bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Underground Movement in Auschwitz Concentration Camp1
Authors: Garliński Józef
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the underground movement in Auschwitz concentration camp. On September 21, 1940, a second transport from Warsaw arrived at Auschwitz. In this transport was a Polish officer, Witold Pilecki. With the consent of his superiors from the underground army, he had volunteered for Auschwitz, letting himself be taken in a Warsaw round-up. In October, Pilecki approached the first, very carefully chosen, prisoners. His idea was to establish an initial group of five men, who were not to know each other but were only united through the leader. After some weeks, there were several of these ‘fives’, connected only through Pilecki; all had sworn the oath of the Polish Home Army. This network was called by its organizer the Union of Military Organization. It was based on two main pillars: the first was the hospital, which afforded shelter and opportunities to help others, the second the Labour Assignment Office. Prisoners who worked there had the chance to transfer their colleagues from a bad working party (Kommando) to a good one, such as electricians, carpenters, cooks, and others.
Edward C. Thaden, with the collaboration of Marianna Forster Thaden, Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710-1870. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1984. Pp. 278.
Authors: Lewitter L. R.
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates Edward C. Thaden's Russia's Western Borderlands, 1710–1870 (1984). The territories in question are Finland, Estonia, Livonia, Courland, Lithuania, White Russia, the right bank Ukraine and the Kingdom of Poland. The fate of the areas whose eastern portion had been the ‘borderlands of Western civilization’ is all too familiar: annexation, attempts at integration with the Empire, Russification fiercely resisted by the Poles, repeated insurrections, a recurrent state of crisis marked by the frequent imposition of martial law, economic stagnation (except for the Kingdom) or plain backwardness, and undue delay in the emancipation of the peasantry. All this was due to the state of affairs which Polish lethargy, Russian expansionism, and international power politics had engendered in the latter part of the 18th century to the subsequent detriment in varying degrees of Russians, White Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Jews. Such advantages as may have accrued to sectional interests, the bureaucracy and the official Church for example, are not clearly shown. The ease and empathy with which the authors of this piece of administrative history adopt a Russocentric, indeed Petropolitan point of view and enter into the rigid and narrow frame of mind of tsarist officialdom is both astonishing and disturbing.
Raymond Pearson. National Minorities in Eastern Europe, 1848-1945. London: Macmillan Press. 1983. Pp. x, 249.
Authors: Smith Anthony
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on two books on Eastern European national minorities. The first is Stephen Horak's comprehensive handbook of national minorities in Eastern Europe between 1919 and 1980. Arranged by ‘state-nation’, the studies contained in the handbook offer a brief historical survey of the overall position of minorities in each state, followed by sections on each minority, together with a valuable bibliography arranged by national minority within each state. In these respects, the handbook, by compiling and presenting so much scattered information in a single volume and indicating what is being done in Eastern Europe in the way of further research, performs an invaluable service. A similar demographic emphasis is apparent in the general account of Eastern European minorities by Raymond Pearson. Here the time-scale stops at 1945 but extends back to 1848, a date which by his own admission possesses symbolic rather than real significance in Eastern Europe. Pearson's account presents the effects of the World Wars, especially the Second, on political boundaries and demographic patterns — notably of ethnic Germans, Russians, Gypsies, and Jews — in a concise, but balanced, manner.
Joseph Marcus. Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1979-1939. (Studies in the Social Sciences.) Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers. 1983. Pp. 569.
Authors: Holzer Jerzy
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Joseph Marcus's Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939 (1983). Marcus's book consists of an introductory section in which he sketches the thousand-year history of the Jews in Poland and gives basic information concerning Poland's history between the two world wars. There is also a section on social history, the longest and most specialized section, where the author discusses the problems of social structure, national income, social groups, social institutions, education, demography, housing conditions, social politics, economic politics, and the wealth accumulated by Polish Jews. Finally, there is a section on political history with an extensive chapter on Jewish political parties, three chronological chapters, and two chapters dealing with various related issues such as emigration and the preparations for war. The whole is supplemented by notes, appendices, a bibliography and an index of names and institutions.
From Maimonides to Duran
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the important thinkers who came after Moses Maimonides’ time. During this period there were three basic ways of relating to Maimonides the philosopher, theologian, and halakhist: his work was commented upon, it was subjected to criticism, and it was invoked as an authority. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries only five thinkers explicitly contributed to the discussion of creed formulation in Judaism. With the beginning of the fifteenth century the chapter reveals a startling change. While in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the question of creed formulation was, at best, of peripheral concern to Jewish intellectuals, in the fifteenth century it moved much closer to the centre of the stage. Indeed, with the glaring exception of Maimonides, no Jewish thinker before the beginning of the fifteenth century devoted systematic, self-conscious, and sustained attention to the question of the dogmas of Judaism.
Joseph Albo
Authors: Kellner Menachem
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Joseph Albo. Albo wrote one of the most enduringly popular works of medieval Jewish philosophical theology, the Sefer ha-Ikkarim. The Sefer ha-Ikkarim, like Crescas's Or Adonai, is a broad-ranging conspectus of theological and philosophical discussions organized according to the author's dogmatic system. But, while only the framework of Crescas's work is determined by his system of principles, much of the content of Albo's work, at least in the first treatise, is given over to substantive discussions of principles of faith. Here, the apologetic intent of the work is evident from the outset. Although masquerading as a disinterested study of the principles of divine law in general, the Sefer ha-Ikkarim is a thinly disguised apology for Judaism. The Sefer ha-Ikkarim, therefore, seeks to explain ‘those principles which pertain to a divine law generally, principles without which a divine law cannot be conceived’.
Writing Jewish History in the Postmodern Climate
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter clarifies what general challenges postmodern thought and practice pose for Jewish history, and on what basis Jewish historiography can meet them. Clarification requires engaging with the subject of postmodernism, notoriously associated with opaque jargon and tangled expression. In addition, the study of Jewish history — indeed, all of Jewish studies — has come into question as a result of the postmodern approach. The chapter considers why having certainties such as the very existence of postmodernism and the accepted method by which it is practised becomes problematic. It then turns to how one can overcome such problems. Perhaps here, in a Jewish context, it can be made to speak, as the Torah is said to do, ‘in the language of humans’.
Methodological Hybridity: The Art of Jewish Historiography and the Methods of Folklore
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the methodology of history and the potential for cooperation between the fields of history and folklore by examining the arguments of folklorist Eli Yassif. In so doing, the chapter raises the question of how the methods of folklore can be used in the historiographical enterprise. The historian's work begins before methodology enters the picture: identifying sources, gathering data or information, formulating questions, and then choosing the appropriate methodology. It continues after methodology has done its work with interpretation in light of the assumptions, questions, knowledge, and methodological analysis that have been proffered. Yassif demands that historians become better folklorists; that does not mean that they need to stop being historians.
Jewish History and Postmodernity: Challenge and Rapprochement
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This concluding chapter shows that it is possible to incorporate postmodern sensibilities and methods into researching and writing Jewish history while preserving — and even enhancing — the fundamental coherence of the subject and the basic integrity of traditional historiographical methodology. Research, evidence, close reading, rational enquiry, and the positivist assumptions that historical description really does have a referent, and that logic or empirical proof can confirm new knowledge, still are the touchstones of the historical endeavour. This positivism, however, is a reformed one. It is both critical, deconstructing sources and reading them ‘against the grain’ (that is, exposing alternative views of reality to those their authors intended to convey), and self-critical, being candid about perspectives and presumptions. It is self-conscious about its epistemological assumptions, its interpretative principles, its rhetorical strategies and devices, and its practitioner's metahistorical biases.
Prague’s Jewish Community
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides an overview of the history and inner workings of the eighteenth-century Jewish community of Prague. It focuses on the efflorescence of Prague's rabbinic culture during the latter half of the century despite Joseph II's Toleranzpatent, which officially abolished the Jewish community's autonomy. It also mentions several historians who claim that the Toleranzpatent marks the beginning of the modernization of Bohemian Jewry that was characterized by political and cultural transformation. The chapter examines Joseph II's Sprachgesetz or language law in 1748 that mandated that all Jewish communal business and public records be kept in German. It elaborates Joseph II's reforms that attempted to eliminate distinctively Jewish behaviour and erode the Jewish community's organizational structure, which challenged traditional Jewish society.
Promotion of Kabbalistic Study, Books, and Customs
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews the range of kabbalistic customs, books, and teachings were promoted by Ezekiel Landau as a result of his kabbalistic orientation. It highlights Landau's view on the Kabbalah as the key to understanding the inner truth of the aggadah, in which he espouses the pedagogic importance of knowing kabbalistic concepts and offers kabbalistic readings of enigmatic agadot. It also examines Landau's kabbalistic worldview that extends beyond the theoretical and affect his opinions and recommendations in the realm of praxis. The chapter recounts the approbation of Moses ben Jekuthiel Zalman's Magid Mishnah as a commentary on the first volume of the Lurianic Mishnat Hasidim. It describes the confused state of Lurianic writings and the tremendous contribution of Moses ben Jekuthiel towards alleviating the problem.
Zohar and Early Mystical Sources
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews the concepts originating in Sefer yetsirah or Book of Creation that are found in several of Ezekiel Landau's writings, including zoharic motifs that repeatedly appear in his Prague works. It considers Sefer yetsirah as the first systematic Hebrew mystical treatise and oldest mystical text used by Landau. It also explores other writings by Landau that appropriate theosophical-theurgical notions emphasized in the Zohar. The chapter details Landau's Prague writings that are replete with citations from the Zohar, such as the depiction of the sefirotic realm's three major aspects: the right, left, and centre. It mentions the research of the art historian Thomas Hubka, which showed that major zoharic motifs were incorporated into the architectural design and interior decorations of numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Polish synagogues.
Introduction
Authors: Flatto Sharon
Published: February 2021

BESIDES APPROPRIATING kabbalistic tenets unique to a specific kabbalistic school, Landau’s Prague works often draw on doctrines that are pivotal to numerous kabbalistic systems, as well as interlacing rabbinic concepts with a range of mystical motifs. The ideas examined in this section appear in a variety of kabbalistic sources, including Nahmanidean writings, the Zohar, and Cordoverian, Lurianic, and ...
The Beginnings of a French Jewish Literature
Authors: Malinovich Nadia
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the tension between universalism and particularism as expressed in the pre-war poetry, novels, and essays of André Spire, Edmond Fleg, Henri Franck, and Jean-Richard Bloch. It examines the question of Jewish identity in the modern world through writers that paved the way for the much more widespread phenomenon of Jewish self-questioning in the post-war years. It also looks at André Spire's ground-breaking Poèmes juifs and Quelques Juifs that offered a scathing critique of both Jewish assimilation and French antisemitism. It discusses Henri Franck's prose poem La Danse devant l'arche, which describes a young man's quest for the meaning of life and reveals a similar tension between affirming the specificity of Jewish roots and embracing a larger French cultural heritage.
Jewish Literature in France 1920–1932
Authors: Malinovich Nadia
Published: February 2021

This chapter covers a set of concerns surrounding the emergence of a modern Jewish literature in the French language. It explains what the novelty of a few maverick intellectuals in the pre-war years that became a recognized genre of writing in the 1920s. It identifies Jewish writers who began to publish novels, plays, poems, collections of folklore, and short stories about different aspects of Jewish life and the issues of assimilation and acculturation in modern society. The chapter discusses Jewish literature in translation that comprised important components of literary renaissance. It also details how French readers were introduced to the world of east European and North African Jewry through novels and short stories written in French by writers who had migrated to France.
Humanity and its Destiny
Authors: Feldman Seymour
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the topic of humanity's ultimate felicity, which is another common interest between some Greek philosophers and believers of scriptural religions. It discusses assumptions that a person's mundane existence as a material entity was not the end of the matter; that there had to be something more than a life of material pursuits and satisfaction. This chapter includes Plato's dialogues in Phaedo where he enunciated and argued for the doctrine that the human soul is immortal by virtue of its essential incorporeality and hence incorruptibility. In other dialogues of Plato, the core doctrine of an immortal soul is associated with the ancillary ideas of the pre-existence of the soul and of the transmigration of souls. It talks about how in later Platonism, especially the philosophy of Plotinus, the basic idea of an immortal soul is interpreted in terms of the doctrine of the ascent, or “reversion”, of the human soul to some higher entity, the World Soul, or even to the One, the ultimate reality.
The Torah
Authors: Feldman Seymour
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores why a divine revelation, in particular the Torah, was given if destiny is defined in terms of intellectual perfection and involves knowledge of the sciences and metaphysics. It talks about Gersonides' whole enterprise of showing the philosophical provability of the fundamental truths of metaphysics, which pertains to true happiness and reveals his complete confidence in the powers of reason. The chapter describes one of the earliest Jewish theologians to confront the issue on the contrast or conflict between human reason and divine revelation head-on, Sa'adiah Gaon. Sa'adiah Gaon was quite confident in his own rational powers and throughout his book engaged in philosophical argument to show that Judaism was a religion wholly compatible with human reason, albeit revealed through prophecy. It points out how divine revelation, according to Sa'adiah Gaon, provides supplementary information that aids in applying the general teachings of the Torah to the specific circumstances of everyday life.
A Synagogue in Olyka: Architecture and Legends
Authors: Kravtsov Sergey R.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Olyka's main synagogue, known as the Great Synagogue, reconstructing it as a virtual site of memory. At the centre of a fertile area populated by Ukrainians and ruled at different times by members of the Ruthenian/Ukrainian, Polish, and Lithuanian nobility, it attracted a community of Jews, who settled there and plied their various trades and crafts for three and a half centuries. Though these activities connected them to the local population and to the rulers of the city, the Jews preserved their identity in a local population dominated by Christian denominations, including Orthodox, Calvinist, and Greek and Roman Catholic. Central to both Jewish and Christian communities was the visible sacred symbol of the synagogue or church, and in their synagogue architecture, Jews felt a need to substantiate a Jewish presence, organized around their sacred space, in their own eyes and in the eyes of other communities. Belarusian, Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish historiographies are informative concerning the Jewish past of Olyka, while Jewish sources are largely silent, or give a legendary narrative of events. Thus, both legend and history contribute to the construction of a place of memory.
Holocaust Narratives and their Impact: Personal Identification and Communal Roles
Authors: Kliger Hannah , Hollander-Goldfein Bea , Passow Emilie S.
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses Holocaust survivors' stories told today not just as witness accounts, but as narratives expressing life stories that become integrated into family identities and are retold by succeeding generations. For the Jewish historical and cultural narrative, particularly of the last century, the experience of trauma and dislocation is communicated on two levels: as family discourse and as communal oral history. Evyatar Friesel has noted the ways in which the Holocaust affects contemporary Jewish consciousness. Meanwhile, Dan Bar-On describes the interpretative strategies that survivors and their children employ to communicate real and imagined lessons of the Holocaust. From these and other studies, the forms of recording and transmitting the experiences of Jewish Holocaust survivors offer lessons in the modes of adaptation and meaning-making in the aftermath of trauma. Ethnographic and autobiographical materials have thus become rich resources for research devoted to issues of survival and identity, providing an insider's view of the suffering endured by trauma victims as well as the processes by which these ordeals are experienced, incorporated, mediated, constructed, and transcended.
The Sublimity of the Jewish Type: Balzac’s Belle Juive as Virgin Magdalene aux Camélias
Authors: Lewin Judith
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies the Jewish female character in French literature. The Jewish woman's difference from feminized Jewish men and marriageable Christian women is not enough to delineate her specificity and hence her function as a fictional character. She is also seen through the lens of orientalism, because of the constructed image of her roots in the Middle East as a member of the ‘Hebraic’ or ‘Israelite’ race. The French Romantic writer Chateaubriand suggested that the treatment of Jews by Christian society varied according to their gender and physical appeal. He argued that Jewish women were exempted from perpetual misery and persecution by the grace Jesus accorded to Mary Magdalene, and that this was the root of Christian men's attraction to and sexual associations with Jewish women. The chapter then presents specific examples of representations of Jewish women: in this case the Jewish woman in Paris of the 1830s and 1840s as she appears in Honoré de Balzac, one of the nineteenth century's most popular and influential European writers. While Balzac had limited contact with actual Jewish women in Paris, the figures he created had a tremendous influence on the rhetoric of representing what has come to be known as la belle Juive.
Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages: With a New Introduction
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: February 2021

This book is based on a comprehensive reading of philosophical arguments drawn from all the major Jewish sources, published and unpublished, from the Geonic period in the ninth century until the dawn of the Haskalah in the late eighteenth century. The core of the book is a detailed discussion of the four doctrines of Christianity whose rationality Jews thought they could definitively refute: trinity, incarnation, transubstantiation, and virgin birth. In each case, the book presents a succinct history of the Christian doctrine and then proceeds to a careful examination of the Jewish efforts to demonstrate its impossibility. The main text is written in a non-technical manner, with the Christian doctrines and the Jewish responses both carefully explained; the notes include long quotations, in Hebrew and Arabic as well as in English, from sources that are not readily available in English. At the time of its original publication in 1977, this book was regarded as a major contribution to a relatively neglected area of medieval Jewish intellectual history; the new, wide-ranging introduction surveys and summarizes subsequent scholarship, and re-establishes its position as a major work.
Trinity
Authors: Lasker Daniel J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jewish philosophical arguments against the Christian doctrine of Trinity. Though not all Christians with whom the Jews were familiar agreed on all the detail of the Trinitarian doctrine, most followed the formulation of the Quicumque (Athanasian) Creed. A number of concepts are presented in this formulation of faith. First, there is only one God, who is one substance or divine nature. Second, this one God has three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Third, the Father was not begotten, the Son was generated from the Father, and the Spirit proceeded from the Father and Son. Fourth, all three Persons are coequal and coeternal. The Jewish polemicists disagreed with the division of God into three Persons and with the assumption that the three Persons were apparently causally connected. The Jews rejected this Christian concept of a triune God as being incompatible with the principles of God's unity, which even the Christians claimed they maintained. The chapter then details the four major categories of Jewish philosophical arguments against the Trinity: (1) Trinity implies matter; (2) the divine attributes are not Persons; (3) generation disproves unity; (4) syllogistic logic refutes the Trinity. It also considers (5) images of the Trinity.
‘Jewish Contribution to Civilization’ and its Implications for Notions of ‘Jewish Superiority’ in the Modern Period
Authors: Cohen Richard I.
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews the landmarks of Jewish historiography from Simone Luzzatto to Jacob Katz, while giving special attention to the nexus between notions of 'Jewish contribution' and 'Jewish superiority'. It discusses the value system that proves the worthiness of Jews according to the criteria of a non-Jewish or Christian worldview. It also claims how Jewish apologists still asserted their cultural 'superiority' in their title to the Bible, their prophetic mission, or the virtuosity and pristine singularity of their Judaism. The chapter cites Joseph Jacobs and Cecil Roth, who have often been mocked for their studies on 'Jewish contribution to civilization'. It looks at Jacobs's and Roth's apologetic, naive works that respond to antisemitic claims about Jews in a caricaturistic manner.
The ‘Jewish contribution’ to Christianity
Authors: Berger David
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains how the discussion of Christianity's Jewish legacy on either side of the interreligious divide developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It cites Jewish apologetics and Christian antisemitism that confronted one another against the background of the new biblical criticism. It also covers the universalist prophetic ethic that was immortalized in the liberal Protestant denominations in Christianity and outweighed the Mosaic law at the bedrock of traditional Judaism. The chapter looks at Judaism's efforts to define its own contours and penetrate the depths of its soul as it encounters the dominant Western faith. It identifies the extent of the Jewish role and the positive assessment of discipline, field, or ideal that Jews had allegedly contributed.
Judaism, Islam, and Hellenism: The Conflict in Germany over the Origins of Kultur
Authors: Heschel Susannah
Published: February 2021

This chapter discloses how the Jewish–Christian encounter spilled over into the study of other non-Western 'others' in Germany. It describes German intellectuals who referred to classical Hellenism as the cultural and racial foundation of the Aryan ideal and German-Jewish scholars who explained how the biblical religion of Israel was indeed the progenitor of contemporary German Kultur. It also discusses classical Islamic civilization as the cultural context in which Judaism had flourished in earlier times, especially along rationalist, philosophical, and aesthetic lines. The chapter argues that Islam preserved the genuine legacy of the Greeks more than Christianity. It reveals how rational Judaism, which had once spawned both the teachings of Jesus and those of Muhammad, continued to carry the torch forward into modernity.
German-Jewish Literature and Culture and the Field of German-Jewish Studies
Authors: Gelber Mark H.
Published: February 2021

This chapter delineates the parameters of developments and relationships to the 'Jewish contribution discourse'. It notes the marginality of Jewish culture in present-day Germany that has enabled the emergence of the quintessential post-modern field of cultural studies in Germany and the basis for diverse criticism. It also mentions Moritz Goldstein, who boldly claimed in his 'Deutsch-jüdischer Parnass' that the Jews in Germany had become the custodians and arbiters of the spiritual treasures of German society. The chapter explores the understanding of European culture as largely Jewish, which militates against the idea of a possible Jewish contribution to that culture since the term 'contribution' appears to make little sense if the Jewish element is the dominant one. It explains the concept of a contribution that rests on the notion of a dominant host culture to which guests might contribute.
Going Public
Authors: Naimark-Goldberg Natalie
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the literary activity of enlightened Jewish women, discussing their attitudes towards authorship and what the crucial decision to publish their writings meant in the context of their time. As female authors, these Jewish women of letters were part of a broader phenomenon in contemporary Europe. Throughout the eighteenth century and especially towards its end, a female writing culture was developing simultaneously in various lands. Although the pace and nature of this literary expansion differed from place to place, depending on specific local conditions, countries including Germany, France, and England all saw a dramatic increase in the number of women active in the field of literature. The chapter then looks at the literary careers and the attitudes towards publishing of four of the Jewish women writers from the period, namely Esther Gad, Dorothea Mendelssohn, Rahel Levin, and Sara Meyer.
Social Gatherings in Private Homes
Authors: Naimark-Goldberg Natalie
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the gatherings that took place in private homes, which provide a setting for social interaction and cultural exchange among enlightened Jewish women, with other members of the Jewish community, and, significantly, with non-Jews. Receiving guests and visiting others' homes was an activity of threefold significance in the life of enlightened Jewish women. It was important to them as members of the cultured strata of German society, in that it offered them the opportunity to engage in cultivated conversation, and by extension to inform themselves and develop their intellectual powers. It had a particular significance for them as Jews, in bringing them into contact not only with members of their own religious community but also with non-Jews, thus strengthening their connections to the German and European world. And it had a further implication for them as women, in offering them an accessible forum for discussion at a time when communication was valued as an important means to foster enlightenment and human progress but women were excluded from many of the formal structures created to facilitate it. This less institutionalized form of sociability thus joined the practices of visiting the spas and exchanging letters as a viable option for female participation in cultural and conversational activity.
Jewish History across Borders
Authors: Rosman Moshe
Published: February 2021

This chapter advocates balancing accepted chronological, temporal rubrics for organizing the study of the Jewish past with spatial or geographical categories. It analyses how a spatial perspective can yield new insight into the subject at hand and help avoid the drawbacks of the temporal approach. It also cites temporal periodization that can capture in shorthand the “essential nature” of a historical era. The chapter looks at a more flexible transnational approach that would define spatial context in a manner less artificial and more appropriate for the study of Jews. It refers to German and east European Jews that acted as “citizens” of a Jewish country called Ashkenaz, which has its own language, laws, and customs.
The Reformation and the Jews
Authors: Bodian Miriam
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on a systematic rethinking of the Protestant Reformation and the Jews. It surveys pioneering articles devoted by earlier historians, such as Jacob Katz, Salo Baron, and Haim Hillel, Ben-Sasson. It also covers confessionalism that lay piety and superstition to cross-confessional discourse in which orthodox and heterodox Jews participated alongside Christians of varying persuasions and contributed more to the fervent religious discourse of the age. The chapter stresses the Reformation's contribution to the emergence of modern Western social and political structures. It outlines the role of the Jews as it emerges from Reformation studies and provides important texts and linguistic services.
Spanish ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’ in an Age of Mass Conversion
Authors: Nirenberg David
Published: February 2021

This chapter proposes to enrich a 'genealogical' approach to determine the religious identity in fifteenth-century Spain that had a 'dialogical' perspective and accompanied the traumatic events of the period. It probes several Conversos that lived alongside and between Jews and Christians, and obfuscated the traditional boundaries between their communities. It mentions Christian theologians, poets, and politicians that joined in 'hypermarking' Jews and Judaism as a means of clarifying what it meant to be Christian before the anti Converso backlash in the middle of the century. The chapter discusses the space between Christianity and Judaism that had been important to many areas of Christian culture but had little to do with living Jews. It recounts Jews and Christians that reconstructed themselves and each other during the century preceding the expulsion, which ultimately reshaped the realities of their relationship and environment.
The Social Context of Apostasy among Fifteenth-Century Spanish Jewry
Authors: Ben-Shalom Ram
Published: February 2021

This chapter seeks to ground individual expressions of the new rhetoric in concrete details of the social context of apostasy that spawned it. It discusses how Jews and the Conversos engaged in the construction and reconstruction of their respective identities in response to the mass conversions. It also emphasizes how the Jew was an entirely contemporary concept and representative of real Jews and Conversos that is firmly rooted in the realities of social interaction during the fifteenth-century Castile. The chapter recognizes the elusiveness and mutability of ethnic and religious identity in formulating the essential characteristics of the self. It describes images of the anthropomorphized figures of Church and Synagogue that adorn the Christian art of western Europe and which contain theological and social messages revealing the chasm separating Christianity and Judaism.
Demographic Outline
Authors: Bernfeld Tirtsah Levie
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents a demographic outline of poverty in the Portuguese Jewish community in early modern Amsterdam. It has become clear from examining records of the numbers of people on poor relief that at times the community was larger than used to be assumed. Behind the beautiful façade of prosperity and grandeza that the community liked to show to the outside world, the kahal had to wrestle with the ever more pressing dilemma of having to look after paupers, who had flocked to Amsterdam expecting to find there a safe and sheltered life, free of persecution, war, and economic depression. By the end of the seventeenth century, a third of all Portuguese Jews were drawing permanent poor relief and almost half were drawing either permanent or temporary poor relief. Portuguese on welfare were often found in small families, mostly headed by women; larger families tended to be headed by men. In the eighteenth century, the character of Portuguese poverty changed. From then on—with the exception of single women—the poor were dominated by men trying to support their families through the economic slump with financial help from the Portuguese community.
Maimonides the Rationalist
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: February 2021

Maimonides was not the first rabbinic scholar to take an interest in philosophy, but he was unique in being a towering figure in both areas. His law code, the Mishneh torah, stands as one of the two most intensely studied rabbinic works coming out of the Middle Ages, while his Guide of the Perplexed is the most influential and widely read Jewish philosophical work ever written. Admirers and critics have arrived at wildly divergent perceptions of the man. We have Maimonides the atheist or agnostic, Maimonides the sceptic, Maimonides the deist, Maimonides the Aristotelian, the Averroist, or proto-Kantian. We have a Maimonides seduced by the blandishments of ‘accursed philosophy’; a Maimonides who sowed the seeds that led to Spanish Jews' loss of faith and mass apostasy and who was therefore responsible for the demise of Spanish Jewry; a Maimonides who incorporated philosophical elements into his rabbinic works and wrote the Guide of the Perplexed not to propagate doctrines to which he was personally committed but in order to rescue errant souls seduced by philosophy; a Maimonides who was the defender of the faith and defined the articles of Jewish belief for all time. In his own estimation, Maimonides was neither exclusively a dedicated philosopher nor exclusively a devoted rabbinist. This book examines Maimonides' efforts to reconstitute this all-embracing, rationalist worldview that he felt had been lost during the millennium-long exile.
The Study of Philosophy as a Religious Obligation
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the origins of medieval Jewish philosophy as a response to a threat. Philosophy was undoubtedly regarded as a threat by many medieval thinkers, Jewish as well as Muslim. In the Jewish milieu, the perceived threat was reinforced by a deep-seated antipathy towards all alien literature that is evidenced in classic rabbinic writings. There was, nonetheless, a minority of medieval Jewish thinkers who did not regard philosophy as a menace. This chapter thus weaves a composite figure out of a number of writers who dipped their toes in philosophy or plunged in head first. It focuses on the rationalist approach to the existence of God, the love of God, and the obligation to study the Torah. The writers from whom the composite image is drawn are not all cut from the same cloth and would not all agree with everything to be said here. There would be demurrals, especially regarding the proposition that philosophy formed an integral component of the rabbinic curriculum. The composite portrait nevertheless captures the overall attitude of the segment of the medieval Jewish spectrum that qualifies as rationalist.
Maimonides’ Knowledge of the Philosophical Literature in his Later Period
Authors: Davidson Herbert A.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the extent to which the evidence bears out the expectation that Maimonides has developed a greater familiarity with philosophical literature in his later years. It begins with the Kalam and then proceeds to Aristotle, the Greek commentators on Aristotle, other Greek philosophers, the Arabic philosophers, and medieval Jewish philosophers. In the period of Maimonides' activity examined in this chapter, he discloses no consciousness of a Neoplatonic school of philosophy and reveals no familiarity with the paraphrases of Plotinus and Proclus that were available in Arabic, or of medieval writings that might be characterized as Neoplatonic. He had some familiarity with the Kalam school, and he knew only part of the available Aristotelian corpus, which he eked out with what he learned from the Arabic Aristotelians and other sources. He also knew and used a number of Alfarabi's writings and he knew a few of Ibn Bājja's. Finally, the precise extent of his knowledge of medieval Jewish philosophy cannot be determined.
Leadership and Communal Administration
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

F OR centuries the institutional structure and functioning of the Syrian Jewish community was grounded in enduring worldwide patterns dating back to the talmudic period. By touching upon the structure and leadership of the religious minorities in the Ottoman empire, the Tanzimat altered the traditional autonomy of the non-Muslim communities vis-à-vis the imperial regime. The mid-nineteenth century saw the reorganization and remodelling of the structure of the Syrian Jewish communities under the influence of the Ottoman reforms. The most significant measures related to the institutionalization of the office of chief rabbi (...
Equality before the Law
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers the impact of the reforms that sought to establish equality before the law for Muslim and non-Muslim subjects in Syrian society. It looks at the Islamic social world-view and principle of inequality before the law which shaped its treatment of religious minorities. It also mentions the Islamic doctrine that mandated that no dhimmi could exercise authority over a Muslim, which resulted in the resistance to the incorporation of infidels or ra'aya in the administrative machinery of the Muslim state. The chapter analyses how Ottoman reforms represented fundamental and sweeping political changes for the empire's non-Muslim subjects. It recounts the establishment of official equality for all subjects in the in Muslim state without regard to religion.
Majority–Minority Relations
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the Ottoman Empire's vast kaleidoscope of national, ethnic, and religious groups, in which Syria was itself a smaller mosaic. It mentions the Sunni as the majority of Syria's Muslim population and other religious streams including Shi'ites, 'Alawites, and Druze. It also talks about the Syrian Christian population that was similarly divided and consists of Latins, Maronites, Greek Orthodox, eastern sects, and Protestants. The chapter highlights the relations between the Syrian Jewish community and the two main Christian denominations, the Catholics and the Protestants. It discusses Jewish–Catholic relations that were dominated by a longstanding animosity, which found an extreme outlet in a series of ritual murder accusations.
Interminority Relations
Authors: Harel Yaron
Published: February 2021

THE PREVIOUS chapter explored the interaction, interdependence, and rivalry between the Muslim and dhimmi communities in Syria. The focus now shifts to relations between the Syrian Jewish community and the two main Christian denominations, the Catholics and the Protestants. Although each is treated more or less as a unitary whole, we must bear in mind that both broad Christian denominations were further subdivided into smaller groups....
Judah Ha-Levi
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the poetry of Judah ha-Levi. The peak of Spanish Hebrew poetry was reached in the works of Judah ben Samuel ha-Levi. He excelled in all the media of his art, and he is generally considered to be the greatest of all post-Biblical Hebrew poets. He was born in Tudela not later than 1075. Tudela was close to the Christian part of Spain, and it is possible that as a young boy he had some experience of life in that part of the peninsula. However, he desired to pursue his learning in southern Spain among the Jews living under Muslim rule. And so he came to Granada, where he was befriended by Moses Ibn Ezra. Judah ha-Levi believed that the redemption of the Jews would be accomplished by their return to the Holy Land; he himself determined to go on pilgrimage and settle there. He met with opposition both to his personal departure and to his ideas. But his belief became for him a strong emotional desire, and this theme forms one of the most characteristic elements of his work, both in his poems and in his philosophical dialogue, ‘The Kuzari’
Judah Al-Harizi
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the poetry of Judah al-Harizi. Like Joseph Ibn Zabara, Judah al-Harizi’s fame depends mainly on his collection of rhymed prose narratives, known as ‘Tahkemoni’. He was born in Spain in the second half of the twelfth century, and the end of that century saw him living in Provence where he was engaged in the work of translation from Arabic into Hebrew, in which field he attained great eminence. He was a devoted follower of Maimonides, began a translation of his commentary to the Mishna, and completed a translation of his great philosophical work, ‘The Guide for the Perplexed’. In addition to his secular poetry, Judah al-Harizi also wrote poems expressing religious devotion to the Holy Land, on the pattern of those of Judah ha-Levi. The chapter then looks at two of his poems: A Secret Kept and The Lute Sounds.
Shem Tob Ben Palquera
Authors: Goldstein David
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the poetry of Shem Tob ben Palquera. Shem Tob ben Palquera was born in northern Spain in 1225 and died after 1290. He was a follower and renowned exponent of Maimonides, and author of a number of moral and philosophical works. His main achievement as a poet was his rhymed popular philosophical work, Ha-Mebakkesh (The Seeker), which consists of a series of dialogues between the main character and men of different professional and social classes. The chapter then presents Shem Tob ben Palquera’s poem If Fear is Like a Rock. The poem talks about the strength of the poet’s heart amid fear and sorrow. He likens his heart to ‘the moon that shines brighter when the darkness falls’
The Mourners for Zion and the Suffering Messiah
Authors: Alexander Philip
Published: February 2021

This chapter talks about the Pesikta rabati 34 on the eschatological vindication of the Mourners for Zion. It analyzes the Pesikta rabati as one of the most remarkable homilies in one of the most remarkable of the rabbinic midrashim. It belongs to a series of piskaot, or ‘chapters’, composed for the seven ‘Sabbaths of Consolation’ following the Ninth of Av. This chapter also explains how the liturgical setting of the Pesikta rabati is important in giving the piska a polemical edge. The Pesikta rabati's rhetoric is strong and challenges the congregation to identify with the Mourners so as to be sure of sharing in their end-time reward. The homilies in Pesikta rabati associated with the Ninth of Av, the Piskaot 34–37, have long been regarded as a distinctive group.
Performative Midrash in the Memory of Ashkenazi Martyrs
Authors: Marcus Ivan G.
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at certain narratives that record and interpret performative Midrash. In performative Midrash, people act out in specific historical situations and modifications of biblical and biblically related texts. Performative Midrash builds on the notion of the creation of rites based on new exegetical interpretations of ancient words. It explores what Michael Fishbane has called ‘the exegetical construction of ritual reality’ by considering how historical actors themselves engage in behaviour that is stimulated by their own spontaneous or planned midrashic extension of earlier literary motifs and events. The chapter also explains why it is impossible to separate performative from literary aspects of a newly imagined event and its subsequent literary representation.
The Destruction of the Temple
Authors: Elbaum Jacob , Turniansky Chava
Published: February 2021

This chapter looks at a Yiddish booklet for the Ninth of Av. This is a hitherto unresearched Yiddish collection of aggadot on the destruction of the Temple in a booklet of twelve pages with no title page, no title, and no mention of the author, the year, or the place of publication. The significance of this booklet lies in two main factors. First, it includes the fullest collection of sequences of talmudic narrative in Yiddish that is known of up to its time. Second, it coincides entirely—except for a few small differences in vocabulary and style—with the distinct cluster of stories entitled Khurbn or Khurbn beys hamikdesh that appears in the Tsene-rene after the discussion of the book of Lamentations. If this collection is an original component of the Tsene-rene, and perhaps even if not, there is much to be learned from it about the manner in which this foundational text of Yiddish literature was consolidated.