Controversistas imaginarios: Abraham Gómez Silveyra y los teólogos del exilio hugonote

In the Huguenot refugee community in The Netherlands, known as a hotbed of the early Enlightenment, literary interest in Judaism was ubiquitous, yet actual Dutch Jews were relegated to a marginal position in the exchange of ideas. It is this paradoxical experience of cultural participation and social exclusion that a major unpublished source allows to depict. The ex-converso Abraham Gómez Silveyra (1651–1741), a merchant endowed with rabbinic education and proficiency in French, composed eight manuscript volumes of theological reflections in Spanish literary prose and poetry. This huge clandestine series, which survives in three copies, shows the author’s insatiable curiosity for Christian thought. While rebutting Isaac Jacquelot’s missionary activity, he fraternizes with Pierre Jurieu’s millenarianism, Jacques Basnage’s historiography, and Pierre Bayle’s plea for religious freedom. Gómez Silveyra, however, being painfully aware of his voicelessness in the public sphere, enacts Bayle’s utopian project as a closed performance for a Jewish audience.En la comunidad de refugiados hugonotes en los Países Bajos, conocida como un semillero de la Ilustración temprana, el interés literario por el judaísmo era omnipresente, a pesar de que los judíos holandeses estuviesen relegados a una posición marginal en el intercambio de ideas. Es esta experiencia paradójica de participación cultural y exclusión social la que permite plasmar una importante fuente inédita. El exconverso Abraham Gómez Silveyra (1651-1741), un comerciante dotado de educación rabínica y dominio del francés, compuso en español ocho volúmenes manuscritos de reflexiones teológicas en prosa y poesía literarias. Esta enorme serie clandestina, que sobrevive en tres copias, muestra la insaciable curiosidad del autor por el pensamiento cristiano. Mientras refuta la obra misionera de Isaac Jacquelot, confraterniza con el milenarismo de Pierre Jurieu, la historiografía de Jacques Basnage y la llamada de Pierre Bayle por la libertad religiosa. Dolorosamente consciente de su falta de voz en la esfera pública, Gómez Silveyra encarna el proyecto utópico de Bayle como una actuación cerrada para una audiencia judía

Le «Messie mystique» et la Bourse d’Amsterdam, le 3 mai 1666

According to an opinion voiced by G. Scholem, the messianic movement of Shabbatai Zevi owed much of its success to the attraction that his paradoxical message exerted among Conversos returning to Judaism in the 17th C. With the intention of criticizing this explanation, the author presents and analyzes in this article a recently discovered satyrical pamphlet that was distributed by the anti-Shabbatean party in Amsterdam following the arrival of news concerning Shabbetai’s prison on May 3, 1666. This text shows that some of the more influential and prosperous Jewish communal leaders did not believe in the false Messiah. Confronting the Shabbatean party, these “unbelievers” used tactics of literary deceit similar to those used in their relation to Catholic Spain. Their Iberian Marrano origins did not arouse in them any mystical enthusiam. To the conttrary, they were concerned with keeping the reputation of rationality and trust they had enjoyed in the European world of finances. This controversy includes an ironical reference to the sancttions that the Amsterdam Jewish community imposed on their heretics Uriel da Costa and Baruch Espinoza.Según una tesis ideada por Gershom Scholem, el movimiento mesiánico de Sabetay Sebí debía su éxito a la atracción que su mensaje paradójico ejerció entre los conversos vueltos al juddaísmo en el siglo xvii. Con intención de criticar esta explicación, este artículo presenta y analiza un panfleto satírico recién descubierto que había sido distribuido por el partido anti-sabataísta de la comunidad judeoportuguesa de Ámsterdam el 3 de mayo de 1666, cuando llegó la noticia de la prisión de Sabetay Sebí. Este texto demuestra que varias de las más prósperas e influyenttes cabezas de la comunidad no creían en el falso mesías. Enfrentándose al partido sabataísta, estos «incrédulos» emplearon estrategias de engaño onomástico y literario semejantes a las que practicaban en sus relaciones con la España católica. La herencia criptojudaica peninsular no les inspiraba, pues, ningún entusiasmo místico; al contrario, se ven preocupados, más que nada, por conservar la reputación de racionalidad y confianza de la cual gozaban en el mundo europeo de las finanzas. Su polémica incluye una alusión irónica a las sanciones que la comunidad de Ámsterdam había impuesto a sus herejes Uriel da Costa y Bento Espinoza

Farewell to Shulamit. Spatial and Social Diversity in the Song of Songs

The Song of Songs, a lyric cycle of love scenes without a narrative plot, has often been considered as the Bible’s most beautiful and enigmatic book. The present study questions the still dominant exegetical convention that merges all of the Song’s voices into the dialogue of a single couple, its composite heroine Shulamit being a projection screen for norms of womanhood. An alternative socio-spatial reading, starting with the Hebrew text’s strophic patterns and its references to historical realia, explores the poem’s artful alternation between courtly, urban, rural, and pastoral scenes with their distinct characters. The literary construction of social difference juxtaposes class-specific patterns of consumption, mobility, emotion, power structures, and gender relations. This new image of the cycle as a detailed poetic frieze of ancient society eventually leads to a precise hypothesis concerning its literary and religious context in the Hellenistic age, as well as its geographical origins in the multiethnic borderland east of the Jordan. In a Jewish echo of anthropological skepticism, the poem emphasizes the plurality and relativity of the human condition while praising the communicative powers of pleasure, fantasy, and multifarious Eros

The pursuit of the Sanhedrin: the Hungarian Jewish Congress in the tradition of nineteenth-century synods

This article studies the Hungarian Jewish Congress of 1868–1869 from a European perspective. During the run-up to the Congress, the Jewish press discussed intensely the organizational models found in Jewish history, in modern Jewries abroad, as well as in the minority churches of Hungary. Central European Jews challenged the success narrative that had come to be associated with the Napoleonic Sanhedrin and the central administration of French Jewry. Comparison with other religious unification attempts can teach us about the expectations that were projected onto the effort to control the Hungarian Jewish pluralization processes with the devices of parliamentary democracy.Published versio