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This volume brings together articles on the cultural, religious, social and commercial interactions among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval and early modern periods. Written by leading scholars in Jewish studies, Islamic studies, medieval history and social and economic history, the contributions to this volume reflect the profound influence on these fields of the volume’s honoree, Professor Mark R. Cohen.
The first encylopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world This is the first encyclopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book features more than 150 authoritative and accessible articles by an international team of leading experts in history, politics, literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Organized thematically and chronologically, this indispensable reference provides critical facts and balanced context for greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims. Part I covers the medieval p...
In the year 921/2, the Jewish leaders of Palestine and Babylonia disagreed on how to calculate the calendar. This led the Jews of the entire Near East to celebrate Passover and the other festivals, through two years, on different dates. The controversy was major, but it became forgotten until its late 19th-century rediscovery in the Cairo Genizah. Faulty editions of the texts, in the following decades, led to much misunderstanding about the nature, leadership, and aftermath of the controversy. In this book, Sacha Stern re-edits the texts completely, discovers many new Genizah sources, and challenges the historical consensus. This book sheds light on early medieval Rabbanite leadership and controversies, and on the processes that eventually led to the standardization of the medieval Jewish calendar.
These papers on the medieval manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah are in honour of Stefan Reif, Professor of Medieval Hebrew at Cambridge University, on the occasion of his retirement after thirty-three years as director of the Genizah Research Unit.
The study of time, astronomy, and calendars, has been closely intertwined in the history of Western culture and, more particularly, Jewish tradition. Jewish interest in astronomy was fostered by the Jewish calendar, which was based on the courses of the sun and the moon, whilst astronomy, in turn, led to a better understanding of how time should be reckoned. Time, Astronomy, and Calendars in the Jewish Tradition, edited by Sacha Stern and Charles Burnett, presents a wide selection of original research in this multi-disciplinary field, ranging from Antiquity to the later Middle Ages. Its variety of approaches and sub-themes reflects the relevance of astronomy and calendars to many aspects of Jewish, and more generally ancient and medieval, culture and social history. Contributors include: Jonathan Ben-Dov, Reimund Leicht, Marina Rustow, Francois de Blois, Raymond Mercier, Philipp Nothaft, Josefina Rodriguez Arribas, Ilana Wartenberg, Israel Sandman, Justine Isserles, Anne C. Kineret Sittig, Katharina Keim, and Sacha Stern
Sects and sectarianism are popular themes in Jewish history, but the meaning of these terms is elusive, often raising more problems than solutions. This volume, drawing on the expertise of a wide range of scholars, examines several Jewish groups from Antiquity to the present day that have been traditionally identified as ‘sects’ or as ‘sectarian’, including most famously the Qumran community and the Qaraites. It questions whether ‘sect’ and ‘sectarianism’ are appropriate or effective as historical categories for the interpretation of social and religious movements in Jewish history.
NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST Part of the Jewish Encounter series One May day in 1896, at a dining-room table in Cambridge, England, a meeting took place between a Romanian-born maverick Jewish intellectual and twin learned Presbyterian Scotswomen, who had assembled to inspect several pieces of rag paper and parchment. It was the unlikely start to what would prove a remarkable, continent-hopping, century-crossing saga, and one that in many ways has revolutionized our sense of what it means to lead a Jewish life. In Sacred Trash, MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole and acclaimed essayist Adina Hoffman tell the story of the retrieval from an Egyptian geniza, or repository fo...
This book challenges a common historical narrative, which portrays medieval Jews as moneylenders who filled an essential economic role in Europe. It traces how and why this narrative was constructed as a philosemitic narrative in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to the rise of political antisemitism. This book also documents why it is a myth for medieval Europe, and illuminates how changes in Jewish history change our understanding of European history. Each chapter offers a novel interpretation of central topics, such as the usury debate, commercial contracts, and moral literature on money and value to demonstrate how the revision of Jewish history leads to new insights in European history.
The medieval church was founded on and governed by concepts of faith and trust--but not in the way that is popularly assumed. Offering a radical new interpretation of the institutional church and its social consequences in England, Ian Forrest argues that between 1200 and 1500 the ability of bishops to govern depended on the cooperation of local people known as trustworthy men and shows how the combination of inequality and faith helped make the medieval church. Trustworthy men (in Latin, viri fidedigni) were jurors, informants, and witnesses who represented their parishes when bishops needed local knowledge or reliable collaborators. Their importance in church courts, at inquests, and durin...
"While rabbinic literature enables us to know more about the rabbis than any of the other members of the Jewish population of Roman Palestine, the social structure of the rabbinic movement remained largely unexplored. In the present study Catherine Hezser combines a critical analysis of the available literary, legal, and epigraphic evi-dence with a selective employment of sociological models. She examines the definition of the boundaries of the rabbinic movement, deals with the nature of the relationships amongst rabbis, and investigates the relationship between rabbis and their contemporaries, that is students, the community, and the patriarch."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved