Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812251873
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe by : Paola Tartakoff

Download or read book Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe written by Paola Tartakoff and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-01-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A investigation into the thirteenth-century Norwich circumcision case and its meaning for Christians and Jews In 1230, Jews in the English city of Norwich were accused of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old Christian boy named Edward because they "wanted to make him a Jew." Contemporaneous accounts of the "Norwich circumcision case," as it came to be called, recast this episode as an attempted ritual murder. Contextualizing and analyzing accounts of this event and others, with special attention to the roles of children, Paola Tartakoff sheds new light on medieval Christian views of circumcision. She shows that Christian characterizations of Jews as sinister agents of Christian apostasy belonged to the same constellation of anti-Jewish libels as the notorious charge of ritual murder. Drawing on a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources, Tartakoff investigates the elusive backstory of the Norwich circumcision case and exposes the thirteenth-century resurgence of Christian concerns about formal Christian conversion to Judaism. In the process, she elucidates little-known cases of movement out of Christianity and into Judaism, as well as Christian anxieties about the instability of religious identity. Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe recovers the complexity of medieval Jewish-Christian conversion and reveals the links between religious conversion and mounting Jewish-Christian tensions. At the same time, Tartakoff does not lose sight of the mystery surrounding the events that spurred the Norwich circumcision case, and she concludes the book by offering a solution of her own: Christians and Jews, she posits, understood these events in fundamentally irreconcilable ways, illustrating the chasm that separated Christians and Jews in a world in which some Christians and Jews knew each other intimately.

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe

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Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812296737
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe by : Paola Tartakoff

Download or read book Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe written by Paola Tartakoff and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A investigation into the thirteenth-century Norwich circumcision case and its meaning for Christians and Jews In 1230, Jews in the English city of Norwich were accused of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old Christian boy named Edward because they "wanted to make him a Jew." Contemporaneous accounts of the "Norwich circumcision case," as it came to be called, recast this episode as an attempted ritual murder. Contextualizing and analyzing accounts of this event and others, with special attention to the roles of children, Paola Tartakoff sheds new light on medieval Christian views of circumcision. She shows that Christian characterizations of Jews as sinister agents of Christian apostasy belonged to the same constellation of anti-Jewish libels as the notorious charge of ritual murder. Drawing on a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources, Tartakoff investigates the elusive backstory of the Norwich circumcision case and exposes the thirteenth-century resurgence of Christian concerns about formal Christian conversion to Judaism. In the process, she elucidates little-known cases of movement out of Christianity and into Judaism, as well as Christian anxieties about the instability of religious identity. Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe recovers the complexity of medieval Jewish-Christian conversion and reveals the links between religious conversion and mounting Jewish-Christian tensions. At the same time, Tartakoff does not lose sight of the mystery surrounding the events that spurred the Norwich circumcision case, and she concludes the book by offering a solution of her own: Christians and Jews, she posits, understood these events in fundamentally irreconcilable ways, illustrating the chasm that separated Christians and Jews in a world in which some Christians and Jews knew each other intimately.

Between Christian and Jew

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Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812206754
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Christian and Jew by : Paola Tartakoff

Download or read book Between Christian and Jew written by Paola Tartakoff and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-07-24 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious interrogation. His confession was as astonishing to his inquisitors as his brush with mortality is to us: the condemned man described a Jewish conspiracy to persuade recent converts to denounce their newfound Christian faith. His claims were corroborated by witnesses and became the catalyst for a series of trials that unfolded over the course of the next twenty months. Between Christian and Jew closely analyzes these events, which Paola Tartakoff considers paradigmatic of inquisitorial proceedings against Jews in the period. The trials also serve as the backbone of her nuanced consideration of Jewish conversion to Christianity—and the unwelcoming Christian response to Jewish conversions—during a period that is usually celebrated as a time of relative interfaith harmony. The book lays bare the intensity of the mutual hostility between Christians and Jews in medieval Spain. Tartakoff's research reveals that the majority of Jewish converts of the period turned to baptism in order to escape personal difficulties, such as poverty, conflict with other Jews, or unhappy marriages. They often met with a chilly reception from their new Christian brethren, making it difficult to integrate into Christian society. Tartakoff explores Jewish antagonism toward Christians and Christianity by examining the aims and techniques of Jews who sought to re-Judaize apostates as well as the Jewish responses to inquisitorial prosecution during an actual investigation. Prosecutions such as the 1341 trial were understood by papal inquisitors to be in defense of Christianity against perceived Jewish attacks, although Tartakoff shows that Christian fears about Jewish hostility were often exaggerated. Drawing together the accounts of Jews, Jewish converts, and inquisitors, this cultural history offers a broad study of interfaith relations in medieval Iberia.

The Velizh Affair

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190640529
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis The Velizh Affair by : Eugene M. Avrutin

Download or read book The Velizh Affair written by Eugene M. Avrutin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Velizh case was the longest ritual murder investigation in the modern world. Drawing on newly discovered trial records, historian Eugene M. Avrutin looks beyond antisemitism as the single most important factor in understanding ritual murder accusations, and in the process, provides an intimate glimpse of small-town life in eastern Europe.

Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe

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Publisher : Wayne State University Press
ISBN 13 : 0814345603
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (143 download)

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Book Synopsis Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe by : Ephraim Shoham-Steiner

Download or read book Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe written by Ephraim Shoham-Steiner and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe is a topic laced by prejudice on one hand and apologetics on the other. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Jews were often portrayed as criminals driven by greed. While these accusations were, for the most part, unfounded, in other cases criminal accusations against Jews were not altogether baseless. Drawing on a variety of legal, liturgical, literary, and archival sources, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner examines the reasons for the involvement in crime, the social profile of Jews who performed crimes, and the ways and mechanisms employed by the legal and communal body to deal with Jewish criminals and with crimes committed by Jews. A society’s attitude toward individuals identified as criminals—by others or themselves—can serve as a window into that society’s mores and provide insight into how transgressors understood themselves and society’s attitudes toward them. The book is divided into three main sections. In the first section, Shoham-Steiner examines theft and crimes of a financial nature. In the second section, he discusses physical violence and murder, most importantly among Jews but also incidents when Jews attacked others and cases in which Jews asked non-Jews to commit violence against fellow Jews. In the third section, Shoham-Steiner approaches the role of women in crime and explores the gender differences, surveying the nature of the crimes involving women both as perpetrators and as victims, as well as the reaction to their involvement in criminal activities among medieval European Jews. While the study of crime and social attitudes toward criminals is firmly established in the social sciences, the history of crime and of social attitudes toward crime and criminals is relatively new, especially in the field of medieval studies and all the more so in medieval Jewish studies. Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe blazes a new path for unearthing daily life history from extremely recalcitrant sources. The intended readership goes beyond scholars and students of medieval Jewish studies, medieval European history, and crime in pre-modern society.

Mothers and Children

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691091662
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Mothers and Children by : Elisheva Baumgarten

Download or read book Mothers and Children written by Elisheva Baumgarten and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history. Elisheva Baumgarten draws on a rich trove of primary sources to give a full portrait of medieval Jewish family life during the period of childhood from birth to the beginning of formal education at age seven. Illustrating the importance of understanding Jewish practice in the context of Christian society and recognizing the shared foundations in both societies, Baumgarten's examination of Jewish and Christian practices and attitudes is explicitly comparative. Her analysis is also wideranging, covering nearly every aspect of home life and childrearing, including pregnancy, midwifery, birth and initiation rituals, nursing, sterility, infanticide, remarriage, attitudes toward mothers and fathers, gender hierarchies, divorce, widowhood, early education, and the place of children in the home, synagogue, and community. A richly detailed and deeply researched contribution to our understanding of the relationship between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors, Mothers and Children provides a key analysis of the history of Jewish families in medieval Ashkenaz.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521219297
Total Pages : 766 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age by : William David Davies

Download or read book The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 2, The Hellenistic Age written by William David Davies and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 766 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 4 covers the late Roman period to the rise of Islam. Focuses especially on the growth and development of rabbinic Judaism and of the major classical rabbinic sources such as the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud and various Midrashic collections.

Passovers of Blood

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Publisher : Clemens & Blair, LLC
ISBN 13 : 9781734804218
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Passovers of Blood by : Ariel Toaff

Download or read book Passovers of Blood written by Ariel Toaff and published by Clemens & Blair, LLC. This book was released on 2020-04-25 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, Jews have been accused of something called "blood libel" or "ritual murder": the killing of non-Jews, often children, to use their blood in bizarre religious ceremonies or to make food. For centuries, this has been denied by Jews. But in fact there may be some truth to such claims after all.

Trent 1475

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Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 0300051069
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Trent 1475 by : R. Po-chia Hsia

Download or read book Trent 1475 written by R. Po-chia Hsia and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested all eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman living in Trent on the charge of ritual murder - the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. Under judicial torture and imprisonment, the men confessed and were condemned to death; their women-folk, who had been kept under house arrest with their children, denounced the men under torture and eventually converted to Christianity. A papal hearing in Rome about possible judicial misconduct in Trent made the trial widely known and led to a wave of anti-Jewish propaganda and other accusations of ritual murder against the Jews." "In this engrossing book, R. Pochia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tragic persecution, drawing principally on the Yeshiva Manuscript, a detailed trial record made by authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Village of Scoundrels

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Publisher : ABRAMS
ISBN 13 : 1613125070
Total Pages : 317 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis Village of Scoundrels by : Margi Preus

Download or read book Village of Scoundrels written by Margi Preus and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his forgery skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught: A policeman is sent to keep an eye on them, German soldiers reside in a local hotel, and eventually the Gestapo arrives, armed with guns and a list of names. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.

The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom

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Publisher : Brepols Publishers
ISBN 13 : 9782503525235
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (252 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom by : Simha Goldin

Download or read book The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom written by Simha Goldin and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish martyrdom in the Middle Ages is a most intriguing social, cultural, and religious phenomenon. It was stimulated by ancient Jewish myths, and at the same time it was influenced by the Christian environment in which the Jews lived and operated. The result was a unique and unprecedented event in which the Jews did not simply refuse to convert to Christianity; they were ready to kill themselves and their children so they would not be forced to convert. The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom discusses the phenomenon of Jewish Martyrdom in medieval Germany, northern France, and England from the time of the First Crusade (1096) until the mid-fourteenth century (that is, the time of the 'Black Death'), in light of modern research and with ample use of hitherto-neglected primary sources. In order to understand the unique phenomenon of Jewish martyrdom, the various Jewish and Christian antecedents that might have influenced the notion of Jewish martyrdom in the Middle Ages need analysis. The texts on which the analysis is based are various, ranging from chronicles through memorial books to liturgical materials and Piyyut. The last part of the book reviews the development of this phenomenon after the fourteenth century and delineates the essential changes and transformations therein at the dawn of the early modern period and beyond.

Flesh and Blood: Interrogating Freud on Human Sacrifice, Real and Imagined

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004424806
Total Pages : 102 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Flesh and Blood: Interrogating Freud on Human Sacrifice, Real and Imagined by : Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

Download or read book Flesh and Blood: Interrogating Freud on Human Sacrifice, Real and Imagined written by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fears and stories about an underground religion devoted to Satan, which demands and carries out child sacrifice, appeared in the United States in the late twentieth century and became the subject of media reports supported by some mental health professionals. Examining these modern fantasies leads us back to ancient stories which in some cases believers consider the height of religious devotion. Horrifying ideas about human sacrifice, child sacrifice, and the offering to the gods of a beloved only son by his father appear repeatedly in Western traditions, starting with the Greeks and the Hebrews. In Flesh and Blood: Interrogating Freud on Human Sacrifice, Real and Imagined, Beit-Hallahmi focuses on rituals of violence tied to religion, both imagined and real. The main focus of this work is the meaning of blood and ritual killing in the history of religion. The book examines the encounter with the idea of child sacrifice in the context of human hopes for salvation.

The Invention of the Jewish People

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Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 178168362X
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (816 download)

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Book Synopsis The Invention of the Jewish People by : Shlomo Sand

Download or read book The Invention of the Jewish People written by Shlomo Sand and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2010-06-14 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical tour de force, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a groundbreaking account of Jewish and Israeli history. Exploding the myth that there was a forced Jewish exile in the first century at the hands of the Romans, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand argues that most modern Jews descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In this iconoclastic work, which spent nineteen weeks on the Israeli bestseller list and won the coveted Aujourd'hui Award in France, Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel's future.

Under Jerusalem

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Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385546866
Total Pages : 525 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Under Jerusalem by : Andrew Lawler

Download or read book Under Jerusalem written by Andrew Lawler and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spellbinding history of the hidden world below the Holy City—a saga of biblical treasures, intrepid explorers, and political upheaval “A sweeping tale of archaeological exploits and their cultural and political consequences told with a historian’s penchant for detail and a journalist’s flair for narration.” —Washington Post In 1863, a French senator arrived in Jerusalem hoping to unearth relics dating to biblical times. Digging deep underground, he discovered an ancient grave that, he claimed, belonged to an Old Testament queen. News of his find ricocheted around the world, evoking awe and envy alike, and inspiring others to explore Jerusalem’s storied past. In the century and a half since the Frenchman broke ground, Jerusalem has drawn a global cast of fortune seekers and missionaries, archaeologists and zealots, all of them eager to extract the biblical past from beneath the city’s streets and shrines. Their efforts have had profound effects, not only on our understanding of Jerusalem’s history, but on its hotly disputed present. The quest to retrieve ancient Jewish heritage has sparked bloody riots and thwarted international peace agreements. It has served as a cudgel, a way to stake a claim to the most contested city on the planet. Today, the earth below Jerusalem remains a battleground in the struggle to control the city above. Under Jerusalem takes readers into the tombs, tunnels, and trenches of the Holy City. It brings to life the indelible characters who have investigated this subterranean landscape. With clarity and verve, acclaimed journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how their pursuit has not only defined the conflict over modern Jerusalem, but could provide a map for two peoples and three faiths to peacefully coexist.

Jacob & Esau

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108245498
Total Pages : 757 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (82 download)

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Book Synopsis Jacob & Esau by : Malachi Haim Hacohen

Download or read book Jacob & Esau written by Malachi Haim Hacohen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 757 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jacob and Esau is a profound new account of two millennia of Jewish European history that, for the first time, integrates the cosmopolitan narrative of the Jewish diaspora with that of traditional Jews and Jewish culture. Malachi Haim Hacohen uses the biblical story of the rival twins, Jacob and Esau, and its subsequent retelling by Christians and Jews throughout the ages as a lens through which to illuminate changing Jewish-Christian relations and the opening and closing of opportunities for Jewish life in Europe. Jacob and Esau tells a new history of a people accustomed for over two-and-a-half millennia to forming relationships, real and imagined, with successive empires but eagerly adapting, in modernity, to the nation-state, and experimenting with both assimilation and Jewish nationalism. In rewriting this history via Jacob and Esau, the book charts two divergent but intersecting Jewish histories that together represent the plurality of Jewish European cultures.

Judaism in Christian Eyes

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199756538
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Judaism in Christian Eyes by : Yaacov Deutsch

Download or read book Judaism in Christian Eyes written by Yaacov Deutsch and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Christian ethnographic writing about the Jews in early modern Europe, offering a systematic historical analysis of this literary genre and arguing its importance for better understanding both the period in general and Jewish-Christian relations in particular. The book focuses on nearly 80 texts from Western Europe (mostly Germany) that describe the customs and ceremonies of the contemporary Jews, containing both descriptions and illustrations of their subjects. Deutsch is one of the first scholars to study these unique writings in extensive detail. He examines books in which Christian authors describe Jewish life and provides new interpretations of Christian perceptions of Jews, Christian Hebraism, and the attention paid by the Hebraist to contemporary Jews and Judaism. Since many of the authors were converts, studying their books offers new insights into conversion during the period. Their work presents new perspectives the study of religion, developments in the field of anthropology and ethnography, and internal Christian debates that arose from the portrayal of Jewish life. Despite the lack of attention by modern scholars, some of these books were extremely popular in their time and represent one of the important ways by which Jews were perceived during the period. The key claim of the study is that, although almost all of the descriptions of Jewish customs are accurate, the authors chose to concentrate mainly on details that show the Jewish ceremonies as anti-Christian, superstitious, and ridiculous; these details also reveal the deviation of Judaism from the Biblical law. Deutsch suggests that these ethnographic descriptions are better defined as polemical ethnographies and argues that the texts, despite their polemical tendency, represent a shift from writing about Judaism as a religion to writing about Jews, and from a mode of writing based on stereotypes to one based on direct contact and observation.

Blood Libel

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Author :
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472902547
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (729 download)

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Book Synopsis Blood Libel by : Hannah Johnson

Download or read book Blood Libel written by Hannah Johnson and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ritual murder accusation is one of a series of myths that fall under the label blood libel, and describes the medieval legend that Jews require Christian blood for obscure religious purposes and are capable of committing murder to obtain it. This malicious myth continues to have an explosive afterlife in the public sphere, where Sarah Palin's 2011 gaffe is only the latest reminder of its power to excite controversy. Blood Libel is the first book-length study to analyze the recent historiography of the ritual murder accusation and to consider these debates in the context of intellectual and cultural history as well as methodology. Hannah R. Johnson articulates how ethics shapes methodological decisions in the study of the accusation and how questions about methodology, in turn, pose ethical problems of interpretation and understanding. Examining recent debates over the scholarship of historians such as Gavin Langmuir, Israel Yuval, and Ariel Toaff, Johnson argues that these discussions highlight an ongoing paradigm shift that seeks to reimagine questions of responsibility by deliberately refraining from a discourse of moral judgment and blame in favor of an emphasis on historical contingencies and hostile intergroup dynamics.