The first few decades of the eighteenth century witnessed an important moment in Jewish-Christian relations, as influential Christian scholars increasingly looked to Jewish texts to reveal the truths of their own faith. To what extent could postbiblical writings help them better understand the New Testament? And who would best be able to explicate these connections? Connecting the Covenants focuses on two separate but entwined stories, the first centering around the colorful character of Moses Marcus. The English-born son of wealthy parents and the grandson of the famous...
The first few decades of the eighteenth century witnessed an important moment in Jewish-Christian relations, as influential Christian scholars increas...
Born in 1918 into the fabric of Arab-Jewish frontier life at the foot of Mt. Tabor, Yigal Allon rose to become one of the founding figures of the state of Israel and an architect of its politics. In 1945 Allon became commander of the Palmah--an elite unit of the Haganah, the semilegal army of the Jewish community--during the struggle against the British for independence. In the 1947-49 War of Independence against local and invading Arab armies, he led the decisive battles that largely determined the borders of Israel. Paradoxically, his close lifelong relations with Arab neighbors did not...
Born in 1918 into the fabric of Arab-Jewish frontier life at the foot of Mt. Tabor, Yigal Allon rose to become one of the founding figures of the s...
Culture Front Representing Jews in Eastern Europe Edited by Benjamin Nathans and Gabriella Safran For most of the last four centuries, the broad expanse of territory between the Baltic and the Black Seas, known since the Enlightenment as "Eastern Europe," has been home to the world's largest Jewish population. The Jews of Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Galicia, Romania, and Ukraine were prodigious generators of modern Jewish culture. Their volatile blend of religious traditionalism and precocious quests for collective self-emancipation lies at the heart of Culture Front. This volume brings...
Culture Front Representing Jews in Eastern Europe Edited by Benjamin Nathans and Gabriella Safran For most of the last four centuries, the broad expan...
"A wonderful book--nuanced, lively, vastly erudite. . . . Klepper has given us a look at Nicholas of Lyra that will become a classic study of this most important figure."--E. Ann Matter, University of Pennsylvania In the year 1309, Nicholas of Lyra, an important Franciscan Bible commentator, put forth a question at the University of Paris, asking whether it was possible to prove the advent of Christ from scriptures received by the Jews. This question reflects the challenges he faced as a Christian exegete determined to value Jewish literature during an era of increasing hostility toward Jews...
"A wonderful book--nuanced, lively, vastly erudite. . . . Klepper has given us a look at Nicholas of Lyra that will become a classic study of this mos...
The 1905 Revolution in Russia ushered in an unprecedented (though brief) period of social and political freedom in the Russian Empire. This environment made possible the emergence of mass Jewish politics and the flourishing of a new, modern Jewish culture expressed in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian. Unfortunately, 1905 also unleashed popular anti-Semitism in the shape of pogroms on a scale previously unknown. Russian Jewry, by far the largest Jewish community in the world at that time, faced fateful decisions. Should the Jews strive to uphold Jewish national uniqueness either in the context of...
The 1905 Revolution in Russia ushered in an unprecedented (though brief) period of social and political freedom in the Russian Empire. This environmen...
Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange Comparative Exegesis in Context Edited by Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern "No other anthology of scholarship on the Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible covers the same chronological span (ancient through early modern) or has the same comparative and contextual emphasis (Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Karaite) as this."--Steven Fraade, Yale University Biblical interpretation is not simply study of the Bible's meaning. Historically, it has also served as a primary medium for cultural and religious exchange between the great...
Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange Comparative Exegesis in Context Edited by Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern "No other anthology...
Renaissance Italy is often characterized as a place of unusual tolerance and privilege toward Jews. Unlike England, France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, the princely courts of early modern Italy, particularly Urbino, Mantua, and Ferrara, offered economic and social prosperity to Jews. When anti-Jewish hostilities created civic tumult in this region, secular authorities promptly contained the violence.
Yet this written record tells only one part of the story. Pictures tell another. In The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance, Dana E. Katz reveals how Renaissance...
Renaissance Italy is often characterized as a place of unusual tolerance and privilege toward Jews. Unlike England, France, Germany, Spain, and Por...
A thirteenth-century text purporting to represent a debate between a Jew and a Christian begins with the latter's exposition of the virgin birth, something the Jew finds incomprehensible at the most basic level, for reasons other than theological: "Speak to me in French and explain your words " he says. "Gloss for me in French what you are saying in Latin " While the Christian and the Jew of the debate both inhabit the so-called Latin Middle Ages, the Jew is no more comfortable with Latin than the Christian would be with Hebrew. Communication between the two is possible only through the...
A thirteenth-century text purporting to represent a debate between a Jew and a Christian begins with the latter's exposition of the virgin birth, s...
Is there such a thing as a distinctive Jewish literature? While definitions have been offered, none has been universally accepted. Modern Jewish literature lacks the basic markers of national literatures: it has neither a common geography nor a shared language--though works in Hebrew or Yiddish are almost certainly included--and the field is so diverse that it cannot be contained within the bounds of one literary category.
Each of the fifteen essays collected in Modern Jewish Literatures takes on the above question by describing a movement across boundaries--between languages,...
Is there such a thing as a distinctive Jewish literature? While definitions have been offered, none has been universally accepted. Modern Jewish li...
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new world. As aspirations for liberation clashed with adherence to tradition, as national, ethnic, cultural, and other alternatives emerged and a long, circuitous search for identity began, it was no longer evident that the definition of Jewishness would be based on the beliefs and practices surrounding the study of the Torah.
In "The Origins of Jewish Secularization in Eighteenth-Century Europe" Shmuel Feiner reconstructs this evolution by...
Throughout the eighteenth century, an ever-sharper distinction emerged between Jews of the old order and those who were self-consciously of a new w...
