Division of the Dowry on the Death of the Daughter: An Instance in the Negotiation of Laws and Jewish Customs in Early Modern Tuscany

Tuscan notarial acts permit the exploration of the often elusive relationship of Jewish practice, Jewish law and the corresponding laws of the state. One issue in early modern Italian Jewish marriage negotiations was the eventual disposition of the dowry of a childless wife who predeceased her husband. Jewish law on the succession of the childless woman was complicated by traditional or regional customs and communal ordinances. Moreover, in sixteenth-century Tuscany there was no official code, court or arbiter of Jewish law. Nonetheless, Christian notaries who wrote pre-nuptial stipulations or pacts for Jews worked with the assumption that Jews were allowed to live according to their own law. This essay argues that individual Jews used to advantage the state's assumption that they could follow Jewish law (despite the absence of any universally-acknowledged or applicable law on this specific subject) by employing notaries to write contracts in disregard of both local statutes and well-known Jewish customs. In the second part of this essay I locate the stipulations in the Jewish marriage system and suggest that the process of negotiation over the fate of the dowry was integrally related to the system's emphasis – in contrast to that of contemporary Christians – on universal marriage and procreation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43003/1/10835_2004_Article_394391.pd

Reading medieval religious disputation: The 1240 "debate" between Rabbi Yeh&dotbelow;iel of Paris and Friar Nicholas Donin.

This dissertation takes as its subject the Latin and Hebrew accounts of a much-studied event: the Jewish-Christian Disputation of 1240. In medieval Europe's first formal religious debate, Friar Nicholas Donin challenged Rabbi Yeh&dotbelow;iel of Paris over the legitimacy of the Talmud. After the disputation, Donin and Yeh&dotbelow;iel wrote individual accounts of their experiences.This dissertation concentrates on the texts of the two disputants and suggests a new approach to reading these texts. Based on the records of the 1240 Debate, this dissertation demonstrates that the authors' goals in writing polemic were not necessarily or exclusively to offer a response to their antagonists.Read as a historical narrative, Yeh&dotbelow;iel's document reveals that it is less an account of the debate than a manual for future Jewish disputants. Moreover, because Yeh&dotbelow;iel's intended audience consisted of learned Jews, he was able to write in melitza, a pastiche of biblical verses in rhymed prose which is impenetrable to the uninitiated. Both explicitly and subtextually, Yeh&dotbelow;iel provided words of encouragement to his readers, as well as subtle anti-Christian invective.Donin's Latin record addressed a Christian, clerical audience, as this was the population with both the ability and the interest in reading such literature. As such, Donin's account must be understood as addressing ecclesiastical concerns, notably the development of unmonitored texts. In an increasingly text-oriented environment, unmonitored texts such as the Talmud were feared as potential catalysts for heretical or offensive ideas. This dissertation places the debate in a Christian context of increasingly tight systems of religious control over books.This dissertation concludes with a comparison of cultural developments in the Jewish and Christian world such as the rise of textual communities, questions of anthropomorphism, heresy, and the structure of academic institutions.Through cognizance of the milieu and audiences of the authors, both Jewish and Christian, we can come to a more nuanced understanding of religious, cultural, and intellectual currents of thirteenth-century northern France.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 2008.School code: 0127