Rabbinic Jews Research Articles

Evaluations of Karaite Scholar Jacob al-Qirqisânî on Torah Translations

Orta çağın önde gelen Yahudi mezhepleri olan Rabbaniler ve Karailer çeşitli dinî meseleler hakkında birbirlerine eleştiriler yöneltmişlerdir. Karailerin en temel itirazı, Rabbani Yahudilerin Sözlü Tora olarak gördükleri Mişna ve Talmud’un vahiy mahsulü olmasına yöneliktir. Bu hareketin önemli temsilcilerinden biri, 10. asırda Bağdat’ta yaşayan Ya‘kup el-Kirkisânî’dir. Onun kaleme aldığı Kitâbu’l-Envâr ve’l-Merâkıb, Karailikle ilgili günümüze ulaşan en hacimli eserdir. El-Kirkisânî, bu eserde kronolojik olarak Yahudi gruplar hakkında değerli bilgiler vermekte ve onları farklı açılardan eleştiriye tabi tutmaktadır. Eserin en temel gündemlerinden biri, Karailerin muarızları olan Rabbanilerin inanç ve uygulamalarındaki dine aykırı hususları ortaya koymaktır. El-Kirkisânî’nin eleştiri konularından biri de Rabbani kaynaklardaki Tevrat ve çevirileriyle ilgili görüşlerdir. Bu çerçevede Septuagint, Targum Onkelos ve Targum Yonatan hakkındaki Rabbani düşünceleri ele almaktadır. Septuagint’in yazılış hikâyesiyle ilgili Hıristiyan ve Rabbani kaynaklardaki nakilleri eleştiren el-Kirkisânî, Rabbanilerin Septuagint’te Tanrı’nın ilhamıyla değişiklikler yapıldığı iddialarına karşı çıkarak bunu Tanrı inançlarındaki bozukluk olarak nitelemektedir. Targum Onkelos ve Targum Yonatan’daki çeviri hatalarını göstererek Rabbanilerin bu çevirileri ve mütercimlerini yüceltmelerine tepki gösteren el-Kirkisânî, Targum Onkelos’u Tevrat’la birlikte liturjide kullanmalarına da karşı çıkmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, Kitâbu’l-Envâr’daki anlatımlar Rabbani literatürdeki bilgilerle ve Tevrat çevirileriyle karşılaştırılarak incelemeye tabi tutulmakta, aynı zamanda el-Kirkisânî’yi etkileyen İslami fikirler ortaya koyulmaktadır.

Abraham ibn Daud’un İbn Hazm’ın Nesih ve Tahrif Eleştirisine Karşı Tevrat Savunusu

Abraham ibn Daud (ö. 1180) İspanyalı önde gelen Yahudi âlimlerdendir. Onun yaşadığı dönemde İspanya toprakları Murabıtlar, Muvahhidler ve Hıristiyan krallıklar arasında savaşlara sahne olmuştur. İbn Daud, Müslümanlar ve Hıristiyanlar tarafından Yahudiliğe yöneltilen eleştirilere karşı Yahudiliği savunmuştur. İbn Daud, ayrıca Karaî Yahudilerin Rabbani Yahudilere yönelik eleştirilerine de cevap vermiştir. İbn Daud, Yahudiliği savunmak üzere biri inanca dair diğeri de Rabbani geleneğin otantikliğine dair iki temel eser yazmıştır. Bunlardan biri Arapça kaleme aldığı el-ʿAḳīdetu’r-Rāfiʿa, diğeri de İbranice Sefer ha-Kabala’dır. Sefer ha-Kabala, Karaîlerin eleştirilerine karşı Rabbani Yahudiliğin Musa’dan itibaren kesintisiz bir şekilde geldiğini ispatlamaya gayret eden bir eserdir. İlk Aristocu Yahudi düşünür olarak bilinen İbn Daud, başyapıtı olan el-ʿAḳīdetu’r-Rāfiʿa adlı eserinde ise Aristo felsefesi ışığında Yahudi inancının üstünlüğünü göstermeye çalışmakta, aynı zamanda Müslümanların nesih ve tahrif iddialarına cevap vermektedir. Elinizdeki makalede, İbn Daud’un nesih ve tahrifle ilgili cevapları incelenecektir. Bunu yaparken İbn Daud’un muhtemel kaynakları ve istifade ettiği eserler de tespit edilmeye çalışılacaktır. Diğer taraftan İbn Daud’un nesih ve tahrif iddialarını hangi Müslüman âlimin eserleri üzerinden okuduğuna dair soru da bu makalede cevaplandırılmaya çalışılacaktır.

Abraham ibn Daud’un (öl. 1180) Sefer ha-Kabala İsimli Eserinde Rabbani Geleneğin Otantikliği

Abraham ibn Daud (d. 1180) was one of the leading Jewish scholars from Spain. During his lifetime, the Spanish lands witnessed wars between Christian kingdoms, Almoravids and Almohads. During this turbulent period, Rabbinic Jews were also exposed to Karaites’ criticism of religion and practice. In this process, Abraham ibn Daud wrote two basic works, one on faith and the other on history, to defend Judaism against attacks from outside. His work on faith is known as al-Aqidah al-Rafiah, the original has been lost and has survived in medieval Hebrew translation as ha-Emunah ha-Ramah. In his work al-Aqidah al-Rafiah, Ibn Daud tries to interpret Judaism in the light of Aristotelian philosophy. Another major work of Ibn Daud is Sefer ha-Qabbalah, which is the subject of this article.

Изучение истории крымских караимов в отечественной и зарубежной историографии

Researchers’ attention to the past of the Crimean Karaites comes from the fact that this problem, despite considerable home and foreign historiography, has never been analysed comprehensively. The turn to the history of the Karaites is of pronounced scholarly significance, since so far it has not only been the subject of scholarly debate, but is often accompanied by non-scientific speculation and polemics. Moreover, the studies of a number of cases and episodes of the Karaites’ past are biased and accompanied by a deliberate distortion of many historical facts and events. This refers primarily to such problems as the ethnogenesis of the Karaites, the chronology of their appearance in the Crimea, the dogmatic principles and features of the Karaite religion, the specificity of educational, cultural, and economic contacts with the Muslim population, as well as with the Jewish communities confessing Rabbinic Judaism. Despite the obvious achievements of Russian and foreign specialists in the Oriental Studies, many problems related with the history of the Karaites lay out of their sight. There is a number of publications presenting historical and ethnological observations outdated from the point of view of modern research. As early as in the pre-revolutionary historiography, the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Karaites and their appearance in the Northern Black Sea Area was addressed, which eventually led to the emergence of several academic theories of the Karaites ethnogenesis providing varying degrees of argumentation (A. Ia. Garkavi, V. V. Grigor’ev, I. I. Kazas, V. D. Smirnov, D. A. Khvol’son, S. M. Shapshal, and others). Along with the legal collisions over the legal status of the Karaites and the Rabbinic Jews, the said discussion contributed to the separation of the Crimean Jewish communities and finally led to the de-Judaization of the Karaites and their loss of ethnic and confessional identity. In Soviet historiography, the history of the Karaites was silenced; serious researches discussing this subject appeared only in the late 1980s. There was a number of works examining the problems of the Karaites (V. L. Vikhnovich, M. I. Gammal, A. G. Gertsen, M. B. Kizilov, V. V. Lebedev, M. Ia. Medvedeva, and A. M. Fedorchuk). The achievements of Western historiography are published by T. Ankori, G. Akhiezer, F. Miller, J. Olszowy-Schlanger, and D. Shapira. Simultaneously, along with the works of professional historians, orientalists, ethnographers, and archaeologists, there appeared a large amount of local and nationally oriented publications with pseudoscientific theories of the origin, culture, and religious customs of the Karaites of the Crimea.

Understanding persecution in Matthew 10:16–23 and its implication in the Nigerian church

The modern use of the word ‘persecution’ in both speeches and books shows a phenomenon that is almost wholly associated with religion. However, persecution is a threat to the peace of religious institutions as well as various societies all over the world; thus, this makes it a phenomenon beyond the scope of religion. However, this research focuses on religious persecution. It studies an aspect of persecution which is called intra muros persecution. This means ‘internal’ persecution. ‘Internal’ in this context describes the kind that existed in the Jewish religious settings, amongst professing Jews, strictly between Rabbinic Jews and Messianic Jews as predicted in Matthew 10:16–23 and is reflected in today’s Christianity in the form of various intra-denominational attacks in Nigeria. The study delves into the history of events which took place between Rabbinic Jews and Messianic Jews and how it relates to the Christian faith, coming out with the discovery that division which it called sectarianism was the brain behind this brand of persecution. The application of the study to the Nigerian situation necessitates the call for tolerance amongst various denominational sects in Nigeria.

معبد راب سمحاة بحارة اليهود القرائين، دراسة معمارية Rab Simḥāh Synagogue In the Kariates's Jewish quarter at Cairo; Architecture study

يعود تاريخ معبد راب سمحاة بحارة اليهود-(عنوانه، شارع کنيس القرائين، حارة اليهود القرائين، الحرنفش)، لما قبل القرن 17م، والذي جدد في نهاية القرن19م، وبقدر ما کانت الطائفة القرائية المصرية على درجة کبيرة من التميز الحضاري والثقافي، کان هذا المعبد انعکاسا لحالتها الفريدة کطائفة أقلية وسط مجتمع أقلية من اليهود الربانيين، الذي يعود العداء التاريخي بين الطائفتين لقرون طويلة سبقت الحرکة الصهيونية التي انتجها وتبنها الفکر اليهودي الرباني المتطرف. تعرض المعبد لترميمات عام 1948، وکذلک تراجع دوره بين القرائين منذ مطلع الثلاثينيات مع تأسيس معبدهم الجديد بالعباسية. لم يحظى المعبد بأي اهتمام من الدارسين والباحثين کما لم يسجل قط کأثر مصري، لذلک لن نجد أي دراسة تاريخية أو معمارية أو أثرية قد تناولت عمارة هذا المعبد بأي قدر من الاهتمام فيما عدا دراسة وحيدة أجريت عام 1984 من قبل الجامعة العبرية بالقدس والتي اکتفت بالتقاط 8 صور فوتوغرافية له إلى جانب بعض ملاحظات ورسومات معمارية لمساقطه. في ظل هذا الغياب الکامل، والتعتيم المعرفي الذي عادة ما يسبق هدم الآثار المصرية وطمس ملامح التاريخ المصري، ظهرت الحاجة لـتناول التاريخ الغنى والمتميز لهذا الأثر المجهول غير المسجل، وتأتى هذه الدراسة للباحث، لتختص بالتوثيق المعماري والوصف الفراغي لکل العناصر المعمارية والهندسة التصميمية لهذا البناء، وقد سبقتها عدة دراسات من قبله اهتمت بمعالجة التاريخ القديم والحديث لهذا الأثر.. ومن خلال هذه الدراسة تم توثيق کل المفردات المعمارية والحالة التصميمية للمعبد کما استطاعت الدراسة أن تجيب عن العديد من التساؤلات الغامضة التي ارتبطت بعمارته، وتفسير فراغاته، مثل أعمال ترميمات1948، موقع حجرة الجنيزة السرية، تفسير التصميم المعماري الغريب والفريد له إلى جانب طبيعته الإنشائية. Rab Simḥāh, A kariate Synagogue in Cairo, which had been constructed before the17th century and restored in late 19th is a special monument as far as the Kariate Jewish sect them self, in all aspects. This Karaite Synagogue resample their minority among the rest of Egyptian Jews, especially Rabbinic Jews which both share a lot of issues before the Zion movement led by the rabbinic sect late 19th. The Synagogue had been restored in 1948, and stepped back in karaite history since the early30s, after anew larger karaite Synagogue had been elected in Abbassia, since that time few scholars had given small interest in documenting this historic monument that why its now un-listed as an Egyptian monument through its history, only an Israelis study in March 1984 led by Hebrew University, which documented the Synagogue with 8 photographs, few site Notes, and architectural sketches. In this situation of knowledge leak, which usually comes before a monuments' destruction, the importance of documenting this building came as an urgent matter, this research is part of a series of researches meant to document: modern and ancient history of the kariate Synagogue and it's architecture value, in this architectura study, are all the Synagogue's spaces and features had been documented and well explained, also many of architecture's part had been solved, like where 1948's restoration took place? And where Ginza secret room may be located? And why and how this Synagogue had reflected the Kariate culture and faith.

Suffering and Sacrifice

This article offers the argument that suffering (yisurin) in the Babylonian Talmud functions as a locus for the relationship between God and rabbinic Jews. Scholars of rabbinic martyrdom and asceticism have tended to claim that the Talmud's positive portrayal of suffering is a theodical apology for unexplained evil in the world. However, the article argues that the Talmud—in contrast to earlier rabbinic texts—presents suffering as spiritually relevant not primarily to justify preexisting suffering, but rather to develop a site at which to interpret information about an individual's spiritual status.The article draws on theories of sacrifice's structure and function, in conjunction with close analysis of rabbinic texts that relate suffering to sacrifice. The pericope at the core of the article's argument demonstrates a strikingly technical approach to the human experience of suffering, describing four examples of yisurin in which no real physical suffering occurs; in each instance the “victim” experiences extremely mild discomfort at most, and at the least barely registers an experience of inconvenience. Nonetheless, these experiences all qualify as “suffering,” and are thus still understood to bear indisputable soteriological import. Physical suffering in the Talmud is thus open for interpretation, yielding information about the status of the sufferer's spiritual self.Human suffering is viewed as religiously desirable in both late rabbinic and early Christian literatures. By developing an understanding of its hermeneutical function for the rabbis, this article helps to elucidate the value of suffering for rabbinic literature as a subset of late antique religious discourse.

Those who require ‘[…] the burning of incense in synagogues are the Rabbinic Jews’: Burning incense in synagogues in commemoration of the temple

This article focuses on the burning of incense in synagogues subsequent to the destruction of the temple, in commemoration of the incense formerly used in the temple rites. We hear about the implementation of this custom in Samaritan and Rabbinic synagogues only several centuries after the destruction of the Samaritan and Jewish Temples. The Samaritans still burn incense in their synagogues at certain times, but among Rabbinic Jews the custom came to an end, probably in the Middle Ages. Burning incense in the synagogue was a point of controversy between the Karaites and the Rabbinic Jews. The Karaites argued that acts involving burning incense and lighting candles are only appropriate for the Temple and their status is like that of sacrifices or offerings that are limited to this complex. It may have been that the rabbinic custom discontinued as a result of the strict Karaite objections to this custom for concern of idolatry. In fact, burning incense in commemoration of the Temple indeed ceased, but this practice remained in evidence until the 19th century for purposes of conveying respect or on festive occasions.

Matthew and the Mishnah: Redefining Identity and Ethos in the Shadow of the Second Temple’s Destruction by Akiva Cohen

Reviewed by: Matthew and the Mishnah: Redefining Identity and Ethos in the Shadow of the Second Temple’s Destruction by Akiva Cohen Simon Lasair akiva cohen, Matthew and the Mishnah: Redefining Identity and Ethos in the Shadow of the Second Temple’s Destruction (WUNT 2/418; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). Pp. xviii + 636. Paper €119. This is a monumental study. Not only does it demonstrate thorough competence in Matthean scholarship specifically and Gospels scholarship generally, but it also shows a comprehensive understanding of the historical scholarship on the Mishnah. The positions Cohen draws upon are explained in detail, often in conversation with opposing viewpoints. Furthermore, through his complex and detailed exposition of his own position, C. presents a compelling argument concerning how early Christians and early rabbinic Jews understood and began to construct their communities in light of the temple’s destruction. C.’s study thus raises significant questions about early Christianity and early Judaism that will need to be addressed as discussions concerning each continue. Cohen opens with the general research question: “How do the authors of religious texts construct their community identity and ethos in the absence of their central cult?” (p. 1). The bulk of the study uses both Matthew and the Mishnah as case studies to explore this question. C. is clear in identifying significant differences in how the Matthean community addressed this concern as opposed to the Mishnah’s framers. C. draws attention, however, to an important domain of interaction between the two movements, namely, the early synagogue. From the early stages of his argument, C. firmly locates the Matthean community within the scope of Second Temple Judaisms, stating that this community was probably an offshoot of the Pharasaic movement. He justifies this position by noting that in Matthew the Pharisees are portrayed as Jesus’ most significant antagonists. He understands this to indicate that the Mattheans were attempting to distinguish themselves from the Pharisees, whose positions concerning halakah and the temple were similar to but distinct from their own. Following Anders Runesson’s notion of association synagogues as the site of general community meetings in late antique Palestine, C. argues that the distinctions from the Pharisees in Matthew had concrete social implications for how the Mattheans functioned within [End Page 704] association synagogues. Given that C. dates Matthew after 70 c.e. and also understands the synagogue as heir to the temple, Matthew’s positions concerning the temple, in C.’s estimation, are crucial for understanding how the Mattheans distinguished themselves from the Pharisees, and also from the early rabbis who saw themselves as heirs of the Pharisees. C.’s section on Matthew thus concludes with several detailed examinations of temple passages in Matthew. In his engagements with these passages, C. finds that the Mattheans were loyal to the temple but not to the point of desiring it rebuilt. Instead, after the temple’s destruction, the Mattheans’ community dynamic became open-ended, no longer focused on the concrete topos of the temple and its cult. According to C., it is this dynamic that enabled gentiles eventually to join the Matthean community. In the temple’s absence, the Mattheans were able to move beyond specifically Jewish concerns and take on viewpoints more favorable to gentile involvements in their movement. In contrast, C. argues that the Mishnah’s framers were concerned with preserving elements of the temple cult despite the temple’s absence. Following Jacob Neusner, C. sees the Mishnah as being framed structurally around temple-related concerns, the times of the sacrifices in the temple often informing the required liturgical practices throughout the rabbinic Jewish day. Moreover, C. argues that the tractates of the Mishnah explicitly concerned with describing the temple cult preserve an idealized vision of the temple and its practices, thus providing a substantial basis for the structuring of rabbinic Jewish life and liturgy; on this latter point, C. again follows Jacob Neusner. Where matters become more complicated is in C.’s discussion of the early synagogue and the many different sects and groups that would meet therein. He is careful not to argue that one single group had dominance in the synagogue; however, he does examine substantial archaeological evidence demonstrating that synagogue...

The fatal chamber pot and the idol of Pe’or – covert anti-Zoroastrian polemic in the Bavli ?

Through the analysis of five aggadic traditions in the Bavli and Palestinian parallels, the article explores intercultural exchange between Babylonian rabbinic Jews and Zoroastrian Persians relating to ritual impurity, most specifically the impurity of excrement. While current research on such intercultural exchange tends to focus on the positive attitudes of Babylonian Jews to the beliefs and practices of their Zoroastrian neighbours, this article argues that these aggadic traditions may exhibit a negative, even hostile, Jewish response to Zoroastrian purity practices. The argument is supported by the comparative analysis of the aggadot with their Palestinian parallels, showing that the Babylonian versions are consistently more humorous, contain more scatological detail and exhibit an enhanced negative view of the non-Jewish ‘Other’. This evidence supports the argument that these aggadot may project a covert, negative view of Zoroastrians, specifically that their beliefs and practices concerning the ritual impurity of excrement are exaggerated and absurd.

Isaac and Jesus: a Rabbinic reappropriation of a ‘Christian’ motif?

If, as recent scholarly insights suggest, adherence to Jesus was a largely intra-Jewish affair during the first few centuries CE, it increases the likelihood of interaction and exchange of ideas between such Jesus-oriented Jews and Jews of other inclinations. This article argues that the motif of the atoning power of the death of the beloved son – developed within first-century Judaism, as evidenced by Paul and the Gospels, and embraced by Jesus-oriented groups – was later reappropriated by Rabbinic Judaism through interaction with Jesus-oriented groups with a Jewish self-identity, and applied by Rabbinic Jews to Isaac. The presence of the aqedah motif in synagogues from the third to six centuries may testify to the reappropriation by non-Jesus-oriented Jews of the motif of the atoning power of the death of the beloved son, and possibly also to the presence and impact of Jesus-oriented groups or individuals in the synagogue of late antiquity.

“Who Would be Mine for the Day!”: Irano-Judaic Marriage Customs in Late Antiquity

Zoroastrians of Babylonia had long lived alongside an important Jewish community whose presence in the region can be traced back to the Achaemenid period (c. 550‒330 BCE). Such long coexistence should justify an interest in the examination of cultural sharing between these two religious groups of Ērānšahr; however, it is just recently that the question of the level of cultural contact between them has become a more important source of inquiry and research by scholars of Iranian history, religious studies and Late Antiquity. The exchanges between the Jews and Zoroastrians of the Sasanian period and their impact on the character of the Babylonian Talmud have been the subject of a number of recent studies, notably by Shaul Shaked, Yaakov Elman, Geoffrey Herman and Shai Segunda, among others. The aim of this article is to contribute to these efforts by exploring the roots of some distinctly Sasanian marriage customs that transcended religious lines and were shared by the rabbinic Jews and Zoroastrians of Ērānšahr.

Reconstructing the Social History of Rabbinic Ideas

Reconstructing the Social History of Rabbinic Ideas David M. Freidenreich Marina Rustow. Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate. Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008. Pp. xxxv + 435. Uriel I. Simonsohn. A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. Pp. viii + 306. How should Historians study the social context and the social impact of rabbinic ideas? This question poses a serious challenge precisely because rabbinic literature itself is so often aspirational rather than descriptive. The challenge is especially acute for those who seek not merely to trace the social history of rabbinic Jews but more specifically the social history of rabbinic ideas. Many scholars, including the present writer, seek to avoid this dilemma entirely by studying rabbinic literature with an eye toward intellectual history, tracing the evolution of rabbinic thought without making any claims about the relationship between elite exhortations and the Jewish masses. This simple solution, however, comes at the price of dismissing important aspects of Jewish history as unknowable. Marina Rustow and Uriel I. Simonsohn, in contrast, confront head on the complex challenges of writing social history about two fundamental rabbinic ideas, namely the notion that Qaraites 1are heretics and the principle that Jews should not take recourse to gentile courts. Their recent books make significant contributions to our understanding of relations [End Page 581]between Rabbanites and non-Rabbanites in the medieval Islamic world. This essay focuses particular attention on their equally valuable contributions to the field of rabbinic historiography, namely, their distinct yet complementary approaches to contextualizing rabbinic thought. Heresy and the Politics of Communitythoroughly disproves the once-prevalent presumption among historians of Rabbanite Judaism that the anti-Qaraite polemics of Sa‘adya Gaon effectively severed ties between Rabbanites and Qaraites, rendering the latter a marginalized, heretical sect. Rustow accomplishes this task by marginalizing the polemical literature of the Rabbanites, once central to historiography of Rabbanite-Qaraite relations, in favor of documentation from the Cairo Geniza. The questions Rustow poses to these documents are no less influential in shaping her revisionist history: they orient her work toward social dynamics instead of the issues of orthodoxy and orthopraxy that animate polemical literature. “Rather than asking only what those accused of heresy believed that made them vulnerable to the charge, I have asked here about the causes and consequences of the accusations—if there were any consequences at all” (p. xviii). Many of Rustow’s questions are profoundly political: who stood to gain from accusations of heresy, what power did Rabbanites have to make those accusations stick, and what power did Qaraites have to thwart such efforts? Rustow finds evidence in the Geniza for only four instances in which Rabbanites in the Fatimid empire purportedly accused Qaraites of heresy during the eleventh century. In each case, the accusers sought political objectives unrelated to Qaraite doctrines. The failure of these accusations to affect Rabbanite-Qaraite relations, Rustow demonstrates, reflects the degree to which Qaraites played key roles in Jewish communal politics, including those of Rabbanite institutions. “The history of heresy,” Rustow concludes, “encompasses not merely the ideas or practices ascribed to heretics, but the set of human circumstances that cause the label to be attached to them” (p. 348). Rustow’s rich depictions of Rabbanite-Qaraite relations, woven from various genres of textual evidence and enlivened with especially effective case studies, demonstrate that even Rabbanite officials did not act on the anti-Qaraite polemic of such figures as Sa‘adya. Rustow documents the heavy reliance of geonim and other officials of the Rabbanite yeshivahs on Qaraite merchants and courtiers in their efforts to obtain, preserve, and extend their authority. She highlights wedding contracts drawn up in Rabbanite courts that preserve the rights of Qaraite spouses to follow their own ancestral customs, and she draws particular attention to Rabbanite use of Qaraite ketubba formularies as exemplary of Rabbanite [End Page 582]respect for Qaraite norms. In one of her many case studies, Rustow shows how a Rabbanite from Toledo sought to help landsmen who had converted to...

Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (review)

Reviewed by: Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza David R. Blumenthal Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole. New York: Schocken Books, 2011. 283 pp. $26.95. In the newest addition to the Nextbook series, Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole have written a remarkably literary history of the vast, but scattered, manuscript fragments that make up the Cairo Geniza. They begin their story with the discovery of a page of the lost Hebrew text of Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) at the end of the nineteenth century in Cambridge, England, and close with the discovery of yet another page of that special text at the beginning of the twenty-first century in Geneva, Switzerland. In between, the book moves at a breathless pace as the authors recount the race to acquire the Geniza fragments, then to decipher and publish them, and finally to reconstruct medieval Mediterranean Jewish economic and social history from them. The key to the success of this book is the lively yet meticulous portrayal of the key characters. The portrait of Solomon Schechter, the volatile, driven scholar of Judaica who worked tirelessly to acquire the largest part of the Geniza for the Cambridge University Library, is riveting. Schechter’s battle with the antisemitic undertones of higher biblical criticism turns out to have been as important as his restless curiosity about the contents of these fragments. The portrait of Adolf Neubauer, the representative of the Oxford University Library, who turns out to be the loser in the race for the Geniza, is so clear that one can feel his misanthropy. The portrait of S. D. Goitein, the person who shifted the emphasis of Geniza scholarship from the famous texts in the large fragments to the life of the common person depicted in the smallest fragments, is so well done that I, who had the privilege of knowing him, could recognize his turns of speech. The portrait of the German Jewish merchant, Schocken, shows his vision and drive, not only in his business but in his effort to preserve the Geniza fragments and gather scholars to study them. Lesser known scholars, too, are given their fair treatment in the cameos that make up the core of Sacred Trash. Even the smell and the dust are palpable. Then there is the romance of it all: Ecclesiasticus had been known only in its Greek translation, but the syntax of the Greek suggested a Hebrew original. And there it was! Page after scattered page, the whole suggesting a vibrant Hebrew culture in the post-biblical period. Yannai, an early medieval poet, had been hardly known at all. And there it was! A complete oeuvre that fills an entire book, once it was identified and assembled, suggesting a vibrant Hebrew culture in the post-talmudic period. Dunash ibn Labrat had been a little-known poet of the early Spanish period. Suddenly, there was a whole body of poetry that included a poem by his wife, who seems to have been better at it [End Page 200] than he, and wholly secular poems about wine and love that had nothing to do with the well-known genre of liturgical poetry, and that suggested a precedent for the emerging secular Hebrew poetry of the twentieth century. There were also new poems of Yehuda ha-Levi and Ibn Gabirol, previously well-known Hebrew poets. Then there is the detective story: Fragments from heretics who seem to be linked to the Sadducees and the (later discovered) Dead Sea Scrolls. A heretic who asked really tough questions about the origin and truth of the biblical narrative, suggesting some of the skepticism about the truth of the Bible in the twentieth century. And the Karaites, a Jewish group that accepted the Bible but not the rabbinic oral tradition of interpretation. Karaites, for instance, had a different ritual calendar, different rules for observing the Shabbat, and different prescriptions concerning the mixing of meat and milk. And yet, Karaites and Rabbanites (as rabbinic Jews were known) lived together, with their synagogues in close proximity and their business and social relations intertwined. Karaites and Rabbanites even “intermarried.” So, how...

Hellenistic Judaism on the Perfection of the Human Body

The article addresses the relevance of the carnality/spirituality discourse in Rabbinic studies started by Daniel Boyarin. The author suggests that Hellenistic Jews were not deprived of an intimate regard of their bodily existence. To a certain extent that perception was rooted not only in the Psalms but in Greek philosophy (mainly stoicism). Hellenic appreciation of human self-esteem was transformed into the ‘radical amazement’ of the Rabbis. Rabbinic Judaism is widely acknowledged for its ‘radical amazement’ (in the words of Abraham Heschel) and the celebration of daily life as a miracle. Indeed, we can speak of continuity between Hellenistic amazement at God's marvellous deeds and Rabbinic ‘radical amazement’. If so, the carnality of Rabbinic Jews was born not out of Jewish humiliation in the age of the Roman Empire but rather out of Hellenistic Jewish dignity and philosophical knowledge of Alexandria.

Returning to Flesh: A Jewish Reflection on Feminist Disability Theology

Returning to Flesh:A Jewish Reflection on Feminist Disability Theology Julia Watts Belser (bio) In her powerful assessment of feminist disability theology, Sharon Betcher argues that feminist recuperation of body has not been inherently liberating for people with disabilities. While a focus on the body allowed feminists to challenge a discourse that valorized the masculine-spirit above the physical-feminine, [End Page 127] Betcher argues that the body is too easily transcendentalized. Though attention to the body has allowed feminists to reclaim the spiritual value of embodiment, it has not necessarily occasioned feminist grappling with the gritty realities of corporeal existence. She notes the degree to which ability, health, beauty, and productivity are expected of today's body, and how these cultural norms become means of policing and subjugating the disabled. Flesh, Betcher suggests, is different. Unlike the body's heady wholesomeness, flesh is vulnerable. Flesh is exposed. Flesh is subject to violence. Judaism has unwillingly played flesh to Christianity's spirit for centuries. For many late antique Christian writers, Jewish resistance to the allegorical and spiritual meanings of the Hebrew Bible led the Jews into a resolute and stubborn denial of the Christian message—a persistant preoccupation with the corporeality of the law. Daniel Boyarin has emphasized the way in which Augustine and other church fathers framed the emerging Jewish-Christian difference in bodily terms. "The carnality of Israel's understanding," he writes, "is what consigns it forever to the realm of the flesh. That is to say, the hermeneutic practices of the rabbinic Jews, their corporeal existence as a people and their emphasis on sex and reproduction, are all stigmatized as 'carnal.'"1 Throughout Christian history, Jews have suffered for this unwillingness to surrender the flesh. Refusal to renounce the physical, tangible reality of Jewishness has left millions of actual Jewish bodies violated and dismembered. But the forcible separation of spirit, body, and flesh is not solely a matter of Jewish-Christian difference. A similar rhetoric of exalted spirit and deviant carnality underscores the relations between Judaism and paganism. In popular Jewish and Christian discourse, the divine call to Abraham heralded a spiritual revolution that transformed the ancient Near East. According to this view, the ethical monotheism first articulated by Judaism and later exemplified through Christianity served as spiritual corrective to the hypersexualized hedonistic culture of Canaan. The subjugation of sexuality, the body, and its flesh comes part and parcel with another triumphalist paradigm of religious evolution.2 Like fantastical and demonic caricatures of the Jews, the rhetorical portrayal of paganism becomes a dangerous specter with little grounding in historical reality. The "pagan" conjures up fears of child sacrifice, sexual indiscriminacy, homosexuality, moral degeneracy, and the overthrow of Western civilization—and links them with the feminine, the Goddess, the earth, and an embrace of the sacredness [End Page 128] of body and flesh.3 As Carol P. Christ describes, the charge of paganism has all-too-often allowed the institutional establishment to police Christian and Jewish feminist theologians, and to break burgeoning alliances between Christian, Jewish, and Neo-Pagan feminists.4 So yes. Let us examine the flesh. But let us not rush to remediate the amputations and scars that these inherited dichotomies have imposed upon our difficult, untidy bodies. Let us open up the terrain of loss and grief and exposure. Disability theologians have critical testimony to bear about the violence implicit in cultural efforts to sever and distance dangerous, unruly flesh from the rest of the more holy and wholesome body. As both Betcher and Eiesland underscore, disability names an identity created and reinforced through the experience of social exclusion and stigma. When Eiesland calls for the body's portrait to represent both bones and braces, she intends it as an explicit critique of "the unexpressed agenda of 'normal' embodiment."5 Likewise, Betcher emphasizes the ways in which global capitalism's incessant demand for cheap labor intersects with its power to fuel the aesthetic expectation for beautiful bodies as sites of consumption. Numerous studies have chronicled the sociological fact that disability is correlated with poverty and vulnerability to violence.6 This vulnerability results not so much from our physical experience, but because of the social and...

Blood libel in a multi‐confessional society: the case of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

In the context of co‐existence with the Jews in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (hereinafter: GDL) the image of the Jew and knowledge about the Jews were important factors, even with regard that the myths which circulated in this society were imported from out of it. In the second half of the sixteenth century the myth of blood libel accusation was disseminating in the GDL, and along with the concept of Jewish harm for society it turned to mass phobia. In that way ritual murder was actualized as an epitome of that harm, the will of Jews to physically annihilate Christians. From the second half of the seventeenth century explanations about the use of Christian blood by Jews as a motivation of ritual murder began to develop in Lithuania, which is in fact another and more focalized version of the idea of Jewish harmfulness. The situation in Lithuania was specific, because the aim of the annihilation of the Christians was not only ascribed to rabbinic Jews, but also to Karaites and Tatars‐Muslims. Notwithstanding this, representatives of the aforementioned communities acted in accord with the society in accusation of the Jews of ritual murder. Besides the mentioned specifics, the article discusses other peculiarities of the myth (like age and sex of assumed victims, images of dynamics and ways of use of blood, descriptions of supposed “killing”, and the structure of the myth’s fibula) which spread in the GDL in comparison to classical blood libel versions spread in Western European societies. The article is based on archive and published documents from the end of the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and old printed books.

Why aren't Jewish women circumcised?: gender and covenant in Judaism

Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism, by Shaye J. D. Cohen. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 317 pp. $39.95. No, Jewish women were never circumcised, despite a few misleading claims and reports, and no, Shaye Cohen does not suggest that Jews adopt this practice. The provocative question which is title of this book is in its essence a Christian polemic meant to undermine Judaism. The fact that Jewish women were not circumcised proved that Christianity was superior to Judaism and that baptism was superior to circumcision. Circumcision only half of members of religion, while baptism saved all. The non-circumcision of women proved that circumcision was unnecessary to achieve salvation. Indeed, Jewish women were not, according to some Christian polemicists, even Jewish because they could not undergo circumcision. All of these arguments were put forth already in antiquity, perhaps as early as Paul (although evidence for this is sparse) and continued to be sounded from time to time among Christians in their disputations with Jews. In contrast, fact that women were not circumcised was obvious to rabbinic Jews from second to eleventh centuries and doesn't seem to have bothered them in least. The essence, then, of this book is its discussion of four different medieval responses to these Christian polemics, and its use of these responses as a window into larger conceptions of Judaism and gender. Since there really weren't all that many responses to this question, and many of responses tend to repeat themselves, heart of book is mostly a discussion of implication of these responses upon larger issues such as meaning of male circumcision, role of women in Judaism gender, Judaism's approach to male and female sexuality, and nature of covenant between God and Israel. These discussions are valuable in their own right, although they occasionally cause book to stray from its main focus. The first medieval response to Christian polemic was simply to downplay women's role in Judaism-women aren't circumcised because their covenant with God is achieved through their husbands or, while young, their fathers. Cohen correctly portrays this as fairly representative of rabbinic culture at large, and therefore doesn't see anything surprising in this claim. The second response was that circumcision is performed on men in order to decrease their lust and that since women have less lusty natures they do not require circumcision. This argument was put forth by Philo in antiquity and was partially repeated by Maimonides, although latter never discussed fact that women were not circumcised. The chapter also contains an extended and interesting excursus into Christian and Jewish views of effeminizing effect that circumcision has on Jewish man. According to some views circumcision even turns a Jewish man into a woman. The chapter includes a discussion of Samson Raphael Hirsch's refinement of Maimonidean article, namely that women are created at a higher level than men and hence do not require circumcision. This apologetic is still heard in Orthodox circles and hence it is revealing to see one of its original proponents. The third response is based mostly on a passage from Sefer HaNizzahon, a medieval anti-Christian polemical work by R. Yom-Tov Lippman Mulhaussen. Mulhaussen deemphasized importance of circumcision in making boys into Jews and turned a Pauline argument on its head-Jews are Jews by virtue of their birth, while Christians require baptism, proving that Christianity is a works based-religion! Concerning non-circumcision of women Mulhaussen responds that no Jew is liable to perform all of commandments: men have circumcision and women have their own commandments, namely sacrifice after childbirth. The fourth response is provided by R. Joseph Bekhor Shor, a medieval French biblical commentator, who says that the blood of menstruation that women observe by telling their husbands of onset of their periods-this for them is covenantal blood. …