Inspired by recent efforts to understand the dynamics of the early modern witch hunt, Johannes Dillinger has produced a powerful synthesis based on careful comparisons.
For most of the last four centuries, the broad expanse of territory between the Baltic and the Black Seas, known since the Enlightenment as "e;Eastern Europe,"e; has been home to the world's largest Jewish population.
The wide-ranging portrayal of modern Jewishness in artistic terms invites scrutiny into the relationship between creativity and the formation of Jewish identity and into the complex issue of what makes a work of art uniquely Jewish.
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 "e;take a cure"e;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.
Written in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed tremendous popularity and influence to the present day.
Staging and Stagers in Modern Jewish Palestine sheds important light on the stagers of modern Jewish Palestine and on the processes and mechanisms that created the performative lore in other cultures, in ancient as well as modern times.
In dieser Studie wird die jüdische Aufklärung in ihrer spezifischen Ausprägung bei Isaak Satanow (1732–1804) sowie dessen einzigartige Verwendung der jüdischen Mystik zur Harmonisierung verschiedenster Wissensfelder dargestellt, analysiert und kontextualisiert.
Hasidism Incarnate contends that much of modern Judaism in the West developed in reaction to Christianity and in defense of Judaism as a unique tradition.
This book traces the mixing of musical forms and practices in Istanbul to illuminate multiethnic music-making and its transformations across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Reconstructing Ashkenaz shows that, contrary to traditional accounts, the Jews of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages were not a society of saints and martyrs.
Since the late 1700s, when the Jewish community ceased to be a semiautonomous political unit in Western Europe and the United States and individual Jews became integrated-culturally, socially, and politically-into broader society, questions surrounding Jewish status and identity have occupied a prominent and contentious place in Jewish legal discourse.
Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance) has amazed and overwhelmed readers ever since it emerged mysteriously in medieval Spain toward the end of the thirteenth century.
Based on archival and primary sources in Persian, Hebrew, Judeo-Persian, Arabic, and European languages, Between Foreigners and Shi'is examines the Jews' religious, social, and political status in nineteenth-century Iran.
In the Zohar, the jewel in the crown of Jewish mystical literature, the verse "e;A river flows from Eden to water the garden"e; (Genesis 2:10) symbolizes the river of divine plenty that unceasingly flows from the depths of divinity into the garden of reality.
As Light Before Dawn explores the mystical thought of Isaac ben Samuel of Akko, a major medieval kabbalist whose work has until now received relatively little attention.
Inventing New Beginnings is the first book-length study to examine the conceptual underpinnings of the "e;Jewish Renaissance,"e; or "e;return"e; to Judaism, that captured much of German-speaking Jewry between 1890 and 1938.
In the Russian Empire of the 1870s and 1880s, while intellectuals and politicians furiously debated the "e;Jewish Question,"e; more and more acculturating Jews, who dressed, spoke, and behaved like non-Jews, appeared in real life and in literature.
With a rare combination of erudition and insight, the author investigates the major aspects of Yiddish language and culture, showing where Yiddish came from and what it has to offer, even as it ceases to be a "e;living"e; language.
Examines the experiences of thousands of Jewish Argentines who migrated to and from Israel Emigration from Israel to other parts of the world has not yet received significant scholarly attention, as the subject is a sensitive one in Israeli society.
In this powerful book, Carol Ochs shows us how to develop a personal theology by examining our life stories, learning to recognize God at work in them, and bringing them into conversation with Torah.
A television producer who moonlights as a cantor, an actress who leaves her husband for another woman and enters a mikvah to mark the transition, a young widow who gets her hair colored to prepare for the unveiling of her husband's gravestone Racelle Rosetts debut story collection enters the lives of members of a Reform Jewish community in Hollywood and explores the unexpected role that ancient ritual plays in the lives of these characters living in contemporary Los Angeles.
