Autores, objetivos y versiones del Iguéret ha-Šabat de Ibn Ezra, una polémica acerca de herejías calendáricas

Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Iggeret ha-Shabbat is a short, three chapter polemical work devoted to refuting calendrical heresies. A prologue describes the fantastic circumstance of its composition: the Sabbath Day appeared to Ibn Ezra in a dream and delivered a poetic lament castigating him for contributing to heretical desecration of the Sabbath. Voluminous scholarship has been devoted to the question of whether the heretical work refuted is the Commentary of R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam). This literature is reviewed in toto, with a focus on Samuel Poznański’s seminal 1897 study identifying the heresy with the obscure Mishawite sect. The importance of the earliest known manuscript is first noted; copied in Lleida in 1382, it served as a basis for a little-known 1840 edition. The authenticity of the fantastic prologue –previously published separately, appended to various Rabbinic volumes –had already been questioned in the 18th century. Manuscripts that Samuel D. Luzzatto (Shadal) wrote and corrected by hand in preparing his first edition are reviewed. A previously unpublished note of his addresses a responsum by R. Hai Gaon, paraphrased by Ibn Ezra or his students in two different works, regarding tequfot superstitions, magical forces associated with the solstices and equinoxes.El Iguéret ha-Šabat del rabino Abraham ibn Ezra es un breve trabajo polémico de apenas tres capítulos, que trata de las herejías calendáricas. En el prólogo se describen las fantásticas circunstancias que rodearon su composición, pues el šabat se le apareció a Ibn Ezra en un sueño y, por medio de un poético lamento, le amonestó por haber contribuido a la herética desacralización del šabat. Han corrido ríos de tinta acerca de si el trabajo herético rebatido es el Comentario de R. Samuel ben Meir (Rašbam). En este artículo se revisan todas las publicaciones que hay sobre el tema, y se presta atención especial al estudio seminal de Samuel Poznański, publicado en 1897, en el que se identifica la herejía con la oscura secta mishawita. Por primera vez, se pone de relieve la importancia del manuscrito más antiguo, el copiado en Lérida en 1382, que constituye la base de la poco conocida edición de 1840. La autenticidad del prólogo fantástico –publicado previamente y de manera aislada en varios volúmenes rabínicos– había sido puesta en duda durante el siglo XVIII. En apéndice se analiza el manuscrito que Samuel David Luzzatto (Šadal) corrigió mientras preparaba su edición. Una nota inédita recoge un responsum de R. Hai Gaon, que parafrasearon Ibn Ezra o sus discípulos en dos obras diferentes, referente a las supersticiones tecufot y a las fuerzas mágicas asociadas a los solsticios y equinocios

St Antony's College Record, 2001

The College Record is our annual report of the year including news from the Warden, Bursar, and the College Centres

Revival After the Great War

In the months and years immediately following the First World War, the many (European) countries that had formed its battleground were confronted with daunting challenges. These challenges varied according to the countries' earlier role and degree of involvement in the war but were without exception enormous. The contributors to this book analyse how this was not only a matter of rebuilding ravaged cities and destroyed infrastructure, but also of repairing people’s damaged bodies and upended daily lives, and rethinking and reforming societal, economic and political structures. These processes took place against the backdrop of mass mourning and remembrance, political violence and economic crisis. At the same time, the post-war tabula rasa offered many opportunities for innovation in various areas of society, from social and political reform to architectural design. The wide scope of post-war recovery and revival is reflected in the different sections of this book: rebuild, remember, repair, and reform. It offers insights into post-war revival in Western European countries such as Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Italy, as well as into how their efforts were perceived outside of Europe, for instance in Argentina and the United States

Masora und Exegese Untersuchungen zur Masora und Bibeltextüberlieferung im Kommentar des R. Schlomo ben Yitzchaq (Raschi)

The commentary of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak, b. Troyes 1040, d. 1105), part of the Jewish core curriculum, is reprinted here together with the Hebrew biblical text. This study takes selected portions to investigate citations of the Hebrew bible and the Masorah in Rashi’s commentary, thus providing an introduction to medieval Jewish biblical interpretation and the Ashkenazi tradition of reading the Hebrew bible

Mizrahi Memoirs: History, Memory, and Identity in Displacement

In this dissertation I analyse the dynamics of history, memory, and identity as represented in the published English-language memoirs of Mizrahim (also known as ‘Middle Eastern Jews’ or ‘Arabic Jews’) who were displaced during the mid- to later-twentieth century from Iraq, Iran, and Egypt. I take a thematic approach, analysing the memoirs through a focus on metaphor, sensescapes, dreams, urban landscapes and sacred sites, as well as the different perspectives of key stakeholders. I demonstrate that the culture wars model is inadequate for the study of the experiences of displacement and dispersal. Rather, I argue that the framework of multidirectional memory (Michael Rothberg), in combination with the notion of screen memory, provides a far more accurate reflection of the memory dynamics represented across this body of texts. I also draw on the concepts of postmemory (Marianne Hirsch) and the ‘off-modern’ (Svetlana Boym) as productive ways of understanding the intergenerational transmission of histories and memories, and the construction of diverse identities in post-displacement life. Furthermore, I show that memory dynamics are multidimensional and are shaped by the senses, emotions, and spirituality. They are multilayered, encompassing diverse experiences of temporality, place, and ontology. They are also highly entangled and interweave different perspectives, power relations, locations, histories, and peoples. Through examining the dynamics of memories, histories, and identities in published English-language Mizrahi life writing, I seek to contribute to a more accurate understanding of the diversity of Jewish experiences and the complexity of Jewish life and history in a Middle Eastern and North African context. I aim to develop a nuanced understanding of situations of displacement, dispersal, and resettlement. I demonstrate that memoir writing is a crucial genre for recording migratory experiences and transnational histories. This medium provides a vital and powerful tool that can aid in the recovery of psychological wellbeing and emotional resilience among women and men who have been displaced. An improved understanding of memory dynamics as well as the construction of identities and histories is all the more important in this present moment where dangerously simplistic divisions are often made at the expense of equity, diversity, and true human complexity

JEWISH HISTORIOGRAPHY ON THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ITS JEWRYFROM THE LATE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EARLY DECADES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The thesis analyzes how Jewish historians presented the Ottoman Empire and its Jewish subjects during the long time span between the end of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. In the first part of the thesis, the key characteristics of the Jewish attitude towards history and history writing are analyzed. Throughout the ages of pre-1820, Jews are observed to be consciously lukewarm towards history. The sealing of the Bible and the emergence of an apocalyptic/messianic world view, which are both considered to have taken place around the last centuries of B.C.E., are illustrated as two major causes behind the emergence of this particular Jewish attitude towards history. In the second part of the thesis, the historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are examined with special emphasis on the period historians who explicitly wrote historical works. As the Ottoman Empire was the super power of the age, in these historical writings, a special divine role was attributed to the Empire. The consecutive part of the thesis focuses on historical writings on the Sabbatian messianic movement. As one of the important episodes of the early modern period of Jewish history, the Sabbatian movement stimulated awareness and interest in history even in the far flung communities of Diaspora and produced a new surge of history writing. The modernization of the Ottoman Empire Jewry that began after the 1840s, and adaptation of numerous already-existing social and intellectual models of the West is the subject of the final part of the thesis. Each of these western Jewish intellectual movements had their distinctive approach to history and influenced the Ottoman Jewish historians in their writings of history. However, the actual scientific and objective historical writings on the Ottoman Jewry started much later in the second half of the twentieth century and gained popularity in the 1980s with the increased world-wide interest in the Ottoman/Turkish Jewry

The text of Targum Qoheleth

The aim of this thesis is to produce a lightly-corrected diplomatic edition of Targum Qoheleth (the Targum to Ecclesiastes), using MS Urbinati Ebr. 1, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana as the base text for the transcription, and incorporating readings from 52 other witnesses into the critical apparatus. The texts range in date from 1189 to the 17th century; both Western and Yemenite manuscripts have been used. The edition features physical descriptions of the textual witnesses; an explanation of the methodology used in constructing the apparatus, detailing which types of readings have been included or excluded in order to produce an apparatus which is of a manageable size rather than a “graveyard of errors”; a translation of the text; and stemmatological analysis. Criteria have been developed to establish which variant readings and shared errors allow the manuscripts to be grouped together into textual families. Only the consonantal text has been taken into consideration, as the pointing is of poor quality in many of the manuscripts; the presence or absence of matres lectionis may be simply a matter of scribal preference. It is hoped that through the examination of the relationships between the different witnesses, some light may be shed on the nature of the Late Jewish Literary Aramaic dialect, and the extent to which there is a division between the Western and Yemenite recensions for Targum Qoheleth. This edition would also allow for a more detailed study of Targum Qoheleth and its textual history than currently afforded by existing editions

This Cannot Happen Here: Integration and Jewish Resistance in the Netherlands, 1940-1945

In this book Ben Braber answers the question how the integration of Jews into Dutch society influenced Jewish resistance during the German occupation of the Netherlands in the second world war. This study highlights the social position of Jews and their group characteristics, but also reviews other factors that determined what forms Jewish resistance took such as personal character and individual circumstance.This is the first comprehensive study of this subject in the English language of Jewish resistance in the Netherlands. It offers a new perspective on Jews during the Holocaust and counters the prejudice about Jews failing to resist persecution. This book is also relevant for today's multi-ethnical society. It is a case study about the hampered integration of a minority, in particular how people in this group react when they are forcefully segregated and persecuted, while thinking "this cannot happen here"

Portrait of Italian Jewish Life (1800s-1930s)

Il numero monografico prende in esame, attraverso alcune biografie, la presenza ebraica in Italia fra Otto e Novecento