Susan Einbinder, “Theory and Practice: A Jewish Physician in Paris and Avignon,” AJS Review, vol. 33, no. 1 (April 2009): 135-153 (original) (raw)
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The Black Death in Hebrew Literature: Treatise On Pestilential Fever
Ha-Ma amar be-Qadda at ha-dever (Treatise on Pestilential Fever), composed by an anonymous author, is one of several treatises devoted to the subject of plague that exist in Hebrew literature. The treatise is basically a concise regimen of health as it was common throughout the Middle Ages that has been adapted to the special case of the plague and that has been supplemented with a final section of remedies for the time of the plague. Although we do not know the name of the author nor where and when he lived and composed the treatise, we can draw some conclusions from the foreign, non-Hebrew terminology used in the treatise. As several of the foreign terms used for the different plants and remedies are in old Spanish, it seems reasonable to suppose that the author hailed from the Iberian Peninsula and possibly composed the treatise there as well. The frequent quotations in the supplementary section 21 from Spanish Islamic physicians like Ibn Rushd, al-Zahrāwī, al-Ghāfiqī and above all Ibn Zuhr also confirm such a supposition.
Disease and the Christian Discourse of Jewish Death in De Excidio Hierosolymitano 5, 2
Vox Patrum, 2021
This article looks as the discourse of Jewish disease as it operates on many levels within the fourth-century Latin Christian called 'On the Destruction of Jerusalem.' I argue that, drawing upon Classical, Jewish, and Christian sources and inspirations, the author of this work (Pseudo-Hegesippus) constructs a multifaceted discourse of Jewish disease and death which helps drive his narrative aim of writing the Jews out of history.
and accessible, the following reflections trace our experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic against a rich backdrop of pandemic settings and halakhic responses present and past. Dr. Reichman' s medical erudition treads lightly alongside his commentary on the challenges to Jewish communal life posed by large-scale outbreaks of plague, smallpox, cholera, and COVID. As he demonstrates, rabbis then and now have always struggled to balance the toll of pandemic strain on individuals with the needs of the larger community and the demands of Jewish law. Dr. Reichman' s essays repeatedly remind us of the ways in which our own experience has been "precedented" in other times. At the same time, he astutely notes what is "unprecedented" in rabbinic responses to COVID: the rapid, internet-facilitated, availability and global sweep of COVID-related halakhic rulings. Blending personal anecdote and history with a ranging study of Jewish law, Dr. Reichman has given us eight essays that shuttle between historical pandemics and the present, with a generous representation of the early modern Italian Jewish physicians who are his special passion. The essays are arranged chronologically, permitting brief glimpses of the author' s personal experience as we follow the trajectory of a pandemic from outbreak to recovery. The personal track is modestly subordinated to the second but nonetheless traceable from the ER crisis conditions of the first COVID wave through the author' s exposure to COVID, his illness, hospitalization, and recovery. Spanning these brief biographical references, pandemic experience as a set of communal and institutional challenges plots the dominant arc of these essays. Here we learn from historical precedents about rabbinic responses to quandaries ranging from prayer quorums, social distancing, and quarantine to access to libraries and books. At the same time, we learn some medical
Plague, Practice, and Prescriptive Text
Journal of Law, Religion and State
This article studies the fate of a contradiction between practice and prescriptive text in 16th-century Ashkenaz. The practice was fleeing a plagued city, which contradicted a Talmudic passage requiring self-isolation at home when plague strikes. The emergence of this contradiction as a halakhic problem and its various forms of resolution are analyzed as a case study for the development of halakhic literature in early modern Ashkenaz. The Talmudic text was not considered a challenge to the accepted practice prior to the early modern period. The conflict between practice and Talmud gradually emerged as a halakhic problem in 15th-century rabbinic sources. These sources mixed legal and non-legal material, leaving the status of this contradiction ambiguous. The 16th century saw a variety of solutions to the problem in different halakhic writings, each with their own dynamics, type of authority, possibilities, and limitations. This variety reflects the crystallization of separate genres ...
Program Unit/ 6 Panels (15 papers), “Literary and Discursive Framing of Medical Knowledge in Antiquity,” in the program unit “Medicine in Bible and Talmud” (2 co-sponsored with the EABS program unit “Early Christianity”), 7-11 August 2017, at European Association for Biblical Studies (EABS)/ SBL International Annual Meeting in Berlin/ Germany. Outline of Panel section Papers are invited on the theme of “Literary and discursive framing of concepts of (medical) knowledge in (Late) Antiquity”, extending from biblical and apocryphal texts, into later Jewish, Rabbinic-Talmudic traditions and beyond (i.e. early medieval time). The organizers explicitly welcome papers by scholars working on similar questions as those outlined in the following but dealing with neighboring or adjacent traditions (ancient Babylonia or Egypt; Graeco-Roman culture(s); Iranian traditions, early Christian or Syriac traditions; early Islam etc.) Recent studies into ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman scientific traditions have emphasized the craft and artifice of those texts. On the one hand, these works can be characterized by a rather astonishing degree of literary expertise, discursive versatility and rhetorical sophistication. Ancient scientific authors were well versed not only in their very field of expertise but adopted and deployed many compositional techniques of their respective cultural milieu. On the other hand, scholars have pointed also to the complex framing of scientific knowledge in texts whose primary focus was poetic, historiographic or literary. This new trend in scholarship on ancient knowledge cultures pays attention to the complex interplay between form and content in the representations of these knowledge discourses. How does the use of rhetoric strategies, literary structures, or the choice of genres in ancient `scientific texts’ affect the ideas and concepts conveyed? In which ways does a specific hermeneutic (Listenwissenschaft/ encyclopaedism/ linguocentrism) not only serve as a ‘container’ but also as a method for knowledge acquisition Based on these thoughts, the research unit welcomes presentations that ask how medical (and other related) knowledge is presented, or rather, represented in particular texts and contexts. Papers may address the question of how such knowledge discoursesare shaped and designed. One might ask further: who constructs this discourse and for whom? Which implicit or explicit authorial strategies and intentions might be discerned? How can the adoption or appropriation of certain textual strategies and compositional techniques rather be seen as a vital venue for knowledge transfer, rather than the actual content of the passage? This set of questions pays attention to the embeddedness of medicine in Talmudic literature, other Jewish and further ancient traditions. So, it allows for valuable insights how medical information and other types of knowledge were integrated into different, overlapping discourses. Especially, the interplay between medical, religious, political, ethical and ritualdiscourses seems to be of crucial importance for a broader understanding of ancient knowledge cultures. Papers should be interested in a comparative approach and may apply theories and methods ranging from textual criticism and redaction history, toliteraryor discursive studies of ancient scientific texts that pay also attention to their socio-cultural framing. Jewish texts as a legacy and integral component of ancient Near Eastern cultures have to be examined carefully with regard to their concept of language, literacy/orality and their discursive techniques. Although being primarily focused on Jewish traditions, the research unit would like to emphasize the comparative approach by inviting papers from scholars working in neighboring traditions on those and similar questions.