Ethnic Europe

Ethnic Europe
Author: Roland Hsu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2010-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804773793

Ethnic Europe examines the increasingly complex ethnic challenges facing the expanding European Union. Essays from eleven experts tackle such issues as labor migration, strains on welfare economies, the durability of local traditions, the effects of globalized cultures, and the role of Islamic diasporas, separatist movements, and threats of terrorism. With Europe now a destination for global immigration, European countries are increasingly alert to the difficult struggle to balance minority rights with social cohesion. In pondering these dilemmas, the contributors to this volume take us from theory, history, and broad views of diasporas, to the particularities of neighborhoods, borderlands, and popular literature and film that have been shaped by the mixing of ethnic cultures.

Zutot 2003

Zutot 2003
Author: Shlomo Berger
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2006-03-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1402026285

Zutot: Perspectives on Jewish Culture aims to fill a gap that has become more and more conspicuous among the wealth of scholarly periodicals in the field of Jewish Studies. Whereas existing journals provide space to medium - and large sized articles, they neglect the small but poignant contributions, which may be as important as the extended, detailed study. The yearbook Zutot serves as a platform for small but incisive contributions, and provides them with a distinct context. The substance of these contributions is derived from larger perspectives and, though not always presented in an exhaustive way, will have an impact on contemporary discussions. Zutot covers Jewish Culture in its broadest sense, i.e. encompassing various academic disciplines - literature, languages and linguistics, philosophy, art, sociology, politics and history - and reflects binary oppositions such as religious and secular, high and low, written and oral, male and female culture.

Visual Aspects of Scribal Culture in Ashkenaz

Visual Aspects of Scribal Culture in Ashkenaz
Author: Ingrid M. Kaufmann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2019-09-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110574411

The medieval Ashkenazi manuscripts of the Small Book of Commandments (Sefer Mitzvot Katan, or ‘SeMaK’ for short), which was written by Isaac of Corbeil, attest a scribal culture in which rabbinical knowledge and piety were combined with creative freedom in manuscript design. This study is concerned with the creation, composition and circulation of manuscripts of the SeMaK and concentrates on the book as an artefact. The focus of the author’s attention is the manuscripts’ material nature, their artistic embellishment and the personal touches that scribes added to them. With the act of writing a text and decorating a SeMaK manuscript, they ‘appropriated’ the text, so to speak, giving it a character of its very own. They drew on a visual language in the process – or rather, on visual languages, which occupy a special place between pure writing culture and pure painting culture. It was in this area ‘in between’ the two that spontaneous touches arose, ranging from changes in the physical arrangement of the text (mise-en-page) to drawings and doodles added in the margins. An examination of paratextual elements broadens the reader’s knowledge about Jewish scribal culture and grants insights into medieval book art, material culture and Judeo-Christian co-existence in the Middle Ages as well as throwing some light on Jewish values, ideals and eschatological hopes.

The Jews in Italy

The Jews in Italy
Author: Yaron Harel
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1644692589

All twenty-two original articles in the current volume are based on lectures given at the conference “The Jews in Italy: Their Contribution to the Development and Diffusion of Jewish Heritage”, which was convened in September 2011, at the University of Bologna, Department of Cultural Heritage. Geographically, the articles range from Italy to the Ottoman Empire (the Balkans and Aleppo), from France and Germany to the Middle East, including Israel, North and East Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Ethiopia). Chronologically, articles begin with the Roman period, through the Middle Ages and Renaissance until modern times. In this collection, the reader will find a wide range of subjects reflecting various scholarly perspectives such as history; Christian-Jewish relations; Kabbalah; commentary on the Bible and Talmud; language, grammar, and translation; literature; philosophy; gastronomy; art; culture; folklore; and education.

Language Politics and Language Survival

Language Politics and Language Survival
Author: Bruce Mitchell
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2006
Genre: Great Britain
ISBN: 9789042917842

Language Politics and Language Survival: Yiddish among the haredim in post-war Britain outlines the history and development of the Yiddish language as it is used among Ultra-Orthodox Jews in contemporary Britain. The language policies of these communities are analysed and placed within the greater socio-historical and religious context of rabbinic justifications for the use of Jewish languages, and of Yiddish in particular. Reasons for the general abandonment of Yiddish outside of the haredi world are also summarized and placed in juxtaposition with the Yiddish language of loyalty of the haredim. Yiddish language and corpus planning in haredi schools is analysed using communal documents and newspaper articles, educational assessments of Jewish schools compiled by Her Majesty's Inspectors, a number of interviews with communal educators, tape recordings of lessons given in Yiddish, and observations made during my own visits to haredi educational institutions. A significant part of this book is dedicated to the analysis of the Yiddish language itself as it is currently used in Britain. The analysis of spoken Yiddish is based on recordings of speech patterns collected in the course of field work in haredi schools in London and Manchester and focuses primarily on dialectal usage based on religious sect and the geographic region within Britain. A brief sociological analysis of haredi literature in Yiddish is provided in order to demonstrate the ideological function of Yiddish language texts in contemporary Britain, and in the haredi world in general. The primary materials used for this are texts produced by, and published within, the haredi communities of Britain.

Beyond Faith: Belief, Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth-Century Judeo-Iberian Manuscript

Beyond Faith: Belief, Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth-Century Judeo-Iberian Manuscript
Author: Michelle M. Hamilton
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004282734

In Beyond Faith: Belief, Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth-Century Judeo-Iberian Manuscript, Michelle M. Hamilton sheds light on the concerns of Jewish and converso readers of the generation before the Expulsion. Using a mid-fifteenth-century collection of Iberian vernacular literary, philosophical and religious texts (MS Parm. 2666) recorded in Hebrew characters as a lens, Hamilton explores how its compiler or compilers were forging a particular form of personal, individual religious belief, based not only on the Judeo-Andalusi philosophical tradition of medieval Iberia, but also on the Latinate humanism of late 14th and early 15th-century Europe. The form/s such expressions take reveal the contingent and specific engagement of learned Iberian Jews and conversos with the larger Iberian, European and Arab Mediterranean cultures of the 15th-century.

"Genizat Germania" - Hebrew and Aramaic Binding Fragments from Germany in Context

Author: Andreas Lehnardt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2010-03-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047443845

“Genizat Germania” is a project at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz focused on the search for and analysis of Hebrew and Aramaic binding fragments found in the books and files of archives and libraries. In recent years this systematic search has revealed several hundred new fragments, including some rare Talmudic, Midrashic and liturgical fragments. The new discoveries both in Germany and elsewhere in Europe have broadened the knowledge of Jewish literature in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. This volume collects the papers of international scholars which cover recent discoveries in Germany, the “European Genizah” or fragments found in Italy, Poland, Great Britain and Austria, the approaches of similar projects in Austria and the Czech Republic, as well as an extensive bibliography.