A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era

A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era
Author: David B. Ruderman
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2014-12-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0295805595

The history of a single book sheds light on the beginnings of modern Jewish thought In 1797, in what is now the Czech Republic, Pinḥas Hurwitz published Book of the Covenant. Nominally an extended commentary on a sixteenth-century kabbalist text, Pinḥas’s publication was in fact a compendium of scientific knowledge and a manual of moral behavior. Its popularity stemmed from its ability to present the scientific advances and moral cosmopolitanism of its day in the context of Jewish legal and mystical tradition. Describing the latest developments in science and philosophy in the sacred language of Hebrew, Hurwitz argued that an intellectual understanding of the cosmos was not at odds with but actually key to achieving spiritual attainment. In A Best-Selling Hebrew Book of the Modern Era, David Ruderman offers a literary and intellectual history of Hurwitz’s book and its legacy. Hurwitz not only wrote the book, but also was instrumental in selling it, and his success ultimately led to the publication of more than forty editions in Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. Ruderman provides a multidimensional picture of the book and the intellectual tradition it helped to inaugurate. Complicating accounts that consider modern Jewish thought to be the product of a radical break from a religious, mystical past, Ruderman shows how, instead, a complex continuity shaped Jewish society’s confrontation with modernity.

The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy

The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy
Author: Joseph R. Hacker
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2011-08-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 081220509X

The rise of printing had major effects on culture and society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology—and the relatively rapid embrace of it among early modern Jews—certainly had an effect on many aspects of Jewish culture. One major change that print seems to have brought to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, particularly in Italy, was greater interaction between Jews and Christians in the production and dissemination of books. Starting in the early sixteenth century, the locus of production for Jewish books in many places in Italy was in Christian-owned print shops, with Jews and Christians collaborating on the editorial and technical processes of book production. As this Jewish-Christian collaboration often took place under conditions of control by Christians (for example, the involvement of Christian typesetters and printers, expurgation and censorship of Hebrew texts, and state control of Hebrew printing), its study opens up an important set of questions about the role that Christians played in shaping Jewish culture. Presenting new research by an international group of scholars, this book represents a step toward a fuller understanding of Jewish book history. Individual essays focus on a range of issues related to the production and dissemination of Hebrew books as well as their audiences. Topics include the activities of scribes and printers, the creation of new types of literature and the transformation of canonical works in the era of print, the external and internal censorship of Hebrew books, and the reading interests of Jews. An introduction summarizes the state of scholarship in the field and offers an overview of the transition from manuscript to print in this period.

Studying the Jewish Future

Studying the Jewish Future
Author: Calvin Goldscheider
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780295983899

Explores the power of Jewish culture and assesses the perceived threats to the coherence and size of Jewish communities in the United States, Europe, and Israel. 001.

The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories

The Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories
Author: Glenda Abramson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 432
Release: 1996
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Glenda Abramson's informative introduction sets the scene for a powerful literary collection, the definitive anthology of a vibrant modern genre.

Early Modern Jewry

Early Modern Jewry
Author: David B. Ruderman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691152888

Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before. Ruderman explores five crucial and powerful characteristics uniting Jewish communities: a mobility leading to enhanced contacts between Jews of differing backgrounds, traditions, and languages, as well as between Jews and non-Jews; a heightened sense of communal cohesion throughout all Jewish settlements that revealed the rising power of lay oligarchies; a knowledge explosion brought about by the printing press, the growing interest in Jewish books by Christian readers, an expanded curriculum of Jewish learning, and the entrance of Jewish elites into universities; a crisis of rabbinic authority expressed through active messianism, mystical prophecy, radical enthusiasm, and heresy; and the blurring of religious identities, impacting such groups as conversos, Sabbateans, individual converts to Christianity, and Christian Hebraists. In describing an early modern Jewish culture, Early Modern Jewry reconstructs a distinct epoch in history and provides essential background for understanding the modern Jewish experience.

Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity

Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity
Author: Lee I. Levine
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2012-03-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0295803827

Generations of scholars have debated the influence of Greco-Roman culture on Jewish society and the degree of its impact on Jewish material culture and religious practice in Palestine and the Diaspora of antiquity. Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity examines this phenomenon from the aftermath of Alexander’s conquest to the Byzantine era, offering a balanced view of the literary, epigraphical, and archeological evidence attesting to the process of Hellenization in Jewish life and its impact on several aspects of Judaism as we know it today. Lee Levine approaches this broad subject in three essays, each focusing on diverse issues in Jewish culture: Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period, rabbinic tradition, and the ancient synagogue. With his comprehensive and thorough knowledge of the intricate dynamics of the Jewish and Greco-Roman societies, the author demonstrates the complexities of Hellenization and its role in shaping many aspects of Jewish life—economic, social, political, cultural, and religious. He argues against oversimplification and encourages a more nuanced view, whereby the Jews of antiquity survived and prospered, despite the social and political upheavals of this era, emerging as perpetuators of their own Jewish traditions while open to change from the outside world.

Zakhor

Zakhor
Author: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
Publisher: UBS Publishers' Distributors
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780295975191

Discusses the nature of Jewish historical memory which traditionally concentrated on the religious meaning of history rather than on the events themselves. Medieval Jewish historians focused either on the ancient past or on recent persecutions, tending to identify them with biblical patterns of oppression. For example, the Hebrew chronicles of the Crusader massacres show awareness of a deterioration in Christian-Jewish relations, using the "binding of Isaac" as a pattern for Jewish martyrdom. Although the chronicles were forgotten, the memory of the persecutions was preserved in halakhic and liturgical works. The expulsion from Spain in 1492 stimulated a minor resurgence in Jewish historiography. However, the kabbalistic myth proved more influential than history. Modern Jewish historiography is based on the secular concept of historical science and, especially since the Holocaust, cannot take the place of group memory.--Publisher description.

Joseph Perl's Revealer Of Secrets

Joseph Perl's Revealer Of Secrets
Author: Dov Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2019-03-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429721153

The dawning of the nineteenth century found the Jews of Eastern Europe torn between the forces of progress and reaction as they took their first tentative steps toward the modern world. In a war of words and of books, Haskaia–the Jewish Enlightenment–did battle with the religious revival movement known as Hasidism. Perl, an ardent advocate of Enlightenment, unleashed the opening salvo with the publication in 1819 of Revealer of Secrets. The novel tried to pass itself off as a hasidic holy book when it was, in fact, a broadside against Hasidism–a parody of its teachings and of the language of its holy books. The outraged hasidim responded by buying up and burning as many copies as they could. Dov Taylor's careful translation and commentary make this classic of Hebrew literature available and accessible to the contemporary English-speaking reader while preserving the integrity and bite of Perl's original. With Hasidism presently enjoying a remarkable rebirth, the issues in Revealer of Secrets are all the more relevant to those seeking to balance reason and faith. As the first Hebrew novel, the work will also be of great interest to students of modern Hebrew literature and modern Jewish history.

The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature

The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature
Author: Marina Zilbergerts
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0253059429

The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature argues that the institution of the yeshiva and its ideals of Jewish textual study played a seminal role in the resurgence of Hebrew literature in modern times. Departing from the conventional interpretation of the origins of Hebrew literature in secular culture, Marina Zilbergerts points to the practices and metaphysics of Talmud study as its essential animating forces. Focusing on the early works and personal histories of founding figures of Hebrew literature, from Moshe Leib Lilienblum to Chaim Nachman Bialik, The Yeshiva and the Rise of Modern Hebrew Literature reveals the lasting engagement of modern Jewish letters with the hallowed tradition of rabbinic learning.