Judaism in Practice: From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period (original) (raw)

2004, The Sixteenth Century Journal

From the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Period testifies to the great variety of religious practices that characterized Judaism in the twelve hundred years between approximately 600 C.E. and 1800 C.E. Although this vast span of time has often been regarded monochromatically, scholars have increasingly come to speak of this period's enormous complexity. The more that we learn about Judaism during this period of time, the more we recognize the dimensions of this complexity, as we will see below. One of the many ways in which this anthology differs from earlier collections of primary Jewish source materials is in its focus on religious practice and religious experience-in keeping with the series of which it is a part. Older sourcebooks have tended overwhelmingly to be interested in either the political, social, and economic history of the Jewish people as a minority community under Islam and Christianity, or in documenting the intellectual religious achievements of medieval and early modern Jewry. There are thus a number of anthologies having to do with medieval Jewish philosophy, mystical thought, and religious poetry, but virtually nothing of scholarly consequence that seeks to encompass the broad range and variety of Jewish religious practice. That this is the case is a matter of considerable irony, in light of the fact that Judaism has historically been regarded as essentially legal, that is, practical in nature. Yet, it is only recently that scholars have come to explore with increasing sophistication the embodied nature of Jewish religion. As the contents of this volume will demonstrate, the ways in which Judaism has been practiced can hardly be isolated from the historical and political experiences of Jews, or from their many different constructions of faith and theology. Nevertheless, a fuller appreciation of the dimensions of religious practice in Judaism requires that they be studied not merely as an appendage to treatments of Jewish history or Jewish thought but on their own terms, as well. The chapters in this book illustrate many different approaches to the analysis of ritual and practice, including literary, anthropological, phenomenological, and gender studies, as well as the methods of comparative religion. Rather than encompass the entire history of Judaism, this sourcebook focuses on the medieval and early modern periods. There are several vantage points from which to construe the emergence of medieval Judaism. From a political point of