Jewish Quarterly Research Articles

Sparks Amidst the Ashes: the Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 320-323 Byron L. Sherwin. Sparks Amidst the Ashes: the Spiritual Legacy of Polish Jewry. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. 176. In the summer of 1989, twenty-two Catholic theologians from Poland studied Judaica at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago. Byron L. Sherwin, the Institute's vice president and professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism, acted as the chief instructor and curriculum developer for the Polish group. One week after the Polish group's departure, Sherwin received an invitation from the Polish Episcopate's Commission on Dialogue with Judaism to participate in an interfaith conference in Poland. Against the advice of many friends and family (a common experience for American Jewish travelers to Poland in the 1990s), Sherwin, a second-generation American who stems from a long line of eminent Polish rabbis, accepted the invitation and traveled to Poland in May 1990. Sherwin would return to Poland several times in the first half of the 1990s, speaking and participating in Catholic-Jewish dialogue conferences at universities in Warsaw and Cracow, at Catholic and Jesuit colleges, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and at diocesan seminaries in Lublin, Wloclawek, Gniezno, Bialystok and Poznan. In 1995, the Vocatio Publishing Company of Warsaw published a selection of Sherwin's lectures under the title, Duchowe Dziezictwo Zydow Polskich (The Spiritual Heritage of Polish Jews). Sparks Amidst the Ashes, which is an expanded and updated version of the Polish publication, is divided into twelve essays on a variety of topics, including the legacy of Jewish rabbinic culture in early modern Poland, Hassidism, the Musar movement, the Holocaust, and a concluding essay on contemporary Polish-Jewish relations. Three main themes run through the collection of essays: the spiritual legacy of Polish Jewry, American Jewry's relationship to its largely Polish-Jewish heritage, and contemporary PolishJewish relations. At the heart of Sherwin's book is the extreme argument, first formulated by Sherwin's mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel, that American Jewry was committing a "second Holocaust" by severing itself from Polish Jewry's vast legacy of piety and learning, "an exercise in spiritual suicide disguised as a success story in social dynamics, political activism, and communal organization" (p. ix). Whereas traditional Polish Jewry believed that observance and study of Jewish law assured Jewish survival, the concept of "Jewish continuity" in contemporary American and Israeli life, Sherwin argues, is based on a new "civic religion." The State of Israel and the lessons of Auschwitz, the new idea asserts, will assure Jewish continuity in the post-Holocaust world. The Holocaust "represents death and SHERWIN, SPARKS AMIDST THE ASHES—ZIMMERMAN32 1 destruction; Israel represents survival and rebirth. This idea has become the most fundamental dogma of Jewish communal life today" (p. 81). The fact that the twin pillars on which Jewish continuity is based— Israel and the Holocaust—has little relationship to Judaism is potentially disastrous for the Jewish future, Sherwin argues. A "Jewish communal agenda rooted in survivalism" has made the call for "Jewish continuity" hollow: "Continuity with what?" (p. 87). According to Sherwin, the answer lies in the rediscovery of Polish Jewry's spiritual legacy: "The spiritual heritage of Polish Jewry can provide a foundation for an authentic Jewish continuity, an alternative to obsolete forms of Jewish secularism, and a conceptual framework and a value system for the re-creation of Judaism in the future" (p. 87). Sherwin goes further and argues that American Jewry's "civil religion" itself poses a danger for Jewish survival: "From the perspective of Polish Jewry, the Torah is the only authentic and viable foundation of individual and communal Jewish life. Study of the Torah is the only basis for Jewish continuity." He concludes that political liberalism, American -Jewish ethnicity or Israeli Jewish national identity "serve not only to replace and to circumvent, but also to subvert the spiritual heritage of Polish Jewry. They offer visions of Jewish identity that are incompatible with the continuity of Judaism as a religious faith" (p. 98). To bolster his call for contemporary Jewry to reclaim the legacy of its Polish past, Sherwin embarks on a fascinating and erudite presentation...

Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 312-313 Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert. Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. viii + 326. Menstrual Purity is the latest contribution to a growing body of critical scholarship on the construction of gender in rabbinic culture. More specifically , it builds on Daniel Boyarin's work on rabbinic notions of the Jewish body by offering a sustained account of what the Rabbis have to say about female bodies. It is very appropriate that this book joins volumes by both Boyarín and Miriam Peskowitz in the Contraversions series, for together, these works mark this series, both at the University of California Press and its current home at Stanford University Press, as the premier publisher of new scholarship on rabbinics and gender. Charlotte Fonrobert offers a powerful and nuanced reading and recontextualization of Niddah, the laws of family purity within rabbinic culture. Fonrobert is not afraid to look at these texts, perhaps the most controversial laws related to women's bodies. Furthermore, instead of dismissing them as simply misogynous, Fonrobert argues for the importance of these embodied practices in the lives of ancient Jewish women. She makes a powerful case for the ways that these laws and practices enabled Jewish women to distinguish themselves as Jews. For Fonrobert, these practices are at the heart of a reading for women in rabbinic culture. Although Fonrobert is at times highly critical of some of the rabbinic accounts of these practices, she makes a point of continually reading with the aim of discovering what these practices meant for ancient Jewish women. In order to do so, she combines readings of rabbinic texts with readings of Greco-Roman and early Christian sources. Fonrobert is very clear about her own critical orientation. In her introduction she positions herself as both a lover of rabbinic texts and a feminist . She makes explicit the challenges that this dual allegiance poses for her as a reader of texts on Niddah. She does not shy away from the fact that this is controversial and uncomfortable material. Not many feminist scholars would willingly pursue rabbinic discussions about what Fonrobert calls "the hermeneutics of colors and stains" or the "rabbinic science of women's blood." Yet Fonrobert stays with these sources in order to offer close readings that enable readers to consider these texts in a different light. Here Fonrobert makes explicit her reliance on feminist literary theory as a way into interpreting these texts. This hermeneutic strategy allows her both to acknowledge the problems these texts pose for feminist readers while also allowing for some of the possibilities they open up for addressing the embodied practices of ancient Jewish women. By not turning away, FONROBERT, MENSTRUAL PURITY—LEVITT3 1 3 Fonrobert enables feminists to begin to read these texts differently—but never uncritically. I cannot say that Fonrobert made me want to return to these texts and affirm them, but she builds an argument for their significance. In so doing, she answers male scholars who have written extensively about the centrality of circumcision to rabbinic Judaism as a way of marking Jewish male bodies as Jewish. In a sense, Fonrobert makes the case that the laws of Niddah enabled Jewish women to engage in a similarly embodied set of practices that distinguished their female bodies as Jewish. Although she does not deny the centrality of circumcision, she does make a strong case for reconsidering Niddah as a way for Jewish women to embody their Jewishness in the ancient world. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter of her study is her account of an early Christian text about Jewish-Christian women who wished to maintain these practices even as they became Christians (chapter 6, "Menstrual Politics in Early Christian Literature"). This is a beautifully written book that will appeal to a wide audience. It makes a strong contribution to rabbinic scholarship and it will interest feminist readers as well as students of early Christianity. Fonrobert makes her work accessible by carefully defining all of her critical terms as well as explaining how rabbinic arguments work. Her infectious enthusiasm for the material will permit new readers...

Azariah de' Rossi: The Light of the Eyes (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 299-302 Joanna Weinberg. Azariah de' Rossi: The Light of the Eyes. Translated from the Hebrew with an introduction and annotations by Joanna Weinberg . Yale Judaica Series XXXI. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. Pp. xlix + 802. The innovative character of Azariah de' Rossi (ca. 151 1-ca. 1577) in the history of Jewish thought and scholarship has often been highlighted, first of all by the maskilim, the champions of the "Jewish Enlightenment" and then by the founders of 19th-century Wissenschaft des Judentums. Therefore it might seem surprising that his landmark work MeDor cEinayim ("Light of the Eyes"), a kind of prolegomena to any further attempt of critical Jewish historiography, still is only (fully) available in the 1866 edition by David Casse] ' and so far has never been completely translated. The latter may be the case since anybody considering the awesome task of rendering MeDor cEinayim in a modern language will not only have felt challenged by the obscure style of the original, but also by the vast erudition needed to explain de' Rossi's numerous allusions, ranging from late antique to 1 6th-century literature. One of the few people equal to the task is Joanna Weinberg, who in a number of highly acclaimed studies has shown deep insights into the work of this outstanding Italian Jewish polymath. Weinberg's annotated translation of Me°or cEinayim is preceded by an introduction, which in its condensed character and relative brevity of sixtyfive pages manages to summarize the scholarship on de' Rossi. After a short discussion of the scanty available data about de' Rossi's life, Weinberg draws attention to the unique place of Me1Or cEinayim in contemporary Jewish literature. In regard to the specific character of 16th-century Jewish historical productions,2 she points out that Light of the Eyes does not follow the literary genre of the chronicle—such as Yosef ha-Kohen's 'Azariah de' Rossi, Me'or cEinayim, ed. David Cassel (Vilna, 1864-66. Repr. Jerusalem, 1970). Several chapters of Me3orcEnayim have also been published and annotated by R. Bonfìl, Azaria de' Rossi: Selected Chaptersfrom Sefer Me^or cEinayim and Matsrefla-Kessef (in Hebrew; Jerusalem, 1991). 2 For some additional bibliography, see A. A. Neuman, "The Shebet Yehuda and Sixteenth Century Historiography," in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, English Section (New York, 1945), pp. 253-273, repr. idem, Landmarks and Goals (Philadelphia , 1953), pp. 82-104; R. Bonfil, "Esiste une storiografia ebraica medioevale?," in Aspetti della storiografia ebraica: Atti del IV Congresso internazionale dell'Associazione Italiana per lo Studio del Guidaismo, S. Miniato, 7-10 Novembre 1983 (Rome, 1987), pp. 227-247; idem, "Jewish Attitudes Toward History and Historical Writing in Pre-Modern Times," Jewish History 11 (1997) 7-40; A. Melamed, "The Perception of Jewish History in Italian Jewish Thought of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth 300THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW Divre ha-Yamim, to mention a contemporary Hebrew chronicle written in Italy. In contrast, de' Rossi does not reflect on history in the form of a narration of events (narrado rerum), but chooses, instead, the genre of the miscellanea used by encyclopaedists, philologists, and antiquarians of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Weinberg provides an overview of the content of Light of the Eyes (pp. xxiii-xxv) which is divided into three essays : a reflection on the earthquake of Ferrara (1570), which has also been described by a number of Christian contemporaries; a Hebrew translation of the Letter of Aristeas; and studies on Jewish history, chronology, and other antiquarian topics, this third part being the main body of the book. Weinberg's pointed discussion of the "cultural context and purpose" of Light ofthe Eyes is especially insightful (pp. xxv-xxxiii). She stresses that while de' Rossi shared many topics of interest with contemporary Christian scholars, he provided a Jewish dimension to these matters. At the same time, he was aware that his critical approach towards rabbinic literature and his use of non-Jewish sources would not find approval among some of his coreligionists, as Weinberg shows. Nonetheless committed to his faith, de' Rossi argued that non-normative matters discussed in the Talmud...

The "Jewish Question" in German Literature, 1749-1939: Emancipation and Its Discontent (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 633-634 Ritchie Robertson. The "Jewish Question" in German Literature, 17491939 : Emancipation and Its Discontent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. ? + 534. In his new study, Ritchie Robertson provides an in-depth survey from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's The Jews (1749) to Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism (1939) of what he calls the Jewish presence in German literature. Through an analysis of scores of literary texts that thematize aspects of Jewish identity in some of the darlings of German-Jewish literature in addition to lesser-known works, Robertson discusses GermanJewish literary productivity as well as the depiction of Jews and Judaism in German and Austrian literature. The first chapters, "Enlightenment" and "Liberalism," follow a chronological path from Lessing and Mendelssohn to Arthur Schnitzler and Stefan Zweig with admirable breadth, whereas the subsequent chapters "AntiSemitism ," "Assimilation," and "Dissimilation," bring a more thematic focus to the study. Robertson mindfully avoids a teleological reading of German history that progresses from a prolonged fight over emancipation and antisemitic discourses to the Holocaust, such as Paul Lawrence Rose and Daniel Goldhagen would have constructed. Instead, he rightly emphasizes that antisemitism in Germany was much more discontinuous than has often been assumed (pp. 151-232). This insight, however, takes surprising forms at times. For example, Robertson reverses the ¡mage of the tolerant Gotthold Ephraim Lessing by postulating the existence of an exclusionary subtext at the heart of Nathan the Wise, while not only is Johann Gottfried Herder left untainted but Johann David Michaelis is turned from a foe into a more benign figure (p. 30). Robertson follows this engaging reading of the Enlightenment by describing a trajectory from assimilation to dissimilation. In contrast to previous scholars like Shulamit Volkov and others, Robertson suggests that the First World War inaugurated a new period in German-Jewish history (p. 378) that reflected the intensifying exclusionary antisemitic discourses of the time. The dating of this turning point may be unconvincing, and, furthermore, to postulate such a radical change in the first place also is problematic insofar as this approach reduces roughly a hundred years of modern German-Jewish creativity to questions of assimilation. The self-assertion of Jews and Judaism in the writings of Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Abraham Geiger or Heinrich Graetz is overshadowed by a discussion of the assimilatory program of German-Jewry during this era. Equally problematic is the way in which Robertson applies himself to the task of delineating how Jews may have internalized anti-Jewish prejudices, 634THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW which he discusses under the heading of "Self-Hatred" (pp. 286-345). The concept of self-hatred is too reductive to adequately address the complicated range of negation, remodeling, and irony that is characteristic of many German-Jewish writers from Heine to Karl Krauss and Elias Canetti. While by and large Robertson is a careful reader of the literary text, as a cultural study his attempt at contributing to the elucidation of GermanJewish identity formation is not very impressive. Robertson's assertion that "culture is not fixed; it is continually reinvented, as we know from the plethora of books with 'Invention' or 'Inventing' in their titles" (p. 5) hardly provides sufficient ground to address this question. Occasionally, he seems to imply that simply analyzing German-Jewish literature would provide him with an understanding of German-Jewish culture. The absence of works like those of Itta Shedletzky and Hans Otto Horch, who have described in detail the contours of Jewish literary criticism, however, makes it obvious that Robertson is not very interested in describing the place of GermanJewish literature within the realm of German-Jewish culture. Nevertheless, as a study of representations of Jewish identities, Robertson 's work offers a weil-versed survey and provides, despite his disclaimer, a comprehensive view of the topic that leaves only the field of postwar German-Jewish literature untouched. A conclusion would have helped to bring the overall development of the Jewish presence during this period into clearer perspective. University of SouthamptonNils Roemer ...

La Clepsydre: Essai sur la pluralité des temps dans le judaïsme , and: Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 598-601 Sylvie Anne Goldberg. La Clepsydre: Essai sur la pluralité des temps dans le judaïsme. Paris: Albin Michel, 2000. Pp. 398. Tamar M. Rudavsky. Time Matters: Time, Creation, and Cosmology in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Pp. xviii + 287. Ironically, the year 2000 of the Christian Era began with two important books by Jewish scholars on the concept of time among Jews. One book is La Clepsydre by Sylvie Anne Goldberg of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; the other is Time Matters by Tamar M. Rudavsky of Ohio State University. Both books have clocks on the cover: La Clepsydre catches our eye with a 19th century synagogue clock from Pisek, Bohemia ; Time Matters features the sundial atop the old Immigrant Shelter building in Jerusalem. Both books are concerned with the relationship between our subjective consciousness of time and our objective clocks. Both also raise the question of whether there is a particularly Jewish consciousness of time. However, the two books are very different in their scope and their approaches . La Clepsydre is subtitled "an essay on the plurality of times in Judaism," and seeks to understand the different sorts of consciousness of time found in Judaism. To this end, it consults biblical and rabbinic sources, and refers to medieval and modern texts only to the extent that they clarify or elaborate on those sources. Its approach is that of cultural history, or what is called in France anthropologie historique. Time matters is subtitled "time, creation, and cosmology in medieval Jewish philosophy," and seeks to explicate the main statements of medieval Jewish philosophers on these abstruse physical and metaphysical topics. Its approach is that of the history of philosophy. Goldberg's book explores the mentalité of the Jewish masses; Rudavsky's explores the minds of the Jewish philosophic elite. La Clepsydre is divided in two parts: Part I discusses Ie temps conté (pp. 37-152) and Part II discusses Ie temps décompté (pp. 153-330). The suggestive distinction between these two kinds of time is that between narrated time and measured time, recounted time and counted time, or time told and time tolled. The distinction is roughly similar to the Aristotelian one between continuous and discrete time (cf. pp. 93-97), except that Ie temps conté is not conceived of as an empty or pure duration, but as a human story. Part I asks, "What is Jewish time?" or "What is the story that constitutes time for the Jews?" Part II discusses temporal, eschatological, historiographical, and mathematical scansions of time. Just as a poem may be scanned, that is, divided into feet, accented and unaccented syllables, TWO BOOKS ON TIME—HARVEY599 caesurae, etc., so Ie temps conté can be scanned, that is, divided into eras, years, months, days, holy days, etc. If Ie temps conté is a poem, Ie temps décompté is its meter. The poem is about human beings and God, creation and redemption, enslavement and liberation, expulsion and return, rejoicing and suffering, love and awe. The meter is both lunar and solar; it is marked not only by days, months, and years, but also by portions of the Torah , Hanukkah candles, the offering of the first sheaf of the barley harvest, and so forth. Many of its accented syllables have to do with the exodus from Egypt, the revelation at Mount Sinai, or the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem first by the Babylonians and then the Romans. In Jewish time, Goldberg argues, past, present, and future are intertwined, and comprise one perpetual narrative, much as the stanzas of a great poem are intertextually bound together, and cannot be understood apart from one another. Goldberg is a perceptive and eloquent observer of Jewish lore and customs, and La Clepsydre is a fascinating essay. Time Matters is divided into six chapters: "Time and Cosmology in Athens and Jerusalem" (pp. 1-21); "Time, Creation, and Cosmology" (pp. 2357 ); "Time, Motion, and the Instant: Jewish Philosophers Confront Zeno" (pp. 59-94); "Temporality, Human Freedom, and Divine Omniscience" (pp. 95-148); "Prelude to Modernity" (pp. 149-173); and...

Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 497-505 Review Essay Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter W. van der Horst. Second Extensively Revised Edition . Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill; Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge , UK: William B. Eerdmans, 1999. Pp. xxxviii + 960. Victor Avigdor Hurowitz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev According to a well-known aggadah (Midrash Rabbah on Exod 5:2; cf. Targum Yerushalmi, ad loc), Pharaoh, not knowing the God of Israel, examined his palace archives where the names of the gods of all the nations were listed in order to verify the credentials of the upstart YHWH whom Moses claimed to represent. Were he living in Mesopotamia, he could have asked to see a copy of the great god list An = Anum. If he were alive today, he would certainly request the book under review. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD) is an encyclopedia of all the divine, semi-divine, deified, hypostasized, and no-longerdivine beings mentioned in the Bible. DDD's purpose is to provide convenient , state of the art information and an updated, comprehensive bibliography about every indigenous and foreign deity mentioned in Scripture: both how they were conceived of in their religions of origin and how they are portrayed or function in the Bible. Any deity suspected of being mentioned or alluded to in the Bible even once is included, no matter how obscure , minor or dubious he/she is, whereas gods who are not mentioned in the Bible are excluded from DDD irrespective of their rank and stature in their native habitats. The hefty tome contains over 600 entries, which, when reduced by approximately 150 cross-Jistings, leaves a total of close to 450 separate articles. It is an international effort, with 106 participants from Europe, North America, and Israel, who each contributed anywhere from one to forty-six articles. Each article contains as many as five sections: a discussion of the divine name or title, its meaning, and etymology; a study of the deity outside the Bible, be it in Ancient Near Eastern or classical literature ; the deity in the Hebrew Bible; the deity in Christian Scripture; bibliography . The second edition has twenty-one more entries than the first edition,1 and many entries have been revised, corrected, and updated. For 1 According to the preface to the revised edition there are "some thirty" new articles. A comparison of the tables of entries for each of the two editions gives the 498THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW the purpose of the project, the problematic, controversial concept "Bible" has been given a maximalist definition, making it congruent with the Holy Scriptures of the Orthodox Churches. DDD's Bible thus consists of the Jewish canon, the complete Septuagint including apocryphal and pseudepigraphic books, and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The introduction explains that four types of deities are included: gods still recognized as such by the authors and the audience; gods mentioned in proper nouns; demythologized or decommissioned gods mentioned albeit not in their capacity as gods; and "ghost-gods" whose presence has been posited by individual scholars but whose actual mention in the Bible or in the Ancient Near East remains questionable. Yet these categories do not exhaust the true range of topics covered. Some gods are represented in several articles by their name, the natural phenomenon they are associated with, and certain epithets by which they are known. There are also articles on divine symbols, deified cult objects, divine manifestations, divine attributes, divine titles, and even pejoratives or euphemisms. Gods and other concepts not eligible for separate entries but discussed in passing are registered in an index. To a certain extent, DDD is a dictionary of god-related terms and not gods per se. It parallels to a degree the highly important book by K. L. Tallqvist, Akkadische Götterepitheta (Helsinki, 1938; reprinted 1974) which contains both divine names and divine epithets. DDD is extremely informative and useful. It has been composed competently by experts in the pertinent disciplines, and should be a standard reference work found in every university...

Maimonides' Empire of Light: Popular Enlightenment in an Age of Belief (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 613-614 Ralph Lerner. Maimonides' Empire ofLight: Popular Enlightenment in an Age ofBelief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. ?vi +221. This book consists of two parts: eight chapters by Ralph Lerner, followed by translations of five texts. Four of the texts are by Maimonides ("Epistle to Yemen," translated by Joel Kraemer; Mishneh Torah selections , translated by Ralph Lerner; "Treatise on Résurrection," translated by Hillel Fradkin; and "Letter on Astrology," translated by Ralph Lerner) and one is by Shem ??? Falaquera ("Epistle of the Debate," translated by Steven Harvey). The eight chapters which precede these translations consist of an introduction ("Philosophy in the Public Square"), chapters introducing each of the translated texts that follow, and chapters on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and Albo's Sefer ha-cIqqarim (which Lerner prefers to call Book of Roots as opposed to what Albo clearly meant, that is, Book of Principles of Religion). Each of Maimonides' texts translated here is already available in a perfectly adequate and not particularly scarce translation. ' The translations presented here are certainly fluent and readable, but do not appear to me to advance our understanding of the texts beyond the already available translations, most of which, I might add, are much more thoroughly and helpfully annotated than those in this book. Ralph Lerner's introductory chapters are elegantly written. They focus "upon the way a master teacher addressed the confusions of his distressed and distracted people" (p. xi). The task of this master teacher, Maimonides, is to instruct an unwilling or inattentive public (p. xii) without causing it damage. Lerner's task, at which he succeeds impressively, is to introduce these Maimonidean texts to a modern public, some of it willing and attentive , but all of it living in a social, scientific, and religious reality entirely unlike that of their original audience. It is hard for me to judge how useful these introductions would be for someone unfamiliar with Maimonides' thought. They do not really add much to what a careful and thoughtful reader (which Lerner certainly is) "Yemen" and "Resurrection" are available in Abraham Halkin and David Hartman , Crisis and Leadership: Epistles ofMaimonides (Philadelphia, 1985) and Mishneh Torah selections are found translated by Moses Hyamson and reprinted in Isadore Twersky's A Maimonides Reader (New York, 1972). This volume also contains Boaz Cohen's translation of "Yemen" and Lerner's translation of "Astrology." Harvey's translation of Falaquera is taken from his own book, which is still very much in print: Steven Harvey, Falaquera's "Epistle ofthe Debate": An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). 614TOE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW could get from the texts themselves. Scholars of medieval Jewish thought will find very little in these introductions that they do not already know. However, this part of the book is nonetheless important for focusing on the role played by Maimonides as a dedicated educator of the masses and for emphasizing the lessons that may be learned from his popular writings. Scholars often focus on Maimonides the scholar, paying insufficient attention to Maimonides the public teacher. Maimonides' Empire of Light is a welcome corrective to this common, one-sided approach. University of HaifaMenachem Kellner ...

The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 569-575 Benjamin Ginsberg. The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998 [1993]. Pp. xii + 286. Paperback $13.00. First time readers will come to Ginsberg's discussion of Jews and politics because of its arresting title—The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State. Ginsberg seconds Hannah Arendt's (1966) well-known proposition that the relationship between Jews and political power has been the principal trigger for organized antisemitism, therefore, the title, The Fatal Embrace. Ginsberg states his primary thesis thus: "The question with which this book is concerned, however, is not so much the roots of anti-Jewish sentiment as the conditions under which such sentiment is likely to be politically mobilized " (p. 8). Ginsberg, true to his word, does not provide an extensive history of antisemitism so much as he attempts to show the ways in which antisemitism has been used as a political weapon to defeat or take over the established order (p. 10). Ginsberg contends that for decades America's Jews (as was the case with their European counterparts) have been protected and enriched by their political alliances with the state (which they frequently helped build), but that they were also expendable when the reigning order believed itself secure in office and no longer in need of the Jews. Therefore , according to Ginsberg, Jews are and continue to be an expendable political commodity, and anti-Jewish attacks and rhetoric are permanent social artifacts that can be used repeatedly to upset the current political reign. An accomplished writer and political historian, Ginsberg treats the reader to an informative history of European Jews, politics, and antisemitism that ranges over 900 years. I found his discussion of French antisemitism particularly satisfying. His main focus, however, is on Jews, politics, and antisemitism in America from the Civil War period to the early 1990s. In the early years of the 20th century, Eastern European Jews poured into America in huge numbers, and with them came increasing incidents of anti-Jewish behavior. The Jews who had arrived earlier in the 19th century (the Sephardic and German Jews) were already comfortably settled, economically successful, and deeply involved in the American political scene when the new Jewish immigrants arrived by the millions. These well-settled Jews differed in a number of ways from the later immigrants. Significantly, they had encountered very little anti-Jewish animus during the time they had been in the U.S. There were some notable exceptions, such as Grant's Civil War Order #11, which attempted to expel all Jewish traders from the war zone. President Lincoln rescinded it almost as soon as Grant signed the order. Then 570THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW there was the well-known refusal on the part of a posh resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, to admit Joseph Seligman and his family in 1877. But America remained remarkably free of anti-Jewish sentiment until the late 19th and early 20th century. In the late teens and early 1920s, antisemitism began to increase noticeably , in no small part because of the efforts of the Immigration Restriction League, America's Nativist Movement, and the warped concepts of the pseudo-science of eugenics. By 1921, it was the U.S. government versus the Jews of Eastern Europe, as well as immigrants from other parts of Southern and Eastern Europe. The Jews had only themselves and their young advocacy organizations (the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith) to defend them from wholesale exclusion. These organizations were unable to prevent the passage of the Johnson-Reed Immigration Restriction Act, signed in 1924, which limited the number of immigrants who could enter America, and particularly restricted the entry of Jews for decades to come. It is from the 1930s that Ginsberg provides his reader with the first in a series of carefully explained examples of the increasing participation of Jews in American government, and the antisemitism that was allegedly part and parcel of that involvement. The Roosevelt administration brought several Jews into its administration and into significant cabinet jobs. Some examples include the Secretary of...

Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides): The Wars of the Lord (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 581-585 Seymour Feldman. Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides): The Wars of the Lord, Vol. 3, translated with notes by Seymour Feldman, appendix by Tzvi Langermann. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society; New York and Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1999. Pp. 580. The Wars of the Lord is one of the most fascinating philosophicalscientific writings of the 14th century and reflects several new trends typical of this century. The work is of importance not only for students of Jewish thought, but also for anyone interested in medieval science and philosophy . Making it accessible to a wide readership is a significant undertaking , and the completion of Feldman's English translation of the book is very welcome. The Wars of the Lord was published in Riva di Trento in 1560 and in Leipzig in 1866. The second printed edition relies on the first, and both are quite defective. There are also many manuscripts, scattered in different libraries but easily available at the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts in Jerusalem. A few partial translations into modern languages exist.' Prof. Feldman has been working on a complete translation for many years: a general introduction and Book I appeared in 1984; Books H-IV were published in 1987. With the publication of the present volume, which includes Books V-VI (but not V.l), the enterprise is accomplished. The first four books of the Wars, contained in the first two volumes of Feldman's translation, are more popular. The third volume, now published, is the longest and its contents the most difficult. Book V is Gersonides' astronomical-cosmological treatise. It is divided into three parts. The first is complete in itself and presents the author's mathematical astronomy. This highly technical part is not included in the printed Hebrew editions and is extant in a few separate manuscripts. The second and third parts deal with cosmological and cosmological-theological subjects. Although far from easy, these two parts are not restricted to specialist readers, as the first is. The sixth book consists of two parts and deals with the creation of the world. Book V.l was already translated into Latin in Gersonides' lifetime,2 and the first twenty chapters were edited and translated into English by Bernard R. Goldstein, who studied this work intensively. He also translated and 1 See vol. 1, "Introduction," pp. 63-64. 2J. L. Mancha, "The Latin Translation of Levi ben Gerson's Astronomy" in G. Freudenthal, ed., Studies on Gersonides: A Fourteenth-Century Jewish PhilosopherScientist (Leiden, 1992), pp. 21-46. 582THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW commented on other chapters in papers studying various topics in Gersonides ' astronomy.3 Feldman's is the first translation of Books V.2-3, VI. 1, and part of VI.2.4 In the present volume, as in the first two, the translation of each book is preceded by a synopsis. The volume includes an appendix by Tzvi Langermann, "Gersonides and Astrology," which is an important contribution to this volume and to the research on Gersonides' science and astrology. Most translations of medieval texts into modern languages are not based on critical editions, as the need for a translation is often felt more urgently than that for a critical edition. This is true of Feldman's translation. It is based on the two printed Hebrew editions and on three manuscripts selected by Charles Touati. This is a good compromise. The manuscripts are better than the printed editions, and many errors and lacunae in the printed editions are corrected in Feldman's translation. For example, in reading chapter VI. 14 in the Leipzig edition I had difficulty with a sentence that was syntactically correct and made sense, but did not support my understanding of the text: pt?> twn jiinìti tuo mona ww yyiinan riyiin ??a? >a yûon na tub ?.5 I checked several manuscripts and found the word "not" which was absent in the printed editions: yinn na tsb ??>. Feldman indeed selects the correct reading. My impression is that the text used for Feldman 's translation, even though not based on a critical edition, is nevertheless reliable. The translation itself is readable. Acquaintance...

A Judaeo-Arabic Candle-Lighting Prayer

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCII, Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001) 133-135 A JUDAEO-ARABIC CANDLE-LIGHTING PRAYER Y. Tzvi Langermann, Bar Ilan University MS St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, Hebrew-Arabic II 2499, part of the rich assortment of Jewish manuscripts formerly known as the Firkowitch Collection, contains the unique but unfortunately incomplete copy of a work of ethical and religious exhortation. Broadly speaking, it bears some resemblance to Bahya ibn Paquda's Duties ofthe Heart. Like the latter, it is written in Judaeo-Arabic, exhibits clear Sufi influence, and was written in the western extremities (Spain or Morocco) of the Islamic world. The manuscript is written in a Sephardic hand of the 14th century; in my estimation, however, the treatise was written in the 13th. Some fourteen folios (28 pages) make up the fragment. Many of these are only partially legible, and there are many lacunae as well. Neither the author's name nor that of the treatise are displayed. However , the author does refer to two other writings of his. One of these, Subul al-Khayrät (The Paths of Boons), is mentioned on f. 2a. Its subject is the order of study of the sciences; according to the author, it follows upon similar discussions of the subject in Maimonides' Guide and Yosef Ibn cAqnin's Tibb al-Nufiis (Therapy for the Souls). No trace of this work exists. The title of this work may have been inspired by the phrase subul al-khayr used by Bahya in the introduction to Duties ofthe Heart.1 However, the second writing mentioned by our author survives, and even enjoyed a certain currency in North Africa. It is a short didactic poem, based on Maimonides' Thirteen Principles, beginning vnö ?ppp?? imx>sD I«. The author refers to it as verses that "I have compiled" (jamactuhd), and cites them along with his own commentary, only part of which survives in the fragment (f. 12a-b).2 The manuscript in its entirety deserves close study. However, the many lacunae between the surviving pages, as well as the poor state of many of 1 Toral Hovot ha-Levavot, Maqor ve-Targum, ed. and trans. Rabbi Yosef Kafih (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 34. 2 See I. Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry (New York, 1930), 3:169, no. 2155, and the relatively long list of references given there. We can now reject the identification of Hayyim Ibn Musa as the author, proposed by David Kaufmann (Beth Talmud [1882], 1 12). In the source cited by Kaufmann, Ibn Musa cites the poem and offers a brief commentary, but—unlike the author of our treatise—he does not claim to have written it. 134THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW . the pages, are such that even a cursory summary of its contents would require a relatively lengthy study, which I cannot undertake at this time. In the interest of scholarship, I feel that it is important to publish one item in the manuscript that is of singular interest: a private prayer to be recited by the woman of the house before lighting the Sabbath candles. The author calls this supplication a ducä3, the Arabic term for private supplication; in Hebrew such a prayer would usually be called a tehinnah. The text is in Judaeo-Arabic and appears to have been composed by the author of the treatise. Following are the text, translation, and some brief comments. jt\h ? oni>y:iNi ?t> ?? onnsi muí -[Tn)HO1J hnìjini p?? »'* otùjh N3TOt>lN 1331 ONiniW H1TY>1 )V TV3N1 nDnVOÏW ipriiWI ^OV^Nl O1JV1JH o>3iu D>\yyrji>i minü Lord, enlighten my fortune and my children towards Your obedience; Illuminate them in Your presence; Place them among the people of learning, practice, fear of God, and knowledge; Keep forbidden things far away from our home; Make our children grow to Torah and good deeds. Commentary: Enlighten: The imperative as it appears in our text is dayyi; it may have been pronounced da?i. The classical form would be dawwiy. The form dayyi is unattested elsewhere. F. Corriente has noted that some "peculiar" solutions for doubly weak verbs are found in Andalusian Arabic, and he cites some...

Kol Nidre: Studies in the Development of Rabbinic Votive Institutions (review)

THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW, XCII,Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001)219-221 MOSHE BENOVITZ.Kol Nidre: Studies in the Development of Rabbinic Votive Institutions. Brown Judaic Series 315. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998. Pp. 203. Moshe Benovitz provides a careful and detailed account of the history of votive institutions in ancient Israel that is as impressive as it is clear. The double-entendreof the title is apparentat the very outset. In the Introduction , Benovitz cites the Kol Nidre prayer,a popularcomponent of the High Holy Day liturgy, andnotes the general obscuritysurroundingthe list of seven ancient votive institutionsmentionedin the prayer(nidrei, esarei, haramei, kinnuyei, qinnusei, and shevu'ot). Successive chapters examine each of these institutions as they appearin biblical, Second Temple and rabbinicsources. A concluding chapterbrings this informationto bearin a final discussion of the Kol Nidre prayeritself. Benovitz studiously and consciously avoids the methodological errorof previous studies, which tend to interpretobscure referencesto votive institutionsin Second Templesources in light of laterrabbinicconceptions. For Benovitz, Second Temple sources representan interim stage in the transition between biblical and rabbinic votive institutions and should not be read anachronistically.On more than one occasion he argues convincingly thatpre-rabbinicsources are a critical missing link, the key to understanding the evolution of votive institutionsfound in rabbinicliterature.For example , the connection between the biblical herem offering andthe rabbinic use of the term herem to refer to excommunication has not hithertobeen satisfactorily explained. In chapter3, Benovitz shows that Second Temple sources attest to a previously unidentifiedform of herem, which he terms "conspiracy herem,"according to which conspiratorsvow to ritually immolate (as herem) anyone in the group who does not follow throughwith the group'scriminalplan. Texts from Qumranindicate thatthe "deathsentence " under a conspiracy herem was commuted to excommunication, a safeguard against the contagion imparted by the herem victim until his death. In rabbinic sources this excommunication would become a punishment in its own right. Likewise, the connection between the biblical neder and the rabbinic neder has never been adequately explained and is obscure to the rabbis themselves. While the biblical neder is always dedicatory of persons and propertyto God and never prohibitive, the rabbinicneder can be either a dedicatoryvow (a promise to devote something or someone to the Temple) or a prohibitive vow (a ban placed on specific propertybarringits use by 220 THEJEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW the votary or some other person). The rabbinicexplanation of prohibitive vows as likening an object to a sacrifice (which is forbidden for general use) has been adoptedratheruncritically by scholars and applied anachronistically to prohibitivevows attestedin Second Temple sources. Benovitz argues that the rabbinic explanation should be rejected; close analysis of the formulaeemployed in prohibitivevows suggests thatthey too are dedicatory ,but thatthe consecration of the object occurs simultaneouslywith the violation of the consecration.For example, a vow to the effect thatthe wine I will drinkis qorban (a sacrifice), dedicates wine only at the moment that I drink it. But the act that consecrates (drinking)is also the act that violates. The practical effect of such a dedicatory vow is that it creates a personalprohibition. Benovitz'understandingof therabbinicprohibitiveneder,set outin chapter 1, illuminates a numberof otherconfusing or obscuretexts. Mark7:11 andCDC XVI:13-15 may be understoodas protestingthe use of dedicatory vows to create a personalprohibition.These texts indicate thatthe practice was viewed by some as an abuseor mockeryof the dedicatoryvow since no consecrationwas ever intended. For their part,the Pharisees would surely have objectedto unscrupuloususes of the prohibitivevow, butconsideredit technically valid, beyond theirpower to annuland, in any event, preferable to the takingof oathsin God'sname. Chapter4 examines the substituteformulaeqonam ,qonahandqonas (insteadof qorban)usedin prohibitivevows of thistype.Benovitzrejectsthecurrenttheoryof a Phoenicianderivationfor the term qonam and proposes instead a Greekderivation.The firstcentury Greekprohibitiveformulaemployed the declined forms koinon, koine, and koinos meaning "common"or "shared"and referringto items donated to charity.These terms were adoptedby the rabbisand the vowels of qorban were then superimposedon these basic terms, giving rise to qonam,qonah and qonas. Understandingthe rabbinicprohibitiveneder as an originally dedicatory vow providesnew insight into the origin andtheoreticalbasis for the dissolution of vows by the rabbinic sages (chapter 6). The Bible contains no provisionfor the dissolution of vows andoaths andyet rabbinicsources indicate thatrabbinicalcourts were empoweredto declare vows not binding. Benovitz argues that...

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908-2001): A Giant Among Scholars

Cyrus H. Gordon, one of the true giants in the fields of biblical studies and ancient Near Eastern studies, died on March 30, 2001, at the age of 92, at his home in Brookline, Mass. Gordon's career was intimately connected to the city in which this journal is published and to the two institutions which underlie its history. Gordon was born in Philadelphia; he took his three degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, all the while taking courses at Dropsie College as well; and later he returned to the latter as a faculty member (see below for details). Accordingly, it is most gratifying for me to publish this tribute to my beloved teacher in the Jewish Quarterly Review. With Gordon's passing, the world of scholarship has lost not only a brilliant intellectual, but also the last link to a distant past. I refer not to antiquity, but rather to the period of the 1920s and 1930s, when academic Nephilim walked the earth, when the Near East still was untouched by modernity, and when the major discoveries at Nuzi and Ugarit were revolutionizing biblical studies. Together these elements created an age now romanticized by younger scholars, one known only through the publications of academics mostly long dead, yet Cyrus Gordon was there for it all. Gordon became involved in the field at a very young age: he published his first article in 1929 at age 21, and he paid his first visit to the Near East in 1931 at age 23. Because of this early start, Gordon knew personally many of the luminaries of the early 20th century: his famed teachers James Montgomery and Max Margolis, the archaeologists Sir Flinders Petrie and Sir Leonard Woolley, the Assyriologist F Thureau-Dangin, the biblicist Pere Marie-Joseph Lagrange of the E1cole Biblique, the great modern Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik, the talmudist Yaakov Nahum Epstein, and many similar individuals. A story that Gordon related to me only a year or so ago illustrates the point well: at a recent informal gathering in Boston, Gordon was describing his early fieldwork to a young archaeologist from Harvard, when the young man turned to Gordon and said with amazement, You dug with Woolley at Ur and you're still alive? During the four years of 1931-1935, Gordon experienced a traditional Near Eastern lifestyle that is rapidly disappearing from this world. The majority of this time was spent in Iraq, in small villages, living among Arabs, Kurds, Yezidis, Mandeans, and Aramaic-speaking Jews and Christians. But

Israel Abrahams: Master Teacher of Liberal Judaism

Solomon Schechter departed England in the spring of 1902 to become president of the reorganised Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His post as Reader in Rabbinic and Talmudic Literature at Cambridge University was taken up by 44-year-old Israel Abrahams who remained at the post until his demise at age sixty-seven.1 Israel Abrahams hailed from a distinguished pedigree. His father Barnett Abrahams served as a Principal of Jews' College but died from rheumatic fever before his thirtythird birthday. Israel's mother, born Jane Rodrigues Brandon, traced her family tree to fugitives from the Spanish Inquisition.2 Entering Jews' College, London, in 1872, Israel Abrahams remained connected to the institution for thirty-three years where he taught English and Mathematics (1881-1899), Homiletics (1894-1903), and acted as Senior Tutor (1899-1905). As a prolific popular writer, his articles appeared in Anglo-Jewry's oldest newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle (1885-1919), including a weekly column that ran for almost twenty-five years. From 1919 until his death he wrote serially for the organ of Liberal Judaism, the Jewish Guardian? As scholar, Abrahams was both a founder (1893) and editor, until his passing, of the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England . Earlier, in 1888, he joined with his beloved friend and colleague, Claude Goldsmid Montefiore (1858-1938) to publish the nondenominational journal, The Jewish Quarterly Review.

Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture

...a fascinating and thought-provoking book... -The Jewish Quarterly The best introduction to the talmudic literature that is available...An extraordinarily important book, brilliant, and lucid. -Daniel Boyarin Fisch has written a rich, thoughtful book. One will come away from Rational Rabbis with a deeper understanding of just what the Talmud is. -Hilary Putnam Talmudic culture is often viewed as bound by its traditions. Menachem Fisch maintains that a close reading of talmudic texts frequently reveals their authors as rabbis who, rather than conform uncritically to tradition, knowingly set out to expose and resolve problems inherent in the received traditions.

Amnon Cohen, A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem (XVIth Century), 2 vols., a Jewish Quarterly Review Supplement (Philadelphia: The Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1994). Vol. 1: Pp. 212. Vol. 2: Pp.375.

Amnon Cohen, A World Within: Jewish Life as Reflected in Muslim Court Documents from the Sijill of Jerusalem (XVIth Century), 2 vols., a Jewish Quarterly Review Supplement (Philadelphia: The Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1994). Vol. 1: Pp. 212. Vol. 2: Pp.375. - Volume 29 Issue 1

A world within. Jewish life as reflected in Muslim court documents from the sijill of Jerusalem (xvith countury). Vol. 1. Texts. Vol. 2. Facsimiles. By Amnon Cohen. (A Jewish Quarterly Review Supplement.) pp. 212; 375. Philadelphia, Pa., Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1994. US $50.00.

A world within. Jewish life as reflected in Muslim court documents from the sijill of Jerusalem (xvith countury). Vol. 1. Texts. Vol. 2. Facsimiles. By Amnon Cohen. (A Jewish Quarterly Review Supplement.) pp. 212; 375. Philadelphia, Pa., Center for Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 1994. US $50.00. - Volume 6 Issue 3

Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840-1914.

Book synopsis: This book presents an important new perspective on Jews in England - and English attitudes towards them - during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This was a period of fundamental change. At the accession of Queen Victoria, Jews in England were a small and disadvantaged minority, numbering no more than 30,000 and excluded from parliament. By the early twentieth century, political and legal disabilities had been almost completely abolished, the Jewish population grown tenfold, and mass immigration from eastern Europe had changed the face of Anglo-Jewry. In exploring these fundamental changes David Feldman investigates the reality of Jewish integration more rigorously than any previous study, and addresses the central questions arising from the Jewish presence in England. To what extent did English society accept or reject the Jewish minority within it? How did the Jews' religious, communal and political identities develop in the English context? What was the impact of immigration, and how did the immigrants fare within the English economy? 'Englishmen and Jews' draws on a wide range of source materials in both English and Yiddish. Its chapters span political, religious, economic and social history. It deals with arguments between Whigs and Tories over Jewish emancipation and with the turbulent political life of the Jewish East End of London, with anti-semitic assaults on Disraeli and with the travails of the immigrant sweatshop workers. Above all, it reshapes our understanding of the connections between English and Jewish history during this period. By seeing each in the context provided by the other it enables us to see both in new ways, and adds strikingly to the debates on national identity and liberalism, and on class and community in pre-1914 English society. 'Ambitious and highly sophisticated ...A great achievement providing a well-researched and analytically sharp account.' Tony Kushner, History Today 'A stimulating and innovative study ...Ambitious in scope and range of concerns.' Thomas Linehan, Jewish Quarterly 'Feldman makes a heroically fair-minded effort to understand opponents of emancipation and unrestricted immigration on their own terms ...On the whole, it is a happy story that he has to tell.' John Gross, Sunday Telegraph Dr. David Feldman is a member of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, the University of London.

Studies in Yiddish Linguistics (review)

Vol. 10, No. 4 Summer 1992 123 Studies in Yiddish Linguistics, edited by Paul Wexler. Tiibingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1990. 216 pp. n.p.1. In 1915, the great linguist Edward Sapir complained that" ... little has yet been done in the way of scientifically examining the various dialects spoken by the jews of Lithuania, Russian Poland, Galicia, Southern Russia, and Roumania." I Indeed, until very recently there has been almost no mainstream linguistic study of Yiddish, by which I mean study that resembles in all relevant respects the contemporary linguistic studies of other languages. Nowadays, such studies would be synchronic descriptions of the syntax, semantics, morphology, or phonology of the language, carried out with the dual aim of deepening our understanding of the grammar of the target language and shedding light on general grammatical theory. In his introduction to Studies in Yiddish Linguistics (5n), Paul Wexler reiterates the lament, but suggests that we may have turned a corner in Yiddish linguistics, pointing out that 30 percent of the total number of Yiddish studies that have ever been published have appeared in the last ten years, and citing SYL itself as "givl ing] grounds for optimism regarding the future of the l1e1d.... " This seems to me to be a rather modest claim for an editor to make, and I lind the modesty appropriate. Studies in Yiddish Linguistics contains 11 articles and two review articles (one by Robert A.. Rothstein on Mordkhe Schaechter's dissertation Aktionen im Jiddischen 11951], and one by Edward Stankiewicz on Maria Brzezina's Polszczyzna Zyd6w 11986]). There are also seven book reviews, one by Neil G. jacobs, one by Stanley Dubinsky in conjunction with the editor of SYL, and the rest by the editor himself. A. rather unique sort of contribution is the report by Kazuo Ueda on Yiddish studies in japan, where we learn, among other things, that there is a Yiddish club in that faraway Ianel. Finally, there is an excellent bibliography of works on or referring to Yiddish published between 1979 and 1988. These (as well as some 1978 items) are listed alphabetically along with the references cited in the articles and reviews. The new entries are distinguished from the references by asterisks. While there are 500 new items on this list, it is striking how few of them could be construed as mainstream linguistics in IEdward Sapir, "NOles on ,Judea-German Phonoloh'Y," in Da\'id G. Mandelbaum, ed., Selected Writing,· of lid((lard Sapir in Language. Culture, and Personality (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1963). pp. 252-72. Originally appeared in The Jewish Quarterly RelJiellJ. 6 (1915). pp. 231-66. 124 SHOFAR the sense defined above. I find only 20 works in the SYL bibliography that could readily be considered mainstream linguistics, or about two per year on average, an incredibly small number in view of the number of linguists who know Yiddish or are interested in it. Things are, indeed, somewhat better in SYL. Of its 11 articles, two (Le., a whole year's average) are clearly mainstream linguistics in my sense (Louis Glinert's "Cause and Concession in Modern Yiddish" and Neil G. Jacobs' "The Faces of a Raising Rule in Yiddish"), and two are close to being so, but are primarily either historical or dialectological in orientation (Robert D. King's "On the Origin of the S-Plural in Yiddish" and Rakhmiel Peltz's "Spoken Yiddish in America: Variation in Dialect and Grammar"). These articles do indeed augur well for the future of Yiddish linguistics, and in fact, the last few years have actually seen the publication of a few articles on Yiddish in the most prestigious linguistic journals. The other seven articles in SYL, however, are of the rather peripheral and parochial type of tr\lditional Yiddishology. These are typically stuck in a few philological ruts: the nature of the non-German segments of the vocabulary of Yiddish (Mordkhe Schaechter's "The First Polish-Yiddish Dictionary ... ," Victor Swoboda's" Ukrainianisms in J. M. LilSic'sjudes-rusyser verter-bix," and Paul Wexler's "Two Comments on Yiddish Contacts with Indo-Iranian Languages"), the sociology of the use ofYiddish in different places and for different purposes (Christopher Hu([on's...

Al-Mahili and the Jews of Tuwat: The Demise of a Community

(1) H.Z. (J.W.) Hirschberg, A History of the Jews in North Africa. Vol. I, From Antiquity to the Sixteenth Century (Leiden, 1974), pp. 401-402. A French translation, which differs slightly from the above is given in Simonne Bakchine-Dumont, Les Juifs du Touat (XIVe et XVe sicles), M6moire de Maitrise d'Histoire, Universit6 de Paris, Facultd des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 1975-1976, pp. 160-161. David Corcos gives the text only of these and other lines from the 'Kinah' in his The Jews of Morocco under the Marinids, Jewish Quarterly Review, LIV (1963-64), pp. 271-287, LV (1964-65), pp. 53-81, 137-150. See pp. 276-277, where he points out the jeu de mots between 'Meghila' and the man of the 'Meghilla' Esther, who is Haman, persecutor of the Jews.

The Great Conspiracy in New Spain

In the introduction to his The Jews in the Canary Islands, Lucien Wolf wrote almost a half-century ago that “The work of the… branches of the Holy Office in America has only been made known to us piecemeal… For social data relating to the great body of Marranos the records have not hitherto been studied.” These records of the trial proceedings, called procesos, still constitute a fairly virgin field of social, religious and economic Latin American history in general and specifically for the history of Jews and Judaism.A few have written articles about Mexican Jews in colonial times after a cursory study of a few documents and several acclaimed texts. It is, therefore, not surprising that the results are superficial and often suffused with errors. The foregoing may be illustrated by statements in an article published in the American Jewish Historical Quarterly. Among the numerous errors that appeared therein are “among 2,281 trials of the Mexican Holy Office, 351 concerned crypto-Jews…” and that “By the end of the seventeenth century, the whole crypto-Jewish community had been destroyed.”