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A book about architecture and society, a wide-ranging cultural and historical depiction of successful Jewish entrepreneurs in an increasingly industrialized Europe, from the dissolution of the ghetto and the 1848 liberation movement to Hitler's assumption of power in Germany. Inspired by Jewish messianism, they pursued a modern culture, free from the old feudal society. The principal characters are bankers, merchants, and industrialists together with their architects, from Schinkel and Semper to Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. They build in Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, Budapest and New York, and in more remote centers of Jewish entrepreneurial activity, such as Oradea (Nagyvarad) in present-day Romania and Lodz in Poland, Stockholm and Gothenburg in Sweden. The buildings shed new light on the Europe of today, but also on a Europe that is lost beyond recall.
The Serene Republic and the Dawn of the Book A highly readable but erudite book in the style of Alberto Angela's A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome, this is the compelling story of fifteenth-century Venice, at that time the mercantile and cultural capital of the world. There, the first genuine publishing houses open for business leading to an explosion of the written word and an unprecedented diffusion of human knowledge. Among the innovators who are driving these new cultural enterprises, one remarkable visionary, Aldo Manuzio, a man credited with inventing the figure of the modern publisher, stands head and shoulders above the rest. Manuzio will publish the first printed editions of the Talmud, the Koran, the works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, and classics of Greek and Latin poetry and theater, bringing about a true revolution and the birth of the modern.
Commemorating the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Venice Ghetto, this magnificent hand-bound Ultimate Collection volume introduces readers to the beauty and historical and spiritual significance of the five principal synagogues in Venice, the most important markers of Jewish faith and culture in the Most Serene Republic. Behind the walls of the Ghetto, Venetian Jews expressed strong ties to the traditions of their forefathers in constructing these beautiful places of worship. The architecture, furnishings, and decorations blended the memory of their different countries of origin with traditions of Venetian artistic culture, bequeathing the City on the Lagoon enduring monuments of unparalleled eminence that remain sites of reverence and admiration.
This book explores how the Jewish ghetto engaged the sensory imagination of Venice in complex and contradictory ways to shape urban space and reshape Christian-Jewish relations.
Much of the most recent research on Jewish scepticism was inspired by the work of the early modern Venetian rabbi Simone Luzzatto, the first thinker in the history of Jewish thought to declare himself a sceptic and a follower of the New Academy. This collected volume shines new light on the intimate relationship between Luzzatto’s sceptical thinking and an era marked by paradoxes and contrasts between religious devotion and scientific rationalism, as well as between the rabbinic-biblical Jewish tradition and the open tendency towards engagement with non-Jewish philosophical, literary, scientific, and theological cultures. It plots out an original path along which to understand Luzzatto’s scepticism by pointing to the various facets of being a Jewish sceptic in seventeenth-century Italy.
Jewish Languages in Historical Perspective is devoted to the diverse array of spoken and written language varieties that have been employed by Jews in the Diaspora from antiquity until the twenty-first century. It focuses on the following five key themes: Jewish languages in dialogue with sacred Jewish texts, Jewish languages in contact with the co-territorial non-Jewish languages, Jewish vernacular traditions, the status of Jewish languages in the twenty-first century, and theoretical issues relating to Jewish language research. This volume includes case studies on a wide range of Jewish languages both historical and modern and devotes attention to lesser known varieties such as Jewish Berber, Judeo-Italian, and Karaim in addition to the more familiar Aramaic, Judeo-Arabic, Yiddish, and Ladino. "On top of Brill’s Journal of Jewish Languages and a number of recent publications providing systematic overviews of Jewish languages as well as related theoretical discussions, this volume is a valuable addition to the increasing interest in Jewish languages and linguistics." -Wout van Bekkum, Groningen, Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXVI 3-4 (2019)
This volume explores perceptions of the "Jewish body" in variety of early modern Jewish sources. It discusses, among other topics, ideas of the ideal body in normative sources, the influence of Kabbalistic ideas on Jewish-Christian discourse and the link between melancholy and exile.
Based on documents (which appear in the appendix on pp. 129-238), reconstructs the activities of Conversos who fled the Portuguese Inquisition to Antwerp and to London. These "Portuguese Nations" established the Sedakah Rescue Organization to help smuggle fellow Conversos from Lisbon to Antwerp and over the Alps to Italy or to the Ottoman Empire. England served only as a temporary refuge for Conversos who were persecuted in the Low Countries. However, they were generally (despite occasional persecution) allowed to remain in Antwerp due to the policies of Emperor Charles V and local authorities, both of whom were guided by economic considerations. Disputes the view that Charles, who was respo...
The Jewish population of early modern Italy was characterised by its inner diversity, which found its expression in the coexistence of various linguistic, cultural and liturgical traditions, as well as social and economic patterns. The contributions in this volume aim to explore crucial questions concerning the self-perception and identity of early modern Italian Jews from new perspectives and angles.
This volume presents dozens of classical Hebrew texts translated into literary Italian. It is the first study of an almost ignored corpus, showing the degree of cultural and linguistic integration of the Jews of Italy long before the German Haskala.