Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero. RoySchwartz. McFarland, 2021. 374 pp. $45.00 paper.

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1394-1396
Author(s):  
Timothy Riggio Quevillon
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
History Of

Holiness in Jewish Thought

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Philosophical Reflection ◽  
Jewish Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Life

Holiness is a challenge for contemporary Jewish thought. The concept of holiness is crucial to religious discourse in general and to Jewish discourse in particular. “Holiness” seems to express an important feature of religious thought and of religious ways of life. Yet the concept is ill defined. This collection explores what concepts of holiness were operative in different periods of Jewish history and bodies of Jewish literature. It offers preliminary reflections on their theological and philosophical import today. The contributors illumine some of the major episodes concerning holiness in the history of the development of the Jewish tradition. They think about the problems and potential implicit in Judaic concepts of holiness, to make them explicit, and to try to retrieve the concepts for contemporary theological and philosophical reflection. Holiness is elusive but it need not be opaque. This volume makes Jewish concepts of holiness lucid, accessible, and intellectually engaging.

Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History

2011 ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
European History ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Common View ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Spain

Circa 1000, the main occupations of the large Jewish community in Muslim Spain and of the small Jewish communities in southern Italy, France, and Germany were local trade and long-distance commerce, as well as handicrafts. A common view states that the usury ban on Christians segregated European Jews into money lending. A similar view contends that the Jews were forced to become money lenders because they were not permitted to own land, and therefore, they were banned from farming. This article offers an alternative argument which is consistent with the main features that mark the history of the Jews: the Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily selected themselves into money lending because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets. After providing an overview of Jewish history during 70–1492, it discusses religious norms and human capital in Jewish European history, Jews in the Talmud era, the massive transition of the Jews from farming to crafts and trade, the golden age of the Jewish diaspora (ca. 800–ca. 1250), and the legacy of Judaism.

The Rise of Normative Judaism. I. To the Reorganization at Jamnia

1924 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 307-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Foot Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Small Extent ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Complete Development ◽  
Great Achievement ◽  
The People ◽  
Distinctive Type ◽  
History Of

The centuries which we designate politically by the names of the dominant powers of the age successively as the Persian, Greek, and Roman periods of Jewish history constitute as a whole an epoch in the religious history of Judaism. In these centuries, past the middle of which the Christian era falls, Judaism brought to complete development its characteristic institutions, the school and the synagogue, in which it possessed, not only a unique instrument for the education and edification of all classes of the people in religion and morality, but the centre of its religious life, and to no small extent also of its intellectual and social life. Through the study of the Scriptures and the discussions of generations of scholars it defined its religious conceptions, its moral principles, its forms of worship, and its distinctive type of piety, as well as the rules of law and observance which became authoritative for all succeeding time. In the light of subsequent history the great achievement of these centuries was the creation of a normative type of Judaism and its establishment in undisputed supremacy throughout the wide Jewish world.

ON ONE PROVISION OF THE TEXTBOOK «THE PAGES OF JEWISH HISTORY OF UKRAINE»

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Gulyma ◽  
◽  
Julius Opelbaum ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Study And Teaching ◽  
History Of

The authors analyze the statement that during the short period of the existence of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (WUNR) the majority of Jews in Galicia had not decided whose interests they should support, those of the Ukrainians or the Poles, and did not have time to realize themselves as citizens of the new Ukrainian state. It is shown that this statement is controversial and contradicts the multiperspectival approach to the study and teaching of history.

Some Methodological Problems of the Study of Jewish History in Poland Between the Two World Wars

2004 ◽  
pp. 163-175
Author(s):  
Jerzy Tomaszewski
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Methodological Consideration ◽  
The Past ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Methodological Problems

This chapter identifies some methodological problems of the study of Jewish history in Poland between the two World Wars. The growing public interest in the history of Polish Jews between the wars has been the reason for the publication of many books and articles. Some are based on only a superficial survey, others present a deep and penetrating analysis of specific problems. This body of literature deserves methodological consideration, together with a critical review of the most important sources, so that some queries, doubts and suggestions can be raised. During at least the past hundred years, a tradition developed in some Jewish and Polish political circles of treating the Jews as a kind of alien body within Polish society. This attitude can also often be observed in contemporary historical studies, despite the authors' declared intentions. This can partly be explained in terms of the distant past, when Jews constituted a distinctly different class of people with its own legal status and institutions, but there is no reason to maintain such an approach when investigating the history of the 20th century.

Flavius Josephus

2019 ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Michael Tuval
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
First Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
Russian Version ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Greek Manuscript

The works of first century CE Jewish historian Flavius Josephus constitute our main source for the study of Jewish history of the Second Temple period. In this chapter, we briefly discuss Josephus’ career and his four compositions, as well as the condition of the Greek manuscript tradition of his works. The chapter also deals with the Latin translations of Josephus, a late antique Christian adaptation of mainly Judean War in Latin, known as Hegesippus, and the remnants of Judean War in Syriac. Next comes Josippon, a medieval Hebrew adaptation of Josephus and some other sources, and finally the much-discussed Slavonic, or Old Russian, version of the Judean War.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Anna Hájková
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Modern Jewish History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Claim

The introduction outlines the objectives of the book and contextualizes it in terms of existing Holocaust studies scholarship in general and Theresienstadt in particular. It offers a brief chronology of the ghetto and explains why it was a ghetto and not a concentration camp. It also relates the work to issues pertinent to modern Jewish history, the history of everyday life, and research on ethnicity and Central Europe. Specifically, it shows how ethnicity became the central category of difference in the prisoner society, one directly linked to stratification. This introduction also lays out the central claim of the book that social interaction continues under extreme circumstances and brings Holocaust and Jewish history into the wider context of modern history. It also discusses forms of prisoners’ agency in the everyday of the ghetto.

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