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Emw 2006: Gender, Family, And Social Structures, Emw 2006

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The 2006 Early Modern Workshop on the topic of “Gender, Family, and Social Structures” addressed a spectrum of topics about the transformation of the concept and form of family in general, and of Jewish family in particular in the early modern period.

The workshop took up questions of: marriage rituals, as represented by early modern (Elisheva Baumgarten) and Christians (Jacob Deutsch), and marriage contracts (Ruth Lamdan), responsibilities of the Jewish community to women and out-of-wedlock children (Elisheva Carlebach), challenges to marriage and marital propriety (Debra Kaplan on rabbinic responses to Jewish women’s encounters with Christian men; David Malkiel and Kenneth …

Review Of The Database Testaments To The Holocaust, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the database Testaments to the Holocaust.

Liberating Visions: Religion And The Challenge Of Change In Maine,1820 To The Present, University Of Southern Maine, Susie Boch, Joseph S. Wood, Maureen Elgersman Lee, Howard M. Solomon, Abraham J. Peck

Publications (Annual Event Catalog)

Liberating Visions: Religion and the Challenge of Change in Maine, 1820 to the Present. Each of the Sampson Center’s three scholars has crafted an original essay related to one of the Sampson Center collections—African-American, Judaic, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender—thereby reflecting on how religious institutions have fostered minority identity and have framed social and cultural transformation.

Table of Contents:

Religion and Transformation (Joseph S. Wood, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs)

Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine Programming (Susie Bock, Director, Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine and Head, USM Special Collections)

The African American …

'Olah: The Rhetoric Of Burnt Offerings, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

The ‘olah offering receives pride of place in most lists of sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible, including the ritual rules of Leviticus. Its prominence in these texts suggests that the writers expected its mention to have an effect on their audience. This rhetorical effect must be evaluated and understood before the references to the `olah can be used to reconstruct ancient religious practices reliably. A comparative analysis of the rhetoric about the `olah suggests that its priority burnished the image of priests as devoted selflessly to divine worship and drew attention away from their economic interests in the sacrificial system …

Adolf Eichmann: Understanding Evil In Form And Content, Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann by Harry Mulisch. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005.

Domestic Interiors Of Two Viennese Jewish Elites Probate Court In Vienna, 1730s, David Horowitz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The probate inventories of mid-eighteenth-century Viennese Court Jews provide a rare opportunity to reflect upon the role of material consumption in the processes of acculturation and class formation among Central European Jewish elites during the decades preceding the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment). Probate inventories are lists of assets and possessions drawn up by government officials in the process of settling the estate of the deceased. These inventories require cautious interpretation by the historian, but potentially yield precious rewards since they afford a glimpse into the individual’s complex material world.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Domestic Interiors of Two Viennese …

The City As A Place Of Regulation, Border And Exclusion, Bernard D. Cooperman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Supplications to the Government, Jewish Settlement in Livorno Atti Civili del Ufficio di governatore di Livorno (1605, 1610)

Law, Boundaries, And City Life In Early Modern Poland-Lithuania, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The dynamics of relations within cities thus are shaped not only by class or religious or ethnic membership but also by the legal framework. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, divisions between the private and royal domains within cities disrupted not only their legal coherence but also that of Jewish communities themselves, sharpening economic competition and often also conflict. This is what the 1711 decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the kahal of Minsk highlights--legal distinctions sometimes exacerbated urban tensions.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal against the Kahal of Minsk (1711)

Click here to view …

Marching Soldiers, Opera Houses And Young Jewish Men In Eighteenth-Century Hague: Haag Jewish Community Minute Book, Stefan Litt

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The presented sources have been selected from the oldest minute book, the pinkas, of the Ashkenazi community in The Hague, which was kept from 1723 until 1786. The Hague was then the Dutch capital and residence of the Orange Stadholders. The city was much smaller than Amsterdam, but it was still one of the most important urban centers of the Dutch Republic. As the capital, its urban population included many officials, diplomats and soldiers, and these people formed and influenced the urban life significantly. The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the high point of the Rococo with its …

The Personal Record Book Of Hayyim Gundersheim Dayyan (1774), Edward Fram

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Rabbinic courts were and remain an integral part of the Jewish community and the Jewish community in Frankfurt in the late eighteenth century had not one but two such courts. The courts handled a wide range of issues including divorces, contracts, real estate transactions, trusts, estates, and also gave opinions on the scope of Jewish communal authority. This particular case deals with a house on the so called "Judengasse" in Frankfurt. The Jewish ghetto was divided up into lots that had names rather than street numbers and houses on the lots were often owned by more than one family. The …

Close Quarters Privacy And Jewish House Space In Early Modern Polish Cities, Adam Teller

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The following texts were chosen in order to illustrate the implications of the growth in Jewish population in Poland's larger towns during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the number of Jews grew faster than the non-Jewish authorities would allow the Jewish quarters to expand. This led to an increasing degree of crowding in the Jewish quarter as a whole as well as in individual houses. To illustrate this, some demographic data on the situation in the Jewish quarter of Poznan may be seen in the presentation.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Cracow Community Ordinance of 5355 (1595) …

Rural Jews Of Alsace, Debra Kaplan

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

From 1348/9-1477, the Jews of Alsace were expelled from the cities in which they had lived throughout the Middle Ages. While many opted to leave the Empire for centers in Eastern Europe and Italy, some Jews remained, moving to the towns and villages in the countryside. By the 1470's, the majority of Alsatian Jews lived in rural areas. Quotas often dictated residential policies in towns and villages, so it was not uncommon to find one or two Jewish families per village/town. The following documents detail the relationship of rural Alsatian Jews, as represented by their communal leaders, with two Alsatian …

Taverns And Public Drinking In Florence, Stefanie Siegmund

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The texts presented here (from Florence, Italy, 1571-1622) draw our attention to a set of spaces neither specifically Jewish nor Christian, but decidedly urban and early modern: the eating and drinking establishments of the cities. Not included here but relevant are the rabbinic laws that forbid Jews to eat non-kosher food, regulate the wine Jews drink, and prohibit Jews from spending or handling money on the Sabbath and on festival days. As a set, the texts both hint at chronological developments in the city of Florence and in the ghetto and also serve to caution against facile readings of any …

Proceedings Of Old Bailey (18th Century), Todd Endelman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Todd Endelman discusses the following six texts were published in The Whole Proceedings upon the King's Commission of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery for the City of London and also the Gaol Delivery for the County of Middlesex, a series of printed volumes recording cases tried at the Old Bailey in the City of London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (now accessible on line at www.oldbaileyonline.org.)

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• The Proceedings of the Old Bailey

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Question Of The Eruv In Early Modern Europe, David Katz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Both the responsum of Rabbi Aboab and that of Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi reflect a feature of pre-modern kehillah life almost never dealt with in scholarly literature, namely, the urban eruv, a physical boundary delineating space in which one is permitted to carry items on Sabbath, erected by the kehillah.

This presentation is for the following text(s), available in the PDF file:

• Samuel Aboab's Responsum 257
• Hakham Zvi Ashkenazi's Responsum, She'elot u'Teshuvot Hakham Zvi no. 6 (1699)

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The Shtetl In Context, Thomas Hubka

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The town plans that will be analyzed were part of a greater, pre-nineteenth century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including most of today's Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and western Ukraine. The overall organization and character of the Polish, eighteenth century, small Jewish town was primarily developed during the fourteenth-through-eighteenth century Polish colonization of its eastern provinces in what is now Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.

Emw 2005: Jews And Urban Spaces, Emw 2005

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

The second Early Modern Workshop (August, 2005) was hosted by the Louis L. Kaplan Chair in Jewish History, the Department of History, and the Rebecca and Joseph Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland; by the Hebraica Section of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., and supported by Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT.

Texts and maps cover a number of urban and geographic settings from London, to The Hague, Frankfurt, Livorno, Florence, Strasbourg, Prague, Poznań, and Minsk. They deal with physical personal space (minutes from the Poznań community record book; responsum of Rabbi Isaac the Great from Poznań; …

Review Of The Book Dictionary Of Literary Biography, Vol. 299: Holocaust Novelists, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Dictionary of literary biography, Vol. 299: Holocaust novelists.

The Boom Of Testimony After Communism: The Voices Of The Holocaust Survivors In Romania: 1989-2005, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

"In this article I intend to deal with the relation between Jewish survivors and Holocaust remembrance in post-communist Romania. Therefore I will investigate the consequences of the Holocaust experience on Jewish survivors from the perspective of how, when and why they remember the catastrophe. My investigation will not particularly focus on the level of the trauma and sufferings they have to live with, but rather on how the political, social and cultural factors have managed to influence the public recollection of the war sufferings and the survivors’ attitude towards Holocaust remembrance. I am interested in discovering mainly the way these …

"Review Of Symbiosis, Symbolism, And The Power Of The Past: Canaan, Ancient Israel, And Their Neighbors From The Late Bronze Age Through Roman Palaestina. Proceedings Of The Centennial Symposium, W. F. Albright Institute Of Archaeological Research And American Schools Of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, May 29-31, 2000", Dale Launderville Osb

School of Theology and Seminary Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Political Impetus, And Moral Imperative: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Karyn House

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Sefer Zikhronot-Book Of Remembrances By Samuel Aboab (1650), Bernard D. Cooperman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Sefer Zikhronot-Book of Remembrances

Records Of The Metz Beit Din: Jewish Court Records (1771-1789), Jay R. Berkovitz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Until roughly 1789, the hallmark of Jewish communal autonomy was the authority granted to rabbinic courts to adjudicate civil cases involving Jewish litigants. Nevertheless, the exclusive civil jurisdiction of these tribunals was challenged regularly by individuals seeking to resolve their disputes in the general courts. In Metz, the much esteemed rabbinic court (beit din) continued to convene until early 1790. Three registers from the beit din are preserved in manuscript at the YIVO Archives in New York. Commencing in 1771, the registers contain nearly two decades of judicial cases totaling 1167 decisions.

The texts included are two cases …

The Jewishness Of Conversos, Talya Fishman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Talya Fishman discusses rabbinic views on the Jewishness of conversos in the early modern period.

This presentation is for the following text(s):

• Keshet U-Magen
• Respuesta A Un Cavallero Frances
• She'elot u-Teshuvot Yakhin u-Vo'az
• Voice of a Fool

The Order Of Women's Commandments Seder Mitzvot Nashim By Benjamin Slonik (1577), Edward Fram

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Using Benjamin Slonik's Seder mitsvot ha-nashim (1577), Edward Fram discusses the impact of printing on Jewish culture in the early modern period.

Anti-Jewish Accusations In Poland: A Medieval Or Early Modern Phenomenon?, Magda Teter

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Anti-Jewish accusations of host desecration and ritual murder, both of medieval origin and nature, became characteristic of the early modern period in Poland. Despite their medieval roots, some of the medieval characteristics of the accusations were gradually lost in the early modern period, even though their traces continue to appear in the sources. The presentation discusses the loss of theological significance of the accusations. The host desecration accusations gradually become church robbery cases, even if some theological rhetoric is retained, and the blood libels become cases of Jewish hostility and not of reenacting of the Crucifixion.

This presentation is for …

Trent 1475: The Responses Of A Pope And A Jewish Chronicler, Kenneth Stow

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

This presentation discusses two responses to the 1475 trial of Jews accused of ritually murdering a Christian boy, Simon, in the city of Trent. One comes from Pope Sixtus IV and another, a century later, from a Jewish chronicler, Joseph ha-Cohen.

The Letters Of Bella Perlhefter (1674-75), Elisheva Carlebach

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Elisheva Carlebach discusses the literary legacy of Bella bat Jacob Perlhefter (born c. 1650), accomplished writer, instructor of music and rhythm, and entrepreneurial seventeenth-century businesswoman. Her letters provide a rare glimpse into the life of a seventeenth-century Jewish woman (other than Glikl).

Letter From Jerusalem By Obadiah Of Bertinoro (1488), Elliott Horowitz

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Elliott Horowitz discusses letters by the fifteenth-century Jewish traveler, Obadiah of Bertinoro, who traveled from northern Italy to Jerusalem, as an example of early modern travel literature and encounters with different cultures.

Sefer Ha-Heshek By Hillel Baal Shem (1739), Moshe Rosman

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Moshe Rosman discusses the 1739 book by Hillel Baal Shem as an example of early modern Jewish culture. It focuses on the tension between manuscript and print culture, and esoteric and exoteric knowledge.

The selected passages highlight Hillel's training, the problems caused by charlatans, the undesirable popularization of mystical techniques fostered by the publication of simplistic handbooks, and the tangled relationship between ba'al shem type practices and "proper" medicine.

Click here for the video of the presentation.