Pub Date : 2022-08-12DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10028
Gadi Sagiv
Egodocuments constitute valuable sources for the study of Hasidism. Yet those penned by hasidic leaders are relatively rare. This article explores egodocumentary material written by hasidic leader Joshua Heschel Rabinowitz of Monastyryshche (1860–1938), who was persecuted in Russia, migrated to America in 1923, and settled in New York. In contrast to the previous scholarship that focuses on Rabinowitz’s public opinions, this article centers on his personal notes. Moreover, rather than read Rabinowitz’s personal writings as reflecting his life and worldview in Eastern Europe from decades earlier, the egodocuments will be read as highlighting the challenges he faced during the years he wrote most of his works, namely, after migrating to the United States. Rabinowitz’s egodocuments not only teach us about him as an individual, but also shed light on the challenges that many admorim faced upon arrival to America between the two world wars.
{"title":"A Hasidic Leader Migrating to America: Egodocuments by Rabbi Joshua Heschel Rabinowitz of Monastyryshche (1860–1938)","authors":"Gadi Sagiv","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10028","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Egodocuments constitute valuable sources for the study of Hasidism. Yet those penned by hasidic leaders are relatively rare. This article explores egodocumentary material written by hasidic leader Joshua Heschel Rabinowitz of Monastyryshche (1860–1938), who was persecuted in Russia, migrated to America in 1923, and settled in New York. In contrast to the previous scholarship that focuses on Rabinowitz’s public opinions, this article centers on his personal notes. Moreover, rather than read Rabinowitz’s personal writings as reflecting his life and worldview in Eastern Europe from decades earlier, the egodocuments will be read as highlighting the challenges he faced during the years he wrote most of his works, namely, after migrating to the United States. Rabinowitz’s egodocuments not only teach us about him as an individual, but also shed light on the challenges that many admorim faced upon arrival to America between the two world wars.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47637952","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-13DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10026
D. Trom
Since exile, the galut, is an outcome of Israel’s defeat, the Jewish political tradition rests on the quest of the least bad solution. This contrasts with Greek-Western political theory. Residing in foreign kingdoms, Jews had to accept their domination and invest in ways to survive in hostile environments. The article shows how rabbinical literature invented a kind of proto-theory of survival and opens opportunities for Jewish agency. Even the State of Israel, generally seen as a rupture in Jewish history, fits into this traditional political logic of survival in exile.
{"title":"The Politics of Galut: On the Rabbinical Tradition of the Least Bad Solution","authors":"D. Trom","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10026","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Since exile, the galut, is an outcome of Israel’s defeat, the Jewish political tradition rests on the quest of the least bad solution. This contrasts with Greek-Western political theory. Residing in foreign kingdoms, Jews had to accept their domination and invest in ways to survive in hostile environments. The article shows how rabbinical literature invented a kind of proto-theory of survival and opens opportunities for Jewish agency. Even the State of Israel, generally seen as a rupture in Jewish history, fits into this traditional political logic of survival in exile.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49578988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-30DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10027
David Mano
{"title":"Tradition and Revolution: Jewish Polity and Politization in Europe, 18th–20th Centuries. Introduction","authors":"David Mano","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10027","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48968350","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-13DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10023
M. Žonca
This article presents an edition of a hitherto unidentified set of commented Hebrew excerpts from Thomas Aquinas’s Sentencia libri De anima. Preserved in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mich. Add. 25, and attributed to an otherwise unknown Jewish scholar named Israel ben Abraham, the excerpts reproduce the Latin text in different degrees of faithfulness to the original. They do not follow the structure of Aquinas’s commentary and seem to have been summarized and rearranged by the translator to reflect his own interests rooted in the study of Jewish philosophical texts, especially the works of Maimonides and Moses Narboni. In the introduction to the edition, I discuss the context of the excerpts as well as the identity of the translator, including the possibility that he was a Christian convert to Judaism.
{"title":"Israel ben Abraham: An Ashkenazic Translator of Aquinas?","authors":"M. Žonca","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10023","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article presents an edition of a hitherto unidentified set of commented Hebrew excerpts from Thomas Aquinas’s Sentencia libri De anima. Preserved in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Mich. Add. 25, and attributed to an otherwise unknown Jewish scholar named Israel ben Abraham, the excerpts reproduce the Latin text in different degrees of faithfulness to the original. They do not follow the structure of Aquinas’s commentary and seem to have been summarized and rearranged by the translator to reflect his own interests rooted in the study of Jewish philosophical texts, especially the works of Maimonides and Moses Narboni. In the introduction to the edition, I discuss the context of the excerpts as well as the identity of the translator, including the possibility that he was a Christian convert to Judaism.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44534011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-04DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10025
Daniella Zaidman-Mauer
Between the years 1650 and 1800, Amsterdam became the center of Yiddish printing. Vernacular medical writings were among the variety of Yiddish books published in Amsterdam. The Yiddish remedies book Seyfer Yerum Moyshe, published in 1679, was written by Moyshe Rofe mi-Kalish. In this article I intend to examine the paratexts of this book and present as a case study the doctor’s recommendations to confront the plague. He explains his remedies are credible and have been tried by many doctors. His book would not only save its readers from having to call a doctor and pay him a lot of money, but also give them remedies they can prepare in their homes or find in their pharmacies. Whether rich or poor, everyone should have access to remedies. Kalish stresses the fact that ultimately leading a pious life, together with these remedies, will promise health and longevity, with G-d’s help.
{"title":"‘May God Shield us from the Plague.’ Vernacular Remedies for the Plague from Moyshe Kalish’s Yiddish Self-help Medical Book Seyfer Yerum Moyshe (Amsterdam 1679)","authors":"Daniella Zaidman-Mauer","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Between the years 1650 and 1800, Amsterdam became the center of Yiddish printing. Vernacular medical writings were among the variety of Yiddish books published in Amsterdam. The Yiddish remedies book Seyfer Yerum Moyshe, published in 1679, was written by Moyshe Rofe mi-Kalish. In this article I intend to examine the paratexts of this book and present as a case study the doctor’s recommendations to confront the plague. He explains his remedies are credible and have been tried by many doctors. His book would not only save its readers from having to call a doctor and pay him a lot of money, but also give them remedies they can prepare in their homes or find in their pharmacies. Whether rich or poor, everyone should have access to remedies. Kalish stresses the fact that ultimately leading a pious life, together with these remedies, will promise health and longevity, with G-d’s help.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42918376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-02DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10024
Uriel Gellman
This article introduces an unknown autobiography written by Aryeh Leib Feinstein who was a communal official in Brisk (Brześć Litewski). In this detailed memoir, written in 1896 and preserved in manuscript form only, Feinstein describes his life from his childhood in a small village near Brisk up to his adulthood, when he became a wealthy merchant in Brisk and a well-known historian of the local community. This unique egodocument is a subjective interpretation of the profound transformations of Eastern European Jewish culture during the second half of the 19th century. It enables us a better understanding of the complex relationship between the personal and the public spheres during this era and illustrates the need of broadening the setting of the self-fashioning of Jewish individuals.
{"title":"A Private Life of a Communal Leader: The Autobiography of Aryeh Leib Feinstein (1821–1903)","authors":"Uriel Gellman","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article introduces an unknown autobiography written by Aryeh Leib Feinstein who was a communal official in Brisk (Brześć Litewski). In this detailed memoir, written in 1896 and preserved in manuscript form only, Feinstein describes his life from his childhood in a small village near Brisk up to his adulthood, when he became a wealthy merchant in Brisk and a well-known historian of the local community. This unique egodocument is a subjective interpretation of the profound transformations of Eastern European Jewish culture during the second half of the 19th century. It enables us a better understanding of the complex relationship between the personal and the public spheres during this era and illustrates the need of broadening the setting of the self-fashioning of Jewish individuals.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48721067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-28DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10022
Zvi Y. D. Ron
There is a popular Ashkenazic custom to serve chickpeas at the Shalom Zakhar celebration on the first Shabbat after a male child is born. Numerous homiletic reasons have been given for this in rabbinic literature. The origin of the custom lies in the practice to serve legumes, a food traditionally associated with mourning, at happy celebrations in order to confuse demonic forces who were understood to desire harming celebrants at such events. The chickpea was the legume of choice due to its longstanding association with fertility.
{"title":"Chickpeas at a Shalom Zakhar","authors":"Zvi Y. D. Ron","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10022","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000There is a popular Ashkenazic custom to serve chickpeas at the Shalom Zakhar celebration on the first Shabbat after a male child is born. Numerous homiletic reasons have been given for this in rabbinic literature. The origin of the custom lies in the practice to serve legumes, a food traditionally associated with mourning, at happy celebrations in order to confuse demonic forces who were understood to desire harming celebrants at such events. The chickpea was the legume of choice due to its longstanding association with fertility.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48399720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-19DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10002
A. Mazor
The article focuses on a Muslim commentary on a section from Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, written by a 13th-century Persian scholar. Whereas the first part of the article briefly discusses the reception of Maimonides’ Guide in medieval Islam, the nature of the commentary, and the identity of its composer, the second and main part discusses a mid-20th-century Egyptian critical edition of the commentary. This part focuses on the Muslim editor’s preface to the commentary, in which he depicts Maimonides and his Guide in a positive light, against the negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism. The contemporary political context is suggested as a motive for this apologetic and polemical depiction.
这篇文章关注的是穆斯林对迈蒙尼德的《迷惘指南》(Guide for The Perplexed)一节的评论，这本书是13世纪波斯学者写的。文章的第一部分简要讨论了中世纪伊斯兰教对《迈蒙尼德指南》的接受情况，评论的性质，以及其作曲家的身份，第二部分也是主要部分讨论了20世纪中期埃及评论版的评论。这一部分主要关注穆斯林编辑对注释的序言，其中他以积极的眼光描绘迈蒙尼德和他的指南，反对对犹太人和犹太教的消极描绘。当代政治背景被认为是这种道歉和论战性描述的动机。
{"title":"Maimonides as Muslim Theologian: Al-Kawtharī’s Edition of al-Tabrīzī’s Commentary on Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed","authors":"A. Mazor","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article focuses on a Muslim commentary on a section from Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, written by a 13th-century Persian scholar. Whereas the first part of the article briefly discusses the reception of Maimonides’ Guide in medieval Islam, the nature of the commentary, and the identity of its composer, the second and main part discusses a mid-20th-century Egyptian critical edition of the commentary. This part focuses on the Muslim editor’s preface to the commentary, in which he depicts Maimonides and his Guide in a positive light, against the negative portrayal of Jews and Judaism. The contemporary political context is suggested as a motive for this apologetic and polemical depiction.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45207522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10018
Martina Mampieri
Isaiah Sonne (1887–1960) was a distinguished scholar, paleographer, bibliographer, librarian, book dealer, and collector whose activities spanned Habsburg Galicia, Fascist Italy, Mandatory Palestine, and the United States during the first six decades of the 20th century. Although he was a prolific author and appreciated by many individuals especially because of his paleographic skills and profound knowledge of Jewish manuscripts and early printed books, his life and scholarship have only received modest attention since his death. The portrait offered in this brief article represents the first fruits of a book project that aims to produce the very first cultural biography of this scholar.
{"title":"Notes for a Biography: A Portrait of Isaiah Sonne (1887–1960)","authors":"Martina Mampieri","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Isaiah Sonne (1887–1960) was a distinguished scholar, paleographer, bibliographer, librarian, book dealer, and collector whose activities spanned Habsburg Galicia, Fascist Italy, Mandatory Palestine, and the United States during the first six decades of the 20th century. Although he was a prolific author and appreciated by many individuals especially because of his paleographic skills and profound knowledge of Jewish manuscripts and early printed books, his life and scholarship have only received modest attention since his death. The portrait offered in this brief article represents the first fruits of a book project that aims to produce the very first cultural biography of this scholar.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47687550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-28DOI: 10.1163/18750214-bja10021
Eliezer Baumgarten
Recent decades have witnessed a broad scholarly discussion of the cultural influences of the printing press Invention. The core of this revolved around the new technological influence on the concept of knowledge, its methods of dispersion, and on social changes that it engendered in the 16th century, when it became an affordable widespread technology. This article presents the way in which the spread of the printing press influenced conceptual paradigms of Kabbalists in general, and Lurianic Kabbalists from Sarug’s tradition in particular. These Kabbalists exchanged the traditional conception of creation as an act of writing, within the conception of the world as a written text, for conceptions of creation as a printing act and the world as a printed text. I show how the professional term ‘letterpress printing’ entered these Kabbalists’ descriptions of divine emanation, alongside their conceptualization of printing as a divine activity, as writing had been conceptualized previously.
{"title":"God as a Printer: On the Theological Status of Printing in the Kabbalistic Tradition of Israel Sarug","authors":"Eliezer Baumgarten","doi":"10.1163/18750214-bja10021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18750214-bja10021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Recent decades have witnessed a broad scholarly discussion of the cultural influences of the printing press Invention. The core of this revolved around the new technological influence on the concept of knowledge, its methods of dispersion, and on social changes that it engendered in the 16th century, when it became an affordable widespread technology. This article presents the way in which the spread of the printing press influenced conceptual paradigms of Kabbalists in general, and Lurianic Kabbalists from Sarug’s tradition in particular. These Kabbalists exchanged the traditional conception of creation as an act of writing, within the conception of the world as a written text, for conceptions of creation as a printing act and the world as a printed text. I show how the professional term ‘letterpress printing’ entered these Kabbalists’ descriptions of divine emanation, alongside their conceptualization of printing as a divine activity, as writing had been conceptualized previously.","PeriodicalId":40667,"journal":{"name":"Zutot","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48560087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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