Jewish Studies Commons^™

The Paratexts Of Jacob Marcaria: Addressing The (Imagined) Reader In Mid-Sixteenth-Century Italy, Adam Shear

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

For a few years in the middle of the sixteenth century (1557-1564), a Hebrew press was active in Riva del Garda (Riva di Trento) under the management of Jacob Marcaria, a physician. The business arrangements of the press seem complicated and difficult to reconstruct (having only the evidence of the printed editions): Marcaria was printer for most of the books and may be considered the publisher of some; for others, he was in partnership with Rabbi Joseph Ottolenghi of nearby Cremona. The activities of Marcaria and Ottolenghi were undertaken with the permission of the Prince-Bishop of Trent, Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo …

Leon Modena's Ari Nohem Between Print And Manuscript, Yaacob Dweck

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation examines Leon Modena's critique of Kabbalah, a Hebrew treatise composed in Venice in 1639 entitled Ari Nohem (The Roaring Lion). One of the primary causes of Modena's critique was the printing of kabbalistic books such as the Zohar, Ma'arekhet ha-Elohut, and Sefer Yetzirah. In Modena's argument, the printing of kabbalistic books in the sixteenth century had disrupted prior patterns of the transmission of kabbalistic knowledge. In particular, Modena argues that kabbalistic books had begun to be read in new ways by new audiences. Using Modena's analysis as a point of departure this presentation will focus on two questions: …

Shlomo Lutzker's Introduction To Magid Devarav Le-Ya'akov, Moshe Rosman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

ABSTRACT: This presentation analyzes Shlomo Lutzker's Introduction to Magid Devarav Le-Ya'akov as a key source of information on the process of formation and publication of early hasidic books and the activities of printers and aditors. It also bears on the questions of whether there existed "hasidic publishers" and how it might be possible to identify a "hasidic book".

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Shlomo Lutzker's Introduction to Magid Devarav Le-Ya'akov: Likutei Amarim (1781)

A Publisher In Service Of His Readers: Prefaces To Amsterdam 1711 Edition Of The Tsene Rene, Shlomo Berger

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The Amsterdam 1711 edition of the Tsene Rene is a particularly interesting because it contains prefaces that include allusions to and discussions of Yiddish texts and book production, the roles of publishers and the envisaged demands of readers. It enables us to determine and evaluate the status of books with the early modern Ashkenazi culture.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Preface to the 1711 edition of Tsene Rene

Technology, Preservation, And Freedom Of Expression: Isaac De Latters As Printer In Sixteenth-Century Italy, Bernard D. Cooperman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presentation discusses broader questions of the relationship between technology and freedom of expression in sixteenth-century Italy. It takes into account the Counter-Reformation context and its impact on Jewish printing and culture.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Responsa of Rabbenu Nissim of Gerona (1546)
• A ruling against rabbis who have sought to delay the printing of the Zohar (1558)
• The "imprimatur" by Isaac de Lattes (1558)

Emw 2009: Reading Across Cultures: The Jewish Book And Its Readers In The Early Modern Period, Emw 2009

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The sixth Early Modern Workshop will focus on the topic of "Reading across Cultures: The Jewish Book and Its Readers in the Early Modern Period." The workshop was held at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University from Sunday, August 23, 2009 and to Tuesday, August 25, 2009.

The workshop opened a discussion of the culture of reading in Jewish society, as well as of the reading of Jewish books in Christian society, during a period of rapid cultural transformation. What was a "Jewish" book, one participant asked? What were the different or parallel developments within Jewish society, …

Gray Zones Of Modern Genocide, Megan Dale Lee

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Italian-Jewish chemist and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi wrote in his work The Drowned and the Saved about the "Gray Zone," or holding place for all things difficult to categorize about his experiences in the Nazi camp Auschwitz. Because human tendency is to divide things in a rigid dichotomy, he argued, anything without a set role is brushed aside. I have extended this Gray Zone to include mutually shared situations from modern genocide including: the relationship of race/land to genocide, the "Forced Victim-Perpetrator" (victim forced to commit atrocities against his or her own people), and the complex international reaction to genocidal …

Emerging Identities In Colonial Tunisia: "Alliancist" And Zionist Representations In Tunis Prior To World War I, Joy A. Land

Department of History - Stamford Publications

By 1900 the Jewish community of Tunisia witnessed the emergence of new competing identities: “assimilationist” of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, termed “Alliancist,” and Zionist. Strikingly, two members of the same family in Tunis, Raymond Valensi, President of the AIU Regional Committee, and Alfred Valensi, President of the Zionist Federation, led the struggle for their separate causes. In his discussion of identity in the modern world, Homi Bhabha asks, "How do strategies of representation or empowerment come to be formulated in the competing claims of communities…where, despite shared histories of …discrimination, the exchange of values, meanings and priorities…may be profoundly antagonistic…?" …

Dave Astor, David Astor

The Oral History Project of Documenting Maine Jewry

No abstract provided.

The Dynamic Concepts Of Resistance And Collaboration In Post-Holocaust Remembrance. Revisiting The Personal Narratives Of Jewish Survivors From Romania, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines how the Holocaust survivors from Romania represented and reinterpreted the notions of resistance and collaboration. Overall, it seems that the treatment of the Holocaust in post-WWII public opinion and scholarship influenced the way survivors represented the Holocaust. For many years, resistance was equated with ‘heroic’ armed struggle. Gradually, the perspective of the Holocaust began to change, and new interpretations enlarging the concept of resistance have since emerged. The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis has also triggered heated debates. Due to changing social and political contexts, new interpretations focusing on the difficulties and moral dilemmas faced …

The Ghosts Of Our Mothers: From Oral Tradition To Written Words—A History And Critique Of Jewish Women Writers Of Iranian Heritage, Farideh Goldin

English Faculty Publications

Throughout the 2,000 years of Iranian Jewish history, women usually were either illiterate or silenced. Iranian Jewish women in exile have been making up for their foremothers by creating prose literature at a fast pace in the last two decades. Through their poetry, novels and memoirs, they validate the claim that with financial security, access to education, and freedom of speech—rarely accessible to Iranian women until the twentieth century—they can shine. This article explores the history and background of Jewish women writers of Iranian heritage.

Images Of Egypt In Early Biblical Literature: Cisjordan-Israelite, Transjordan-Israelite, And Judahite Portrayals, Stephen C. Russell

Publications and Research

This book suggests a regional paradigm for understanding the development of the traditions about Egypt and the exodus in the Hebrew Bible. It offers fresh readings of the golden calf stories in 1 Kgs 12:25-33 and Exod 32, the Balaam oracles in Num 22-24, and the Song of the Sea in Exod 15:1b-18 and from these paints a picture of the differing traditions about Egypt that circulated in Cisjordan Israel, Transjordan Israel, and Judah in the 8th century B.C.E. and earlier.
In the north, an exodus from Egypt was celebrated in the Bethel calf cult as a journey of Israelites …

The Jews And Ius Commune, Kenneth Stow

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

From the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, there was a gradually increasing integration of Jews into systems of ius commune, loosely, the law of the land, but actually a legal tradition based on Roman law, which subsumed local law, usually called ius proprium. The integration might be purely theoretical or in fact, as certainly occurred in the papal state and it seems elsewhere in Italy, too. This legal integration prepared the way for the major legal upheaval worked by the French Revolution. The implications are many. The details mostly unresearched. The Tractatus de Iudaeis of Giuseppe Sessa (Turin, 1713) is the …

When The Indelible Sacrament Of Baptism Met Mercantile Raison D'Etat, Benjamin Ravid

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In theory, under almost all circumstances, once a Jew had been baptized, s/he became a Christian and any relapse constituted heresy and was liable to severe punishment, often by death. However, in the mid-sixteenth century the Papacy adopted a far more lenient policy out of considerations of commercial raison d' état and invited New Christian merchants to assume Judaism in Ancona with assurance of complete freedom from any persecution. At the same time, Venice expelled all Marranos from the city and forbade them to return. The papal attitude changed with the Counter-Reformation and former New Christians who had reverted to …

Trying Issues: Polish-Lithuanian Jews Under Multiple Jurisdictions, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The texts presented here highlight issues of multiple jurisdiction Jews were subjected to in early modern Poland-Lithuania

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Privilege for the Jews of Lwów (1692)
• Privilege for the Jews of the Przemyśl Region and Rus' (1660)

Jews At The Court Of The Kadi, Yaron Ben-Naeh

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

One of the most astonishing phenomena of Jewish life in the Ottoman state is the widespread appeal to the kadi's court - a muslim court. I intend to describe the frequency of this norm, against explicit regulations, and explain the motivation to use the kadi's services, as well as the reasons for the ban against it. I shall conclude with the social and cultural significance of this practice.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Mordechai Halevi, Darkei Noam (Pleasant Ways) (Venice, 1697)
• The court records of istanbul/ Istanbul sher'iyye sijilleri (1662)

Under Imperial Protection? Jewish Presence On The Imperial Aulic Court In The 16th And 17th Centuries, Barbara Staudinger

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

From the middle ages on Jewish life in the holy roman empire was characterized by their egal status as servants of the imperial chamber (servi camerae, Kammerknechte). Paying taxes to the imperial chamber, the Jews stood under special protection of the Emperor. The so-called Speyrer Jew Privilege (1544) stated the legal framework of the Jewish community of the Empire, prohibiting expulsion, and „unjustified“ acusations of ritual murder and securing undisturbed religious practice, and imperial conduct and protection. But what was this privilege along with other privileges from indiviuals worth in reality? Based on two cases from the Imperial Aulic Court …

Evasion As A Legal Tactic: The 1616 Amsterdam Regulations Concerning The Jews, Miriam Bodian

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Early modern rulers (or ruling bodies) who chose to readmit Jews in places where they had long been banned were faced with theological dilemmas and practical problems. Although it is true that the principle of freedom of conscience was gaining increasing acceptance, its adherents were rarely clear about whether it could be applied to non-Christians. And while the economic interests of rulers favored the settlement of Jews in their lands, the opposition of guilds and clergy could not be ignored. In these circumstances, a rather striking policy of evasion was adopted - in France, in the Netherlands, and in England. …

The Herem As The Source Of Authority Of The Lay Governing Council, Anne Oravetz Albert

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

A treatise on the herem composed by Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, the head rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam. Specifically, this pamphlet defends the authority of the lay leadership council to do so, arguing against unnamed members of the community who are causing scandal by denying that authority.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Exhortation to those who fear the Lord, not to fall into sin due to lack of understanding of the precepts of his Holy Law by Isaac Aboab de Fonseca (1679/80)

Challenging Herem In Hamburg, 1732, David Horowitz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

These documents represent one of the earliest calls for state intervention by the Hamburg authorities into the internal decisions of the bet din. The bed din of the Triple Community of Hamburg-Altona-Wandsbek compelled Joseph Jonas, a resident of Hamburg, to divorce his wife after she was suspected of adultery. When he refused, the chief rabbi and kahal put him and his wife in the ban (herem). Jonas turned to the Hamburg Senate for assistance in reversing the decision and removing himself from the ban. The documents comprise letters from Jonas and the Hamburg kahal in defense of their respective positions …

Takkanot Kahal And The Origin Of Communal Structures In A Franconian Village Community In The 17th Century, Stefan Litt

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Takkanot Kahal are clearly a phenomenon of early modern Jewry in Europe. Throughout the Ashkenazi world there were four common ways to enact them. By elaborating takkanot, Jewish leaders copied the Gentile custom of creating legal digests in that time, thus adapting the communities to the administrative structures of the early modern state. The short statutes of the community in Ühlfeld, dating fromm 1688, are a rare example for takkanot enacted in an early stage of the local Jewish history. The text clearly shows the efforts of the author, R. Asher Enslen of Schnaittach, to strenghten the ties in the …

The Legal Status Of The Wife In Ashkenazi Jewish Legal Tradition: Continuity And Change In The Sixteenth Century, Elimelekh Westreich

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The ban of Rabbenu Gershom forbade both polygamy and divorcing a woman against her will. The ban has been seen by historians as a key determinant of the singularity of Ashkenazi Jewish culture. In sixteenth-century Poland there were two main approaches among halakhic scholars towards the ban: one, represented by R. Solomon Luria adhered strictly to the Ashkenazi legal tradition; the second, represented by R. Shalom Shakhna and R. Moses Isserles, was open to other Jewish legal traditions. Is this phenomenon related to the Early Modern Period? And if so, how is it related? My discussion in the workshop shall …

Expanding Legal Horizons?, Edward Fram

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Legal change was not only a result needs to adapt the law to new situations but could be stimulated by new information. New sources were not always accepted and this presentation will attempt to locate the point in time in which acceptance of a large number of new sources took place in the eastern European community of the early modern age.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Shulhan `arukh, Yoreh De'ah 19.1 (1567)
• Siftei Kohen-The Priest's Lips on Yoreh De'ah 19.1 (1647)
• Turei Zahab-The Golden Columns on Yoreh De'ah 19.1 (1646)

Law: Continuity And Change In The Early Modern Period, Emw 2008

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The topic in 2008 was "Law: Continuity and Change in the Early Modern Period." It was chosen because various shifts in the legal sphere are among the many changes that mark the early modern period as transitional. These include issues of communal self-governance as well as the relationship of Jews to the laws and courts of the lands in which they lived. The participants looked at the primary texts through both an historical and a jurisprudential lens, and engaged in an interdisciplinary dialogue about how law evolves, and how it affects and is affected by historical developments. The 2008 workshop …

Bibliography Of Works By And About Imre Kertész, Nobel Laureate In Literature 2002, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

The Sanctified ‘Adultress’ And Her Circumstantial Clause: Bathsheba’S Bath And Self-Consecration In 2 Samuel 11, J. D'Ror Chankin-Gould, Derek Hutchinson, David H. Jackson, Tyler D. Mayfield, Leah Rediger Schulte, Tammi J. Schneider, E. Winkelman

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Bathsheba's actions in 2 Sam. 11.2-4 identify crucial aspects of her character. Past commentators interpret these words in connection with menstrual purification, stressing the certain paternity of David's adulterine child. This article demonstrates that the participles rōheset and mitqaddesšet and the noun mittum'ātāh do not denote menstrual cleansing. Bathsheba's washing is an innocent bath. She is the only individual human to self-sanctify, placing her in the company of the Israelite deity. The syntax of the verse necessitates that her action of self-sanctifying occurs simultaneously as David lies with her. The three focal terms highlight the important legitimacy of Bathsheba before …

The Study Of Literature And Culture Online (Theory And Application), Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

History Of Ricl: Research Institute For Comparative Literature, University Of Alberta 1985-1999, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb Library

No abstract provided.

Diversity At The Ballot Box: Electoral Politics And Maine's Minority Communities, Post-Wwii To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Selma Botman, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck, Bob Greene

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

As this year’s Sampson Center exhibition makes clear the powerful desire to find historical inevitability in the advance toward equal opportunity for all Americans has become far more nuanced by the sometimes discomforting reminders that advances at the ballot box are neither as clear-cut nor as unconditional as we once hoped. The ancient antipathies of racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia are not so easily elided by political campaigns and elections. The pace of social consensus requires a degree of patience and continuing attention that tries the very fabric of American life while we attempt to comprehend the consequences of change wrought …

An Army Of Housewives: Women’S Wartime Columns In Two Mainstream Israeli Newspapers, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

At the height of Israel's 1948 war, women's columns in the newspapers Ha'aretz and Ma‘ariv offered readers advice, stories, and letters. They focused on domestic practices such as preparing food, sewing clothes, dressing fashionably and providing comfort. At first glance, they completely ignored the war raging around them. However, this essay shows that the columnists portrayed housewives' roles, no less than men's front-line fighting, as an important part of the nation's wartime effort. The columnists and their responding readers took the housewives' domestic practices, which made them seem so unfit for battle and turned them into a battlefield of their …