The Emancipation led Italian Jews to redefine themselves in fundamental ways, beginning a debate about integration and assimilation that continued until the Racial Legislation Laws of 1938. This groundbreaking study examines the numerous youth movements, newspapers, and cultural societies that attempted to revitalize Italian Judaism and define the "essence" of Jewish identity during this period. Throughout, author Cristina M. Bettin demonstrates how Jews integrated rather than assimilated, which became a unique and defining feature of Italian Judaism.

This is the first book about the meals of Early Judaism. As such it breaks important new ground in establishing the basis for understanding the centrality of meals in this pivotal period of Judaism and providing a framework of historical patterns and influences.

Blech argues that both Christianity and Judaism are responsible for anti-Semitism in claiming divine revelation as the source of their scriptures.

Josephus (AD 37-?100), a pro-Roman Jew closely associated with the emperor Titus, is one of the earliest systematic commentators on the Bible, as well as one of the foremost historians of the beginning of the Christian era. Politically, Josephus was pro-Roman, and although he had no sympathy for extreme Jewish nationalism, he was a zealous defender of Jewish religion and culture. This text examines the principles that guided Josephus in his understanding of the Bible, investigating his creative contribution in the writing of biblical accounts. The study evaluates Josephus as a historian and demonstrates the originality and consistency of his work as an author.

The product of many years of intensive work, this volume represents the first time a comprehensive study of such magnitude and scope has been prepared for the reading public. Combining the skills of journalist and scholar, the author has composed a work that is not only easy-to-read, but is meticulous in its factual information. Mr. Beller is a Canadian journalist who spent many years in Latin America studying all the communities and their people at first hand.

Among the articles included in this Hebrew-English anthology are: . The Hebrew Manuscript as Source for the Study of History and Literature . A Fifteenth Century Hebrew Book List . Rashi's Commentary on the Pentateuch and on the Five Scrolls (Venice, 1538) . One Hundred Years of the Genizah Discovery and Research in the United States . Building a Great Judaica Library - At What Price? . The Liturgy of the Rothschild Mahzor . Two Philosophical Passages in the Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Isaac Ibn Giat . The New Jewish Theological Seminary Library Prof. Menahem Schmelzer is Professor Emeritus of Medieval Hebrew Literature and Jewish Bibliography at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He has been a full-time member of the JTS faculty since 1961, and served as Librarian from 1964 to 1987. In addition to writing numerous articles and reviews for scholarly journals, Prof.. Schmelzer was Associate Division Editor of the "Modern Jewish Scholarship" section of Encyclopaedia Judaica. He has lectured at the Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1992, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1999, he was the recipient of an honorary degree from the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. He was appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Senior Scholar at the Kluge Center in the Library of Congress for a four-month period in 2004.

This edited collection of essays critically examines how diverse religions of the world represent, understand, theologize, theorize and respond to disability and/or chronic illness. Contributors employ a wide variety of methodological approaches including ethnography, historical, cultural, or textual analysis, personal narrative, and theological/philosophical investigation.

Redemption and Resistance brings together an eminent cast of contributors to provide a state-of-the-art discussion of Messianism as a topic of political and religious commitment and controversy. By surveying this motif over nearly a thousand years with the help of a focused historical and political searchlight, this volume is sure to break fresh ground. It will serve as an attractive contribution to the history of ancient Judaism and Christianity, of the complex and often problematic relationship between them, and of the conflicting loyalties their hopes for redemption created vis--vis a public order that was at first pagan and later Christian. Although each chapter is designed to stand on its own as an introduction to the topic at hand, the overall argument unfolds a coherent history. The first two parts, on pre-Christian Jewish and primitive Christian Messianism, set the stage by identifying two entities that in Part III are then addressed in the development of their explicit relationship in a Graeco-Roman world marked by violent persecution of Jewish and Christian hopes and loyalties. The story is then explored beyond the Constantinian turn and its abortive reversal under Julian, to the Christian Empire up to the rise of Islam.

This work is the first major commentary of LXX Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah in English. Rather than seeing LXX mainly as a text-critical resource or as a window on a now-lost Hebrew text, this commentary, as part of the Septuagint Commentary Series, interprets Baruch and EpJer as Greek texts and from the perspective of Greek readers unfamiliar with Hebrew. Included are a transcription and an English translation of Codex Vaticanus, the oldest extant manuscript of the books, and a detailed commentary. Another major contribution is the utilisation of the sense-delimitation (paragraphs) of Codex Vaticanus and other codices to explore how early readers interpreted the text.

In the long history of the monotheistic tradition, violence - often bloody with warfare - have not just been occasional but defining activities. Since 9/11, sociologists, religious historians, philosophers and anthropologists have examined the question of the roots of religious violence in new ways, and with surprising results. In November 2004, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion brought together leading theorists at Cornell University to explore the question whether religions are viral forms of a general cultural tendency to violent action. Do religions, and especially the Abrahamic tradition, encourage violence in the imagery of their sacred writings, in their theology, and their tendency to see the world as a cosmos divided between powers of good and forces of evil? Is such violence a historical condition affecting all religious movements, or are some religions more prone to violence than others?;The papers collected in this volume represent the independent and considered thinking of internationally known scholars from a variety of disciplines concerning the relationship between religion and violence, with special reference to the theories of 'just war' and 'jihad', technical terms that arise in connection with the theology of early medieval Christianity and early Islam, respectively.

This is a pioneering study of the nineteenth century Hasidic movement as shown through the life of one of the most controversial and influential Hasidic leaders, Rabbi Israel Friedman of Ruzhin (1796-1850). The dramatic episodes of his life-including his involvement in the murder of Jewish informers, his imprisonment in Russia, his subsequent escape to Austria where he successfully reestablished his court-are echoed by the contradictory and highly critical opinions of his personal character and his role as leader of one of the largest and most opulent Hasidic courts of the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century Hasidism has been a comparatively neglected topic in Jewish historiography largely because of the traditional view that the movement was in a degenerate state during this period. The natural interest that scholars found in the eighteenth-century origins of the movement, alongside their personal dislike of the nineteenth-century Hasidic courts and their machinations, led them to concentrate on the earliest years and the more recent phases of Hasidism. The book is in four parts. Part I draws on surprisingly rich non-Hasidic sources as well as on Hasidic materials to recreate the early life of Rabbi Israel from his childhood to his leadership of a Hasidic community. Part II concentrates on his activities as a famous spiritual leader, his adventures in Russia, and his final years in Austria. In Part III, the author analyzes major aspects of Rabbi Israel's career and thought as a Hasidic leader and public figure, with emphasis on his approach to materialism, wealth, and luxury. Part IV describes in detail the royal Hasidic court of Rabbi Israel and his sons-its formation, buildings, economics, social structure, functionaries, and administrative organization.

From the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late 1930s, the West Bohemian spa towns of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad were fashionable destinations for visitors wishing to "take a cure"-to drink the waters, bathe in the mud, be treated by the latest X-ray, light, or gas therapies, or simply enjoy the respite afforded by elegant parks and comfortable lodgings. These were sociable and urbane places, settings for celebrity sightings, match-making, and stylish promenading. Originally the haunt of aristocrats, the spa towns came to be the favored summer resorts for the emerging bourgeoisie. Among the many who traveled there, a very high proportion were Jewish. In Next Year in Marienbad, Mirjam Zadoff writes the social and cultural history of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad as Jewish spaces. Secular and religious Jews from diverse national, cultural, and social backgrounds mingled in idyllic and often apolitical-seeming surroundings. During the season, shops sold Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, kosher kitchens were opened, and theatrical presentations, concerts, and public readings catered to the Jewish clientele. Yet these same resorts were situated in a region of growing hostile nationalisms, and they were towns that might turn virulently anti-Semitic in the off season. Next Year in Marienbad draws from memoirs and letters, newspapers and maps, novels and postcards to create a compelling and engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in the years between the fin de siecle and the Second World War.

Series: Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum Section 1 - The Jewish people in the first century Historial geography, political history, social, cultural and religious life and institutions Edited by S. Safrai and M. Stern in cooperation with D. Flusser and W.C. van Unnik Section 2 - The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud Section 3 - Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature

For Jews and Christians in Antiquity beliefs about demons were integral to their reflections on fundamental theological questions, but what kind of 'being' did they consider demons to be? To what extent were they thought to be embodied? Were demons thought of as physical entities or merely as metaphors for social and psychological realities? What is the relation between demons and the hypostatization of abstract concepts (fear, impurity, etc) and baleful phenomenon such as disease? These are some of the questions that this volume addresses by focussing on the nature and characteristics of demons - what one might call 'demonic ontology'.

From Renaissance to Risorgimento, the Hebrew tombstones of Padua express the cultural currents of their age, in text and art. The inscriptions are mainly rhymed and metered poems, about life, love and faith, while the design and ornamentation of the actual stones reflect prevailing architectural and artistic tastes. Additionally, the inscriptions illuminate the society of Padua's Jews, and the social and cultural changes they underwent during the 330 years covered by this study. Thus these tombstones capture the flow of Italian Jewish culture from Renaissance to Baroque, and from the early modern to the modern era.

During the past two generations, Jewish public thought and discourse has differed dramatically from that of the era between the Emancipation and the Second World War. The chasm of the Holocaust and the watershed establishment of a Jewish state has radically changed the Jewish intellectual landscape. With their two largest concentrations in Israel and the United States, the Jews are no longer a European nation. Above all, the Jews, for the first time since they went into exile, have become free individuals, with the right to choose between the land of their birth and their ancestral homeland in Israel.

Are the Jews then a religious community dispersed among other nations? A community of equal citizens of various countries with their own cultural and historical identity? Or are the Jewish people a nation with its own homeland? However one answers this question, the political, socio-economic and cultural ramifications are enormous. Moreover, since world Jewry is now crisscrossed by divisions between religious and secular Jews, between groups of different cultural backgrounds, and between those living in a sovereign Jewish state and those who are citizens of other countries, it is the link between Israel and the Diaspora which confers a collective identity on this multiform entity. Yosef Gorny's central theme is Jewish public thought concerning the identity and essence of the Jewish people from the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel up to the present day. Chapters address such topics as The Zionist Movement in Search of a National Role, The Zionist Movement in Quest of its Ideological Essence, The Intellectuals in Search of a Jewish Identity, The Diminishing Status of Israel as a Jewish State, Revolutionary RadicalismThe Left-Wing Jewish Student Movement, 1967-1973, Neo-Conservative Radicalism, The Alternative Zionism of Gush-Emunim, The Conservative Liberalism, and In Defense of Perpetual Zionist Revolt. Reflecting the collective thinking of Jewish intellectuals, this is a volume of interest to anyone concerned with issues of Jewish identity.

Rosenberg looks to the Qumran scrolls for clues to the relationship of the Essenes or Sadoqites to the early Christians. He finds that many of their beliefs, including the expectation of a Moreh Sedeq or Correct Teacher, were taken on by the early Christians and shaped in the early days of the Church.

By comparing Qumran texts with New Testament materials, Rosenberg shows that, in Christian teaching, Jesus plays the part of the three separate persons who, according to the Sadoqites, were supposed to represent and embody sedeq or divine justice. This book will be of interest to all who are concerned with Judaism and the evolution of Christianity.