Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911534
Shira Weiss
Reviewed by: The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought: Critical Essays by Jason Kalman Shira Weiss Jason Kalman. The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought: Critical Essays. Cincinnati, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 2022. 605 pp. Jason Kalman’s The Book of Job in Jewish Life and Thought is a diverse collection of republished, revised, and new critical essays on Job, ranging from rabbinic, medieval, to modern perspectives on the biblical text. The author examines how Jewish readers in different times and places interpreted the book of Job and reconciled the conflict between how the relationship of God and humans was described regarding seeming injustices, as opposed to depictions of the divine-human relationship in other biblical books within the Jewish canon. As often with collected works, each essay stands alone as an independent analysis of a disparate aspect of the book of Job, spanning different genres, with minimal cohesion among the chapters. Few books, however, cover so many time periods in such a sophisticated manner, as works typically offer either focused analyses on a single theme, such as theodicy, providence, or protest, delve into a specific time period, or broadly trace the reception of a biblical character or book throughout history. Kalman’s work makes a meaningful scholarly contribution by presenting a historical study of the interpretation of Job from antiquity to contemporary times [End Page 452] in one volume, gathering and analyzing varied texts, including the Targum of Job, medieval mystical commentaries, as well as poems, sermons, legal codes, responsa, and polemical writings. Throughout history, the book of Job inspired literary creativity as its interpreters explored foundational philosophical and theological issues that arose in the text, including evil, divine providence, free will, and the pursuit of wisdom. Though discussed, these concepts are not the primary focus of this collection. Rather, each heavily footnoted chapter engages in a critical analysis of a far more nuanced topic relating to Job. The first five chapters consist of individual essays that deal with ideas regarding Mosaic authorship of the book of Job in rabbinic literature; exegetical traditions of the church fathers; Rashbam’s methodological challenges; the unity of Maimonides’s thought; and Soloveitchik’s modern application of Job, respectively. The final section of the work presents a typography of the evolution of interpreting Job from the rabbinic era to the sixteenth century, highlighting Job’s place in Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, medieval peshat (literary-contextual) commentaries, philosophical, Karaite, and Jewish mystical texts, anthological commentaries, and medieval art. The appendix offers an English translation of texts from Midrash ʾIyov, alluded to earlier in the final chapter. Despite disparity between chapter topics, each essay in Kalman’s collection elucidates a link in the exegetical chain of how Job was read throughout
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911543
Zoé Grumberg
Reviewed by: Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France by Nick Underwood Zoé Grumberg Nick Underwood. Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. 266 pp. In Yiddish Paris, Nick Underwood writes the biography of the “forgotten homeland of Yiddishist diaspora nationalism in Western Europe: France, and more specifically Paris” (1) in the interwar years. He studies several Yiddish cultural institutions, their members, and the performances, activities, and meetings they organized. If the book focuses mainly on Paris, which was the city where most Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe settled before and after the First World War, Underwood also briefly mentions cities such as Nancy, Metz, and Strasbourg. At that time, for many, France represented the country of human rights, of liberty, and, for leftists, of multiple revolutions. More specifically, for Jews, the emancipation of Jews in 1791 and the Dreyfus affair were major symbols. France was seen as a country that could be torn apart over the fate of a Jew. Fleeing from authoritarian regimes, antisemitism, and poverty, many east European Jews thus chose France and, more specifically, Paris. They brought with them a specific language and culture from eastern Europe. But this specific Yiddish culture was also shaped by the French context. As Underwood argues, these Jewish immigrants created an “alternative diasporic and French identity: Franco-Yiddishness” (6). The book is divided into five chapters that are five case studies: each focuses on a component of interwar Yiddish culture in Paris. In the first chapter, Underwood presents the institutionalization of Yiddish cultural life in Paris after World War I. He studies the Paris branch of the Kultur Lige, created in 1922. The Kultur Lige was originally founded in Kiev in 1918 by Yiddish cultural activists who wanted to create and extend high Yiddish culture. It was, at first, a nonpolitical institution. In France, it also started as an apolitical institution—or rather, an institution that united different political sensibilities, without being political itself—before being taken over by the Communists in 1925. The Kultur Lige was central in the building of a Yiddish community in Paris: it helped recent immigrants accommodate to their new life in France while sharing and maintaining their Yiddish culture through lectures, discussions, and various cultural gatherings. In the second chapter, Underwood turns to the Medem-farband, a cultural institution created in 1925 by Bundists and named after Vladimir Medem, a Bundist ideologue known [End Page 474] for his anti-Bolshevism and defense of the nation as a cultural form. Soon, a connection was made with the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research). Bundists thus hoped to make their own mark on Parisian Yiddish culture. The next three chapters address transpolitical cultural activities: drama (
书评:意第绪语巴黎:两次世界大战期间法国的舞台国家和社区，作者:尼克·安德伍德。意第绪语巴黎:两次世界大战期间法国的舞台国家和社区。布卢明顿:印第安纳大学出版社，2022。266页。在《意第绪语的巴黎》一书中，尼克·安德伍德写了一部关于两次世界大战期间“意第绪语流散民族主义在西欧被遗忘的家园:法国，尤其是巴黎”的传记(1)。他研究了几个意第绪文化机构，它们的成员，以及它们组织的表演、活动和会议。如果说这本书主要关注的是巴黎，那么安德伍德也简要地提到了南希、梅斯、斯特拉斯堡等城市。巴黎是第一次世界大战前后大多数东欧犹太移民定居的城市。当时，对许多人来说，法国代表着人权和自由，对左派来说，法国代表着多重革命。更具体地说，对犹太人来说，1791年的犹太人解放运动和德雷福斯事件是主要的象征。法国被视为一个会因为犹太人的命运而四分五裂的国家。为了逃离专制政权、反犹主义和贫困，许多东欧犹太人选择了法国，更确切地说，是巴黎。他们从东欧带来了一种特殊的语言和文化。但这种特殊的意第绪文化也受到法国背景的影响。正如安德伍德所言，这些犹太移民创造了“另一种散居和法国身份:弗朗哥-意第绪”(franco -Yiddish)(6)。这本书分为五个章节，分别是五个案例研究:每个章节都关注两次世界大战期间巴黎意第绪文化的一个组成部分。在第一章中，安德伍德介绍了第一次世界大战后巴黎意第绪文化生活的制度化。他研究了1922年创建的文化联盟的巴黎分支。1918年，意第绪文化活动人士在基辅创立了“文化之家”，他们想要创造和扩展意第绪文化。起初，它是一个非政治性的机构。在法国，在1925年被共产党接管之前，它也是作为一个非政治机构开始的——或者更确切地说，是一个团结不同政治敏感性的机构，而不是政治机构。Lige文化中心是巴黎意第绪语社区建设的核心:它帮助新移民适应他们在法国的新生活，同时通过讲座、讨论和各种文化聚会分享和维护他们的意第绪语文化。在第二章中，Underwood转向了Medem-farband，这是一个1925年由Bundists创建的文化机构，以Vladimir Medem命名，Vladimir Medem是一位以反布尔什维克主义和作为一种文化形式保卫国家而闻名的Bundist理论家。不久，他与犹太研究所(YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)建立了联系。因此，邦迪主义者希望在巴黎的意第绪文化中留下自己的印记。接下来的三章讨论了跨政治的文化活动:戏剧(第3章)，合唱团(第4章)，以及20世纪30年代巴黎意第绪文化生活中的两个主要事件:世界博览会的现代犹太文化馆和第一届国际意第绪文化大会(第5章)。虽然关于两次世界大战之间法国犹太人的现代学者主要研究法国本土犹太人和移民犹太人之间的冲突，以及犹太共产主义者、邦德主义者和犹太复国主义者之间的冲突，但安德伍德坚持通过关注文化领域来研究意第绪人之间的合作。他写道，“两次世界大战之间犹太文化不断变化的本质，说明了官方政策与‘实地’文化实践的不同，也就是说，在文化组织开展的工作中”(56)。这是这本书的主要兴趣之一;另一个目的是通过分析安德伍德在几个国家收集的大量未经研究的档案，让读者深入了解这种充满活力的文化生活。通过这样做，作者复活了迄今为止未被探索的法国意第绪犹太人的一部分历史。更重要的是，他想表明这种文化生活是与法国文化生活纠缠在一起的。意第绪文化活动家确实想“将自己定位为法国(以及更广泛的欧洲)文化的重要贡献者，也许是通过他们特定的亚文化具有讽刺意味”(193)，尽管这种意第绪文化生活只有极少数非犹太的法国公民知道。最后，研究两次世界大战期间的犹太文化协会和机构……
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911533
Daniel H. Weiss
Reviewed by: Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel by Katell Berthelot Daniel H. Weiss Katell Berthelot. Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. 552 pp. Katell Berthelot’s monograph sets out an ambitious goal: to correct for previous scholarly tendencies to downplay the impact of the “pagan” Roman Empire on Jewish history and thought. While various lines of scholarship have highlighted political, legal, and military aspects of the Jewish interaction with the Roman Empire prior to its Christianization, Berthelot emphasizes that there has been insufficient focus on the ideological and theological challenge posed to Jews and Judaism during that period, and that many scholars have associated Jewish ideological-theological responses primarily with Christianity and the Christian Roman Empire (8–9). Against this trend, she presents the reader with an extensive presentation of various juxtapositions between ideological dimensions promulgated by Roman cultural and political institutions and writings, on the one hand, and Jewish texts (primarily Philo, Josephus, and classical rabbinic literature), on the other hand, showing ways in which the latter can be fruitfully understood as responding to and resisting the former. Importantly, she shows the ways in which Jewish texts can be understood as resisting Roman imperial ideology while also imitating or appropriating various aspects of that ideology, as resistance can take [End Page 450] the form both of explicit rejection and of competitive imitation of that which is to be resisted. Each of Berthelot’s chapters provides the reader with an in-depth treatment of a relevant subtopic. Chapter 1 focuses on the ways in which pre-Roman Israelite/Jewish texts engaged with and responded to earlier ancient empires, setting conceptual precedents for writers in the Roman period to draw upon and modify. Chapter 2 focuses on implicitly and explicitly theological and theopolitical dimensions of Roman imperial ideology, highlighting notions such as the Roman people’s “genius”; the personification of Roma as a goddess; Rome’s claim of divine election and providence; military victory as divine blessing stemming from Roman virtue and piety; and Roman claims about its achievement of “peace.” She then shows how, particularly following the destruction of the Temple and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the apparently “defeated” status of Israel was used by the Romans to proclaim the defeat of Israel’s God and/or the divine rejection of Israel, with Rome taking the place of Israel in divine favor. Accordingly, she analyzes various texts to show that they can be understood as seeking to respond to and resist this Roman imperial assumption. Rabbinic literature’s linking of the Roman Empire to Esau/Edom (as Jacob/Israel’s twin), prior to the empire’s Christianization, underscores the competitive dynamic and the distinctive status assign
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911542
Jaclyn Granick
Reviewed by: A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: The American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France by Laura Hobson Faure Jaclyn Granick Laura Hobson Faure. A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: The American Jewish Presence in Post-Holocaust France. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2022. xix + 345 pp. Laura Hobson Faure’s monograph, adapted, updated, and translated from her French-language edition, has already made a splash in the Anglophone Jewish world, winning the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. The monograph is indeed a superb example of historical scholarship and writing, which shine in its English edition. A Jewish Marshall Plan focuses on the post-Holocaust Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in France as a way of dually exploring the entangled nature of American and French history and its Jewish counterparts. When the French edition was published in 2013, the JDC as a subject of historical inquiry was still rare. Hobson Faure’s work has been crucial in the last decade in shifting historiography on overseas American Jewish philanthropy from hagiographical institutional history into many emerging transnational history frameworks, including: America in the world, international humanitarianism and Jewish philanthropy, postwar American influence on France, and Jewish Diaspora after the Holocaust. A combination of thorough archival research in addition to original oral histories, deployed with a particular sensitivity to gender dynamics, provides a stunning array of viewpoints grounding the entire narrative. A Jewish Marshall Plan opens via an introduction to French Jewish resistance member turned humanitarian social worker, Gaby Wolff Cohen, whom we meet again throughout the book. Wolff Cohen’s story reminds readers of the American organizations and professions related to social work, teaching, and nursing that were so fundamental to this project and to nurturing women’s emerging communal leadership. Hobson Faure points out, though, soberingly, that despite the similarities in the effort by Americans to influence French society, while the Marshall Plan responded to the Cold War, the American Jewish initiative was rather a response to the Holocaust, undertaken to fill a void where Jewish survivors were a political afterthought. This resulted in a parallel welfare system, both by choice and by need: other humanitarian associations like the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration sought to rebuild nation-states and promote internationalism, while the JDC aimed to re-enroot Jews in the nation-state. Setting the scene, chapter 1 explains that French Jews understood themselves as equal partners to American Jewish organizations, due to their identification with the legacy of the Alliance Israélite Universelle—despite their Holocaust ruination. In 1933, the JDC began to shift its attention from eastern toward western Europe in response to new refugee crises, relocating its European hub back to Paris (where it had begun in
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911545
Ari Joskowicz
Reviewed by: A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture by Jason Lustig Ari Joskowicz Jason Lustig. A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 280 pp. The publication of Jason Lustig’s book A Time to Gather makes clear that Jewish studies is finally experiencing its own archival turn. Building on the [End Page 478] momentum generated by other recent works in the field, Lustig’s book marks a new stage in this scholarship, with its sweeping analysis of Jewish efforts to build monumental document collections during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. An intellectual and cultural history of some of the largest Jewish archival repositories in Germany, Israel, and the United States, Lustig’s volume demonstrates how the archives that scholars consult to unearth sources about the ideas and ideologies animating modern Jewish life are themselves an expression of these very same impulses. Lustig’s central contention is that the Jewish archives he studies were engaged in a shared project that also pushed them into competition with one another, as each developed ambitions of total collecting. The first chapter charts the origin story of that modern ambition by covering the establishment of the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden, which the German Federation of Jewish Communities founded in 1903 to bring together the collections of Jewish institutions across the German Empire. Mirroring German nationalist understandings of the unified history of German territory, these collections sought to centralize communal documents produced across the new empire. Focusing on this geographic and territorial ambition, Lustig carefully reconstructs the thinking and ideologies behind the Gesamtarchiv’s and later archives’ efforts to gather in one institution traditional forms of written documentation of Jewish history. These aspirations were front and center in the efforts of the Jewish Historical General Archives in Jerusalem, the subject of the second chapter. Mirroring the larger project of a Zionist ingathering of exiles, the General Archives aimed to reproduce that mission for a wider range of historical records. Archivists and administrators shaped by the German tradition sought to create an even grander version of a total archive that would bring the documentary traces of Jewish life from Jews around the world to Jerusalem. Its later name, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, underlines this claim. Founded at the dawn of a new age in archival technology, the Central Archives engaged in a massive project of microfilming whenever physical documents proved difficult to acquire. The American Jewish Archives, the focus of chapter 3, represent a concurrent post-Holocaust effort in the United States. Under the visionary leadership of Jacob Rader Marcus, the archive developed a hemispheric vision of collecting in the Americas. It also emphasized the role that decentralized co
书评:《收集的时间:档案与对犹太文化的控制》作者:杰森·勒斯蒂格《聚集的时刻:档案与犹太文化的控制》。纽约:牛津大学出版社，2022。贾森·勒斯蒂格(Jason Lustig)的著作《聚会的时刻》(A Time to Gather)的出版清楚地表明，犹太研究终于经历了自己的档案转折。在该领域其他近期作品所产生的势头的基础上，勒斯蒂格的书标志着这一学术研究进入了一个新阶段，它全面分析了犹太人在20世纪和21世纪建立纪念性文献收藏的努力。在德国、以色列和美国的一些最大的犹太档案库的知识和文化史上，勒斯蒂格的卷展示了学者们如何查阅档案，以发掘有关现代犹太人生活的思想和意识形态的来源，这些档案本身就是这些相同冲动的表达。勒斯蒂格的核心论点是，他所研究的犹太档案都参与了一个共同的项目，也使他们彼此竞争，因为每个人都有全面收集的野心。第一章通过介绍Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden的建立，描绘了这一现代野心的起源故事。Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden是德国犹太社区联合会(German Federation of Jewish Communities)于1903年成立的，旨在汇集德意志帝国各地犹太机构的藏品。这些收藏反映了德国民族主义者对德国领土统一历史的理解，试图将整个新帝国产生的公共文件集中起来。专注于这种地理和领土野心，Lustig仔细地重建了Gesamtarchiv和后来的档案努力背后的思想和意识形态，这些努力是为了将传统形式的犹太历史书面文件收集在一个机构中。这些愿望是位于耶路撒冷的犹太历史总档案馆(第二章的主题)努力的首要和中心。作为犹太复国主义者聚集流亡者的更大项目的反映，总档案馆旨在为更广泛的历史记录重现这一使命。受德国传统影响的档案保管员和管理人员试图创建一个更宏伟的完整档案，将世界各地犹太人生活的记录痕迹带到耶路撒冷。它后来的名字，犹太民族历史中央档案馆，强调了这一说法。中央档案馆成立于档案技术新时代的黎明，每当实体文件难以获得时，它就会进行大规模的缩微拍摄项目。第三章的重点是美国犹太人档案，它代表了美国大屠杀后的同时努力。在雅各布·雷德·马库斯富有远见的领导下，档案馆发展了美洲半球的收藏愿景。它还强调了材料的分散复制对历史知识生产的作用。事实上，马库斯经常声称他更喜欢复制品而不是原件。这种方法与战后德国城市希望保留被摧毁或灭绝社区的原始文件(第四章的主题)的愿望有着根本的不同。在本章中，勒斯蒂格追溯了围绕这些材料的几次有争议的辩论，包括由一群精选的非犹太人和犹太活动家在沃尔姆斯和汉堡保存犹太档案的失败尝试引发的辩论。总的来说，耶路撒冷的总档案馆在这些冲突中取得了成功，将大多数公共档案转移到以色列，后来又破坏了在德国建立一个与之竞争的原始或缩微拷贝中央档案馆的企图。第5章考察了从从未以这种形式统一过的分散收藏中创建数字档案的努力。在新的资金(End Page 479)需求和机会的推动下，以及为大规模保护工作提供新技术的愿望，纽约犹太历史中心的成立，YIVO的维尔纳收藏品，以及将开罗Geniza的碎片整合在一起的项目将不同的收藏品集合在一个虚拟的屋顶下。这最后一章是勒斯蒂格对不同现代犹太机构的全部收集努力进行的严密论证的调查的一个恰当而显著的结论。它很好地展示了在单个存储库中组合文档的冲动如何创建…
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911527
Leore Sachs-Shmueli
Abstract: This microtextual analysis of a Zoharic textual unit sheds light on the boundaries and ideologies that guided the editors as they prepared the first print edition of the Zohar (Mantua, 1558), revealing how they adapted and interpolated an external commentary by Joseph of Hamadan, a thirteenth-century Castilian kabbalist. Furthermore, examining the adaptation of this same passage by a fourteenth-century Italian kabbalist, Menaḥem Recanati, provides insights into an important stage in the canonization of the Zohar. This fascinating case study not only contributes to the textual criticism of the Zohar but also brings to the fore the construction of improper sexuality as the most dangerous threat to the male Jew.
摘要:对《光辉之书》文本单元的微观文本分析，揭示了指导编者准备第一版《光辉之书》(曼图亚，1558年)的边界和意识形态，揭示了他们如何改编和插入13世纪卡西提亚卡巴拉学者约瑟夫·哈马丹(Joseph of Hamadan)的外部注释。此外，检查14世纪意大利卡巴拉学家Menaḥem Recanati对同一段的改编，提供了对光辉之书册封的重要阶段的见解。这个引人入胜的案例研究不仅有助于对《光辉之书》的文本批评，而且还将不正当的性行为作为对男性犹太人最危险的威胁的构建带到了前面。
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911552
Björn Siegel
Reviewed by: The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century by Matthias B. Lehmann Björn Siegel Matthias B. Lehmann. The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 2022. 400 pp. In his newest book, Matthias B. Lehmann embarks on the mission of writing a biography of Baron Moritz (Maurice) de Hirsch. Despite the missing personal papers of Baron de Hirsch, Lehmann’s biographical study successfully “opens a window onto the larger world of the Jewish nineteenth century” and “presents a trans-national, pan-European story” (7). It could be written predominately based on Baron de Hirsch’s business papers and family correspondences stored in various archives and libraries across the world. The first part, entitled “European family,” illustrates the rise of the Hirsch family starting with Jacob Hirsch (1764–1840), the grandfather of Baron de Hirsch, who was granted the status of nobility by the Bavarian king in 1818. The history of the Hirsch family unfolds in a time when capitalism began to change the social and political framework of societies and emancipation began [End Page 493] to offer new possibilities for European Jews. Baron de Hirsch was born in 1831 into a circle of Jewish families that had profited from these new political and social circumstances. He even strengthened this elitist and transnational network by his marriage with Clara Bischoffsheim. When on April 17, 1869, Baron de Hirsch signed a preliminary agreement on the Ottoman railroad concession, he finally joined the first ranks of Europe’s bankers and financiers and the “new [Jewish] aristocracy.” Even though the family did not gain dynastic status due to the early death of son Lucien (1887) and the problematic relations with granddaughter Lucienne (daughter of Lucien and Irène Premelic) or the other two adopted children, Baron de Hirsch began to symbolize the “new nucleus of political power within the Jewish world” (39). Jewish solidarity and the advocacy of Jewish rights across the globe remained as important as being a businessman and citizen of a European nation with economic interests and an imperial and “civilizing mission.” By examining major European newspapers and journals, Lehmann illustrates how the European press began to shape the image of Baron de Hirsch, but also fueled antisemitic discourses about him and his philanthropic and political endeavors. The origins of Baron de Hirsch’s wealth are studied in the second chapter of the book, which gives insight into his economic activities in the context of the Ottoman railway construction. Lehmann reveals in this rich and sometimes overwhelmingly detailed chapter how Baron de Hirsch’s economic plans and his participation in the politics of “railroad imperialism” paved the way for a new modernity and profoundly changed ideas of mobility. Moreover, Baron de Hirsch’s successful business practices led to further antisemitic imaginations in European politics
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911532
Matthew Kraus
Reviewed by: When Near Becomes Far: Old Age in Rabbinic Literature by Mira Balberg and Haim Weiss Matthew Kraus Mira Balberg and Haim Weiss. When Near Becomes Far: Old Age in Rabbinic Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. x + 221 pp. “How terribly strange to be seventy.” (Simon and Garfunkel, 1968) Mira Balberg and Haim Weiss have beautifully written a monograph that captures the contradictions, ambiguities, and anxieties of old age through close readings of selected narratives from the rabbinic corpus. The title itself captures the essence of the authors’ subtle and profound treatment of the subject. Playing on a traditional reference to the declining eyesight of the elderly, they center old age as a reading strategy, “to shed light on . . . these rich texts” using “age as a primary lens . . . through which near can become far and far can become near” (11). Rather than focus on the legal and narrative selections that speak directly about old age, the authors examine stories in which old age plays a consequential, but not necessarily central part. In asking why a character is an old man, or why age is mentioned in passing, or why a generation gap is an element in a story, the authors reveal the conflicting cultural assumptions about the elderly and the corresponding friction laid bare when embodied in narrative. The authors do many things well in this book. Especially commendable are their sensitive and theoretically informed readings of texts and their use of parallel versions to highlight the unique relevance of old age in the Babylonian Talmud compared to Palestinian traditions. They also avoid essentializing old age and rabbinic literature. Even though they regularly refer to “rabbinic literature” and “old age,” one never gets the sense that these are totalizing and stable terms. The book is divided into seven sections: an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue. Since the individual chapters center on analyzing specific texts, the introduction provides the authors’ general impressions resulting from their comprehensive survey of references to old age in rabbinic literature. They explain that the tension between ideal and reality productively frames the analysis of primarily narrative materials. Rabbinic literature contains both idealized representations of old age and “the psychologically, physiologically, and socially complicated realities of aging” (2). Statements and stories can refer to the idyllic notions of respect toward the elderly and irenic intergenerational interactions, as well as physical and mental decline, social marginalization, and resentful children. Here the authors also draw on anthropologist Haim Hazan’s distinction between the “ageless self,” whose wisdom remains intact, and the “selfless age,” where the self has fundamentally become lost along with the person’s physical and mental faculties. The authors consciously concentrate on literary texts and preempt any attempt to historicize old age. Rather, t
书评:当近变远:拉比文学中的老年，作者:米拉·巴尔伯格和海姆·韦斯。当近变远:拉比文学的晚年。牛津:牛津大学出版社，2021。“七十岁真是太奇怪了。(Simon and Garfunkel, 1968)米拉·巴尔伯格和海姆·韦斯写了一本精美的专著，通过仔细阅读拉比语库中精选的故事，捕捉到了老年人的矛盾、模糊和焦虑。书名本身就抓住了作者对这个主题微妙而深刻的处理的精髓。他们借用了老年人视力下降的传统说法，将老年作为一种阅读策略，“阐明……”这些丰富的文本“使用”年龄作为主要镜头……通过它，近可以变远，远可以变近。”作者没有把重点放在直接讲述老年的法律和叙事选择上，而是研究了老年扮演次要角色的故事，但不一定是核心部分。在询问为什么一个角色是一个老人，或者为什么年龄会被提及，或者为什么代沟是故事中的一个元素时，作者揭示了关于老年人的相互矛盾的文化假设，以及在叙事中体现出来的相应摩擦。在这本书中，作者在很多方面都做得很好。特别值得赞扬的是他们对文本的敏感和理论上的了解，以及他们使用平行版本来突出巴比伦塔木德与巴勒斯坦传统相比的老年的独特相关性。他们也避免将老年和拉比文学本质化。尽管他们经常提到“拉比文学”和“老年”，但人们永远不会觉得这些是总体和稳定的术语。全书分为引言、五章、结语等七个部分。由于个别章节集中于分析具体文本，引言部分提供了作者对拉比文献中有关老年的参考文献进行全面调查后得出的总体印象。他们解释说，理想与现实之间的张力有效地构成了对主要叙事材料的分析。拉比文学既包含了对老年的理想化表述，也包含了“心理上、生理上和社会上复杂的老龄化现实”(2)。陈述和故事可以指对老年人的尊重、代际互动、身心衰退、社会边缘化和怨恨的孩子等田园诗般的概念。在这里，作者还引用了人类学家Haim Hazan对“永恒的自我”和“无私的年龄”的区分，“永恒的自我”的智慧仍然完好无损，“无私的年龄”的自我已经从根本上随着人的身体和精神能力而消失。作者有意识地把注意力集中在文学文本上，避免任何将老年历史化的企图。相反，他们“将老年作为拉比想象的对象和拉比艺术表达的主题来探索”(7)。他们对“超越拉比关于老年的说法”的兴趣，以及对“拉比文本中老年是如何表现的”(6)的兴趣，暗示了叙事中理想化的老年表现如何可能转化为对日常社会实践的理解。作者为他们对叙事的关注辩护，因为它们是社会互动的丰富位点，这往往比数字名称更能定义老年。在一种尖锐而又重要的格言中，作者深刻地将性别的建构映射到老年的建构上。第一章主要包括巴赫蒂尼对犹太法典中关于亚伯拉罕和撒拉(B. baba Meẓi)和大卫王(B. Sanhedrin 22a)的叙述的解读。与巴勒斯坦传统的相似之处相比，这些读物突出了巴比伦塔木德的怪诞和独特的方向，尤其令人信服。在第二章中，作者分析了B. Kiddushin 30b对M. Kiddushin 1:7的讨论，以揭示拉比对“老年父母逐渐退出社会秩序”的矛盾心理(60)。《塔木德》的这一部分包含五个故事(寡妇的儿子、达玛·本·内蒂娜、阿维米和r·阿巴胡、r·塔丰和他的母亲、r·阿西和他的母亲)，它们有三个共同的主题:不可能充分尊重父母、代际暴力和惊人的逆转……
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911530
Andrew Higginbotham
Reviewed by: Wealth, Poverty, and Charity in Jewish Antiquity by Gregg E. Gardner Andrew Higginbotham Gregg E. Gardner. Wealth, Poverty, and Charity in Jewish Antiquity. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. xiii + 284 pp. Gregg E. Gardner has previously written on the topic of charity in his Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2015). In the present work, he takes the next step in this investigation “to help fill the gap in critical research on wealth, poverty, and charity in late antique Judaism” (2). In chapter 1, he reveals that the Tannaim occupied the top two strata of wealth in their society (middle-class artisans and merchants and upper-class landowners). From such a position, they perceived “poverty as a possible impediment to Torah study” (22) and their texts often reflect the perspective of the benefactor (36). In chapter 2, Gardner examines the rabbinic interpretations of the biblical commandment to provide for the poor during the harvest. His investigation reveals that pe’ah, gleanings and forgotten produce, never belong to the householder, as they are portrayed as God’s direct beneficence to the poor. In chapter 3, Gardner contrasts the negative commandments involving the harvest with the positive rabbinic command to give charity from one’s own wealth. Individual direct almsgiving thus forms the center of the present book and the counterpoint to the focus on organized charity in Gardner’s previous work. This line of study begins in chapter 3 with the preliminary observation that “charity [is] given to the living and to the poor” (59). In chapter 4, Gardner turns the lens of his investigation onto the content of that charity, that is, wealth. Mammon is perceived more neutrally by the rabbis than by other groups of the period (Christians, Qumran, etc.), perhaps because, as Gardner argues, “the cultural and social world in which the rabbis lived was increasingly monetized” (97). In chapter 5, Gardner extends this monetization idea with a study of divine favor as “wages” for fulfilling divine commandments. In chapter 6, Gardner explores another aspect of charity, that is, as a mechanism by which to preserve one’s wealth through “investment” in the divine treasure scheme. The Greco-Roman model of benefaction by which elites built buildings or public works out of their wealth (euergetism) is then seen by the rabbis in tension with the material dilemma of squandering versus spending one’s resources. Chapters 5 and 6 then form their own duality, examining the polarities of earned and invested wealth along the spectrum of the divine-human relationship. Chapter 7 explores rabbinic anxiety over the accumulation and loss of wealth. Gardner argues here that the charity system established by the rabbis can also be seen as a safety net against their own apprehension about the ephemerality of one’s net worth. Finally, chapter 8 compares rabbinic views on wealth and charity to early Christian para
书评:《古代犹太人的财富、贫穷与慈善》作者:格雷格·e·加德纳。古代犹太人的财富、贫穷与慈善。奥克兰:加州大学出版社，2022。Gregg E. Gardner曾在他的《拉比文学中有组织的慈善起源》(剑桥大学出版社，2015年)中写过关于慈善的话题。在目前的工作中，他在这项调查中采取了下一步行动，“以帮助填补古代犹太教晚期对财富、贫困和慈善的批判性研究的空白”(2)。在第一章中，他揭示了坦纳姆占据了他们社会中最富有的两个阶层(中产阶级的工匠和商人以及上层阶级的地主)。从这样的立场来看，他们认为“贫穷是学习托拉的一个可能的障碍”(22)，他们的文本通常反映了捐助者的观点(36)。在第二章中，加德纳考察了拉比对圣经诫命的解释，以在收获期间为穷人提供帮助。他的调查显示，pe 'ah，收集和被遗忘的产品，从来都不属于户主，因为它们被描绘成上帝对穷人的直接恩惠。在第三章中，加德纳对比了消极的戒律和积极的戒律，前者涉及收获，后者涉及从自己的财富中施舍。因此，个人直接施舍形成了本书的中心，并与加德纳先前工作中对有组织慈善的关注形成了对位。这条研究路线从第3章开始，初步观察到“慈善是给予活着的人和穷人的”(59)。在第四章中，加德纳将他的调查镜头转向了慈善的内容，也就是财富。与同一时期的其他群体(基督徒、库姆兰人等)相比，拉比对财神的看法更为中立，这可能是因为，正如加德纳所说，“拉比生活的文化和社会世界日益货币化”(97)。在第5章中，Gardner扩展了这种货币化理念，研究了神的恩惠作为履行神诫命的“工资”。在第六章中，加德纳探讨了慈善的另一个方面，即作为一种机制，通过“投资”神圣的宝藏计划来保护自己的财富。希腊-罗马的慈善模式，即精英们用他们的财富建造建筑或公共工程(euergetism)，然后被拉比们看作是挥霍与消费资源之间物质困境的紧张关系。然后，第5章和第6章形成了它们自己的二元性，沿着神与人的关系的光谱检查了赚取和投资财富的两极。第七章探讨了拉比对财富积累和损失的焦虑。加德纳在这里辩称，拉比们建立的慈善体系也可以被视为一个安全网，以对抗他们自己对个人净资产短暂性的担忧。最后，第8章比较了拉比对财富和慈善的看法与早期基督教的相似之处，因为这两个群体都变得更加繁荣和融入社会。这本书的目标读者似乎既包括早期拉比犹太教的学者，也包括那些对古希腊罗马世界晚期及其周边省份的物质世界和意识形态世界之间的相互作用感兴趣的人。加德纳的目标是阐明坦尼特文献中的慈善概念，从几个世纪积累的实践中提取，并将其起源置于更大的经济和社会力量之中。这本书的方法论是很好的平衡，专注于主要文本在其更大的修辞语境，然后阅读这些文本在各种有用的社会学和文学批评理论的光。在我看来，加德纳实现了他的既定目标，即理解财富，无论是财富的占有还是财富的感知，是如何塑造了关于贫困和一般生活的富有内涵的讨论的轮廓。因为我支持Gardner的演讲，所以请允许我探讨一些其他人可能认为是弱点的工作优势。首先，加德纳出色地将拉比领域的非专家讨论背景化。然而，前几章有时陷入这些背景论述的泥潭。也就是说，我找到了每一章的进展和…
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Pub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1353/ajs.2023.a911536
Robert A. Harris
Reviewed by: The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270 by Mordechai Z. Cohen, and: Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution by Mordechai Z. Cohen Robert A. Harris Mordechai Z. Cohen. The Rule of Peshat: Jewish Constructions of the Plain Sense of Scripture and Their Christian and Muslim Contexts, 900–1270. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. 496 pp. [End Page 456] Mordechai Z. Cohen. Rashi, Biblical Interpretation, and Latin Learning in Medieval Europe: A New Perspective on an Exegetical Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 350 pp. With these two publications, Mordechai Cohen has managed to break new ground and, particularly with The Rule of Peshat, has provided most useful studies for anyone interested in the history of medieval biblical exegesis. The “rule” that Cohen addresses in The Rule of Peshat is that “a (Scriptural) verse never escapes from the hands of its plain meaning,” an ancient rabbinic dictum1 but one that the medievals applied in a range of meanings that the book investigates. The words “plain meaning” render the elusive ancient rabbinic term פשוטו, which, like its medieval successor, פשט, was never defined either in antiquity or the medieval period.2 Cohen has written eight chapters in The Rule of Peshat, each devoted to an individual exegete or school, and in each of them he analyzes the degree to which those commentators have incorporated the rule in their exegesis. Following an introduction in which he traces the emergence of peshat from its antecedents in ancient midrash, Cohen includes chapters on Geonim and Karaites; the Andalusian school; Rashi; R. Joseph Kara and Rashbam; the Byzantine tradition; Abraham Ibn Ezra; Maimonides; and Naḥmanides. In The Rule of Peshat, Cohen distinguishes his approach from the older scholarly view that finds a “continuous peshat-derash dichotomy from antiquity to the modern era”; instead, he argues for a dynamic view of peshat that each peshat exegete developed on his own and/or in light of exegetes who preceded him. Briefly, Cohen examines the means through which medieval exegetes transformed an ancient, barely recognized observation into the fundamental rule for much of their biblical exegesis. Cohen points out that for early pashtanim such as Saʿadiah, the rule was firm—but yielded to rabbinic devotion to Oral Torah that was determinant in case of conflict between peshat and Halakhah. However, later exegetes strengthened the rule, which led to peshat being considered of coequal value with midrash, even with respect to biblical verses that nominally addressed matters of Halakhah. Ultimately, Cohen claims that for some exegetes, the rule requires the exegete to recognize peshat as the “exclusive hermeneutical authority,” even with the attendant problems to which this claim might lead.3 This is not the
由Mordechai Z. Cohen的《Peshat的规则:圣经的明显意义的犹太人结构及其基督教和穆斯林背景》(900-1270)和Mordechai Z. Cohen的《中世纪欧洲的Rashi，圣经解释和拉丁语学习:一场训诂学革命的新视角》(Robert A. Harris Mordechai Z. Cohen)审阅。Peshat的规则:犹太人对圣经的理解及其基督教和穆斯林语境，900-1270。费城:宾夕法尼亚大学出版社，2020。[End Page 456] Mordechai Z. Cohen。《圣经解释与中世纪欧洲的拉丁语学习:一场训诂学革命的新视角》。剑桥:剑桥大学出版社，2021。有了这两本出版物，Mordechai Cohen成功地开辟了新的领域，尤其是《Peshat的规则》，为任何对中世纪圣经注释史感兴趣的人提供了最有用的研究。科恩在《Peshat的规则》中提到的“规则”是:“(圣经)经文永远不会脱离其简单含义的掌控。”这是古代拉比的格言，但在书中研究的是中世纪的一系列含义。单词“plain meaning”是古拉比语中难以理解的术语“- - -”的意思，这个词和它在中世纪的后继词“-”一样，在古代和中世纪都没有定义科恩在《Peshat的规则》中写了八章，每一章都专门讨论一个注释者或学派，在每一章中，他都分析了这些注释者在他们的注释中融入规则的程度。在介绍中，他追溯了peshat在古代米德拉什的前身的出现，科恩包括了关于Geonim和Karaites的章节;安达卢西亚学派;Rashi;R.约瑟夫，卡拉和拉什巴姆;拜占庭传统;亚伯拉罕·伊本·以斯拉;迈蒙尼德;和Naḥmanides。在《Peshat的规则》一书中，科恩将他的方法与旧的学术观点区分开来，后者发现了“从古代到现代持续的Peshat -derash二分法”;相反，他主张一种动态的peshat观点，每个peshat注释者都是根据自己和/或根据他之前的注释者发展起来的。简而言之，科恩考察了中世纪注释者如何将一个古老的、几乎不为人所知的观察转化为圣经注释的基本规则。科恩指出，对于早期的普什塔尼教徒，比如萨·迪亚，这条规则是坚定的，但在peshat和哈拉卡之间发生冲突时，拉比对口述律法的忠诚是决定性的。然而，后来的注释者加强了这一规则，这导致peshat被认为与midrash具有同等的价值，即使是在名义上涉及哈拉卡问题的圣经经文方面。最后，科恩声称，对于一些注释者来说，这个规则要求注释者承认peshat是“唯一的解释学权威”，即使伴随着这种说法可能导致的问题这里不是讨论拉什在多大程度上应该被视为普什坦人的地方。不可否认的事实是，尽管Rashi的Torah评论的巨大优势植根于米德拉什，但Cohen在两本书中都将Rashi的参与(End Page 457)与peshuto shel mikra - n的概念联系起来。对于这个评论家来说，很明显，拉什清楚地表达了他对peshat和derash的承诺，以服务于对圣经语言的解释，4科恩提供了一个相当冷静的问题讨论。最低限度地，科恩说明了拉希在解释圣经文本的顺序和排列时与规则相关的方法，并在拉希的当代基督教世界的背景下这样做在跟随Rashi的法国北部注释家中，Cohen用了一章来描述R. Joseph Kara和rashham .6然而，书中其余的大部分内容都致力于在地中海世界(从拜占庭到西班牙)工作的注释家，特别是R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Maimonides和Naḥmanides。不幸的是，尽管经过了深入的讨论，这本书突然结束了，没有一个总结章，作者本可以提供一个关于中世纪世界peshat的“兴衰”的一般性反思。尽管如此，科恩的研究将被证明是对中世纪研究感兴趣的人不可或缺的工具。
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