bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Sexual Antisemitism: “Horribly Sensual”
Authors: Wilson Stephen
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses sexual antisemitism. French antisemites characterized the Jews in sexual terms, both explicitly and implicitly. First, Jews were generally associated with sexuality and with special sexual potency. Fear and hatred of Jews was a way of expressing fear and hatred of sexuality. Particular significance was attached by antisemites to the fact that male Jews were circumcised, and, perhaps more important, that they were circumcisers. An association was established here between sexuality and physical violence, which also found expression in verbal sadism. Related to this was the more ambiguous image of the erotic Jewess, seductress, enchanter, prostitute, and witch. Finally, in less explicit form, sexual elements underlay antisemitic attitudes to money, to the nation, and to the Jew as a deicide.
Antisemitism and Jewish Response
Authors: Wilson Stephen
Published: February 2021

This chapter highlights the ways in which French Jews reacted to the various kinds of hostility directed against them. Three general points can be made in conclusion. First, despite the process of assimilation, Jews in France at the turn of this century retained many of the characteristics of an unassimilated minority, characteristics which antisemitism strengthened. The Jewish opposition to antisemitism was mainly the option of individuals responding to some general sense of Jewish solidarity but lacking the support of established collective organizations, and it frequently involved great personal sacrifice. Second, although the element of individual courage in such behaviour cannot be overlooked, the main factor for its interpretation in socio-historical terms seems to be a confidence based on Jewish assessment of the strength and meaning of antisemitism in France. Third, the often negative response of Jews to antisemitism must be related to the nature of antisemitism which have been analysed in the previous chapters. The Jews were not simply the objects of explicit acts of discrimination or threats, to which they could react, or against which they could defend themselves. They were the central characters in someone else's mythical view of the world, which was, in important ways, a much less comfortable position to be in, if only because there was no clear way to extricate themselves from it.
Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace
Authors: Harvey Steven
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the paradox that is Maimonides’ life. The same thinker who taught that the true human perfection and the ultimate end of man is only achieved through solitude and isolation, himself lived an unceasingly active and incredibly public life as private and court physician, business man, and Jewish communal leader, judge, and rabbi — a life which afforded little time for food and sleep, let alone the privacy requisite for contemplation and the intellectual worship of God. The chapter then presents three solutions to this paradox. It also looks at the purpose of the Guide of the Perplexed and Maimonides’ understanding of the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot. Finally, the chapter considers the parable of the sultan’s palace, as well as the limits of knowledge.
Why Maimonides was not a Mutakallim
Authors: Harvey Warren Zev
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses the question of why Maimonides was not a mutakallim, or practitioner of Kalām. Maimonides took great pains to differentiate himself from the mutakallimūn (the dialectical theologians), and to explain just what he had against them. Following Alfarabi, he distinguished sharply between philosophy and kalām (dialectical theology). According to this distinction, a philosopher — like Alfarabi or Maimonides — is interested in the objective and open-minded pursuit of truth, while the mutakallim is interested in supporting religious beliefs. Maimonides argues that the mutakallim violates the rule of Themistius: instead of seeking to make his ideas conform to that which exists, he seeks to make that which exists conform to his ideas. To put the matter simply: a philosopher seeks to subject his imagination to his intellect, while the mutakallim subjects his intellect to his imagination. Maimonides quite plainly was a philosopher and not a mutakallim, for he was interested in the open-minded pursuit of truth, sought to make his ideas conform to what exists and not vice versa, and aimed to live by his intellect and not his imagination. The chapter then reflects on the relationship between the Guide of the Perplexed and the Kalām.
Maimonides on Religious Language
Authors: Hyman Arthur
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses how Maimonides’ concern with religious language is part of his overall philosophic programme in which the correct understanding of language applied to God is one of the central themes. Not only is it obligatory for the intellectual elite to have a philosophically correct understanding of divine attributes, but even the unsophisticated masses must be taught that anthropomorphic and anthropopathic terms applied to God cannot be taken in their literal meaning. To present Maimonides’ views on religious language, the chapter undertakes a threefold task. First, it examines a passage from the Treatise on the Art of Logic in which Maimonides analyses the various ways in which terms may signify. Second, it discusses how he uses the distinctions of the Treatise in the Guide of the Perplexed to show that anthropomorphic and anthropopathic terms occurring in Scripture must be taken in a spiritual sense. Third, it considers the reasons which brought him to his position that accidental attributes predicated of God must be interpreted as attributes of action, and essential attributes as negations or negations of privations. The chapter concludes by looking at how Maimonides’ account of divine attributes influenced his attitude towards prayer.
The Early Decades of Ayyūbid Rule
Authors: Drory Joseph
Published: February 2021

This chapter reflects on the early decades of Ayyūbid rule, which corresponded with Maimonides’ early years in Egypt. The Ayyūbid rulers, while endeavouring to shape the country according to their tastes and preferences, tried to enforce an accelerated rhythm of orthodoxy. Their efforts were generally successful. But this was not the only effect of Ayyūbid domination over Egypt. As a result of Saladin’s own particular background, education, political tradition, and familial connections, his rise to power had further significant implications for Egypt. First, Egyptian involvement in the wars against the Crusaders was increased. Second, the links with other countries conquered by Saladin and ruled by his relatives were strengthened. Third, Egypt gained a predominant position in Yemen. Fourth, Egypt adopted the modes and style of government that had prevailed in the Muslim East ever since the middle of the eleventh century.
Saladin’s Egypt and Maimonides
Authors: Ehrenkreutz Andrew S.
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the transition in power from the Shīʻī Fāṭimids to the Sunnī Ayyūbids, and the coincidence of Maimonides’ rise to prominence at this juncture. When Maimonides settled in Alexandria in 1165, he could hardly have expected to witness so many dramatic events that would in subsequent decades decisively affect the course of Egyptian history. Interestingly enough, the rise of the great Jewish philosopher, physician, and social activist to public prominence in Egypt coincided chronologically and geographically with that of his famous Muslim contemporary, Saladin, whose career in Egypt opened a new chapter in the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Of these two celebrities, Saladin was the first to set foot on Egyptian soil. The chapter then assesses the effect of the abrupt termination of the Fāṭimid caliphate — under whose relatively tolerant and commercially oriented regime the non-Muslim minorities had experienced a period of prosperity — on the Jewish community of Fusṭāṭ.
Plutarch: Lives of Aristeides and Cato
Authors: Sansone David
Published: February 2021

Plutarch's Lives have always attracted a large number of admirers, particularly because of his pragmatic concern with ethics and politics. But Plutarch intended his Lives to be read in pairs, an intention that is often ignored by those who treat these works as merely historical sources. This new text and translation provides the first commentary in English on the pair Aristeides and Cato. In addition to supplying commentary on historical, stylistic and textual matters, the book also explores Plutarch's purpose in comparing the fifth-century Greek statesman, Aristeides, with the second-century Roman, Cato the Elder. The book provides Greek text with facing translation, notes and introduction.
Introduction
Authors: Sansone David , Sansone David , Sansone David
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Plutarch's Lives, which represent a valuable ancient source for the more interesting periods of Greek and Roman history. However, it is not as a historian, or even as a biographer in the modern sense of the word, that Plutarch has been so highly valued. Rather, those who regard Plutarch as among the greatest of ancient authors appreciate him principally as a moralist and as a purveyor of political wisdom. To understand what kind of biography Plutarch was writing (or thought he was writing), the chapter considers what the art of biography was like in Plutarch's lifetime. Plutarch is in large measure responsible for the importation of ethical concern into the biographical genre. The chapter then looks at the Lives of Aristeides and Cato. While Cato is wholly admirable for his ability to be satisfied with the absolute minimum, his virtue is somewhat tainted, as far as Plutarch is concerned, by an excessive interest in commercial enterprise and by an obsession with money. For this reason, Aristeides is more virtuous and more nearly divine.
Life of Aristeides
Authors: Sansone David
Published: February 2021

1. Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, belonged to the tribe Antiochis and came from the deme Alopece. Of the varying accounts that have circulated concerning his wealth, one has it that he spent the whole of his life in straitened circumstances and that, after his death, he left two daughters who remained for a long time unmarried on account of their ...
Plato: Republic V
Authors: Halliwell S.
Published: February 2021

This new edition provides a thorough reappraisal of one of the most remarkable and controversial sections of the Republic. Book 5's radical proposals for the ideal state include an argument for the essential equality of the sexes; provision for full female participation in the work of the Guardians (including warfare); the abolition of the family for this same ruling class, with a sexual as well as economic system of communism; and a policy of eugenic control. Plato feared that some of this material would arouse amusement in his readers; in fact, parts of Book 5 have been subsequently used to support a charge of totalitarianism against Plato, while other elements have led to description of him as the first feminist. Book 5 also examines the relation between knowledge and belief, and in doing so embarks on the great structure of metaphysical thought which forms the centrepiece of the entire work. All these topics receive fresh and detailed consideration in the introduction and commentary, which are designed to make this important work accessible to a wide range of readers. Greek text with translation, commentary and notes.
Commentary
Authors: Halliwell S.
Published: February 2021

449a1-451b8

Having reached an understanding of justice as the harmonious unity of constituent elements in either a city (i.e. its classes) or the individual soul (its psychological 'parts'), Socrates is now proceeding to consider the four main types of injustice or evil. But he is interrupted by Adeimantus and the others present, who demand that he clarify what he had meant by his remark earlier in the conversation that justice requires some kind of 'sharing' (koinônia) of women and children. Socrates is reluctant to elaborate, both because of the scepticism which his ideas will encounter, and because he feels grave self-doubt about them....
Commentary
Authors: Comber Michael , Balmaceda Catalina
Published: February 2021

The prologues of the BJ and the BC express virtually the same set of moral commonplaces. This raises the question: are they detachable irrelevances, selected from the sort of collection of prologues that Cicero said he used for the De gloria (Ad Att. 16. 6.4)? Or do they have a connection to the subsequent narrative? The issue goes back at least as far as Quintilian (3.8.9): ‘In the ...
Xenophon: Hellenika II.3.11 - IV.2.8
Authors: Krentz Peter
Published: February 2021

The second part of the Hellenika, covering the decade after the end of the Peloponnesian War, is Xenophon at his best. It unfolds in a series of discrete, often dramatic, episodes: The Thirty at Athens, the campaigns of Thibron and Derkylidas in Asia Minor, the Spartan War against Elis, the accession of King Agesilaos, the conspiracy of Kinadon, the campaigns of Agesilaos in Asia Minor, the outbreak of war against Sparta in Greece, and Agesilaos' recall. It includes several of Xenophon's best speeches, some of his wittiest dialogue, and several choice turns of phrase. This edition follows the pattern of the Hellenika III.3.10 (Warminster 1989). The commentary tries both to interpret the text and to assess its historical accuracy. Throughout the book uses the rest of Xenophon's works to throw light on the Hellenika. The edition presents Greek text with facing-page translation.
Introduction
Authors: Krentz Peter
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the life and writings of Athenian historian Xenophon. It recounts Xenophon's rise to success during the fourth year of the 94th Olympiad and how his life was saved by Sokrates at the battle of Delion in 424. It also speculates that Xenophon was possibly born between 430 and 425 as he claimed that he wasn't too young to replace Proxenos as general, who was then about 30 years old. The chapter talks about Xenophon's role in developing Agesilao's new cavalry force when he joined him in Asia Minor and how he might have witnessed or participated in the battle of Koroneia against the Athenians. It also discusses Xenophon's exile from Athens between 399 and 394 during the outbreak of the Korinthian war as his pro-Spartan and anti-Persian activities contradicted current Athenian interests.
Menander: The Shield and The Arbitration
Authors: Ireland Stanley
Published: February 2021

What reason has an educated man for going to the theatre, except to see Menander? Thus the judgement of Aristophanes of Byzantium, and in later antiquity the social comedies of Menander ranked second in popularity only to the epics of Homer. Yet for centuries thereafter the plays were thought to be irretrievably lost, failing to become part of the canon of writers that generations of copyists deemed worthy of transmitting to us. It was only in the 20th century that large sections of the plays began to emerge from Egypt, enabling modern readers to gauge for themselves the correctness of earlier verdicts. Following on from the author's edition of Menander's Bad-Tempered Man (dyskolos), the present volume aims to provide readers with ready access to the playwright's consummate sophistication in dramatic technique through two, albeit incomplete, plays, The Shield (aspis) and Arbitration (epitrepontes). The Greek text is accompanied by a translation aimed at providing a version that is readable, while at the same time remaining close enough to the original to make comparison of the two a feasible proposition. The commentary, in turn, concentrates upon dramatic development, providing the reader with pointers to appreciating the playwright's often subtle techniques of both dramatic development and character portrayal.
Social (or Documentary) Realism in Feature Film
Authors: Sohn-Rethel Martin
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines social (or documentary) realism in feature film. It focuses on three of Ken Loach's films: Ladybird Ladybird (1994), made before his collaboration with screenwriter, Paul Laverty, and two after: Sweet Sixteen (2002) and It's a Free World... (2006). The reality uncovered in Ladybird Ladybird is arguably not strictly political in a primary, economically driven sense. It is based on the true story of Maggie (Crissy Rock) whose children are taken away by social services. The 'truth' premise that is a given in such an uncompromising work of social realism made for a stark confrontation: on one side, Loach protesting the truth of his depiction; on the other, social services crying foul on behalf of every beleaguered social worker in the country. It might be argued that the resulting standoff over who had truth on their side was not all that productive in improving social services in Britain. Meanwhile, Loach's Sweet Sixteen is a classic example of his later documentary-drama approach. It's a Free World... works to a very similar template as Sweet Sixteen. The chapter then considers realism in Paul Greengrass's drama-documentary Bloody Sunday (2002) and Jim Sheridan's In The Name Of The Father (1993).
‘Just room for one inside, sir’
Authors: Conolly Jez , Bates David Owain
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the first of the house guests' stories of Dead of Night, ‘Hearse Driver’, which is also directed by Basil Dearden. The story is recounted by racing driver Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird) who survives a mid-race crash that leaves him hospitalised with head injuries, in the care of Joyce (Judy Kelly) the dedicated nurse and his future wife. While convalescing, Grainger is witness to a strange temporal shift and a bizarre premonition in the form of a Victorian horse-drawn hearse beneath his nursing home room window. The driver of the hearse (Miles Malleson) delivers perhaps the film's most well-known line: ‘Just room for one inside, sir’. The chapter studies the significance of the bed as a prime vehicle for scares in horror cinema and explores the potency of stillness and the suspension of time as devices for eliciting those goose bumps.
‘Something evil, monstrously evil’
Authors: Conolly Jez , Bates David Owain
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the third story, ‘Haunted Mirror’, directed by Robert Hamer. The story belongs to socialite Joan Cortland (Googie Withers) who tells the group about her husband Peter (Ralph Michael) and his obsession with an antique mirror. Lurking in the dark grandeur of the other room in the mirror is an unseen entity from a bygone age, the spirit of the mirror's murderous former owner Francis Etherington, which preys on Peter's jealousies. The mirror as a supernatural threshold has become deeply synonymous with the horror genre, having travelled far and wide by way of Chinese and Greek mythology, Grimm's fairy tales, and the mind of Lewis Carroll. The chapter looks at the British post-war male gender crisis embodied by Peter Cortland and the comparative strength of character displayed by Joan.
One People?
Authors: Sacks Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This is the first book-length study of the major problem confronting the Jewish future: the availability or otherwise of a way of mending the schisms between Reform and Orthodox Judaism, between religious and secular Jews in Israel, and between Israel itself and the diaspora — all of which have been deepened by the fierce and continuing controversy over the question of ‘who is a Jew?’ The book studies the background to this and related controversies. It traces the fragmentation of Jewry in the wake of the Enlightenment, the variety of Orthodox responses to these challenges, and the resources of Jewish tradition for handling diversity. Having set out the background to the intractability of the problems, the book ends by examining the possibilities within Jewish thought that might make for convergence and reconciliation. The Chief Rabbi employs a variety of disciplines to clarify a subject in which these dimensions are inextricably interwoven. He also explores key issues such as the underlying philosophy of Jewish law, and the nature of the collision between tradition and modern consciousness. Written for the general reader as much as the academic one, this is a thought-provoking presentation of the dilemmas of Jewish Orthodoxy in modernity.
A Collision of Consciousness
Authors: Sacks Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses whether pluralism is compatible with Jewish tradition. Pluralism proposes a mode of Jewish unity acceptable to modern consciousness. But it is ipso facto unacceptable to Orthodoxy; it succeeds only if the terms of Orthodoxy are false. Pluralism fails within the terms it sets itself. It sought to accommodate liberal and Orthodox Judaisms within the same universe of discourse. They were variant interpretations of the same covenantal truth. Orthodoxy cannot be so accommodating; only an Orthodoxy misconceived as an ultra-traditional liberalism can. Orthodoxy is defined in terms of truth and authority, not interpretation and option. This fact cannot be translated into pluralism. The chapter then differentiates between pluralism and inclusivism, halakhic argument and halakhic decision, and the modern and traditional Jewish self. It also considers the concept of integrity.
Schism?
Authors: Sacks Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores the possibility of a different route by which the collision between tradition and modernity might be negotiated, one that does not involve the fragmentation of Jewry into denominations. One possibility of what one might call a non-denominational non-Orthodoxy is suggested by the thought of one of the most profound twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, Franz Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig, as a characteristically modern thinker, places the self — not community or law — at the heart of his system. A very similar position, philosophically more explicit, was advanced by Emil Fackenheim in an essay written in 1938. The chapter then addresses the challenge of reinterpreting Jewish law in such a way as to make it viable as the code of a modern society. In the early decades of the twentieth century, this line of thought was explored by Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn. But the most complex, haunting response to the crisis of halakhah and modernity was given by Rabbi Abraham Kook. The chapter also discusses the differences between Orthodoxy and Reform.
The Congregation of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw: Its Changing Social Composition and Ideological Affiliations
Authors: Guterman Alexander
Published: February 2021

This chapter details how the congregation of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw reflected the social dynamics that had transformed the face of Warsaw Jewry. They included an increasingly large proportion of Jews whose way of life distanced them from the devoutly Orthodox masses. Many showed clear signs of acculturation, Polonization, and an ongoing process of assimilation, although such behaviour may not have been motivated by any clear ideology of integration into the Polish nation. While many of the Great Synagogue's leaders tried to influence the views of the congregation, it was the members themselves who shaped the image of the synagogue. Their loyalties represented the spectrum of allegiances in the Jewish population of Warsaw at the time, and as Jews from the countryside joined their brethren in the capital, the Great Synagogue came to reflect the social and ideological transformations taking place among Polish Jewry in the early part of the twentieth century, especially between the two world wars.
History, Experience, and Democracy István Bibó Revisited: The Jewish Question after 1944–Fifty Years Later
Authors: Braun Robert
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines István Bibó's essay ‘The Jewish Question’. It is not for its political relevance that Bibó's work on the Jewish question should be read today. The essay was written and first published in an era when many countries were groping for an answer to questions posed by the incredible tragedy of the Jewish people. Parallel to this was the search for an answer to ‘the collapse of respectable European society’. The date of the essay's publication is not the only reason to place Bibó's book among the most important works to have searched for an interpretation and explanation of the tragedy. The problem of how to represent and comprehend the Holocaust, as well as the historical and social issues of the Jewish question, are still at the forefront of scholarly debates.
Andrzej Jezierski (Ed.) Historia Polski w liczbach: Ludność, terytorium
Authors: Basista Jakub
Published: February 2021

This chapter addresses History of Poland in Figures: Population, Territory, which was edited by Andrzej Jezierski. It is to be published in several volumes devoted to land and population, agriculture and forestry, mining and industry, education and culture, trade, finances, the army, and religion. In August of 1994, the first of these was published. The statistical presentation on land and population is divided into three parts, each following the same pattern, which corresponds to three periods in Polish history: the years before 1795, 1795–1918, and 1918–90. Each part contains research statistics for the period, followed by tables, graphs, and maps. The volume closes with an extensive bibliography of sources and publications. Readers of Polin may be especially interested in the statistical data on the Jewish population of Poland, which is well represented for the modern period and the Second World War.
Milton Shain The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa
Authors: Gilman Sander L.
Published: February 2021

This chapter explores Milton Shain's The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa, a second volume in his ongoing examination of the history of the Jews in South Africa (and its constituent parts). His earlier book, Jewry and Cape Society: The Origins and Activities of the Jewish Board of Deputies for the Cape Colony, provided a detailed and exquisite look at the inner workings of the Board of Jewish Deputies in the Cape. This ‘internal’ history of Cape Jewry revealed many of the tensions and problems that impacted on the migration and acculturation of Jews in southern Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His new volume is more expansive, and examines the detailed history of the idea of the Jew, and the Jewish response to this construction, in the Afrikaans- and English-speaking areas of South Africa. Shain's chronological spread reaches from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War, with a short conclusion bringing the volume up to the present. His theme is the ‘origin’ of antisemitism in South African culture, a culture self-consciously a ‘frontier society’ in which Jews formed a minority that came to be identified with anglophone ideals and norms.
Features of the Shabatean Movement and the Portrayal of Shabetai Tsevi in the Writings of Luzzatto and his Disciples
Authors: Tishby Isaiah
Published: February 2021

This chapter reviews the charges of Shabatean heresy in the campaign against Rabbi Moses Hayim Luzzatto that erupted at the beginning of 5490. It explains that the accusations were based on the assumption that Luzzatto's activity as head of a group and as a man favoured with a magid was intended to hasten the second advent of Shabetai Tsevi. It also describes Luzzatto's Kinat hashem tsevaot, in which he expressed his strong opposition to Shabateanism and set out a broad range of kabbalistic and messianic arguments intended to prove its falsity and the dangers it involved. The chapter recounts Luzzatto's powerful messianic urge from the time that the magid appeared to him in 1727 until he went to Amsterdam in 1735. It mentions Luzzatto's deep study of the writings of the Shabatean scholars, such as the works of Nathan of Gaza.
Outcasts from Society
Authors: Toaff Ariel
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the outcasts from Jewish and Christian societies. If it is true that the entire Jewish population was the object of more or less violent discrimination in medieval Italian society, it is also true that Jewish society itself rejected or excluded some of its members, with a logic similar to that at work in Christian circles. One can distinguish at least three levels of marginalization: that of the Jewish community as a whole, as a religious minority; that of outcasts from Jewish society, consisting mainly of Jews who threatened the established order; and that of those individuals banished from all society, Jewish and Christian, because of their deviant behaviour. The category of the excluded and marginalized within Jewish society included primarily the poor and beggars, the mad and sick, and converts to Christianity, particularly if they were poor. Another category of the excluded was made up of criminals and delinquents, whose marginalization was independent of whether they were Jews or Christians. Gambling dens and games of chance occupy an important place in offences committed by the Jews of Umbria in this period. This comes as no surprise, since gambling was a widespread vice in medieval society, vainly and frequently inveighed against by preaching friars in town squares and by rabbis in the synagogues.
The Pattern of Discrimination
Authors: Toaff Ariel
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jewish–Christian relations in late medieval Italy. The daily business and general relations between Jews and the non-itinerant clergy in Umbrian communes in the late Middle Ages were close and constant. However, from the fifteenth century onwards, in the communes of Umbria as elsewhere in Italy, there was a proliferation of legislative measures obliging Jews to wear something that would distinguish them from Christians. The imposition of the so-called ‘badge for Jews’ was justified by the hope that it would discourage sexual relations between infidels and Christians. The chapter then looks at the discrimination against the Jews during the triduum of the Christian Holy Week, particularly the holy sassaiola, the fight with stones. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the fate of the Jews became one with that of the gypsies. Ghettoization and segregation on the one hand, and expulsion on the other, were simply two sides of the same coin with which Christian society, now closed and homogeneous, hoped to deal with minority groups.
Joseph G. Weiss: A Personal Appraisal
Authors: Katz Jacob
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines Joseph G. Weiss's methodological approach and the quality of his achievements. Anyone acquainted with Weiss's opus will have observed that most of his publications are predicated on a meticulous analysis of the relevant sources, on the basis of which he then attempts to substantiate the thesis of the article in question. His groundwork is thus of a philological nature based on intimate acquaintance with the nomenclature employed by the hasidic authors. These drew their terminology from the vast literature of the aggadah and homiletics, medieval philosophy and kabbalah, allowing themselves at the same time to deviate from and revise the original meanings. Correct interpretation of the hasidic sources therefore requires due attention to the terms employed in them and their historical background, an enterprise whose success depends upon continual rereading and examination of the texts. Weiss recognized this: he once said that in order to be sure of one's handling of the sources, one should peruse all the relevant texts every year. From the fact that he returns again and again to the basic sources of hasidic history and teachings in his publications and constantly offers new insights into the intentions of their authors, it seems that he tried to live up to this.
Social Conflicts in Międzybóz in the Generation of the Besht
Authors: Rosman Moshe J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter evaluates the social conflicts in Międzybóż in the generation of the Besht. It characterizes the alignment of various social groups in the town, and suggests implications that these may have had for the Besht's status in the town and for the development of early hasidism. Discussions of social conflict in the Jewish communities of eighteenth-century Poland generally tend to consider the phenomenon in terms of the élite class versus the ‘common people’. According to the usual construction, rich, politically powerful individuals, particularly those with close ties to Polish magnates, monopolized control over the institutional resources of the Jewish community in order to benefit themselves and exploit or oppress the poor and powerless. There is evidence that, to some extent, this paradigm fits the circumstances of the Jews in Międzybóż during the time of the Besht's residence there.
Hasidism and the Kahal in Eastern Europe
Authors: Ettinger Shmuel
Published: February 2021

This chapter assesses the relationship between hasidism and the kahal in eastern Europe. Contrary to the opinion of a number of historians, neither the revolutionary or radical religious teachings of the new movement, nor its alleged opposition to the oligarchic structure of the traditional leadership institutions of the kahal, were the reason for the eruption of the anti-hasidic polemic of 1771–2. Rather, it was the personal intervention of Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, which brought it about. The Gaon of Vilna, who was not a communal officer as such, and who was described in all the documents of the polemic as ‘the hasid’—a mystically oriented pietist—was himself the moving force behind the campaign to eradicate the heretical ‘sect’ (kat) of the hasidim, a violent campaign which lasted for a quarter of a century. The first initiative to oppose hasidism may have come from the leaders of the community of Shklov, but it did not gain wider support until the Gaon of Vilna was mobilized to lend it his personal authority.
Introduction
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This introductory chapter briefly deals with the question of a dichotomy between Athens and Jerusalem. More specifically, it aims to approach the issue by considering how Athens, with its associations of classical antiquity and Hellenism, might have any impact on modern Jewish culture. Both sides of this dichotomy, as this chapter shows, are quite different and distinct from one another. Indeed, they represent seemingly contradictory worlds. For the Jews, Athens represented Western culture as a whole. It was ‘modern’ and ‘secular’. A cultural value or trait was identified as ‘Greek’ in order to approve of it or, conversely, to attach a stigma to it. Some Jewish writers have also argued that ‘Athens’ and ‘Jerusalem’ signify the two forces of a primal duality (Urzwet) that have been contending with each other in Judaism since its inception, creating within it a tension, as well as a dynamic and enriching multiplicity. However, as this chapter shows, duality also creates a disintegrating tension, or one which in the final analysis causes the totality and the unity to alter their nature.
Waking the Dead—Greece as an Ideal and an Exemplar
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses the phenomenon of Hellenomania, or Greekomania, as it occurred within Western European culture. The imaginary Greece and Greeks were Europe’s longed-for image, with which it conducted a profound, fervent, incisive, and ramified discourse. Primarily, ‘Greece’ signifies the intense desire to seek the origin and paradigm of a perfect and complete secular world. Its creation was the result of a poignant yearning that grew out of the recognition of a lack, and out of an aspiration for redemption. The ideal of ancient Greece was a central part of the different ideological, political, and aesthetic streams and sub-streams which were active in the spirit of Europe of the time. It was not only the philosophical heritage of classical antiquity that inspired the intellectual life of Europe; it was classical antiquity whole and entire, as a living entity. Different cultural and social trends gazed at the Greek mirror in order to understand their nature and essence, to be inspired, to seek a model, whether positive or negative. The image of Greece was thus interwoven into the ideological reactions and responses to industrialization, nationalism, mass society, and secularization.
‘Greek Wisdom’ as Secular Knowledge and Science
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on how ‘Greek wisdom’ is treated in Jewish culture. It shows that the term ‘Greek wisdom’ had a long history, and the maskilim (men of letters and thinkers) turned to it to seek support and legitimization for their views in the Jewish intellectual tradition. The term ‘wisdom’ was the main — perhaps even the only positive signal with which the Jews marked part of the Greek-Hellenistic culture, and the one with the longest and most consecutive history; it was generally identified with Greek wisdom. It meant the heritage and legacy of classical antiquity and Hellenism in philosophy, sciences, and the arts; it also symbolized a lost Jewish heritage and the proper relationship between the Jewish world and the world of the Gentiles. Moreover, wisdom became a multipurpose and multivalent concept that in the intellectual utopia of the maskilim was intended to serve as a bridge and intermediary between the Jewish intellectual tradition and the outside world.
The Moral Dimension: Commonality and Particularity
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter emphasizes that it was the ethical (moral) basis of Judaism that was now seen as separating Jews from non-Jews. Moreover, it stresses that the Greek mirror played an important role in shaping the image of Jewish morality. Greek morality (or better non-morality) was perceived as antinomical to Judaism; even when Jewish writers were ready to agree that Greek ethics did exist, they found them fundamentally different from (and inferior to) Jewish ethics. The chapter thus demonstrates that Greeks and Jews alike distinguished between themselves and other nations on a moral basis. Some Greek writers believed that Greek ethics was what separated the Hellenes from the barbarians. The dominant view in Jewish tradition was similar, and also stressed the deep chasm between the moral behaviour of Jews and that of Gentiles.
Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and Alexandria: Two Models of a National and Cultural Encounter
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the period between Alexander the Great’s conquest of Palestine and the moment when paganism gave way to Christianity. In Palestine — just as in Egypt — Hellenistic culture continued to flourish under Roman rule, and there the confrontation-cum-encounter with the Jews took place with Rome as the political authority — and with Hellenism as the culture. The focus here is on the way in which this period served as an inclusive historical paradigm, and on the way in which different parts of it were symbols’ of historical phenomena. As the chapter shows, the encounter with Hellenism, particularly in the Hasmonean era, had a powerful and influential impact, and its effects on future generations — and on Jewish historical consciousness — were profound. That is precisely why it functioned as a model of the nature of the encounter between Judaism and other cultures.
The New Jewish Culture: Ideal and Reality
Authors: Shavit Yaacov
Published: February 2021

This chapter considers the meaning of culture in the context of the modern Jewish society in Palestine. In modern times, a new cultural environment came into being, in which the market of imported culture played an important role. In both spheres, an attempt was made to exert control, to screen the traits taken into Jewish culture, and to censor the imported cultural market. The identity and the content of the new culture were determined according to the degree of success or failure that met attempts to govern these two spheres on the basis of a predetermined pattern. Furthermore, the chapter argues that culture is not only a system of values but also of practice, of modes of behaviour. The Hellenizing Jew was once accused, not of having adopted the principles of Greek philosophy, but of having emulated and adopted Hellenistic cultural practices. Hence the basic question in relation to the content of a culture is not necessarily what its declared system of values is, but rather what its actual modes of behaviour are.
The Beginnings of Hymnography in Ereṣ Yisra’el and Babylon
Authors: Weinberger Leon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Ereṣ Yisra’el, the birthplace of the piyyuṭ and the home of the anonymous poets (4th–6th c.) who generally followed biblical models — most notably the book of Psalms — in their liturgical writings. Some of their structural and stylistic innovations prompted the more imaginative creativity of their successors. Yose b. Yose (4th–5th c.), the first hymnist to be identified by name, expanded the musical devices of the hymn with strophic rhyming patterns, alliteration and assonance, and enhanced the hymn with legends from the rabbis. He employed figurative language in the form of metonymy — the emblematical use of words — and recontextualized biblical phrasing for assignment in the synagogue hymn. Yose was followed by the hymnography of Yannai, the stylistic master of the pattern poem and an innovator in synthetic parallelism, and Eleazar Qillir (or Qallir), the most prolific of the Ereṣ Yisra’el poets. The chapter then looks at the new era in Jewish hymnography which began with the decline of the Ereṣ Yisra’el centres of learning beginning with the Arab conquest in 634 and the corresponding emergence of academies in Babylonia.
Ottoman Hymnography
Authors: Weinberger Leon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on Ottoman hymnography. With the Ottoman conquest of Anatolia, Greece, and the Balkans from the Byzantines beginning with the capture of Bursa (Brusa) in 1326, the condition of Jews improved. The religious life of the Ottoman Jewish community was much enhanced by the installation of a Hebrew printing press in Constantinople. Among the leading rabbi-poets in the early Ottoman period were Šalom b. Joseph Enabi of Constantinople and Elia b. Samuel from Istip, in Macedonia. Like his Cretan colleagues, Enabi was attracted to the revival of classical studies in the Balkans. Other leading rabbi-poets include Mordecai Comtino, Elijah Ṣelebi, Menaḥem Tamar, and Elia Ha-Levi. The chapter then discusses how Solomon b. Mazal Ṭov rose to prominence in Constantinople. A prolific writer of sacred and secular hymns, Solomon b. Mazal Ṭov epitomizes the renaissance of Hebrew literature in an Ottoman Golden Age.
Karaite Synagogue Poets
Authors: Weinberger Leon J.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the Karaite synagogue poets. The Karaites, a Jewish sect originating in the first half of the eighth century, are distinctive mainly because of their refusal to accept the authority of the talmudic-rabbinic tradition. Although the Karaites were at odds with their Rabbanite brethren in matters relating to Jewish law, they readily adopted the latters’ models in hymnography. The Karaite liturgy, which in the early years of the sect consisted of recitation from the Psalms and other scriptural readings, soon developed into rich and varied genres for fasts and feasts. The new hymnography was preserved in the thirteenth-century Karaite prayer-book edited by the scholar-poet Aaron b. Joseph the Elder from Crimea and Constantinople. Like their Rabbanite counterparts, Karaite hymnists served a didactic function, instructing the laity in their religious obligations. Karaite poets also used the liturgy as a means of instructing their congregations in current philosophical issues, particularly those relating to Jewish Neoplatonism and the nature of the soul. In their aesthetic function, Karaite hymnists resembled the Rabbanite Hispanics, favouring Arabic quantitative metres and verse forms. Caleb Afendopolo (d. 1525) of Kramariya (near Constantinople) was the master of this poetic art, as seen in his liturgical (and secular) writings.
Jewish Marriage in Eighteenth-Century Poland
Authors: Goldberg Jacob
Published: February 2021

This chapter discusses Jewish marriage in eighteenth-century Poland. Jews, as well as many non-Jews, acknowledged that Jewish marriages embodied a good, stable model and praised them as examples to be emulated in an era when immorality and marital breakdown seemed to threaten the institution. Even in much earlier times, Jewish marriages, particularly those of Polish Jews, were recognized as embodying all desirable matrimonial attributes. In the course of the eighteenth century, Jewish marital practices attracted the attention of all levels of Polish society, as well as of leading maskilim in other countries. It was during the period of the Polish Enlightenment that the model of Jewish marriage was promoted on a wider scale because it conformed to popular ideas based on contemporary mercantilist and cameralist principles. The chapter then considers the convergence of opinion between Jewish and Christian Enlightenment representatives on some aspects of marriage in Jewish society, and looks at the incidence of early marriage in the Jewish population and the vicissitudes in the practice of young couples living in the home of their parents.
European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism, 1550-1750
Authors: Israel Jonathan I.
Published: February 2021

This survey history of Jewish life and culture in early modern Europe is the first to focus on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a radically new phase in Jewish history. The book lays particular emphasis on the reversal of trends in western and central Europe in the late sixteenth century, which was followed by a rapid increase in Jewish numbers and activity, and far-reaching reorganization of Jewish society and institutions. A major consequence of these changes was a much expanded and more varied Jewish role in European civilization as a whole. The first edition of this book was the joint winner of the Wolfson Literary Prize for History in 1986. For this third edition, the book has been updated and includes a new introduction.
Jewish Culture (1550–1650)
Authors: Israel Jonathan
Published: February 2021

This chapter details the radical transformation of Jewish culture which occurred during the middle decades of the sixteenth century. Whereas medieval and Renaissance Italian Jewish intellectual life was essentially Talmudic, the changes of the mid-sixteenth century produced an altogether more rounded, complete, and coherent Jewish culture. Jewish society, indeed Jewish nationhood, as something distinct from Jewish religion, now emerged as much more definite realities than before. As late as the early sixteenth century, some Italian Jewish scholars had adhered to traditional Judaism rather than inhabited a specifically Jewish cultural world. Intellectually, they had immersed themselves in the learning of their non-Jewish contemporaries. From around 1550, by contrast, Jewish scholars lived and worked in a cultural atmosphere increasingly removed from that of their neighbours, even though in close touch and constantly interacting with it. Allegiance to traditional Judaism now fused with a whole package of new elements: a much intensified political and historical awareness; a new involvement in poetry, music, and drama; and an urgent quest to incorporate fragments of western philosophy and science into the emerging corpus of Jewish culture, all welded by a far more potent current of mysticism than had ever pervaded the Jewish world previously.