Browse results

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 7,510 items for :

  • Jewish History & Culture x
  • Search level: All x
Clear All
This book is a summary of the extensive research by the co-authors on the validity and application of the 1804 French Civil Code in the Free City of Cracow (1815-1846), the Polish constitutional city-state established at the Congress of Vienna. From the wealth of case-law and legal practice of the Cracovian Republic, there emerges a picture in which its inhabitants were consciously and consistently building the structure of a modern state. As far as was possible amid the realities of post-feudal society, this state was already based on the rule of law. One of the basic elements of this legal structure was precisely the Napoleonic Code, which established the framework for the private law of the Free City, and made it a very small, but important, part of European legal heritage.
The Judaeo-Arabic Translation and Commentary of Salmon ben Yerōḥām on the Book of Esther
This volume comprises an edition and translation of one of the earliest specimens of Jewish programmatic commentary on the book of Esther. The commentary’s author, Salmon b. Yerōḥām, is a central early figure in the “Golden Age” of Karaism (late-9th–11th cent.), a Jewish scripturalist and penitential movement centered at that time in Jerusalem. Among the various facets of Salmon’s commentary that we explore in our introduction are his translation technique, exegetical method, homiletical emphases, and polemical concerns. We also explore his use of sources, both explicit and tacit (in the latter case to a surprisingly broad degree as regards rabbinic sources and Saadia), as well as the reception of Salmon’s commentary in subsequent Jewish exegetical tradition.
In Toledo in 1529, a converso named Pedro de Cazalla declared that the connection between man and God was but a thread and that it should not be mediated by the Church. Hardly an isolated phenomenon, Cazalla’s inner spirituality was a widespread response to the increasing repression of religious dissent enacted by the Inquisition.
Forced baptisms of Jews and Muslims had profound effects across Spanish society, leading famous intellectuals as well as ordinary men and women to rethink their sense of belonging to the Christian community and their forms of religiosity. Thus, in this book, early modern Iberia emerges as a laboratory of European-wide transformations.
Leadership, Charity, and Literacy
Author:
This book is a history of Ottoman Jews that challenges prevailing assumptions about Jews’ arrival in the empire, their relations with Muslims, and the role of religious and lay leaders. The book argues that rabbis played a less prominent role as communal and spiritual leaders than we have thought; and that the religious community was one of several frameworks within which Ottoman Jews operated. A focus on charitable and educational communal practices shows that with time Jews preferred to avoid the scrutiny of rabbis and the community, leading to private initiatives that undermined rabbinical and lay authority.
Author:

Abstract

Around the turn of the 17th century, the Swedish antiquary and mystic Johannes Bureus (1568–1652) claimed to have discovered the primordial theology and science of his Scandinavian ancestors encoded in their system of writing, the runic alphabet, inspired in large part by earlier Christian interpretations of the Kabbalah. In the leadup to the Swedish intervention in the Thirty Years’ War, he viewed the discovery as the ecumenical solution to the confessional divisions that were rending Europe asunder. This article explores how Bureus’s simultaneously typical and idiosyncratic engagement with the Kabbalah originated, what functions it served in his broader antiquarian program, and how it evolved to adapt to the shifting contours of Protestant scholarship in the first half of the 17th century.

Open Access
In: Zutot
Author:

Abstract

MS Mich. 335 in the Bodleian library, from the 15th century, is a collection of philosophical works in Hebrew, predominantly concerned with logic. Among them is a short text entitled Treatise on the Four Inquiries, attributed to ‘Al-Muqammas.’ The present study shows that this treatise is in fact a Hebrew adaptation of the first chapter of Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ’s Twenty Chapters, which was repurposed into a self-standing introduction to logic. This finding enhances the growing appreciation of Al-Muqammaṣ’s place in the history of Jewish philosophy, extending it to the field of logic. The study is accompanied by an edition of the Hebrew text with a parallel English translation.

In: Zutot

Abstract

This article analyses an overlooked phenomenon in the history of Reformed Hebraism in the era of ‘high orthodoxy’ (c. 1640–1720), namely the increasing interest in Kabbalah as an ancient tradition of ‘mystical’ exegesis. It enquires into the reasons that propelled this interest, proposing that they are to be found in the attempt to elaborate an acceptable notion of an allegorical sense of Scripture that was current in antiquity, as well as in the insistence (which was of particular importance in anti-Remonstrant polemics) that the Trinity and the divinity of the Messiah were known to the ancient Jews through the Old Testament and its interpretation. Finally, the article shows how these ideas developed in the more specific context of Dutch Reformed theology, where Kabbalah was understood by some scholars (especially around the Groningen professor Jacob Alting) as evidence of the spiritual dimension inherent in the Mosaic covenant.

In: Zutot
In: IMAGES
Author:

Abstract

This article investigates the images of paired scrolling patterns recurring in the design of Jewish ritual spaces and objects. It explores a facet of non-narrative visual expression within Jewish visual culture. The chronologically and geographically disconnected depictions of similar paired scrolled patterns on Jewish artifacts exemplify the process of creating and recreating symbolic meanings based on the mimetic qualities of an image. In their various renditions and contexts, volutes in their resemblance to growing plan