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 book provides the first publication of the tract Tiferet Bahurim (The Glory of Youth) which was written in the mid-seventeenth century by R. Pinhas Barukh ben Pelatiyah Monselic in Ferrara, Italy. The tract was written as a guide for young men about to marry regarding their family life and their sexual deportment. By analyzing the Tiferet Bahurim Roni Weinstein addresses the following questions: What was the source of the growing interest in sexuality, and controlling juvenile sexuality? How is this tract related to centuries-old Jewish ethical literature, as well as...

This sociological reading of the kabbalistic ideas of the early modern period suggests that they gained acceptance because they responded to the needs of contemporary Jewish society. Although they were presented as continuing a tradition, their goal was reformation: few aspects of Jewish life were not changed in consequence. This broadly based and innovative study challenges accepted ideas on the origins of Jewish modernity, and also shows how Counter-Reformation Catholicism affected these developments. The Hebrew edition of the book was awarded the Goren-Gottstein Prize for the Best Book in...