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After World War II, the centre of gravity for world Jewry moved utside Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, large-scale emigration and post-war assimilation resulted in a disheartening contraction of European Jewry, with the notable exception of France. Today, Europe's Jews number only 17 percent of the world Jewish population. At the beginning of this century, they comprised 83 percent and were the centre of the modern Jewish experience. In a radical reversal, former peripheries became the centres, notably American Jewry, the largest and most dynamic of the Diaspora communities, and the State of Israel. An examination of the altered place of Europe and its future role in Jewish histor...
This edited collection honors Menahem Schmelzer's influence upon the field of Jewish liturgy. Three generations of scholars apply different analytical methods to varying texts and ritual occasions, providing an up-to-date picture of the field and its implications for related areas.
This volume includes contributions presented at two conferences, in Mainz and Jerusalem, and presents new discoveries of binding fragments in several European libraries and archives and abroad. It presents newly discovered texts with unknown Jewish writings from the Middle Ages and analyses fragments of well-known texts, such as textual witnesses of Midrashim. One chapter overviews recent discoveries in certain collections, some of them far beyond the geographical horizon of the original project, but certainly all of European origin. Other chapters study palaeographical and codicological issues of manuscript fragments and Ashkenazic inscriptions. A final article refers to the beginnings of scholarly interest in Hebrew binding fragments in Germany and sheds light on the part played by Christian Hebraists in its development.
The word "West" is omnipresent and often unquestioned. The goal of this volume is to elaborate a critical reflection on this concept and make these implicit processes explicit. The articles focus on spatio‐temporal practices regarding the production and representation of westernness. Taking critical perspectives, which view the West from the inside and the outside, they address issues of highest political and social relevance.
"In 1922, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a leader of the Zionist movement as well as many Progressive causes, established a non-denominational rabbinical seminary in New York City. Having already founded the thriving Free Synagogue movement and the American Jewish Congress, he now turned his energy toward opening the Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR) with the same ambitious aim: revolutionizing American liberal Judaism. He believed mainstream American Jewish institutions had become outdated, refusing to relinquish a nineteenth-century mindset. In championing the new Jewish nationalism and fighting alongside America's leading proponents of social and economic justice, Wise had developed a mass follo...
After the Nazi seizure of power on January 30, 1933, over 250 German rabbis, rabbinical scholars, and students for the rabbinate fled to the United States. The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate follows their lives and careers over decades in America. Although culturally uprooted, the group's professional lives and intellectual leadership, particularly those of the younger members of this group, left a considerable mark intellectually, socially, and theologically on American Judaism and on American Jewish congregational and organizational life in the postwar world. Meticulously researched and representing the only systematic analysis of prosopographical data in a digital humanities database, The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate reveals the trials of those who had lost so much and celebrates the legacy they made for themselves in America.
The scholarship of Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), one of the founders of Islamic studies in Europe, has not ceased to be in the focus of interest since his death. This volume addresses aspects of Goldziher’s intellectual trajectory together with the history of Islamic and Jewish studies as reflected in the letters exchanged between Goldziher and his peers from various countries that are preserved in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and elsewhere. The thirteen contributions deal with hitherto unexplored aspects of the correspondence addressing issues that are crucial to our understanding of the formative period of these disciplines. Contributors: Camilla Adang, Hans-Jürgen Becker, Kinga Dévényi, Sebastian Günther, Máté Hidvégi Livnat Holtzman, Amit Levy, Miriam Ovadia, Dóra Pataricza, Christoph Rauch, Valentina Sagaria Rossi, Sabine Schmidtke, Jan Thiele, Samuel Thrope, Tamás Turán, Maxim Yosefi, Dora Zsom.
The Habsburg Empire was one of the first regions where the academic study of Judaism took institutional shape in the nineteenth century. In Hungary, scholars such as Leopold and Immanuel Löw, David Kaufmann, Ignaz Goldziher, Wilhelm Bacher, and Samuel Krauss had a lasting impact on the Wissenschaft des Judentums (“Science of Judaism”). Their contributions to Biblical, rabbinic and Semitic studies, Jewish history, ethnography and other fields were always part of a trans-national Jewish scholarly network and the academic universe. Yet Hungarian Jewish scholarship assumed a regional tinge, as it emerged at an intersection between unquelled Ashkenazi yeshiva traditions, Jewish modernization movements, and Magyar politics that boosted academic Orientalism in the context of patriotic historiography. For the first time, this volume presents an overview of a century of Hungarian Jewish scholarly achievements, examining their historical context and assessing their ongoing relevance.
In Saadya Gaon: The Double Path of the Mystic and the Rationalist Gyongyi Hegedus offers a new perspective on the thought of the most significant medieval Jewish thinker of the pre-Maimonidean era, Saadya Gaon. Saadya’s important philosophical works belong to two distinct traditions: his main work is written in the style of rationalist theology (kalam), but he is also responsible for composing a commentary in a neo-Pythagorean tone. In addition to contextualizing the two traditions and analyzing their Islamic parallels, the book makes the argument that Saadya consciously constructed a two-layered model of thought and harmonized two styles: one based on sensation and logic, the other on a specific prophetic insight.
The Evil Eye is mentioned repeatedly throughout the Old Testament, Israel's parabiblical writings, and New Testament, with a variety of terms and expressions. The Old Testament (Greek Septuagint) contains no less than fourteen text segments involving some twenty explicit references to the Evil Eye (Deut 15:9; 28:54, 56; Prov 23:6; 28:22; Tob 4:7, 16; Sir 14:3, 6, 8, 9, 10; 18:18; 31:13; 37:11; Wis 4:12; 4 Macc 1:26; 2:15; Ep Jer 69/70). At least three further texts are also likely implied references to an Evil Eye (1 Sam 2:29, 32; 18:9), with some other texts as more distant possibilities. The Evil Eye is mentioned also in the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the writi...