JACOB IN THE TENT OF ESAU EARLY MODERN JEWISH–CHRISTIAN POLEMICS AS MEANS OF THE ACCULTURATION AND MODERNIZATION OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY A new approach to a hitherto neglected text corpus, produced in the Northern Italian Duchies of the Habsburg Empire in the 17th–18th centuries (original) (raw)
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Can polemics innovate, University of Vienna, 2017
The corpus of anti-Christian Jewish polemical literature-consisting of texts written in Hebrew or vernacular languages, during the Middle Ages and the early modern times-is as rich as it is poorly known. The studies devoted to these writings are invariably limited to one single text or to a choice of texts, which, in spite of being scientifically justified, is necessarily arbitrary. The study of the totality of this corpus is still to be done. Since many texts were lost and others are still in manuscript, such a study could not be exhaustive. However, since the function and specificity of this literature can only be apprehended by adopting a large perspective and by taking into account its multifarious relation to the historical, intellectual and religious contexts, this type of investigation is highly necessary. My intervention proposes therefore a first "total" approach of this polemical literature.
Judaica. Neue digitale Folge
This book is a history. Thus, it will appear to the literary historian or philologist relatively cursory in detail, and sprawling in scope, given its subject. But for the historian, for the scholar who needs a manageable overview of what Sefer Yosippon (henceforth SY) is and what it meant in the premodern period, this study represents a valuable tool. Its structure, with endnotes-by-chapter, corresponds to its contents: readability replaces textual detail (which, after all, takes up a great deal of space and thus constitutes an intentional preference). If some of the content found herein has already been put forward in previous work (by scholars like Saskia Dönitz and Daniel Stein Kokin), the end result of this study is still an original, accessible, and occasionally novel approach to SY as an object of transmission and debate among Renaissance humanists in Western Europe. The introduction begins by framing the context of inquiry: Renaissance Hebraism, which, Zeldes states, focused on 1) "the quest for … the primordial monotheistic religion" and 2) "the theory that certain Hebrew sources, especially Jewish esoteric literature, contained the hidden key to the origins of Christianity" (1). The book sets out to frame SY within that milieu. The brief introduction to SY itself (2-5) is laconic, undetailed, and scarcely adequate for a robust understanding of the work, comprising instead a highly truncated version of what Saskia Dönitz and others have already published (in German and English).¹ The critical introductory discussion is made more difficult to follow by the fact that most of the critical information is relegated to endnotes. Returning to renaissance humanism, Zeldes suggests that SY's reception therein is made special by the nonsacred character of Jewish historiography, as opposed to Scripture, Talmud, esoteric literature, etc. (What exactly this dichotomy might mean could have used a fuller discussion here, as could its justification.) SY's popularity within renaissance humanism owed much to its being mistakenly apprehended as Flavius Josephus' own 'original' work. Both Jews and Christians read and leveraged the work. Zeldes frames her study
Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations
This essay responds to chapter 8, "The Orthodox World and Jewish-Christian Dialogue," which concludes Karma Ben-Johanan's exploration and analysis of developments in Christian-Jewish dialogue following the Second Vatican Council. Just as the first half of the book focused on Catholic Christians and their contributions to interreligious understanding in this period, the second half of the book focuses on Orthodox Jews and, for the most part, the teachings that lead to their avoidance of dialogue. After her review in chapter 5 of "Christianity in the Jewish Tradition," Ben-Johanan provides two chapters that cover sources previously published only in Hebrew and Yiddish. Chapter 6, entitled "Christianity in Contemporary Halakhic Literature," is on contemporary ḥaredi (ultra-Orthodox) teachings about Christianity. 1 Chapter 7, entitled "Christianity in Religious Zionist Thought," deals with teachings of the religious Zionist followers of Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook. The materials in these chapters constitute "difficult texts" 2 for me and many other Jews engaged in dialogue with Christians, but, as Ben-Johanan points out, for the groups she studies here Christianity "is more an image than a reality" (229). Thus, while they constitute important (and, as of this writing, politically 2 I discuss this technical term in my Cursing the Christians?: A History of the Birkat HaMinim (New York: Oxford, 2012), 11-12. The question of the limits of such publication of "difficult texts" is a topic worthy of discussion in the period covered by this book which has seen much recovery of precensored versions of Jewish texts. For example, the controversy over Ariel Toaff's 2007 study of the blood libel, Pasque di sangue: Ebrei d'Europa e omicidi rituali, aroused so much controversy that it was withdrawn for revisions.