pro-German cultural tendencies, and rejected the dominant pro-Polish integrationist movement, seeking ideological allies among the Russian or Galician maskilim and the Russian authorities, rather than among the Polish Jewish proponents of modernization. At the other extreme, the representatives of the radical pro-Polish assimilation movement, who strove to obliterate all signs of Jewish separateness, were as far removed from the integrationists as were the offshoots of the Haskalah. The transformation of Jewish modernizing circles in Poland in the second half of the nineteenth century appears to have been mainly a result of the trend towards Polonization already observable among the first generation of maskilim in the Kingdom of Poland. The chapter then considers the growth in the significance of the Polish language to Jewish society and the emergence of Polish patriotism. It also discusses the attitude of the three basic groups — the traditional maskilim, assimilationists, and integrationists — towards hasidism.
Waning Enthusiasm: Izraelita and the Moderate Integration Movement
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses how the weekly Izraelita, which was established in 1866, carried on the traditions of Jutrzenka by employing the same journalists and by faithfully reproducing its integrationist ideals in a new period. This came about mainly due to the efforts of Samuel Henryk Peltyn, the founder and long-time editor-in-chief of Izraelita. Izraelita soon became the platform of the modernizing camp and Peltyn himself became its main ideologist and the undisputed leader of the moderate integrationists. Throughout his thirty years as a writer, Peltyn unceasingly promoted the idea of the social integration of Jews with Polish society and at the same time fought with the anti-religious tendencies of the radical supporters of assimilation. Naturally, the hasidic issue was also one of the themes he discussed. Of all Izraelita's plans to enlighten the hasidim, however, only one turned out to be truly original, proposed by Izrael Leon (Leib) Grosglik. With the publication of Grosglik's ‘Letters from a Young Ex-Hasid’ and with the interest in the hasidic issue peaking around 1869, Izraelita increasingly rarely published long editorials devoted to hasidism. An interesting expression of the ambivalence towards hasidism and ultimate disillusionment was that of Hilary (Hillel) Nussbaum, one of the most active members of the integration movement, who was also a contributor to Izraelita and an amateur historian.
The Jewish Contribution to (Multicultural) Civilization
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the Jewish ‘contribution discourse’. It argues that this discourse was a sign of Jewish unease, frustration, and fear in the face of indicators that, despite Jews' ‘good faith’ efforts to conform to the legal, social, and cultural demands of the emancipating societies, and notwithstanding legal guarantees of civil and political equality, their integration was in reality but partial, contingent, tenuous, and even revocable. The persistence of active antisemitism and unofficial or informal barriers to complete Jewish participation in social, cultural, and economic endeavours prompted Jews to attempt to demonstrate their worthiness to qualify as fully fledged members of society. Analysis of their contributions would serve this cause. At least it could bolster Jewish self-confidence and stiffen Jews' resolve in continuing their struggle for acceptance. It was paramount that Jews themselves should have a sense of their own value and importance if they were to morally convince or legally coerce others to recognize finally that they really belonged.
Prolegomenon to the Study of Jewish Cultural History
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the Jewish spirit. It approaches the cultural history of a traditional society, as Jewish society was everywhere until the onset of modernity, by examining the history of the interaction of a society and its members with their collective history. Nationalist-inspired scholarship produced a Jewish political history. The Jewish historiography created in the decades after the Shoah and the establishment of Israel has turned in significant measure to social history. The postmodern age that has been so occupied with the deconstruction of symbols and meanings that were previously self-evident would seem to have prepared the ground for a new synthesis of cultural meaning. The chapter thus returns to the study of the spirit; not what it produced, but what it was.
Introduction
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the multi-layered mystical rabbinic culture of eighteenth-century Prague. It reveals the prominence of Kabbalah in traditional life, particularly in the biography and writings of one of the towering figures of Ashkenazi Jewry named Ezekiel Landau, Prague's chief rabbi from 1754 to 1793. It also explores the deep roots of mysticism of the rabbinic culture of eighteenth-century Prague and sheds light on a central aspect of the life and world-view of a large number of early modern Ashkenazi Jews. The chapter covers the neglect of Prague's rabbinic culture, the importance of Prague as a meeting ground between East and West, and the centrality of Kabbalah for Prague Jews and its persistence over the longue durée. It reviews a wide range of kabbalistic materials and sources that influenced seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ashkenazi Jews.
Prague’s Rabbinic Culture: Halakhah and Kabbalah
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

This chapter chronicles the continued importance of halakhah and Kabbalah within the rabbinic culture and surveys Prague's largely overlooked talmudic academies, Jewish court system, and numerous rabbinic scholars. It considers the kabbalist and poet Avigdor Kara, who composed the well-known elegy Et kol hatela'ah and the famed Judah Loew ben Bezalel, who was commonly referred to as the Maharal. It also explains that the Maharal was a prolific and influential author who was best known for his unique approach to the aggadah, ethics, Jewish philosophy, and mysticism. The chapter describes Prague's leading rabbis during the late sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, such as Ephraim Solomon of Luntshitz, popularly referred to as Keli Yakar. It recounts Pragues' long tradition of Jewish mysticism, kabbalistic study, and publication of important kabbalistic works.
Introduction
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

K ABBALISTIC IDEAS from divergent schools, sources, and trends permeate all genres of Landau’s writing. A thorough study of his works reveals that these kabbalistic sources formed an integral part of his spiritual and mystical universe, and that, to a certain extent, he felt compelled to disseminate their teachings....
Enlivening the Public Sphere: Jewish Sociability in the 1920s
Authors: Malinovich Nadia
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the expansion of Jewish associational life over the course of the 1920s. It talks about the growth of a whole variety of youth movements that created unprecedented opportunities for young Jews to educate themselves about Jewish history and culture. It also examines the meaning of Jewish identity in the modern world. The chapter mentions the first national youth movement and the religiously oriented Chema Israël that aimed to provide an institutional structure of educational and recreational activities in order to transmit Judaism to future generations. It includes the Union Universelle de la Jeunesse Juive (UUJJ), which reached the height of its popularity and influence in the mid-1920s in the hope of appealing to as wide a range of Jewish youth as possible and to build bridges between different communities.
The Story of Creation
Authors: Feldman Seymour
Published: February 2021

This chapter is devoted to the single problem of the creation of the world. According to Gersonides, Maimonides' theory of creation was deficient because of its hasty scepticism about the decidability of the question, but it was also erroneous in its uncritical adoption of the ex nihilo account of creation and in foisting the theory on Scripture. It provides Gersonides' argument against Maimonides that the creation of the world is provable, and the world was not created ex nihilo. This chapter also details an indirect criticism of Maimonides' cosmological scepticism by means of a direct refutation of Aristotle's cosmological dogmatism. Gersonides considered the creation of the world to be one of the central dogmas of Judaism, especially because it highlights the volitional and providential character of divine activity.
God and his Attributes
Authors: Feldman Seymour
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains how the existence of God is philosophically provable. It adopts the terminology of Thomas Aquinas about some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. In attempting to delineate the distinct domain of theology, Aquinas distinguished between the “preambles of faith” and the “articles of faith.” This chapter analyzes the underlying assumption that human reason can prove and explain some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. Not only does it discuss the common ground for philosophy and faith, but it explains monotheistic religions without religiously based assumptions. It describes the ontological proof of Anselm of Canterbury and points out various arguments about the world and how they cannot be explained without positing the existence of God.
The Chutzpah of Jewish Cultural Studies
Authors: Bronner Simon J.
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Jewish cultural studies. In its formation, Jewish cultural studies is something of a hybrid of Jewish studies and cultural studies. For Jewish studies, Jewish cultural studies helps to contemporize and contextualize Jewish experience. And since the identity of Jewishness is often open to interpretation, a related discourse of Jewish cultural studies is on the authenticity of cultural practice and disputed claims to heritage. The chapter then discusses the word chutzpah to draw attention to the questions, posed by the discipline of Jewish cultural studies, of representation and identity that arise from cultural communication. Rendered positively or not, chutzpah in the twenty-first century or the postmodern age has been used in popular culture to convey an unshakable Jewish spirit in the absence of material difference.
‘Take Down Mezuzahs, Remove Name-Plates’: The Emigration of Objects from Germany to Palestine
Authors: Schlör Joachim
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates the meaning of objects inventoried and packed as emigrants prepared to leave Germany for Palestine after Adolf Hitler came to power. Private property has, for both the individual memory and the collective memory, a deep emotional significance. The exclusion of the Jews from German society started with the National Socialist policy of ‘Aryanization’, the expropriation of property. Many y émigrés had to abandon, to leave behind, their private dwellings. In the process, they lost more than the object itself. Around 1800, the British philosopher and legal theoretician Jeremy Bentham drew attention to the importance of the relationship between an object and its owner: ownership forms the basis of a hope. Thus, the threat of losing property is symbolic of the loss of all hope of a continued life in Germany and as a German. Ultimately, Aryanization and confiscation were a symbolic theft of identity. And in these cases, even the legal system was no longer capable of protecting property rights. Those who emigrated in good time were able to take at least some of their property with them.
Hasidism versus Zionism as Remembered by Carpatho-Russian Jews between the Two World Wars
Authors: Rosen Ilana
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the stories of Jews who lived in Carpatho-Russia which demonstrate the conflicts between hasidism and Zionism among Jewish community members. Before the First World War, most of Carpatho-Russian Jewry opposed the Zionist movement and excoriated families and youths who joined it. After the war, the Zionists founded the Hebrew academic high schools; organized groups of potential emigrants to Erets Yisra'el; prepared them for pioneering and agricultural life in a training process called hakhsharah; and, where possible, sent them on aliyah (emigration) to Palestine. Until they emigrated, the newly recruited Zionists were often a cause of social and cultural upheaval in their home towns and villages, as they challenged the long-standing reign of hasidism by presenting an alternative new ethos. The chapter identifies three kinds of conflict brought about by the rise of Zionism in Carpatho-Russia, as reflected in the personal narratives of people who came to Israel from that region as Zionists. One is the ideological, verbal, and physical battle between members of the two movements. The second is the inner struggle of the region's Zionist youth while they were in transition between hasidism and Zionism. Thirdly, the chapter looks at family relations and the conflicts that were the inevitable result of the first two clashes.
As Goyish as Lime Jell-O? Jack Benny and the American Construction of Jewishness
Authors: Pearse Holly A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the Jewishness of modern radio comedy. The question of whether Jack Benny — who in a career spanning from 1932 to 1965 was internationally renowned as a star in the classic radio period and, later, the ‘golden age’ of television — was a Jewish comic or not is hard to answer. The belief among popular culture critics that his screen and radio persona had no ethnicity and was part of a more universal strain of comedy as radio sought popularity outside urban centres has been expressed in many summaries of his life and career. However, scholars looking to Jewish cultural studies more than to media studies for analytical perspectives have argued that celebrities play a role in the construction of American Jewishness, even those ethnic performers who appropriate apparently non-ethnic stage personas. Performance can encode so-called ‘Jewish sensibilities’, though in a highly commodified form largely produced by generations of media portrayals of Jewishness. The chapter examines this thesis by giving special attention to Jack Benny in performance on the radio at a formative time for mass culture.
Jewish Coding: Cultural Studies and Jewish American Cinema
Authors: Koven Mikel J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the Jewishness of Hollywood film. It explores how Jewishness is encoded within specific key Jewish American films — films which, while made by Jewish American film-makers, are accessible to and indeed intended for a mainstream, and therefore not necessarily a Jewish, audience. The emphasis on the ‘ness’ in ‘Jewishness’ moves the humanistic analysis of popular cinema from what the director intended to the way that different audiences interpret the production. It is a way to get at Jewish meanings which may be different from literal meaning, which tends to be defined by mainstream or Christian standards. Coding is here recognized as a kind of cultural bilingualism wherein, while the films are on the surface fully comprehensible to all potential audience members, Jewish and non-Jewish, certain discourses will be directed to and more immediately understood by those who have esoteric knowledge of Jewish American culture. Through a consideration of various types of cinematic encodedness — of language, of customs, and of music — the chapter investigates the emergent Jewishness of these films, which include Exodus (1960), Schindler's List (1993), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
The Dualities of House and Home in Jewish Culture
Authors: Bronner Simon J.
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter lays out two related dimensions of the Jewish home: the physical and the metaphysical. Calling a house a home suggests an emotional connection to it that has been constituted by the shared history of the building and its occupants. When residents refer to a ‘Jewish home’, they may define their domiciles socially as Jewish because their families live there, but a cultural question is how ‘Jewishness’ is materially expressed to themselves and to others. Inside the house, artefacts of home religious observance — often designated as specifically for the sabbath, Hanukah, or Passover — are often displayed and described by families as markers of identity, as well as being used for rituals. The chapter goes on to explore how the Jewish home is expressed through its interiors and exteriors; through feelings, practices, and performances; and through the domestic sphere and the domestication of identity.
Home in the Pampas: Alberto Gerchunoff’s Jewish Gauchos
Authors: Szurmuk Mónica
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns to Argentina, where Alberto Gerchunoff's Jewish Gauchos (1910) became an icon of Jewish incorporation into Argentinian society in the early twentieth century. In a series of vignettes, Gerchunoff showed that in working the land Jews had returned to a biblical way of life and had finally come home. His text received attention not just for its powerful narrative of immigrant Jews making a home in Argentina but even more for the way in which it claimed Argentina as a Jewish homeland. The publication of the book opened up a symbolic space for Jewish immigrants in the lettered culture of Buenos Aires and also in the future of the country. But, as the chapter shows, later in his life Gerchunoff came to doubt his idealism about Argentina as homeland, though by that time he had become separated from his text, which had taken on a life of its own in the Argentinian imagination.
Domesticity and the Home (Page): Blogging and the Blurring of Public and Private among Orthodox Jewish Women
Authors: Lieber Andrea
Published: February 2021

This chapter turns a feminist lens on blogs as the literary voice of Orthodox Jewish women in England and the United States, but finds that these women's productions defy easy categorization. They are extensions of home because their content typically relates the woman's responsibility for family and home. They are ‘home pages’ where these women can voice their frustrations and joys, but unlike conversations, in which they can control who listens, these daily diaries are public. The chapter scrutinizes the many non-Jewish reporters drawing attention to the blogs and their surprise that what they assumed to be an isolated, pre-modern group would log on from computers in a ‘traditional’ Jewish household. At the same time, it reveals internal conflicts within the group about how their communications can be reconciled with halakhah, and their potential to change the role of women.
Culture Mavens: Feeling at Home in America
Authors: Joselit Jenna Weissman
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews recent museum exhibitions and guides to cultural Jewishness to pose the question of whether a new emotional concept of Jews at home is apparent in American culture. Considering the status of American Jewry as the largest diaspora population in the world, one must wonder if it constitutes a decided rupture with the past, an entirely new calibration of matters Jewish, or simply an expression of tradition in a new register. It laments the difficulty of studying the American Jewry, especially when compared with the Jewish populations in other countries — to say nothing of contemporary Israeli society. The American Jews' fluid and simultaneous embrace of consumer culture and liturgical tradition, of ‘kosher cellphones’ and gay weddings, of Chinese food and ‘heirloom talitot’ (prayer shawls) that embed a photograph of a beloved ancestor in their folds — makes for a culture that defies easy description. Yet the chapter surmises that there is something about the modern American Jewish experience circa 2009 that seems downright revolutionary rather than evolutionary.
Reflections on ‘Culture Mavens’ from an Australian Jewish Perspective
Authors: Rutland Suzanne D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter seeks to explain Australian Jewish cultural patterns in the light of the narrative of the social and historical context that has developed in America discussed in Chapter 10. It considers that Australian Jewry was not only a decade but possibly a whole generation behind American Jewry, if not more. The chapter describes how, on the whole, Australian Jewry is still much more traditional in its Jewish lifestyles and choices. The largely religious Jewish day school movement, which attracts a high proportion of Jewish children, is a major factor affecting home practice, decoration, and observance in Australia. Since there is a clear nexus between home and school, this adds to the distinctive element of Australian Jewry. In addition, the community is still largely an immigrant community, strongly informed by the Holocaust and Israel, and does not demonstrate the same varieties of Judaism described in that chapter.
Incarnation
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Jewish philosophical arguments against the Christian doctrine of incarnation. Two main features were apparent in the doctrine that Jesus was both God and man: the first was the soteriological and the second was the Christological. Discussion of soteriology attempted to explain “why God became man.” Christology was intended to answer the question of “how God became man.” The question of why God became man was answered by the doctrine of original sin and its redemption. The Jewish polemicists employed a wide range of contentions which stressed that this doctrine was not befitting God; they argued that the Christian notion of original sin is inconsistent with God's justice. The Christians argued from a totally different perspective: that God became man was not unbefitting divinity; rather, it was a sign of God's great love for mankind. However, it is concerning the second aspect of incarnation, namely, Christology, that one discerns arguments of a philosophical nature. Three commonly held philosophical suppositions were seen as precluding God's taking on flesh. These were (l) God's incorporeality, (2) His immutability, and (3) His simple unity. In addition, the Jewish polemicists argued that (4) the assumption of a union of Divinity and humanity had certain impossible consequences.
Transubstantiation
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Jewish philosophical arguments against the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation—the dogma that the bread and wine used in the mass actually became the body and blood of Christ. For many Christians, the sacrament of the Eucharist and the doctrine of transubstantiation were mysteries that were not amenable to rational investigation. Yet the fact that mysteries were not rationally provable did not mean that Christian thinkers refrained from trying to give a philosophical underpinning to this doctrine. However, the Jewish use of specifically philosophical arguments against transubstantiation came surprisingly late. Whatever the reason for the late appearance of Jewish philosophical arguments against transubstantiation, it is certain that by the time of their appearance, some Jews already had a good idea of the internal Christian criticism of it. The first Jewish polemicist to offer a comprehensive, philosophical critique of the doctrine of transubstantiation was Profiat Duran. Duran claimed that the whole idea of transubstantiation ran counter to the principles of the rational sciences. Other Jewish polemicists, though relying upon Duran's arguments, used different frameworks to present their contentions. The Jewish philosophical arguments against transubstantiation can be divided into five categories: (l) the interpenetrability of bodies; (2) the concepts of number and place; (3) the concept of motion; (4) the problem of accidents; and (5) miscellaneous arguments.
Conclusions
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter focuses on the nature of Jewish–Christian polemics and intellectual relations. It is clear from the discussion of philosophical arguments that those Jews who participated in anti-Christian polemics had a fairly good knowledge of the beliefs with which they disagreed. Though some Jewish polemicists had a much greater knowledge of Christianity than others, most of those engaged in religious debates had a fairly good understanding of Christianity. They learned about Christian beliefs from frequent contact with Christian polemicists and missionaries. Another feature of the medieval Jewish philosophical critique of Christianity is the fact that the Jewish arguments were rarely original. It is rather easy to find the sources of these contentions in Christian heretical literature, Muslim Kalam, or orthodox Christian works which were intended to answer heterodox objections. Most of the philosophical arguments found in the works of Jewish polemicists can also be discovered in various earlier sources. The chapter then studies the role of philosophy in Jewish–Christian polemics, and discusses the significance of the medieval Jewish philosophical polemic against Christianity.
Louis Finkelstein, Mordecai Kaplan, and American ‘Jewish contributions to Civilization’
Authors: Biale David
Published: February 2021

This chapter compares three twentieth and twenty-first century overviews of Jewish culture and civilization through the works of Mordecai Kaplan, Louis Finkelstein, and David Biale. It addresses criticisms to some of the treasured dichotomies of what might be called “Judaism”. It also discusses exile versus sovereignty, Jewish versus non-Jewish culture, elite versus popular culture, and Jewish distinctiveness versus cultural hybridity and pluralism. The chapter reveals the modern topos of the Jewish contribution to civilization that can be traced back to Moses Mendelssohn, who argued that the Jews had anticipated modernity by removing coercion from religion. It mentions Jewish writers who strove to persuade that the Jews deserved to enter Western civilization.
Does Gender Matter?
Authors: Hyman Paula E.
Published: February 2021

This chapter probes the significant contributions to the understanding of the past, which postmodern criticism that has attributed vital importance to women as a historical subject and to gender as a category of critical analysis. It offers a valuable assessment both of inroads already made by women's history and gender analysis into Jewish historical research. It also invokes distinctions drawn by Gerda Lerner, 'the doyenne of women's history', to categorize both achievements and desiderata in the field of feminism. The chapter reviews compensatory history which focuses on women previously ignored, including gender-based adjustment and refinement of interpretation in areas ranging from the Conversos to the shtetl and from the Holocaust to the family. It tackles areas where women's and gender-sensitive history have the power to transform and reshape the fundamental assumptions of European Jewish history.
Setting the Scene
Authors: Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a background of the arrival of the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam in the 1850s and how they created out of nothing a Jewish community that quickly became renowned across the world. The former Conversos, including those of the Portuguese community of early modern Amsterdam, have been called the first modern Jews. As New Christians, they gained a reputation for immense wealth, elegance, and aristocratic style that commanded respect in their new domicile. It is less widely known that the new immigrants from the Iberian peninsula also included paupers, or that some of the immigrants or their descendants later became impoverished in Amsterdam. Because of the economic restrictions Amsterdam imposed upon Jews, many were not able to practise their accustomed occupations and as a result were reduced to poverty. Women, single or at the head of a nuclear or extended family, were particularly vulnerable, as were orphans, the infirm, and the aged. Thus, the Portuguese in Amsterdam built up a welfare system that included provision for displaced persons, and especially paupers, belonging to their ‘nation’. However, in the event they had to cope not only with their own compatriots but also with a host of poor migrants from other parts of the contemporary Jewish world, fleeing various combinations of war, persecution, economic depression, and unemployment and lured to Amsterdam by the reputed wealth of the Amsterdam Portuguese.
Migration of the Poor
Authors: Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the arrival in to and departure from Amsterdam of poor migrants and the underlying reasons for their movements. The early modern period saw thousands of people, Jews among them, emigrate from their home countries and travel in search of a new life. Some were forced to leave by war, persecution, or economic difficulties; others were attracted by the work made available by new state or mercantile policies. The chapter then looks at the admissions policy of the Amsterdam Portuguese community and casts light on the city's role as a transit port. The city's tolerant immigration policy carried a number of risks, the most obvious of which was that it would be burdened with a large influx of paupers. However, the city seemed undeterred by this. Nevertheless, the city did take a few preventive measures from the last decades of the sixteenth century onwards. For example, undesirable elements were banned from the city, and the authorities laid down that all immigrants must have resided in Amsterdam for a specified period before they could claim poor relief from the city or from the Reformed Charity Board. Over time, eligibility for poor relief was made conditional on increasingly long periods of residence, along with more and more stringent restrictions of other kinds.
The Organization of Welfare
Authors: Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the organization of poor relief along both centrally controlled and private lines and identifies what cultural patterns were reflected in the structure of Portuguese welfare provision. Centralization of poor relief, a fairly new phenomenon in early modern Europe, helped to co-ordinate the various charitable activities, optimizing the care of the poor and keeping it under control. The Amsterdam Portuguese Jews, being integrated European citizens, were aware of these ideas and tried to adapt them to their own environment. They were also influenced by spiritual and religious currents in Jewish thinking. They banded together in societies that, in addition to studying, tried to atone and repent for sins with charitable work. Ultimately, they evinced a highly developed notion of expiation that not only sprang from tendencies within Judaism but also reflected the Catholic background of the former New Christians.
Financing Charity
Authors: Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates the financial support for poor-relief institutions in the Portuguese community, which continued for two centuries. This was made possible by a combination of measures: a constant process of ad hoc adaptation and revision; extracting promises of legacies from the rich; the productive investment of capital; and, finally, taking out loans from other charitable institutions and from individuals. Curbing expenditure and stimulating income became the basis of financial policy. Although the growing tax burden increased the risk both of losing affluent existing members of the community and of failing to attract the well-to-do from other parts, more income had to be generated by higher taxation. Private charity also constituted an important supporting element in the reception and relief of the poor. Contributions to charity were not confined to the elite, but came from various income groups. By and large, it would seem that the average contribution donated by non-Jewish philanthropists was far exceeded by that made by Portuguese Jews.
The Motives behind Charity
Authors: Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the motives behind charity. In seventeenth-century Amsterdam, a well-to-do Portuguese community shouldered the organization of poor relief in many ways and discharged its responsibility for receiving and assisting the poor and for maintaining peace and order. Portuguese Jews supported poor relief as a civic duty and because they felt responsible for their neighbours, as well as for reasons of prestige. In addition, they often made charitable gifts, either in the normal course of life or as they neared death, for religious motives. By the end of the seventeenth century, Portuguese religiosity was tapering off and Portuguese Jews were also becoming less and less involved in the life of their community. Their charity, however, did not decline as a result; on the contrary, it grew. Charitable grants still had religious connotations, but rising poverty, even among the better-off families of the community, called for a collective effort not only through the official channels but also, and to an ever greater extent, by the private sector. Individual Portuguese increasingly took the reins in their own hands, not least in the attempt to maintain their prestige and to gain a hold over the administrative machinery by which charity was disbursed.
Maimonides’ Knowledge of the Philosophical Literature in his Rabbinic Period
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at how Maimonides incorporates philosophy into his works. Although a number of Maimonides' references to philosophers and philosophy cannot be traced, certain conclusions can be drawn. His rabbinic writings subscribe to the Arabic Aristotelian picture of the universe, which he took for granted was authentically Aristotelian. He appears to have learned that scheme from straightforward and accessible works such as Alfarabi's writings and Ghazali's account of the views of the philosophers rather than from the heavier-going treatises of Avicenna. During the period in which Maimonides acquired a breathtaking mastery of rabbinic literature and was busy with his rabbinic writings, he managed to acquire a thorough knowledge of astronomy and a good knowledge of medicine. Despite his unequivocal commitment to the philosophical ideal, he did not find the time needed for mastering the literature of philosophy and made do with short cuts instead.
Maimonides’ Shemonah perakim andAlfarabi’s Fuṣūl Muntazaᒼa
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Maimonides' references to Alfarabi's Fuṣūl al-madanī and Fuṣūl Muntazaʿa — that is, that is to say, Fuṣūl for the Statesman and Excerpted Fuṣūl, with a focus on the latter in particular. Alfarabi's book comprises about 100 fuṣūl (chapters), which range in length from a sentence or two to a couple of pages but usually consist of a single paragraph. They are too short to be termed chapters in the accepted sense of the word today, in contrast to the eight fuṣūl making up Maimonides' Shemonah perakim, which are genuine chapters. Whether Alfarabi assembled and formulated the material by himself or copied some or all from an earlier work that had already done the job can only be conjectured. Whoever it was that composed and assembled the building blocks out of which the Fuṣūl is put together was familiar with Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics; that is clear from the contents and terminology. Here, the chapter shows that, although Maimonides refers to ancient and recent philosophers and to ‘many’ other compositions, all the identifiable quotations in Shemonah perakim can be traced to a single source — the well-known Fuṣūl of Alfarabi.
Maimonides’ Ethical Systems
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Maimonides' treatment of ethics. Shemonah perakim and Mishneh torah base their treatments of ethics on the postulate that characteristics in the human soul are the locus of virtue and vice. Although human actions and characteristics in the soul are interrelated, and the former are the instrument for inculcating the latter, it is not the actions that are virtuous or vicious. Only characteristics in the soul are. On one essential point, Maimonides is consistent and unequivocal throughout his writings. The goal of human life is to perfect the human intellect and to think intelligible thoughts concerning metaphysical matters and, most importantly, God. Ethical attainments, however construed, are means to the greater end.
First Signs of Westernization
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the perception of the eighteenth century that nurtures the seeds of change for the Ottoman Empire and applies to the Syrian Jewish community. It recounts the arrival of Italian Jewish merchants in eighteenth-century Aleppo that fostered significant changes in the socio-economic fabric of the long-standing Jewish community. It also discusses the roots of the uninterrupted Syrian Jewish settlement as the diaspora closest to Erets Yisra'el that lie in antiquity. The chapter cites the extended exposure of Aleppo's Jews to new European Jewish settlers in the city as the most significant force for change in the Syrian Jewish community in the eighteenth century. It describes how European Jews altered the communal and economic structure of Aleppine Jewry and ultimately affected other Syrian Jewish centres.
The Jews in the Local Economy
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

THE Ottoman regime imposed few restrictions on the economic activity of Jews, who were neither barred from, nor forced to pursue, particular occupations. Where Jews were excluded from a specific sector, this was the result of the inflexible Ottoman guild system. Syrian Jews engaged in a wide variety of occupations, ranging from crafts and small workshops to lending on credit and investment in light industry and agriculture. Before examining this activity in any detail, however, it is necessary to consider its context: the economic decline of the Ottoman empire....
Education—Traditional and Modern
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

AS IN THE ELECTION of chief rabbis and the communal administration, so in education the wealthy elites, including the Francos, exercised decisive influence within the Jewish communities of Syria. Throughout the period under examination here the majority of Jewish boys continued to study in traditional frameworks; nonetheless, these years also saw a rising number of students enrolling in the modern schools for boys established by the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the foundation of Alliance institutions for girls. The process of introducing modern educational institutions illustrates once again how divisions within the Jewish community affected Jewish life in Syria....
An Era of Transition
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the Jewish minority in Syria in 1840, when the Damascus affair took place and ended when economic disaster overtook Damascus Jewry. It highlights profound changes in Ottoman imperial rule and society in Syria from 1840, when Ottoman rule was reinstated. It also analyses shifts in Jewish society against the broad background of the political, social, and economic changes that took place in Syria. The chapter looks at the difference between the Jewish communities of Damascus and Aleppo with regard to social structure, economic endeavour, communal leadership and organization, and education. It recounts Jewish merchants in both Damascus and Aleppo in 1840 that engaged in international trade via the camel caravans that travelled between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.
Joseph Ibn Abithur
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the poetry of Joseph Ibn Abithur. Joseph was born in the middle of the tenth century in Merida and lived in Cordoba, which was the centre of Muslim and Jewish civilisation in Spain at this time. There is a tradition, preserved by Abraham ibn Daoud, that he gave an Arabic explanation of the Talmud to the Caliph al-Hakim II. Joseph was surrounded by controversy. He was forced to leave Spain after making an unsuccessful bid for the intellectual leadership of the Jewish community, and he spent the latter part of his life journeying in the lands of the Middle East. He is known as a poet mainly for his liturgical work, much of which was adopted into the prayer-books of the Provencal, Catalonian, and North African Jews. Ultimately, his poetry is more akin to that of the piyyutim of Eastern Mediterranean Jewry than to the ‘new’ poetry beginning to flourish in Spain. The chapter then looks at three of his poems: Sanctification, A Song for the New Year, and Lament on the Devastation of the Land of Israel (1012).
Todros Ben Judah Abulafia
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the poetry of Todros ben Judah Abulafia. Todros ben Judah Halevi Abulafia was born in Toledo in 1247. Alfonso of Castille attracted many Jews to his court, and Todros was among those who sought wealthy patrons in an effort to reach the royal favour, and he did indeed succeed in being received by the king, to whom he dedicated a number of verses. One of his patrons, Don Isaac de la Maleha, was executed by the king in 1279. Todros himself was imprisoned with many other Jews of Castille, and held for ransom. In 1281, however, he was released amid circumstances which are unknown. He appears to have received the approbation of Alfonso’s successor, Sancho IV. The chapter then looks at Todros’s poem From Prison.
To ‘Civilize’ the Jews: Polish Debates on the Reform of Jewish Society, 1788–1830
Authors: Wodziński Marcin
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides a general introduction to the issues that shaped Polish policy towards Jews. It emphasizes the most general policy objectives and their implementation, as well as on the way the Jewish community was perceived. Many Polish reformers envisaged that Polish Jews should become “civil Christians”, that is distinct from their Polish Christian neighbors only in their private religious beliefs. The chapter also talks about the proposed new “Mosaic” religion that was essentially devoid of religious ritual and with a minimum of institutional structures. It explains the Mosaic religion as a state-sponsored campaign to purge Judaism of its content so as to facilitate the reform of Jewish society.
Building Community Within and Around Schools
Authors: Goldring Ellen B.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the role of the school in redefining the collaboration between school and community. It argues that it is important to explore the purposes and mechanisms of school–community collaboration. The chapter considers why a school should pursue collaboration with the community, and what the mechanisms are by which schools and communities can interact with and mutually support one another. It focuses on three purposes, on the corresponding perspectives on why and how school–community relations can ‘work’, and on appropriate mechanisms for bringing this about. The first strand concerns school–community collaboration for the purpose of enhancing learning. Second, the chapter discusses school–community collaboration for the purpose of developing social capital. Third, it presents the notion of school–community collaboration for the purpose of building and developing the wider Jewish community.
From Control to Collaboration
Authors: Smrekar Claire
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores four different models of school–community relations: co-optation, management, engagement, and coalition. These models are derived from qualitative case studies of public and private schools, including magnet schools, Catholic schools, workplace schools, and neighbourhood schools, located in urban and suburban contexts in the United States. Each model includes four elements that define the nature, quality, and intensity of association between schools and their communities — its goals, functions, relationships, and outcomes — and are reflected in the organizational practices and priorities of the schools. The chapter examines these models to consider how schools' cultures and organizational priorities coalesce to produce particular models of school–community relations. It also considers how these models are mapped on to different kinds of schools and what the implications might be regarding the types of relationships formed between families and schools for Jewish day school education worldwide.