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68 results in Littman Library of Jewish Civilization

Page 2 of 4

Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement
  • A Revolution in the Name of Tradition
  • Naomi Seidman
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    31 January 2019
  • National Jewish Book Awards 2019 Winner of the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women's Studies and Finalist for Education and Jewish Identity.
    Sarah Schenirer is one of the unsung heroes of twentieth-century Orthodox Judaism. The Bais Yaakov schools she founded in interwar Poland had an unparalleled impact on a traditional Jewish society threatened by assimilation and modernity, educating a generation of girls to take an active part in their community. The movement grew at an astonishing pace, expanding to include high schools, teacher seminaries, summer programmes, vocational schools, and youth movements, in Poland and beyond; it continues to flourish throughout the Jewish diaspora.Naomi Seidman explores the movement through the tensions that characterized it, capturing its complexity as a revolution in the name of tradition. She presents the context which led to its founding, examining the impact of socialism, feminism, Zionism, and Polish electoral politics on the process, and recounts its history, from its foundation in interwar Kraków to its near-destruction in the Holocaust, and its role in the reconstruction of Orthodoxy in subsequent decades.A vivid portrait of Schenirer shines through. The book includes selections from her writings published in English for the first time. Her pioneering, determined character remains the subject of debate in a culture that still regards innovation, female initiative, and women's Torah study with suspicion.

Jewish Preaching in Times of War, 1800–2001
  • Marc Saperstein
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    31 August 2012
  • Wartime sermons reveal how Jews perceive themselves in relation to the majority society and how Jewish and national values are reconciled when the fate of a nation is at stake. They also illustrate how rabbis guide their communities through the challenges of their times. The sermons reproduced here were delivered by American and British rabbis from across the Jewish spectrum - Orthodox to Liberal, Ashkenazi and Sephardi - from the Napoleonic Wars to the attacks of 9/11. Each sermon is prefaced by a comprehensive introduction explaining the context in which it was delivered. Detailed notes explain allusions unfamiliar to a present-day readership and draw comparisons where appropriate to similar passages in contemporary newspapers and other sermons. A general introduction surveys more broadly the distinctive elements of modern Jewish preaching - the new preaching occasions bound up with the history of the countries in which Jews were living; new modes for the dissemination of the sermons (printed pamphlets and the Jewish and general press), and the emergence of women's voices from the pulpit. It also surveys the distinctive themes of modern Jewish sermons, including responses to Jewish suffering, social justice, eulogies for national leaders, Zionism, and war. What Jewish religious leaders said to their congregations when their countries went to war (or, in some cases, were considering going to war) raises questions of central significance for both modern Jewish history and religious thinking in the civic context. What evidence do these sermons present concerning the degree of patriotism felt by Jews? Where and when do we find examples of dissent from the policies taken by their governments, or explicit criticism? What theological problems are raised by the preachers in the context of unprecedented and unimagined destruction, and how do they respond to these problems? How is the enemy presented in these texts? How is the problem of Jews fighting and killing other Jews addressed? Are the preachers functioning to articulate traditions that challenge the consensus of the moment, or as instruments of social control serving the needs of governments looking for unquestioning support from their citizenry? In all these areas, this book makes an important contribution to the American- and Anglo-Jewish history of this period while also making available a collection of mostly unknown Jewish texts produced at dramatic moments of the past two centuries.

Medieval Jews and the Christian Past
  • Jewish Historical Consciousness in Spain and Southern France
  • Ram Ben-Shalom
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    29 October 2015
  • The focus in this book is on the historical consciousness of the Jews of Spain and southern France in the late Middle Ages, and specifically on their perceptions of Christianity and Christian history and culture. RamBen-Shalom offers a detailed analysis of Jews' exposure to the history of those among whom they lived. He shows that the Jews in these southern European lands experienced a relatively open society that was sensitive to and knowledgeable about voices from other cultures, and that this had significant consequences for shaping Jewish historical consciousness.

Gersonides
  • Judaism within the Limits of Reason
  • Seymour Feldman
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    09 July 2020
    Print publication:
    03 September 2015
  • Gersonides (1288–1344), known also as Ralbag, was a philosopher of the first rank as well as an astronomer and biblical exegete, yet this is the first English-language study of the significance of his work for Jewish thought. Seymour Feldman, the acclaimed translator of Gersonides' most important work, The Wars of the Lord - a complete philosophical system and astronomical encyclopedia - has written a comprehensive picture of Gersonides' philosophy that is both descriptive and evaluative. Unusually for a Jewish scholar, Gersonides had contacts with several Christian notables and scholars. It is known that these related to mathematical and astronomical matters; the extent to which these contacts also influenced his philosophical thought is a matter of some controversy. Unquestionably, however, he wrote a veritable library of philosophical, scientific, and exegetical works that testify not only to the range of his intellectual concerns but also to his attempt to forge a philosophical-scientific synthesis between these secular sciences and Judaism.
    Unlike many modern scientists or philosophers, who either scorn religion or compartmentalize it, he did not see any fundamental discrepancy between the pursuit of truth via reason and its attainment through divine revelation: there is only one truth, with which both reason and revelation must agree. As a philosopher-scientist and biblical exegete Gersonides sought to make this agreement robustly evident. While philosophical and scientific ideas have progressed since Gersonides' time, his work is still relevant today because his attempt to make prophecy and miracles understandable in terms of some commonly held philosophical or scientific theory is paradigmatic of a religion that is not afraid of reason. His general principle that reason should function as a 'control' of what we believe has interesting and important implications for the modern reader. Indeed, some of his basic arguments are favoured by many contemporary thinkers who attempt to incorporate modern science into their religious belief system.

    He was not afraid to make religious beliefs philosophically and scientifically credible; one could say that he pursued an 'ethics of belief' in that he held that there are constraints to what is believable, especially in religion. In this respect he was a precursor of Kant and Hermann Cohen: Judaism is or should be a religion of reason.

Jewish Women in Enlightenment Berlin
  • Natalie Naimark-Goldberg
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    09 July 2020
    Print publication:
    28 March 2013
  • National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for the Barbara Dobkin Award for Women's Studies, 2013.The encounter of Jews with the Enlightenment movement has so far been considered almost entirely from a masculine perspective. This highly original study, based on analysis of the correspondence and literary works of a group of educated Jewish women, demonstrates their intellectual proclivities, feminine awareness, and social activities, as well as their attitudes to marriage, traditional family frameworks, and religion. In doing so it makes a significant contribution to German Jewish history as well as to gender studies.

Jewish Theology for a Postmodern Age
  • Miriam Feldmann Kaye
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    08 July 2020
    Print publication:
    08 March 2019
  • In the postmodern, relativist world-view with its refutation of a single, objective, and ultimate truth, it has become difficult if not impossible to argue in favour of one's own beliefs as preferable to those of others. Miriam Feldmann Kaye's pioneering study is one of the first English-language books to address Jewish theology from a postmodern perspective, probing the question of how Jewish theology has the potential to survive the postmodern onslaught that some see as heralding the collapse of religion. Basing her arguments on both philosophical and theological scholarship, Feldmann Kaye shows how postmodernism might actually be a resource for rejuvenating religion.

    Her response to the conception of theology and postmodernism as competing systems of thought is based on a close critical study of Rav Shagar (Shimon Gershon Rosenberg) and Tamar Ross. Rather than advocating postmodern ideas, she analyses their writings through the lens of the most radical of continental postmodern philosophers and cultural critics in order to offer a compelling theology compatible with that world-view. Whether the reader considers postmodernism to be inherently problematic or merely inconsequential, this study demonstrates why reconsidering these preconceptions is one of the most pressing issues in contemporary Jewish thought.

Jewish Hymnography
  • A Literary History
  • Leon J. Weinberger
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    07 January 2020
    Print publication:
    01 December 1997
  • Leon J. Weinberger is University Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama, and winner of the 1995 Friedman Prize of the Histadrut Ivrit of America for contributions to Hebrew literature and culture.

Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages: With a New Introduction
  • Daniel J. Lasker
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    19 December 2019
    Print publication:
    27 April 2007
  • This meticulously researched study is based on a comprehensive reading of all the major Jewish sources from the Geonic period in the ninth century until the dawn of the Haskalah in the late eighteenth century. Its clearly written and carefully documented exposition of the philosophical arguments used by Jews to refute four central doctrines of Christianity (trinity, incarnation, transubstantiation, and virgin birth) makes a major contribution to a relatively neglected area of medieval Jewish intellectual history.

Studies in East European Jewish Mysticism and Hasidism
  • Joseph Weiss, Joseph Dan
  • Edited by David Goldstein
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    03 December 2019
    Print publication:
    01 November 1997
  • A classic text for all those interested in Jewish religious developments in eastern Europe, this paperback has a new introduction locating Weiss's work in the context of contemporary scholarship and the current resurgence of hasidism.

Hasidism Reappraised
  • Edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    03 December 2019
    Print publication:
    01 July 1996
  • This volume is arranged under seven headings: the social history of Hasidism; the social functions of the mystical ideals; distinctive schools of thought within Hasidism; the Hasidic tale; the history of Hasidic historiography; contemporary Hasidism; and present research on Hasidism.

Pride Versus Prejudice
  • Jewish Doctors and Lawyers in England, 1890–1990
  • John Cooper
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    28 November 2019
    Print publication:
    01 July 2003
  • This pioneering study, based on a wide range of sources and supported by numerical data, illustrates the lives and professional experiences of the individuals involved.

Love, Work, and Death
  • Jewish Life in Medieval Umbria
  • Ariel Toaff
  • Translated by Judith Landry
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    28 November 2019
    Print publication:
    01 June 1996
  • Umbria was an important geographical and political entity in Italy during the late Middle Ages and was always linked to the Papal State. This text considers the place of the Jews in the religious, social and economic context of the region and discusses their mentality and family life.

The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah
  • Elliot K. Ginsburg
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    28 November 2019
    Print publication:
    24 January 2008
  • Combining traditional textual analysis with more innovative anthropological approaches, Ginsburg makes an important contribution to the understanding of Jewish spirituality, myth, and ritual.

Maimonides' Confrontation with Mysticism
  • Menachem Kellner
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    21 September 2006
  • A skilful and accessible demonstration of how Maimonides used philosophy to purify a corrupted and paganized religion and translate metaphysical distinctions into moral challenges.

Reluctant Cosmopolitans
  • The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam
  • Daniel M. Swetschinski
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    01 June 2000
  • Daniel M. Swetschinski was born in Brussels in 1944 and grew up in Amsterdam. He studied Semitic languages, philosophy, and history at the universities of Ghent, Amsterdam and Brandeis, and has taught Jewish history at McGill University and the University of Arizona. His many published articles on Dutch Jewish history include a contribution on the period 1516-1621 in Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland edited by J.C.H. Blom et al (the English-language edition of which is also published by the Littman Library as The History of the Jews in the Netherlands). He co-edited Mystics, Philosophers, and Politicians (1982) in honour of Alexander Altmann, and has been a major collaborator on projects of the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam: The Lopes Suasso Family, Bankers to William III (1988) and Orphans Objects: Facets of the Textiles Collection of the Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam (1997).

Jewish Theology and World Religions
  • Edited by Alon Goshen-Gottstein, Eugene Korn
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    05 April 2012
  • The contributors to this volume represent a range of disciplines and denominations within Judaism and share the conviction that articulating contemporary Jewish views of other world religions is an urgent objective for Judaism. Their essays show why a Jewish theology of world religions is a priority for Jewish thinkers and educators concerned with reinvigorating Judaism's contribution to the contemporary world and maintaining Jewish identity and continuity.

Syrian Jewry in Transition, 1840–1880
  • Yaron Harel
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    01 February 2010
  • 'A work of impressive scholarship, offering new insights into and understanding of the impact of Ottoman reforms on the restructuring of the Syrian Jewish community. The anecdotal material is fascinating and the questioning of old stereotypes is important. It is not a study that will be easily surpassed: it represents many years of serious scholarship and the ability to challenge some old views with new data. It is definitely a book that anyone teaching Middle Eastern Jewry should read and assign to students. Descendants of that community in America should welcome its insights into their history and culture.'

How Jewish is Jewish History?
  • Moshe Rosman
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    25 October 2007
  • Moshe Rosman cogently and critically presents the considerations that must be brought to bear on the writing of Jewish history in the light of post-modernist thinking.

New Perspectives on the Haskalah
  • Edited by Shmuel Feiner, David Sorkin
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    01 June 2001
  • Revises our understanding of the relationship between the Haskalah, Orthodoxy, and hasidism, reassesses the role of key individuals in the movement, and offers a new, more nuanced, definition of the Haskalah. Should be of interest to all students of modern Jewish history, literature, and culture in eighteenth-century Germany and eastern Europe in the nineteenth century.

Turn Aside from Evil and Do Good
  • An Introduction and a Way to the Tree of Life
  • Zevi Hirsch Eichenstein
  • Edited by Louis Jacobs
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    27 November 2019
    Print publication:
    01 May 1995
  • A guide to would-be hasidic kabbalists on how to live a holy life, this work conveys the full flavour of the hasidic approach to kabbalism. Comprehensive and accessible scholarly annotations elucidate the kabbalistic ideas and imagery and clarify the sources to which the author refers. This masterpiece will be of interest to anyone interested in hasidism and Jewish mysticism or the religious way of life and its social history.

Page 2 of 4