Judaism's Encounter with Other Cultures

Judaism's Encounter with Other Cultures

Author: Gerald J. Blidstein

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0765759578

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The issue of Judaism's relationship to secular learning and wisdom is one of the most basic concerns of Jewish intellectual history. The authors collected in this study discuss both sides of the issue and collectively offer an eloquent and convincing case for the perpetuation of Judaism's dialogue with the 'outside' world.


Judaism's Encounter with Other Cultures

Judaism's Encounter with Other Cultures

Author: Jacob J. Schacter

Publisher: Jason Aronson, Incorporated

Published: 1997-05-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1461629284

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The issue of Judaism's relationship to secular learning and wisdom is one of the most basic concerns of Jewish intellectual history. The authors collected in this study discuss both sides of the issue and collectively offer an eloquent and convincing case for the perpetuation of Judaism's dialogue with the 'outside' world.


Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World

Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World

Author: Mladen Popović

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-01-23

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 9004336915

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The essays in this volume originate from the Third Qumran Institute Symposium held at the University of Groningen, December 2013. Taking the flexible concept of “cultural encounter” as a starting point, the essays in this volume bring together a panoply of approaches to the study of various cultural interactions between the people of ancient Israel, Judea, and Palestine and people from other parts of the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. In order to study how cultural encounters shaped historical development, literary traditions, religious practice and political systems, the contributors employ a broad spectrum of theoretical positions (e.g., hybridity, métissage, frontier studies, postcolonialism, entangled histories and multilingualism), to interpret a diverse set of literary, documentary, archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, and iconographic sources.


Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe

Jewish Culture in Early Modern Europe

Author: Richard I. Cohen

Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press

Published: 2014-12-31

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0822980363

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David B. Ruderman's groundbreaking studies of Jewish intellectuals as they engaged with Renaissance humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment have set the agenda for a distinctive historiographical approach to Jewish culture in early modern Europe, from 1500 to 1800. From his initial studies of Italy to his later work on eighteenth-century English, German, and Polish Jews, Ruderman has emphasized the individual as a representative or exemplary figure through whose life and career the problems of a period and cultural context are revealed. Thirty-one leading scholars celebrate Ruderman's stellar career in essays that bring new insight into Jewish culture as it is intertwined in Jewish, European, Ottoman, and American history. The volume presents probing historical snapshots that advance, refine, and challenge how we understand the early modern period and spark further inquiry. Key elements explored include those inspired by Ruderman's own work: the role of print, the significance of networks and mobility among Jewish intellectuals, the value of extraordinary individuals who absorbed and translated so-called external traditions into a Jewish idiom, and the interaction between cultures through texts and personal encounters of Jewish and Christian intellectuals. While these elements can be found in earlier periods of Jewish history, Ruderman and his colleagues point to an intensification of mobility, the dissemination of knowledge, and the blurring of boundaries in the early modern period. These studies present a rich and nuanced portrait of a Jewish culture that is both a contributing member and a product of early modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire. As director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Ruderman has fostered a community of scholars from Europe, North America, and Israel who work in the widest range of areas that touch on Jewish culture. He has worked to make Jewish studies an essential element of mainstream humanities. The essays in this volume are a testament to the haven he has fostered for scholars, which has and continues to generate important works of scholarship across the entire spectrum of Jewish history.


Friendship in Jewish History, Religion, and Culture

Friendship in Jewish History, Religion, and Culture

Author: Lawrence Fine

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2021-02-04

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0271090081

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The ubiquity of friendship in human culture contributes to the fallacy that ideas about friendship have not changed and remained consistent throughout history. It is only when we begin to inquire into the nature and significance of the concept in specific contexts that we discover how complex it truly is. Covering the vast expanse of Jewish tradition, from ancient Israel to the twenty-first century, this collection of essays traces the history of the beliefs, rituals, and social practices surrounding friendship in Jewish life. Employing diverse methodological approaches, this volume explores the particulars of the many varied forms that friendship has taken in the different regions where Jews have lived, including the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman world, Europe, and the United Sates. The four sections—friendship between men, friendship between women, challenges to friendship, and friendships that cross boundaries, especially between Jews and Christians, or men and women—represent and exemplify universal themes and questions about human interrelationships. This pathbreaking and timely study will inspire further research and provide the groundwork for future explorations of the topic. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Martha Ackelsberg, Michela Andreatta, Joseph Davis, Glenn Dynner, Eitan P. Fishbane, Susannah Heschel, Daniel Jütte, Eyal Levinson, Saul M. Olyan, George Savran, and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson.


Chinese and Jews

Chinese and Jews

Author: Irene Eber

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780853036746

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"The essays in this book span an entire millennium, from the arrival of Jews on Chinese shores during the Tang Dynasty in the 9th Century to modern times, illuminating the encounters between the two cultures." "The first part of the book deals with the arrival of Jews in China and their organisation and life in the remote and isolated community of Kaifeng, the settlement of Jews after the Opium War in the mid-nineteenth century and finally the story of the Jewish refugees who flocked to China to find a haven from Nazi persecution in the twentieth century." "The second part reflects on the intellectual exchanges between Jews and their Chinese hosts, how the Jewish communities maintained their identity and how their respective cultures met and merged in surprising and powerful ways through scholarship, literary exchange, the translation of Chinese and Yiddish works and through religious reciprocation."--BOOK JACKET.


Letters to Josep

Letters to Josep

Author: Levy Daniella

Publisher:

Published: 2016-03-30

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789659254002

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This book is a collection of letters from a religious Jew in Israel to a Christian friend in Barcelona on life as an Orthodox Jew. Equal parts lighthearted and insightful, it's a thorough and entertaining introduction to the basic concepts of Judaism.


Jews and Power

Jews and Power

Author: Ruth R. Wisse

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2008-12-24

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0307533131

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Part of the Jewish Encounter series Taking in everything from the Kingdom of David to the Oslo Accords, Ruth Wisse offers a radical new way to think about the Jewish relationship to power. Traditional Jews believed that upholding the covenant with God constituted a treaty with the most powerful force in the universe; this later transformed itself into a belief that, unburdened by a military, Jews could pursue their religious mission on a purely moral plain. Wisse, an eminent professor of comparative literature at Harvard, demonstrates how Jewish political weakness both increased Jewish vulnerability to scapegoating and violence, and unwittingly goaded power-seeking nations to cast Jews as perpetual targets. Although she sees hope in the State of Israel, Wisse questions the way the strategies of the Diaspora continue to drive the Jewish state, echoing Abba Eban's observation that Israel was the only nation to win a war and then sue for peace. And then she draws a persuasive parallel to the United States today, as it struggles to figure out how a liberal democracy can face off against enemies who view Western morality as weakness. This deeply provocative book is sure to stir debate both inside and outside the Jewish world. Wisse's narrative offers a compelling argument that is rich with history and bristling with contemporary urgency.