Author: Todd M. EndelmanPublisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472065929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
Introduces a rigorous comparative dimension to the study of Jewish civilization and culture
Comparing Jewish Societies
Author: Todd M. EndelmanPublisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472065929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
Introduces a rigorous comparative dimension to the study of Jewish civilization and culture
The Chosen Few
Author: Maristella BotticiniPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691144877
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Book Description
Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein show that, contrary to previous explanations, this transformation was driven not by anti-Jewish persecution and legal restrictions, but rather by changes within Judaism itself after 70 CE--most importantly, the rise of a new norm that required every Jewish male to read and study the Torah and to send his sons to school. Over the next six centuries, those Jews who found the norms of Judaism too costly to obey converted to other religions, making world Jewry shrink. Later, when urbanization and commercial expansion in the newly established Muslim Caliphates increased the demand for occupations in which literacy was an advantage, the Jews found themselves literate in a world of almost universal illiteracy. From then forward, almost all Jews entered crafts and trade, and many of them began moving in search of business opportunities, creating a worldwide Diaspora in the process.
Imperialism and Jewish Society
Author: Seth SchwartzPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334
Book Description
This provocative new history of Palestinian Jewish society in antiquity marks the first comprehensive effort to gauge the effects of imperial domination on this people. Probing more than eight centuries of Persian, Greek, and Roman rule, Seth Schwartz reaches some startling conclusions--foremost among them that the Christianization of the Roman Empire generated the most fundamental features of medieval and modern Jewish life. Schwartz begins by arguing that the distinctiveness of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods was the product of generally prevailing imperial tolerance. From around 70 C.E. to the mid-fourth century, with failed revolts and the alluring cultural norms of the High Roman Empire, Judaism all but disintegrated. However, late in the Roman Empire, the Christianized state played a decisive role in ''re-Judaizing'' the Jews. The state gradually excluded them from society while supporting their leaders and recognizing their local communities. It was thus in Late Antiquity that the synagogue-centered community became prevalent among the Jews, that there re-emerged a distinctively Jewish art and literature--laying the foundations for Judaism as we know it today. Through masterful scholarship set in rich detail, this book challenges traditional views rooted in romantic notions about Jewish fortitude. Integrating material relics and literature while setting the Jews in their eastern Mediterranean context, it addresses the complex and varied consequences of imperialism on this vast period of Jewish history more ambitiously than ever before. Imperialism in Jewish Society will be widely read and much debated.
Comparing Jewish Societies
Author: Todd M. EndelmanPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cross-cultural studies
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Author: Hugh ChisholmPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
Languages : en
Pages : 1090
Book Description
This eleventh edition was developed during the encyclopaedia's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the time and it is considered to be a landmark encyclopaedia for scholarship and literary style.
Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages
Author: Ephraim KanarfogelPublisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814336531
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
Paperback edition of a favorite text on the literary creativity and communal involvement in the production of the Tosafist corpus. The Jews of northern France, Germany, and England, known collectively as Ashkenazic Jewry, have commanded the attention of scholars since the beginnings of modern Jewish historiography. Over the past century, historians have produced significant studies about Jewish society in medieval Ashkenaz that have revealed them as a well-organized, creative, and steadfast community. Indeed, the Franco-Russian Jewry withstood a variety of physical, political, and religious attacks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to produce an impressive corpus of Talmudic and halakhic compositions, known collectively as Tosafot, that revolutionized the study of rabbinic literature. Although the literary creativity of the Tosafists has been documented and analyzed, and the scope and policies of communal government in Ashkenaz have been fixed and compared, no sustained attempt has been made to integrate these crucial dimensions. Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages considers these relationships by examining the degree of communal involvement in the educational process, as well as the economic theories and communal structures that affected the process from the most elementary level to the production of the Tosafist corpus. By drawing parallels and highlighting differences to pre-Crusade Ashkenaz, the period following the Black Death, Spanish and Provençal Jewish society, and general medieval society, Ephraim Kanarfogel creates an insightful and compelling portrait of Ashkenazic society. Available in paperback for the first time with a new preface included, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages will be a welcome addition to the libraries of Jewish studies scholars and students of medieval religious literature.
A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations
Author: Abdelwahab MeddebPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1153
Book Description
The first encylopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world This is the first encyclopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book features more than 150 authoritative and accessible articles by an international team of leading experts in history, politics, literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Organized thematically and chronologically, this indispensable reference provides critical facts and balanced context for greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims. Part I covers the medieval period; Part II, the early modern period through the nineteenth century, in the Ottoman Empire, Africa, Asia, and Europe; Part III, the twentieth century, including the exile of Jews from the Muslim world, Jews and Muslims in Israel, and Jewish-Muslim politics; and Part IV, intersections between Jewish and Muslim origins, philosophy, scholarship, art, ritual, and beliefs. The main articles address major topics such as the Jews of Arabia at the origin of Islam; special profiles cover important individuals and places; and excerpts from primary sources provide contemporary views on historical events. Contributors include Mark R. Cohen, Alain Dieckhoff, Michael Laskier, Vera Moreen, Gordon D. Newby, Marina Rustow, Daniel Schroeter, Kirsten Schulze, Mark Tessler, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, and many more. Covers the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today Written by an international team of leading scholars Features in-depth articles on social, political, and cultural history Includes profiles of important people (Eliyahu Capsali, Joseph Nasi, Mohammed V, Martin Buber, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, Edward Said, Messali Hadj, Mahmoud Darwish) and places (Jerusalem, Alexandria, Baghdad) Presents passages from essential documents of each historical period, such as the Cairo Geniza, Al-Sira, and Judeo-Persian illuminated manuscripts Richly illustrated with more than 250 images, including maps and color photographs Includes extensive cross-references, bibliographies, and an index
The Price of Whiteness
Author: Eric L. GoldsteinPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691207283
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
What has it meant to be Jewish in a nation preoccupied with the categories of black and white? The Price of Whiteness documents the uneasy place Jews have held in America's racial culture since the late nineteenth century. The book traces Jews' often tumultuous encounter with race from the 1870s through World War II, when they became vested as part of America's white mainstream and abandoned the practice of describing themselves in racial terms. American Jewish history is often told as a story of quick and successful adaptation, but Goldstein demonstrates how the process of identifying as white Americans was an ambivalent one, filled with hard choices and conflicting emotions for Jewish immigrants and their children. Jews enjoyed a much greater level of social inclusion than African Americans, but their membership in white America was frequently made contingent on their conformity to prevailing racial mores and on the eradication of their perceived racial distinctiveness. While Jews consistently sought acceptance as whites, their tendency to express their own group bonds through the language of "race" led to deep misgivings about what was required of them. Today, despite the great success Jews enjoy in the United States, they still struggle with the constraints of America's black-white dichotomy. The Price of Whiteness concludes that while Jews' status as white has opened many doors for them, it has also placed limits on their ability to assert themselves as a group apart.
A History of Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East
Author: Heather J. SharkeyPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052176937X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Book Description
This book traces the history of conflict and contact between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Ottoman Middle East prior to 1914.
Jewish Civilization
Author: Shmuel N. EisenstadtPublisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438401930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325
Book Description
This book explains why the best way to understand the Jewish historical experience is to look at Jewish people, not just as a religious or ethnic group or a nation or "people," but, as bearers of civilization. This approach helps to explain the greatest riddle of Jewish civilization, namely, its continuity despite destruction, exile, and loss of political independence. In the first part of the book, Eisenstadt compares Jewish life and religious orientations and practices with Hellenistic and Roman civilizations, as well as with Christian and Islamic civilizations. In the second part of the book, he analyzes the modern period with its different patterns of incorporation of Jewish communities into European and American societies; national movements that developed among Jews toward the end of the nineteenth century, especially the Zionist movement; and specific characteristics of Israeli society. The major question Eisenstadt poses is to what extent the characteristics of the Jewish experience are distinctive, in comparison to other ethnic and religious minorities incorporated into modern nation-states, or other revolutionary ideological settler societies. He demonstrates through his case studies the continuous creativity of Jewish civilization.