The Jewish study Bible

Jabès’ aphorism captures the challenge to readers of scripture: how to preservethe immaculate experience of the ineffable through a finite languageof maculate perception. The Jewish Study Bible [JSB] is a testament to thehuman struggle with the divine as read through diverse interpretive lensesthroughout the ages. Editors Berlin and Brettler, along with Fishbane, havecompiled a first-rate Hebrew Bible that fuses the technically adept JPSEnglish translation along with introductions, annotations, and essays bymany of today’s established and burgeoning scholars. This model is basedupon The New Oxford Annotated Bible (p. xi), which abridges in-depthessays by contemporary scholars into accessible versions for general readersand undergraduate students. The balance between North American and ...

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Medieval Jewish Legends on the Decline of the Babylonian Centre and the Primacy of Other Geographical Centres

Regional Identities and Cultures of Medieval Jews ◽

10.3828/liverpool/9781906764678.003.0003 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 37-46

Keyword(s):

Eleventh Century ◽

The Other ◽

Jewish Study ◽

Folk Tales ◽

Islamic World

This chapter recounts how the Babylonian centre of Jewish study gradually went into decline and Jewish centres in Christian Europe grew stronger in France, Germany, Spain, and Provence during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It demonstrates the ways Jews sought reasons to extol the virtues of their own locale, which was customary in contemporaneous Christian societies. It also describes the various centres in Christian Europe that sought to establish a connection to the charismatic Charlemagne, cities, and countries in the Islamic world, which produced literatures praising their region. The chapter describes the eleventh-century legends and folk tales that extol the virtues of different Jewish centres in Europe set against the backdrop of the decline of the Babylonian centre following the death of R. Hai Gaon. It examines the rivalry between Spain and Ashkenaz as each centre strived to outdo the other.

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