How did Jews in the Netherlands view themselves and how were they viewed by others? This is the single theme around which the twenty-five essays in this volume, written by scholars from the Netherlands, Israel and other countries, revolve. The studies encompass a variety of topics and periods, from the beginning of the Jewish settlement in the Dutch Republic through the Shoah and its aftermath. They include examinations of the Sephardi Jews in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Jews in the periods of Emancipation and Enlightenment, social and cultural encounters between Jews...

Medieval Jewish literature from the 10th century onwards drew heavily on Arabic literary models.
This important new study discusses the introduction of fictionality into Classical Arabic Literature, the mechanics of the basic rhyming model in Classical Arabic poetry and the medieval Arabic theory of rhyme. Subsequently, it goes on to analyze the introduction of Arabic literary models into 10th-century Jewish literature, Karaite influences, the roles of Hebrew and Arabic and bilingualism, metrical innovations and literary contacts in later Jewish literary works.
This work will prove a...

The essays in this volume deal with the social and intellectual history of the Western Spanish and Portuguese Jews who established new communities in Northwestern Europe during the seventeenth century. The founders of these communities were mainly former Marranos, descendants of those Jews who had converted to Christianity in the closing years of the Middle Ages. After being separated from the Jewish world for many generations, they returned to Judaism and became an integral part of the Sephardi nation. Amsterdam became the metropolis of this new Jewish diaspora, which was...

This major new contribution to the history of women examines the special status accorded to women in the Jewish communities of the Eastern Mediterranean provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. Topics examined include their daily life and the social norms governing them, polygamy, divorce, child marriage, and the position of female slaves. Based on a detailed analysis of Hebrew and Arabic manuscript sources, legal and other, this first study of the subject in English opens up an almost unknown world of women to the modern researcher.

Several years ago an international conference was held at the University of California to honor Professor William Brinner, whose personal scholarship throughout the years has focused on both the Jewish and Muslim historical, cultural, and intellectual experiences. This volume, which consists of the works of many of the conference participants, is a collection of essays that deal with the interaction of Judaism and Islam over history from different perspectives. The book is divided into nine parts: introduction, overview, Jewish-Muslim interaction in medieval times, Jewish-Muslim interaction...

This volume, consisting of seventeen studies by leading experts in the field, takes stock of recent work on the history and literary culture of the Jews in the Netherlands and Antwerp from before the revolt until the present. Important new discoveries are included here for the first time.

This volume is concerned with the religious, social and commercial 'networking' methods extending over a large part of the world, ranging from the Near East to South America, used by the western Sephardic Jewish diaspora - and the linked 'New Christian' diaspora (in lands where the Inquisition prevailed)- from the mid sixteenth to the mid eighteenth century. Particular attention is given to the role of these unique diasporas in the functioning of the six great European world maritime empires of the time - the Venetian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English and French. New material and argument...

The main focus of this book is the study of Abraham Ibn Ezra's (1089-1167) scientific thought within the historical and cultural context of his times. His scientific contribution may be understood as the very embodiment of 'the rise of medieval Hebrew science', a process in which Jewish scholars gradually adopted the holy tongue as a vehicle to express secular and scientific ideas. The first part provides a comprehensive picture of Ibn Ezra's scientific corpus. The second part studies his linguistic strategy. The third and fourth parts study Ibn Ezra's introductions to his scientific...

Marriage Rituals Italian Style: A Historical Anthropological Perspective on Early Modern Italian Jews is the first comprehensive attempt to present the wealth of primary documents relating to marriage rituals in Jewish Italian communities - responsa, private letters, court protocols, defamating books, love stories, material objects - and place them in historical context. The book traces the chronological course of different phases of marriage (matchmaking, betrothal, the wedding day), and also adopts a thematic perspective. Marriage rituals mirror key issues in local Jewish culture:...

This is the first comprehensive study of the images in five profusely illustrated Yiddish books that were produced in sixteenth-century Italy: a manuscript of Jewish customs illustrated by its scribe, and two books of customs, a chivalric romance, and a book of fables, all printed at Christian presses in Venice and Verona.The long-neglected manuscript includes more than one hundred drawings, here reproduced for the first time, which are strikingly inventive and full of a joie de vivre that gives the lie to the lachrymose view of Jewish history.This volume, which explores how Yiddish imagery...