Jewish Law in Transition

Jewish Law in Transition PDF Author: Hillel Gamoran
Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN: 0878201424
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
The prohibition against lending on interest (Exodus 22:24) is a well-known biblical law: "If you lend to any one of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him." This prohibition was intended to prevent the wealthy from exploiting the unfortunate. In the course of time, it was seen to have consequences that militated against the economic welfare of Jewish society as a whole. As a result, Jewish law (halakhah) has over the centuries relaxed the biblical injunction, allowing interest charges despite the biblical prohibition. Hillel Gamoran seeks to explain how and when this law of high moral standing collapsed and fell over the course of the centuries. Talmudic rabbis believed that business agreements violated the biblical prohibition against lending in five areas: loans of produce, advance payment for the purchase of goods, buying on credit, mortgages, and investments. The Bible does not consider any of these activities, but all arise in postbiblical literature. How was the biblical law to be applied to situations that had not occurred in biblical times? And how could the rabbis allow these activities when they were hampered from doing so by the laws against lending on interest? To answer these questions, Gamoran examines the biblical prohibition against lending and postulates when it was written, why it was written, and to whom it applied. He then considers the early and later teachers of the Oral Law, the Tannaim and Amoraim, who expanded discussion of the ban in light of various business activities from 70 C.E. to 500 C.E. Finally, he explores how the original tannaitic proscriptions for each of the five activities were upheld or relaxed over the centuries. Each activity is considered in the period of the Geonim (ca. 650-1050), the Rishonim (ca. 1000-1500), and the Aharonim (ca. 1500-2000). For each period, Gamoran shows how the rabbis struggled with the law and with one another and used inventive interpretation to create the legal fictions necessary for business life to flourish.

Jewish Law in Transition

Jewish Law in Transition PDF Author: Hillel Gamoran
Publisher: Hebrew Union College Press
ISBN: 0878201424
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Get Book Here

Book Description
The prohibition against lending on interest (Exodus 22:24) is a well-known biblical law: "If you lend to any one of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be to him as a creditor, and you shall not exact interest from him." This prohibition was intended to prevent the wealthy from exploiting the unfortunate. In the course of time, it was seen to have consequences that militated against the economic welfare of Jewish society as a whole. As a result, Jewish law (halakhah) has over the centuries relaxed the biblical injunction, allowing interest charges despite the biblical prohibition. Hillel Gamoran seeks to explain how and when this law of high moral standing collapsed and fell over the course of the centuries. Talmudic rabbis believed that business agreements violated the biblical prohibition against lending in five areas: loans of produce, advance payment for the purchase of goods, buying on credit, mortgages, and investments. The Bible does not consider any of these activities, but all arise in postbiblical literature. How was the biblical law to be applied to situations that had not occurred in biblical times? And how could the rabbis allow these activities when they were hampered from doing so by the laws against lending on interest? To answer these questions, Gamoran examines the biblical prohibition against lending and postulates when it was written, why it was written, and to whom it applied. He then considers the early and later teachers of the Oral Law, the Tannaim and Amoraim, who expanded discussion of the ban in light of various business activities from 70 C.E. to 500 C.E. Finally, he explores how the original tannaitic proscriptions for each of the five activities were upheld or relaxed over the centuries. Each activity is considered in the period of the Geonim (ca. 650-1050), the Rishonim (ca. 1000-1500), and the Aharonim (ca. 1500-2000). For each period, Gamoran shows how the rabbis struggled with the law and with one another and used inventive interpretation to create the legal fictions necessary for business life to flourish.

Entangled Histories

Entangled Histories PDF Author: Elisheva Baumgarten
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812293436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From Halakhic innovation to blood libels, from the establishment of new mendicant orders to the institutionalization of Islamicate bureaucracy, and from the development of the inquisitorial process to the rise of yeshivas, universities, and madrasas, the long thirteenth century saw a profusion of political, cultural, and intellectual changes in Europe and the Mediterranean basin. These were informed by, and in turn informed, the religious communities from which they arose. In city streets and government buildings, Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived, worked, and disputed with one another, sharing and shaping their respective cultures in the process. The interaction born of these relationships between minority and majority cultures, from love and friendship to hostility and violence, can be described as a complex and irreducible "entanglement." The contributors to Entangled Histories: Knowledge, Authority, and Jewish Culture in the Thirteenth Century argue that this admixture of persecution and cooperation was at the foundation of Jewish experience in the Middle Ages. The thirteen essays are organized into three major sections, focusing in turn on the exchanges among intellectual communities, on the interactions between secular and religious authorities, and on the transmission of texts and ideas across geographical, linguistic, and cultural boundaries. Rather than trying to resolve the complexities of entanglement, contributors seek to outline their contours and explain how they endured. In the process, they examine relationships not only among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities but also between communities within Judaism—those living under Christian rule and those living under Muslim rule, and between the Jews of southern and northern Europe. The resulting volume develops a multifaceted account of Jewish life in Europe and the Mediterranean basin at a time when economic, cultural, and intellectual exchange coincided with heightened interfaith animosity. Contributors: Elisheva Baumgarten, Piero Capelli, Mordechai Z. Cohen, Judah Galinsky, Elisabeth Hollender, Kati Ihnat, Ephraim Kanarfogel, Katelyn Mesler, Ruth Mazo Karras, Sarah J. Pearce, Rami Reiner, Yossef Schwartz, Uri Shachar, Rebecca Winer, Luke Yarbrough.

Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Library (BMC). Part XIII: Hebraica

Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Library (BMC). Part XIII: Hebraica PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004475311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum (British Library), generally referred to as BMC, is a monument in the history of the book. BMC followed on from the rearrangement of the Museum's incunabula begun by Robert Proctor on the basis of the comprehensive survey of printing types and presses of the fifteenth century that he had published in 1898 as an 'Index' of the incunabula in the Museum and the Bodleian Library. The Index represented a working-out of the system he had developed for the identification of printers of the incunabula period on the basis of typographical material. The volumes of BMC extend Proctor's principles by providing full descriptions of the incunabula in the collections of the British Museum and making revisions where necessary. The first part appeared in 1908, prepared by A.W. Pollard after Proctor's death in 1903. The most recent part was published in 1985.

The Open Past:Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud

The Open Past:Subjectivity and Remembering in the Talmud PDF Author: Sergeĭ Borisovich Dolgopolʹskiĭ
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082324492X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
If life in time is imminent and means an always open future, what role remains for the past? If time originates from that relationship to the future, then the past can only be a fictitious beginning, a necessary phantom of a starting point, a retroactively generated chronological period of "before." Advanced in philosophical thought of the last two centuries, this view of the past permeated the study on the Talmud as well, resulting in application of modern philosophical categories of the "thinking subject", subjectivity, and time to thinking about thinking displayed in the texts of the Talmud. This book challenges that application. Departing from the hitherto prevalent view of thinking in the Talmud in terms of anonymous thinking subjects, called "redactors" or "designer" of Talmudic discussions, the book reconsiders the modern reduction of the past to a chronological period in time, and reclaims the originary power (and authority) the past exerts in thinking and remembering displayed both in the conversations the characters in the Talmud have, and in the literary design of these conversations. Central for that task of reclaiming the radical role of the past are contrasting medieval notions of the virtual and their modern appropriations, thinking subject among them, which serve as both a bridging point and a demarcation between the practices of thinking of, and remembering, the past in the Talmud vis-a-vis other rhetorical and/or philosophical school and disciplines of thought. The Open Past suggests the possibility of understanding the conversations and the design of these conversations in the Talmud in terms of thinking in no time. This no time has several layers of meaning. In its weakest formulation, it means "in no single time" in the sense that the Talmudic conversations happen in no historically "real" time. More strongly put, it means, borrowing the language from film theory, that the Talmud requires a never consolidated difference between diegetical time, and the time of montage; which creates a no-one's time and place that in turn creates time and place for everyone else. Even more strongly, it means that performance of the conversations in the Talmud is constantly driven by, and towards, an always open past -- a power of that past is radically different from the power of either futuristic or chronological time.

The Early Acharonim

The Early Acharonim PDF Author: Hersh Goldwurm
Publisher: Mesorah Publications, Limited
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Biographical sketches of 300 great sages and leaders from the 15th-17th centuries. A panoramic range of biographies of great men from all Jewish communities such as Arizal, R' Yosef Caro, Maharsha, R' Menashe ben Yisrael as Jewish life moved eastward.

National Union Catalog

National Union Catalog PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Union catalogs
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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Book Description
Includes entries for maps and atlases.

The Talmud, the Steinsaltz Edition

The Talmud, the Steinsaltz Edition PDF Author: Adin Steinsaltz
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 9780679773672
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Since it was first published in 1989, the "Talmud Reference Guide" has introduced thousands of people to the study of the books of Jewish law. The guide is an historical treatise on the Talmud and its role in Jewish life, as well as an essential road map to the twenty projected volumes of the Steinsaltz translation. Brilliantly written and lavishly designed and illustrated, this full-length guide will raise interest in the Talmud.

Hebraica

Hebraica PDF Author: British Museum. Department of Printed Books
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Incunabula
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description


Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture

Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture PDF Author: Gregg Stern
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135975612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Philosophy and Rabbinic Culture is a study of the great, and curiously underappreciated, engagement of a Medieval European Jewish community with the philosophic tradition. This lucid description of the Languedocian Jewish community's multigenerational cultivation of - and acculturation to - scientific and philosophic teachings into Judaism fulfils a major desideratum in Jewish cultural history. In the first detailed account of this long-forgotten Jewish community and its cultural ideal, the author gives an expansive reappraisal of the role of the philosophic interpretation in rabbinic culture and medieval Judaism. Looking at how the cultural ideal of Languedocian Jewry continued to develop and flourish throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with particular reference to the literary style and religious teaching of the great Talmudist, Menahem ha-Meiri, Stern explores issues such as Meiri’s theory of "civilized religions", including Christianity and Islam, controversy over philosophy and philosophic allegory in Languedoc and Catalonia, and the cultural significance of the medical use of astrological images. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Religion, of Judaism in particular, and of Philosophy, History and Medieval Europe, as well as those interested in Jewish-Christian relations.

Polin

Polin PDF Author: Antony Polonsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Antisemitism
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
"Established in 1986 by the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, 'Polin : Studies in Polish Jewry' has acquired a well-deserved reputation for publishing authoritative material on all aspects of Polish Jewry. Contributions are drawn from many disciplines -- history, politics, religious studies, literature, linguistics, sociology, art, and architecture -- and from a wide variety of viewpoints. Under an editorial collegium headed by Antony Polonsky and François Guesnet, volumes are published annually with each volume devoted to a different theme."--