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Examines the changing relationship of this Jewish sect to rabbinic Judaism and the influence of Muslim and Christian environments Notions of history and the past contained in literature of the Karaite Jewish sect offer insight into the relationship of Karaism to mainstream rabbinic Judaism and to Islam and Christianity. Karaite Judaism and Historical Understanding describes how a minority sectarian religious community constructs and uses historical ideology. It investigates the proportioning of historical ideology to law and doctrine and the influence of historical setting on religious writings about the past. In the present volume, Fred Astren discusses modes of representing the past, espec...
This collection of original materials provides a sweeping view of medieval and early modern Jewish ritual and religious practice. Including such diverse texts as ritual manuals, legal codes, mystical books, autobiographical writings, folk literature, and liturgical poetry, it testifies to the enormous variety of practices that characterized Judaism in the twelve hundred years between 600 and 1800 C.E. Its focus on religious practice and experience--how Judaism was actually lived by people from day to day--makes this anthology unique among the few sourcebooks available. The volume encompasses the broad scope and complex texture of Jewish religious practice, taking into account many aspects of...
This book studies the role of the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey in providing refuge and prosperity for Jews fleeing from persecution in Europe and Byzantium in medieval times and from Russian pogroms and the Nazi holocaust in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It studies the religiously-based communities of Ottoman and Turkish Jews as well as their economic, cultural and religious lives and their relations with the Muslims and Christians among whom they lived.
This volume contains the proceedings of the international conference held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in July 2008 in honor of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In a book with a bold new view of medieval Jewish history, written in a style accessible to nonspecialists and students as well as to scholars in the field, Marina Rustow changes our understanding of the origins and nature of heresy itself. Scholars have long believed that the Rabbanites and Qaraites, the two major Jewish groups under Islamic rule, split decisively in the tenth century and from that time forward the minority Qaraites were deemed a heretical sect. Qaraites affirmed a right to decide matters of Jewish law free from centuries of rabbinic interpretation; the Rabbanites, in turn, claimed an unbroken chain of scholarly tradition. Rustow draws heavily on the Cairo Geniza, a reposit...
When Venice conquered Crete in the early thirteenth century, a significant population of Jews lived in the capital and main port city of Candia. This community grew, diversified, and flourished both culturally and economically throughout the period of Venetian rule, and although it adhered to traditional Jewish ways of life, the community also readily engaged with the broader population and the island's Venetian colonial government. In Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete, Rena N. Lauer tells the story of this unusual and little-known community through the lens of its flexible use of the legal systems at its disposal. Grounding the book in richly detailed studies of individuals an...
The Jews of Khazaria chronicles the history of the Khazars, a people who, in the early Middle Ages, founded a large empire in eastern Europe (located in present-day Ukraine and Russia). The Khazars played a pivotal role in world history. Khazaria was one of the largest-sized political formations of its time, an economic and cultural superpower connected to several important trade routes. It was especially notable for its religious tolerance, and in the 9th century, a large portion of the royal family converted to Judaism. Many of the nobles and commoners did likewise shortly thereafter. After their conversion, the Khazars were ruled by a succession of Jewish kings that began to adopt the hal...
This comprehensive survey of Jewish-Greek society's development examines the exchange of language and ideas in biblical translations, literature and archaeology.
This book offers a new and inclusive approach to Western exegesis up to 1100. For too long, modern scholars have examined Jewish and Christian exegesis apart from each other. This is not surprising, given how religious, social, and linguistic borders separated Jews and Christians. But they worked to a great extent on the same texts. Christians were keenly aware that they relied on translation. The contributions to this volume reveal how both sides worked on parallel tracks, posing similar questions and employing more or less the same techniques, and in some rare instances, interdependently.
Covers the middle Byzantine period, describing the day-to-day workings of the Byzantine-Jewish economy via primary sources.