The Jews of Early Modern Venice

The Jews of Early Modern Venice

Author: Robert C. Davis

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2001-03-28

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 9780801865121

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The constraints of the ghetto and the concomitant interaction of various Jewish traditions produced a remarkable cultural flowering.


Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382-1797

Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382-1797

Author: Benjamin C. I. Ravid

Publisher:

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781000939309

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The Jewish community of early modern Venice was perhaps the leading Jewish community of its time. It emerged as a response to the desire of the Venetian government to make credit readily available and, toward the end of the 16th century, it greatly expanded as Venice, faced with a serious decline in its international maritime trade, adopted a policy of attracting Iberian New Christian merchants. Yet Jews were still treated as the Other and subjected to restrictions and discriminatory measures, including confinement to a segregated enclosed quarter; the 'ghetto'. Despite this, the interplay between economically motivated raison d'état and traditional religious hostility resulted in a delicate balance which enabled the Jewish community of Venice to assume a real leadership role in the world of the Iberian Jewish Diaspora. Based extensively on previously unconsulted documents, these articles deal with central issues in the experience of the Jews of Venice, and so of Diaspora Jewish history in general: the Jewish quarter, maritime trade and urban moneylending, the Jewish distinguishing head-covering, relations with church and state, the forced baptism of Jewish minors, the converso problem, and anti-Judaism.


The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy

The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy

Author: Joseph R. Hacker

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-08-19

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 081220509X

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The rise of printing had major effects on culture and society in the early modern period, and the presence of this new technology—and the relatively rapid embrace of it among early modern Jews—certainly had an effect on many aspects of Jewish culture. One major change that print seems to have brought to the Jewish communities of Christian Europe, particularly in Italy, was greater interaction between Jews and Christians in the production and dissemination of books. Starting in the early sixteenth century, the locus of production for Jewish books in many places in Italy was in Christian-owned print shops, with Jews and Christians collaborating on the editorial and technical processes of book production. As this Jewish-Christian collaboration often took place under conditions of control by Christians (for example, the involvement of Christian typesetters and printers, expurgation and censorship of Hebrew texts, and state control of Hebrew printing), its study opens up an important set of questions about the role that Christians played in shaping Jewish culture. Presenting new research by an international group of scholars, this book represents a step toward a fuller understanding of Jewish book history. Individual essays focus on a range of issues related to the production and dissemination of Hebrew books as well as their audiences. Topics include the activities of scribes and printers, the creation of new types of literature and the transformation of canonical works in the era of print, the external and internal censorship of Hebrew books, and the reading interests of Jews. An introduction summarizes the state of scholarship in the field and offers an overview of the transition from manuscript to print in this period.


The Scandal of Kabbalah

The Scandal of Kabbalah

Author: Yaacob Dweck

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-12-26

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0691162158

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The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a rang.


Early Modern Jewry

Early Modern Jewry

Author: David B. Ruderman

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0691152888

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Early Modern Jewry boldly offers a new history of the early modern Jewish experience. From Krakow and Venice to Amsterdam and Smyrna, David Ruderman examines the historical and cultural factors unique to Jewish communities throughout Europe, and how these distinctions played out amidst the rest of society. Looking at how Jewish settlements in the early modern period were linked to one another in fascinating ways, he shows how Jews were communicating with each other and were more aware of their economic, social, and religious connections than ever before. Ruderman explores five crucial and powerful characteristics uniting Jewish communities: a mobility leading to enhanced contacts between Jews of differing backgrounds, traditions, and languages, as well as between Jews and non-Jews; a heightened sense of communal cohesion throughout all Jewish settlements that revealed the rising power of lay oligarchies; a knowledge explosion brought about by the printing press, the growing interest in Jewish books by Christian readers, an expanded curriculum of Jewish learning, and the entrance of Jewish elites into universities; a crisis of rabbinic authority expressed through active messianism, mystical prophecy, radical enthusiasm, and heresy; and the blurring of religious identities, impacting such groups as conversos, Sabbateans, individual converts to Christianity, and Christian Hebraists. In describing an early modern Jewish culture, Early Modern Jewry reconstructs a distinct epoch in history and provides essential background for understanding the modern Jewish experience.


Transnational connections in early modern theatre

Transnational connections in early modern theatre

Author: M. A. Katritzky

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2019-11-25

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 1526139197

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This volume explores the transnationality and interculturality of early modern performance in multiple languages, cultures, countries and genres. Its twelve essays compose a complex image of theatre connections as a socially, economically, politically and culturally rich tissue of networks and influences. With particular attention to itinerant performers, court festival, and the Black, Muslim and Jewish impact, they combine disciplines and methods to place Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the wider context of performance culture in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Czech and Italian speaking Europe. The authors examine transnational connections by offering multidisciplinary perspectives on the theatrical significance of concrete historical facts: archaeological findings, archival records, visual artefacts, and textual evidence.


Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice

Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice

Author: Sarra Copia Sulam

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-11-15

Total Pages: 631

ISBN-13: 0226779874

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The first Jewish woman to leave her mark as a writer and intellectual, Sarra Copia Sulam (1600?–41) was doubly tainted in the eyes of early modern society by her religion and her gender. This remarkable woman, who until now has been relatively neglected by modern scholarship, was a unique figure in Italian cultural life, opening her home, in the Venetian ghetto, to Jews and Christians alike as a literary salon. For this bilingual edition, Don Harrán has collected all of Sulam’s previously scattered writings—letters, sonnets, a Manifesto—into a single volume. Harrán has also assembled all extant correspondence and poetry that was addressed to Sulam, as well as all known contemporary references to her, making them available to Anglophone readers for the first time. Featuring rich biographical and historical notes that place Sulam in her cultural context, this volume will provide readers with insight into the thought and creativity of a woman who dared to express herself in the male-dominated, overwhelmingly Catholic Venice of her time.


Trading Places

Trading Places

Author: Maartje Van Gelder

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 9004175431

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This book deals with the Netherlandish merchant community in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice. It examines the merchants commercial activities, their social and communal relations, as well as their interaction with the Venetian state, which was accustomed to protect its own trade. The Netherlandish merchants in Venice, as part of an extensive international trading network, were ideally placed to connect Mediterranean and Atlantic commerce. They quickly became the most important group of foreign merchants in the city at a time of rapid economic changes. Drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, this book shows how these immigrant traders used their strong commercial position to secure a place in Venice. It demonstrates how the changing balance of international commerce affected early modern Venetian society.


Trading Nations

Trading Nations

Author: Benjamin Arbel

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9789004100572

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The unfolding of this relationship reveals new perspectives on the history of sixteenth-century Venice, on the social and economic history of the Jews, and on the history of the Ottoman Empire in its prime.