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68 results in Littman Library of Jewish Civilization

Page 1 of 4

Hasidism Beyond Modernity
  • Essays in Habad Thought and History
  • Naftali Loewenthal
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    11 July 2020
    Print publication:
    18 December 2019
  • The Habad school of hasidism is distinguished today from other hasidic groups by its famous emphasis on outreach, on messianism, and on empowering women. Hasidism Beyond Modernity provides a critical, thematic study of the movement from its beginnings, showing how its unusual qualities evolved. Topics investigated include the theoretical underpinning of the outreach ethos; the turn towards women in the twentieth century; new attitudes to non-Jews; the role of the individual in the hasidic collective; spiritual contemplation in the context of modernity; the quest for inclusivism in the face of prevailing schismatic processes; messianism in both spiritual and political forms; and the direction of the movement after the passing of its seventh rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in 1994. Attention is given to many contrasts: pre-modern, modern, and postmodern conceptions of Judaism; the clash between maintaining an enclave and outreach models of Jewish society; particularist and universalist trends; and the subtle interplay of mystical faith and rationality. Some of the chapters are new; others, published in an earlier form, have been updated to take account of recent scholarship. This book presents an in-depth study of an intriguing movement which takes traditional hasidism beyond modernity.

Poverty and Welfare Among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam
  • Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    23 November 2019
    Print publication:
    05 July 2012
  • The reputed wealth and benevolence of the Portuguese Jews of early modern Amsterdam attracted many impoverished people to the city, both ex-Conversos from the Iberian peninsula and Jews from many other countries. In describing the consequences of that migration in terms of demography, admission policy, charitable institutions—public and private—philanthropy and daily life, and the dynamics of the relationship between the rich and the poor, Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld adds a nuanced new dimension to the understanding of Jewish life in the early modern period.

Jewish Mysticism
  • The Infinite Expression of Freedom
  • Rachel Elior
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    23 November 2019
    Print publication:
    31 May 2007
  • A masterly investigation of the Jewish mystical phenomenon, from antiquity to the twentieth century, contextualized in the spiritual and historical circumstances in which it evolved.

Ceremonial Synagogue Textiles
  • From Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Italian Communities
  • Bracha Yaniv
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    16 July 2020
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019
  • National Jewish Book Awards 2019 Finalist for Visual Arts. Richly illustrated and meticulously documented, this is the first comprehensive survey of synagogue textiles to be available in English. Bracha Yaniv, a leading expert in the field of Jewish ceremonial textiles, records their evolution from ancient times to the present. The volume contains a systematic consideration of the mantle, the wrapper, the Torah scroll binder, and the Torah ark curtain and valance, and considers the cultural factors that inspired the evolution of these different items and their motifs. Fabrics, techniques, and modes of production are described in detail; the inscriptions marking the circumstances of donation are similarly subjected to close analysis. Fully annotated plates demonstrate the richness of the styles and traditions in use in different parts of the Jewish diaspora, drawing attention to regional customs. Throughout, emphasis is placed on presenting and explaining all relevant aspects of the Jewish cultural heritage. The concluding section contains transcriptions, translations, and annotations of some 180 inscriptions recording the circumstances in which items were donated, providing a valuable survey of customs of dedication. Together with the comprehensive bibliography, inventory lists, and other relevant documentation, this volume will be an invaluable reference work for the scholarly community, museum curators, and others interested in the Jewish cultural heritage.

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.

Reinventing Maimonides in Contemporary Jewish Thought
  • James A. Diamond, Menachem Kellner
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    20 February 2019
  • Every work on Jewish thought and law since the twelfth century bears the imprint of Maimonides. A. N. Whitehead's famous dictum that the entire European philosophical tradition 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato' could equally characterize Maimonides' place in the Jewish tradition. The critical studies in this volume explore how Orthodox rabbis of different orientations—Shlomo Aviner, Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv), Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, Joseph Kafih, Abraham Isaac Kook, Aaron Kotler, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Elhanan Wasserman—have read and provided footnotes to Maimonides in the long twentieth century. How well did they really understand Maimonides? And where do their arguments fit in the mainstream debates about him and his works? Each of the seven core chapters examines a particular approach. Some rabbis have tried to liberate themselves from the influence of his ideas. Others have sought to build on those ideas or expand them in ways which Maimonides himself did not pursue, and which he may well not have agreed with. Still others advance patently non-Maimonidean positions, while attributing them to none other than Maimonides. Above all, the essays published here demonstrate that his legacy remains vibrantly alive today.

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.

The Zohar: Reception and Impact
  • Boaz Huss
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    14 July 2020
    Print publication:
    12 May 2016
  • National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for the Nahum N. Sarna Memorial Award for Scholarship, 2016.From its first appearance, the Zohar has been one of the most sacred, authoritative, and influential books in Jewish culture. Many scholarly works have been dedicated to its mystical content, its literary style, and the question of its authorship. This book focuses on different issues: it examines the various ways in which the Zoharhas been received by its readers and the impact it has had on Jewish culture, including the fluctuations in its status and value and the various cultural practices linked to these changes. This dynamic and multi-layered history throws important new light on many aspects of Jewish cultural history over the last seven centuries.Boaz Husshas broken new ground with this study, which examines of the reception and canonization of the Zohar as well as its criticism and rejection from its inception to the present day. His underlying assumption is that the different values attributed to the Zohar are not inherent qualities of the zoharic texts, but rather represent the way it has been perceived by its readers in different cultural contexts. He therefore considers not only the attribution of different qualities to the Zohar through time but also the people who were engaged in attributing such qualities and the social and cultural functions associated with their creation, re-creation, and rejection.For each historical period from the beginning of Zohar scholarship to the present, Huss considers the social conditions that stimulated the veneration of the Zohar as well as the factors that contributed to its rejection, alongside the cultural functions and consequences of each approach. Because the multiple modes of the reception of the Zohar have had a decisive influence on the history of Jewish culture, this highly innovative and wide-ranging approach to Zohar scholarship will have important repercussions for many areas of Jewish studies.

A Woman's Life
  • Pauline Wengeroff and Memoirs of a Grandmother
  • Shulamit Magnus
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    14 July 2020
    Print publication:
    10 December 2015
  • In 1908, Pauline Wengeroff published the first piece of writing by a woman in the history of Jewish literature to tell the story of a life and a family with historical consciousness and purpose. It is also the first account in this literature to make women, and men, the focus of inquiry. Shulamit Magnus's biography of this extraordinary woman lets readers share Wengeroff's life, her aspirations, and her disappointments, making a significant contribution both to women's history and to our understanding of the emergence and shape of Jewish modernity.

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.

Recovering a Voice
  • West European Jewish Communities after the Holocaust
  • David H. Weinberg
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    03 September 2015
  • David Weinberg's multi-national study focuses on the efforts by the Jews of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to reconstruct their lives after the Second World War. These efforts have largely been ignored, perhaps because the emphasis on assisting survivors in displaced persons camps in occupied Germany, Austria, and Italy and in developing Israel as the centre of the Jewish world after the Holocaust diverted attention from the struggle by Jews in western Europe to recover their voice and sense of purpose. Weinberg attempts to set the record straight, presenting the challenges that were faced both in the national context and in the world Jewish arena and examining how they were dealt with. Weinberg begins his study by reviewing the action taken to revive Jewish communities in the three countries materially and institutionally, remodelling them as efficient, self-sustaining, and assertive bodies that could meet new challenges. With the creation of the State of Israel, Jews who stayed in western Europe had to defend their decision to do so while nevertheless showing public support for the new nation. There was also a felt need to respond quickly and effectively to any sign of antisemitism. In addition, tensions arose between Jews and non-Jews concerning wartime collaboration in deportations, and the need to memorialize Jewish victims of Nazism. The Cold War offered challenges of its own: the perceived need to exclude communist elements from communal affairs was countered by a resistance to pressures from American Jewish leaders to sever links with Jews in eastern Europe. Yet beneath the show of assertiveness Jewish life was fragile, not only because of the physical depletion of the population and of its leadership but because the Holocaust had shaken religious beliefs and affiliations and had raised questions about the value of preserving ethnic and religious identity. At the same time, new forms of Jewish consciousness had evolved, meaning that Jewish leaders had to provide for diverse educational, religious, and cultural needs. This book's comprehensive approach offers a broad and valuable addition to existing studies on the regeneration of Jewish life in individual European countries. Underscoring the similar political, cultural, social, and economic issues facing Jewish survivors in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands after the Holocaust, David Weinberg demonstrates how, with the aid of international Jewish organizations, they used unprecedented means to meet unprecedented challenges. It is a story worth telling that adds much to our understanding of postwar European Jewish life.

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.

Intrigue and Revolution
  • Chief Rabbis in Aleppo, Baghdad, and Damascus, 1774–1914
  • Yaron Harel
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    11 July 2020
    Print publication:
    18 June 2015
  • Yaron Harel has constructed a dramatic story of how eleven chief rabbis all became the subject of controversy and were subsequently dismissed. This took place against a background of crime and licentiousness rarely documented in the context of Jewish society. Set firmly in the social and political developments of the time, this colourful picture is very different from the commonly accepted image of Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire.

Reading Maimonides' Mishneh Torah
  • David Gillis
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    11 July 2020
    Print publication:
    08 January 2015
  • In this highly original study, David Gillis demonstrates that the Mishneh torah, Maimonides' code of Jewish law, has the structure of a microcosm. Through this symbolic form, Maimonides presents the law as designed to perfect the individual and society by shaping them in the image of the divinely created cosmic order. The commandments of the law thereby bring human beings closer to fulfilling their ultimate purpose, knowledge of God. This symbolism turns the Mishneh torah into an object of contemplation that itself communicates such knowledge. In short, it is a work of art.

    Gillis unpacks the metaphysical and cosmological underpinnings of Maimonides' scheme of organization with consummate skill, allowing the reader to understand the Mishneh torah's artistic dimension and to appreciate its power. Moreover, as he makes clear, uncovering this dimension casts new light on one of the great cruxes of Maimonides studies: the relationship of the Mishneh torah to his philosophical treatise The Guide of the Perplexed. A fundamental unity is revealed between Maimonides the codifier and Maimonides the philosopher that has not been fully appreciated hitherto.

    Maimonides' artistry in composition is repeatedly shown to serve his aims in persuading us of the coherence and wisdom of the halakhic system. Gillis's fine exegesis sets in high relief the humane and transcendental purposes and methods of halakhah as Maimonides conceived of it, in an argument that is sure-footed and convincing.

Collected Essays
  • Volume II
  • Haym Soloveitchik
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    14 July 2020
    Print publication:
    07 November 2014
  • In this second volume of his essays on the history of halakhah, Haym Soloveitchik grapples with much-disputed topics in medieval Jewish history and takes issue with a number of reigning views. His insistence that proper understanding requires substantive, in-depth analysis of the sources leads him to a searching analysis of oft-cited halakhic texts of Ashkenaz, frequently with conclusions that differ from the current consensus. Medieval Jewish historians cannot, he argues, avoid engaging in detailed textual criticism, and texts must always be interpreted in the context of the legal culture of their time. Historians who shirk these tasks risk reinforcing a version that supports their own preconceptions, and retrojecting later notions on to an earlier age. These basic methodological points underlie every topic discussed.

    In Part I, devoted to the cultural origins of Ashkenaz and its lasting impact, Professor Soloveitchik questions the scholarly consensus that the roots of Ashkenaz lie deep in Palestinian soil. He challenges the widespread notion that it was immemorial custom (minhag kadmon) that primarily governed Early Ashkenaz, the culture that emerged in the Rhineland in the late tenth century and which was ended by the ravages of the First Crusade (1096). He similarly rejects the theory that it was only towards the middle of the eleventh century that the Babylonian Talmud came to be regarded as fully authoritative. On the basis of an in-depth analysis of the literature of the time, he shows that the scholars of Early Ashkenaz displayed an astonishing command of the complex corpus of the Babylonian Talmud and viewed it at all times as the touchstone of the permissible and the forbidden. The section concludes with his own radical proposal as to the source of Ashkenazi culture and the stamp it left upon the Jews of northern Europe for close to a millennium.

    The second part of the volume treats the issue of martyrdom as perceived and practised by Jews under Islam and Christianity. In one of the longer essays, Soloveitchik claims that Maimonides' problematic Iggeret ha-Shemad is a work of rhetoric, not halakhah - a conclusion that has generated much criticism from other scholars, to whom he replies one by one. This is followed by a comprehensive study of kiddush ha-shem in Ashkenaz, which draws him into an analysis of whether aggadic sources were used by the Tosafists in halakhic arguments, as some historians claim; whether there was any halakhic validation of the widespread phenomenon of voluntary martyrdom; and, indeed, whether halakhic considerations played any part in such tragic life-and-death issues. The book concludes with two essays on Mishneh torah which argue that that famed code must also be viewed as a work of art which sustains, as masterpieces do, multiple conflicting interpretations.

Leadership and Conflict
  • Tensions in Medieval and Modern Jewish History and Culture
  • Marc Saperstein
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    14 July 2020
    Print publication:
    30 October 2014
  • This masterly collection of essays offers a multifaceted analysis of how Jewish leaders in medieval and early modern times responded to the challenges presented by a changing world. Based largely on the study of sermons and response - genres that show them addressing real situations in the lives of their people - the book reveals how they handled intellectual, social, and political diversity and conflict. As medieval Jews were exposed to new philosophical ideas, many began to question and challenge rabbinical leadership. Leadership and Conflict explores the process by which these ideas became more accessible, the doubts that consequently arose regarding certain biblical and rabbinic texts, and the attempt by some leaders to ban the study of philosophical texts altogether. The book also addresses the rhetoric of rebuke used by preachers to criticize behavior within their community that they considered to be a violation of Jewish law and tradition. Another set of challenges to traditional Jewish life emerged from political developments in the wider world, including the unification of France, the Spanish Inquisition and Edict of Expulsion, and the beginning of the Counter-Reformation. Leadership and Conflict asks whether criticism of the talent and leadership of rabbis in such times of crisis was justified. The final section of the book is devoted to conflicting attitudes within Jewish society: towards the Holy Land, exile and diasporic existence, and messianic movements and personalities. Leadership and Conflict represents three decades of scholarship by Professor Marc Saperstein, a distinguished historian. Bringing his perceptive essays together in a single volume allows a new generation of students and scholars to have access to his insights and conclusions.

Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century
  • Creating a Tradition of Learning
  • Shaul Stampfer
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    16 July 2020
    Print publication:
    31 July 2014
  • One of the key ways in which the traditional Jewish world of eastern Europe responded to the challenges of modernity in the nineteenth century was to change the system for educating young men so as to reinforce time-honoured, conservative values. The yeshivas established at that time in Lithuania became models for an educational system that has persisted to this day, transmitting the talmudic underpinnings of the traditional Jewish way of life. To understand how that system works, one needs to go back to the institutions they are patterned on: why they were established, how they were organized, and how they operated. This is the first properly documented, systematic study of the Lithuanian yeshiva as it existed from 1802 to 1914. It is based on the judicious use of contemporary sources—documents, articles in the press, and memoirs—with a view to presenting the yeshiva in its social and cultural context. Three key institutions are considered. Pride of place in the first part of the book is given to the yeshiva of Volozhin, which was founded in 1802 according to an entirely new concept—total independence from the local community—and was in that sense the model for everything that followed. Chapters in the second part focus on the yeshiva of Slobodka, famed for introducing the study of musar (ethics); the yeshiva of Telz, with its structural and organizational innovations; and the kollel system, introduced so that married men could continue their yeshiva education. Topics covered include the leadership and changes in leadership; management and administration; the yeshiva as a place of study; and daily life. This English edition is based on the second Hebrew edition, which was revised to include information that became available with the opening of archives in eastern Europe after the fall of communism.

Midrash Unbound
  • Transformations and Innovations
  • Edited by Michael Fishbane, Joanna Weinberg
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    19 December 2013
  • Midrash is arguably the most ancient genre of Jewish literature, forming a voluminous body of scriptural exegesis over the course of centuries. There is hardly anything in the ancient rabbinic universe that was not taught through this medium. The diversity and development of that creative profusion are presented here in a new light. The contributors cover a broad range of texts, from late antiquity to the modern period and from all the centres of literary creativity, including non-rabbinic and non-Jewish literature, so that the full extent of the modes and transformations of Midrash can be fully appreciated. A comprehensive introduction situates Midrash in its historical and cultural setting, pointing to creative adaptations within the tradition and providing a sense of the variety of genres and applications discussed in the body of the book.

    Bringing together an impressive array of the leading names in the field, the volume is innovative in both its scope and content, seeking to open a new period in the study of Midrash and its creative role in the formation of culture. It should be of interest to all scholars of Jewish studies, as well as to a wider readership interested in the interrelationships between hermeneutics, culture, and creativity, and especially in the afterlife of a classical genre and its ability to inspire new creativity in many forms.

    Contributors: Philip Alexander, Sebastian Brock, Jacob Elbaum, Michael Fishbane, Robert Hayward, William Horbury, Sara Japhet, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Naftali Loewenthal, Ivan G. Marcus, Alison Salvesen, Marc Saperstein, Chava Turniansky, Piet van Boxel, Joanna Weinberg, Benjamin Williams, Elliot Wolfson, Eli Yassif.

The Jews in Poland and Russia: A Short History
  • Polonsky Antony
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    10 July 2020
    Print publication:
    26 September 2013
  • A very readable and comprehensive overview that examines the realities of Jewish life while setting them in their political, economic, and social contexts.

Collected Essays
  • Volume I
  • Haym Soloveitchik
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    14 July 2020
    Print publication:
    18 July 2013
  • Written at different times and for different audiences - some for scholars of rabbinic literature, some for laymen or for scholars not necessarily Jewish - the essays gathered together in this volume nevertheless have an inner coherence. They reflect the author's lifetime interest in the history of halakhah - not as intellectual history per se, but rather a concern to identify measurable deflection in the unfolding of halakhic ideas that could point to an undetected force at work. What was it that stimulated change, and why? What happened when strong forces impinged upon halakhic observance, and both the scholarly elite and the community as a whole had to grapple with upholding observance while adapting to a new set of circumstances? Haym Soloveitchik's elegant presentation shows skilfully that the line between adaptation and deviance is a fine one, and that where a society draws that line is revelatory of both its values and its self-perception. Many of the articles presented here are well known in the field but have been updated for this publication (the major essay on pawnbroking has been expanded to half again its original size); some have been previously published only in Hebrew, and two are completely new. An Introduction highlights the key themes of the collection and explains the underlying methodology. Having these essays in a single volume will enable scholars and students to consult all the material on each theme together, while also tracing the development of ideas. The opening section of the volume is a brief description and characterization of the dramatis personae who figure in all these essays: Rashi and the Tosafists. It covers the halakhic commentaries and their authors; the creativity of Ashkenaz; and the halakhic isolation of the Ashkenazic community. The second section focuses on usury and money-lending, including the practice of pawn-broking, while the third section deals with the ban on Gentile wine and how that connected to the development of money-lending. The final section presents general conclusions in the form of four studies of the communal self-image of Ashkenaz and its attitude to deviation and change.

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