{"title":"Transmission and Reception of Isaac ibn Sahula’s Kabbalistic Commentary on Two Psalms","authors":"S. Campanini","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10033","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In his largely fabulous Historia eclesiastica, politica, natural y moral published in Valencia in 1610, the Dominican Luis de Urreta offers a brief survey of the riches of the Ethiopian imperial library with great admiration. The universal character of the Emperor’s library ensured that it also contained a good selection of Jewish authors and Hebrew books. Among them one can find two names that are in fact one: Isaac ben Sahula. This article documents how Christian knowledge of this author and of some of his works came about, through which ways it became very much widespread, also examining in passing the false attributions of works or rather ideas that became commonplace, especially between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Finally, it will show that a very large part of his fame derived from a single Hebrew manuscript.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44386929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Philosophical Background of Yoḥanan Alemanno: Remarks on Logic and Psychology","authors":"Hanna Gentili","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10034","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The convergence of philosophical and kabbalistic sources in the works of Yoḥanan Alemanno (ca. 1435–ca. 1504) attests to the richness of fifteenth-century scholarship in Italy, specifically its reception of sources that had characterized cultural debates across the Mediterranean for centuries. Beginning with a discussion of his personal notebook (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms Reggio 23), and focusing on his treatment of logic and psychology, this study demonstrates the extent to which Alemanno relied on the Jewish Aristotelian tradition based on the translations of Averroes’ Arabic commentaries. Moreover, it shows the relationship between this tradition and the kabbalistic themes addressed by the author in his works.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45461596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studying Ibn Sīnā, Performing Abulafia in a Mid-Sixteenth-Century Prison: Emotional, Medical, and Mystical Bodies between Italy and Silesia","authors":"M. Jánošíková","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10036","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Historians often address knowledge transfer in two ways: as an extension and continuation of an established tradition, or as the tradition’s modification in an act of individual reception. This article explores the tension between the two approaches through a case study of Eliezer Eilburg. It traces the footsteps of a sixteenth-century German Jew and his study of the late medieval Hebrew medical and mystical literature composed in the wider Mediterranean. As it uncovers the cultural, political, and social processes shaping knowledge transfer between various Jewish cultures and geographies, the article highlights the receiver’s individual agency. Under the thickly described intellectual traditions, it is the receiver’s lived experience that allows historians to grasp the impact of knowledge on the lives of premodern people—the impact on their body and its relation to the world and to God. Building this argument, this article problematizes the relationship between theory and practice.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49613520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Or Ha-Shem from Spain. The Life, Works, and Philosophy of Rabbi Hasdai Crescas, edited by Esti Eisenmann and Warren Zev Harvey","authors":"B. Gampel","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49044423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jacob Ṣemaḥ, Humanist","authors":"J. Chajes","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10032","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Jacob Ṣemaḥ (ca. 1578–1667), an erudite physician-kabbalist, was raised amongst the conversos of Viana de Caminha in northwest Portugal. He fled the country in his mid-thirties to live openly as a Jew, arriving first in Salonica. Ṣemaḥ was responsible for the consolidation of the Lurianic literary corpus in the second third of the seventeenth century. His contribution, I argue, should be situated in the broader context of a scholarly curriculum vitae that began decades before his flight from Portugal, as Ṣemaḥ embraced Jewish life as a humanist. Coupled with his natural gifts and genius, Ṣemaḥ’s humanist education served him remarkably well in his new life. The interesting question is therefore not “how might he have learned Torah in Portugal” but “how did his Portuguese educational background affect—indeed, effect may be the more apt term—his Jewish scholarship?”","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49331720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Matrix of Understanding: Moses Zacuto’s Em la-Binah and Kabbalistic Works of Reference","authors":"G. Necker","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10031","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The systematization of knowledge for educational practice entered a new era in the wake of Ramism. Innovative encyclopedic approaches and textbooks also surfaced in the field of Kabbalah. This article discusses Moses Zacuto’s approach to the kabbalistic genre of reference books and the impact of Lurianic Kabbalah. Against the backdrop of the reception of Ramist ideas and building upon the interaction between Kabbalah and logic in Abraham Cohen de Herrera’s Spanish books, two works in particular, which Zacuto left in an apparently unfinished state in manuscript form, are analyzed in this context: Em la-Binah and Remez ha-Romez. Both works differ from traditional reference books, and Em la-Binah in particular will be examined in order to answer the question of how Zacuto’s strategy for commonplace learning worked in a Lurianic textbook in progress.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-08-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42987180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transmission and Transformation of Kabbalistic Knowledge in Italy at the End of the Fifteenth Century","authors":"Flavia Buzzetta","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-11411102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-11411102","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The article looks at the transfer of knowledge between Judaism and Christianity in the Renaissance, a period characterized by the encounter of different cultures and belief systems. In particular, it will focus on the Christian Kabbalah, which channels various philosophical and sapiential traditions into a universal, and at the same time, plural vision of wisdom. This convergence of ideas resulted, on the one hand, in the elaboration of translations, adaptations, and vulgarization of Jewish texts and, on the other, in the development of new interpretations. This is a characteristic of the collected writings of Pierleone of Spoleto, which involved the transformative communication of Jewish translators and the creative reception of Christian humanists. Of these manuscripts, we will examine the annotations concerning the sefirot, which are an excellent example of the reinterpretation of Jewish thought through a typically humanistic perspective.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47188976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Printed Primer of Kabbalistic Knowledge: Sha‘arei Orah in East-Central Europe","authors":"Avinoam J. Stillman","doi":"10.1163/1872471X-BJA10029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471X-BJA10029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article explores the printed editions of Joseph Gikatilla’s Sha‘arei Orah in the broader context of kabbalistic knowledge in early modern East-Central Europe. Following its first Italian editions, the book was reprinted several times. The Kraków 1600 edition with commentary by Matityah Delacrut presented Sha‘arei Orah as a kabbalistic lexicon and study aid. The Offenbach 1715 edition included additional notes that linked Sha‘arei Orah to the Safedian Kabbalah of Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria. Finally, the several editions published in Żółkiew exemplify the diversification of Kabbalah in the contentious religious climate of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe. Each printing reflects a discrete historical context, yet Sha‘arei Orah was consistently seen as an introductory guide to Kabbalah. Threading together these unique moments reveals one trajectory of the history of Kabbalah, as printing brought esoteric texts to new generations of readers with new concerns and agendas.","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41613664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamics of Remembrance across Time and Media: On Ruth Glasberg Gold’s Multiple Accounts of Her Holocaust Experiences in Transnistria","authors":"Dana Mihăilescu","doi":"10.1163/1872471x-bja10027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471x-bja10027","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article considers the dynamics of the memories of World War <span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">II</span> for survivors who give multiple accounts of their experiences over time. I compare five testimonies with different medial content given in 1944, 1983, and 1996 by Ruth Glasberg Gold. In November 1941, at the age of eleven, she was deported with her parents and brother from Czernowitz to the Bershad ghetto, Transnistria, where she lost her family and was orphaned. My major interest is to examine how Glasberg Gold’s memories over time intersect with changes of medium, location, language, and temporal context, and might have brought different or similar emphases in her written, audio, and video testimonies of the Holocaust. I believe her case to be important for scholarly analysis as it allows one to explore how the developing personality of a Holocaust survivor and changing media environments intersect and relate to how memories of the Holocaust become shaped, rehashed, and modified over time.</p>","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138540067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rabbi, Mystic, or Impostor? The Eighteenth-Century Ba‘al Shem of London, written by Michal OronMissionaries, Converts, and Rabbis: The Evangelical Alexander McCaul and Jewish-Christian Debate in the Nineteenth Century, written by David B. Ruderman","authors":"Paweł Maciejko","doi":"10.1163/1872471X-BJA10028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1872471X-BJA10028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41158,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Jewish Studies","volume":"15 1","pages":"369-375"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47245723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}