The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law
Title | The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law PDF eBook |
Author | Mauro Bussani |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 423 |
Release | 2012-08-16 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0521895707 |
The book delves into the 'deeper structures' of the world's legal systems, where law meets culture, politics and socio-economic factors.
Jewish Traditions
Title | Jewish Traditions PDF eBook |
Author | Ronald L. Eisenberg |
Publisher | Jewish Publication Society |
Pages | 831 |
Release | 2010-01-01 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0827610394 |
In an encyclopedic reference for anyone who wants information about all things Jewish, Eisenberg distills an immense amount of material from classic and contemporary sources into a single volume.
The Book of Tradition
Title | The Book of Tradition PDF eBook |
Author | Abraham Ibn Daud |
Publisher | U of Nebraska Press |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2010-03-01 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0827609167 |
Hundreds of years before the Inquisition, the Almohade invasion of Spain wiped out many of the Spanish Jewish communities in Muslim Andalusia ending the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. Thousands of Jews fled north to Christian Spain, where they had to live among Karaite Jews very different from themselves. Philosopher Abraham ibn Daud responded to this upheaval by writing The Book of Tradition, known as Sefer ha-Qabbalah. This epice on Jewish history from ancient times to the 12th century eulogized Spanish Jewry and reminded readers of a once-thriving culture. In JPS's edition of this classic work, first puhlished in 1967, renowned scholar Gerson D. Cohen presents his translation of ibn Daud's entire text, as well as commentary and an extensive introduction that masterfully provides context for the reader.
Remix Judaism
Title | Remix Judaism PDF eBook |
Author | Roberta Rosenthal Kwall |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Pages | 268 |
Release | 2020-02-14 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1538129566 |
Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World offers an eloquent and thoughtful new vision for all Jews seeking a sense of belonging in a changing world, regardless of their current level of observance. Kwall sets out a process of selection, rejection, and modification of rituals that allow for a focus on Jewish tradition rather than on the technicalities of Jewish law. Her goal is not to sell her own religious practices to readers but, rather, to encourage them to find their own personal meaning in Judaism outside the dictates of Commandment by broadening their understanding of how law, culture and tradition fit together. In Remix Judaism, Kwall inspires her audience to be intentional and mindful about the space they allocate for these elements in defining their individual Jewish journeys and identities.
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
Title | Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud PDF eBook |
Author | Moulie Vidas |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Pages | 249 |
Release | 2016-05-31 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 069117086X |
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.
The Miriam Tradition
Title | The Miriam Tradition PDF eBook |
Author | Cia Sautter |
Publisher | University of Illinois Press |
Pages | 185 |
Release | 2010-12-01 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0252090276 |
The Miriam Tradition works from the premise that religious values form in and through movement, with ritual and dance developing patterns for enacting those values. Cia Sautter considers the case of Sephardic Jewish women who, following in the tradition of Miriam the prophet, performed dance and music for Jewish celebrations and special occasions. She uses rabbinic and feminist understandings of the Torah to argue that these women, called tanyaderas, "taught" Jewish values by leading appropriate behavior for major life events. Sautter considers the religious values that are in music and dance performed by tanyaderas and examines them in conjunction with written and visual records and evidence from dance and music traditions. Explaining the symbolic gestures and motions encoded in dances, Sautter shows how rituals display deeply held values that are best expressed through the body. The book argues that the activities of women in other religions might also be examined for their embodiment and display of important values, bringing forgotten groups of women back into the historical record as important community leaders
Becoming the People of the Talmud
Title | Becoming the People of the Talmud PDF eBook |
Author | Talya Fishman |
Publisher | University of Pennsylvania Press |
Pages | 424 |
Release | 2012-01-31 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0812204980 |
In Becoming the People of the Talmud, Talya Fishman examines ways in which circumstances of transmission have shaped the cultural meaning of Jewish traditions. Although the Talmud's preeminence in Jewish study and its determining role in Jewish practice are generally taken for granted, Fishman contends that these roles were not solidified until the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The inscription of Talmud—which Sefardi Jews understand to have occurred quite early, and Ashkenazi Jews only later—precipitated these developments. The encounter with Oral Torah as a written corpus was transformative for both subcultures, and it shaped the roles that Talmud came to play in Jewish life. What were the historical circumstances that led to the inscription of Oral Torah in medieval Europe? How did this body of ancient rabbinic traditions, replete with legal controversies and nonlegal material, come to be construed as a reference work and prescriptive guide to Jewish life? Connecting insights from geonica, medieval Jewish and Christian history, and orality-textuality studies, Becoming the People of the Talmud reconstructs the process of cultural transformation that occurred once medieval Jews encountered the Babylonian Talmud as a written text. According to Fishman, the ascription of greater authority to written text was accompanied by changes in reading habits, compositional predilections, classroom practices, approaches to adjudication, assessments of the past, and social hierarchies. She contends that certain medieval Jews were aware of these changes: some noted that books had replaced teachers; others protested the elevation of Talmud-centered erudition and casuistic virtuosity into standards of religious excellence, at the expense of spiritual refinement. The book concludes with a consideration of Rhineland Pietism's emergence in this context and suggests that two contemporaneous phenomena—the prominence of custom in medieval Ashkenazi culture and the novel Christian attack on Talmud—were indirectly linked to the new eminence of this written text in Jewish life.