Menasseh ben Israel

Menasseh ben Israel PDF Author: Steven M. Nadler
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224109
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
An illuminating biography of the great Amsterdam rabbi and celebrated popularizer of Judaism in the seventeenth century Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was among the most accomplished and cosmopolitan rabbis of his time, and a pivotal intellectual figure in early modern Jewish history. He was one of the three rabbis of the “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam, a community that quickly earned renown worldwide for its mercantile and scholarly vitality. Born in Lisbon, Menasseh and his family were forcibly converted to Catholicism but suspected of insincerity in their new faith. To avoid the horrors of the Inquisition, they fled first to southwestern France, and then to Amsterdam, where they finally settled. Menasseh played an important role during the formative decades of one of the most vital Jewish communities of early modern Europe, and was influential through his extraordinary work as a printer and his efforts on behalf of the readmission of Jews to England. In this lively biography, Steven Nadler provides a fresh perspective on this seminal figure.

Menasseh ben Israel

Menasseh ben Israel PDF Author: Steven M. Nadler
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300224109
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
An illuminating biography of the great Amsterdam rabbi and celebrated popularizer of Judaism in the seventeenth century Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was among the most accomplished and cosmopolitan rabbis of his time, and a pivotal intellectual figure in early modern Jewish history. He was one of the three rabbis of the “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam, a community that quickly earned renown worldwide for its mercantile and scholarly vitality. Born in Lisbon, Menasseh and his family were forcibly converted to Catholicism but suspected of insincerity in their new faith. To avoid the horrors of the Inquisition, they fled first to southwestern France, and then to Amsterdam, where they finally settled. Menasseh played an important role during the formative decades of one of the most vital Jewish communities of early modern Europe, and was influential through his extraordinary work as a printer and his efforts on behalf of the readmission of Jews to England. In this lively biography, Steven Nadler provides a fresh perspective on this seminal figure.

A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel

A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel PDF Author: Cecil Roth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description


Rembrandt's Jews

Rembrandt's Jews PDF Author: Steven M. Nadler
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226567372
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
There is a popular and romantic myth about Rembrandt and the Jewish people. One of history's greatest artists, we are often told, had a special affinity for Judaism. With so many of Rembrandt's works devoted to stories of the Hebrew Bible, and with his apparent penchant for Jewish themes and the sympathetic portrayal of Jewish faces, it is no wonder that the myth has endured for centuries. Rembrandt's Jews puts this myth to the test as it examines both the legend and the reality of Rembrandt's relationship to Jews and Judaism. In his elegantly written and engrossing tour of Jewish Amsterdam—which begins in 1653 as workers are repairing Rembrandt's Portuguese-Jewish neighbor's house and completely disrupting the artist's life and livelihood—Steven Nadler tells us the stories of the artist's portraits of Jewish sitters, of his mundane and often contentious dealings with his neighbors in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, and of the tolerant setting that city provided for Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews fleeing persecution in other parts of Europe. As Nadler shows, Rembrandt was only one of a number of prominent seventeenth-century Dutch painters and draftsmen who found inspiration in Jewish subjects. Looking at other artists, such as the landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael and Emmanuel de Witte, a celebrated painter of architectural interiors, Nadler is able to build a deep and complex account of the remarkable relationship between Dutch and Jewish cultures in the period, evidenced in the dispassionate, even ordinary ways in which Jews and their religion are represented—far from the demonization and grotesque caricatures, the iconography of the outsider, so often found in depictions of Jews during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Through his close look at paintings, etchings, and drawings; in his discussion of intellectual and social life during the Dutch Golden Age; and even through his own travels in pursuit of his subject, Nadler takes the reader through Jewish Amsterdam then and now—a trip that, under ever-threatening Dutch skies, is full of colorful and eccentric personalities, fiery debates, and magnificent art.

Judaism for Christians

Judaism for Christians PDF Author: Sina Rauschenbach
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498572979
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was one of the best-known rabbis in early modern Europe. In the course of his life he became an important Jewish interlocutor for Christian scholars interested in Hebrew studies and negotiated with Oliver Cromwell and Parliament the return of the Jews to England. Born to a family of former conversos, Menasseh was versed in Christian theology and astutely used this knowledge to adapt the content and tone of his publications to the interests and needs of his Christian readers. Judaism for Christians: Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) is the first extensive study to systematically focus on key titles in Menasseh’s Latin works and discuss the success and failure of his strategies of translation in the larger context of early modern Christian Hebraism. Rauschenbach also examines the mistranslation of his books by Christian scholars, who were not yet ready to share Menasseh’s vision of an Abrahamic theology and of a republic of letters whose members were not divided by denomination. Ultimately, Menasseh’s plans to use Jewish knowledge as an entrée billet for Jews into Christian societies proved to be illusory, as Christian readers understood him instead as a Jewish witness for “Christian truths.” Menasseh’s Jewish coreligionists disapproved of what they perceived to be his dangerous involvement in Christian debates, providing non-Jews with delicate information. It was only a century after his death that Menasseh became a model for new generations of Jewish scholars.

The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry

The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry PDF Author: Yosef Kaplan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004343164
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
In The Religious Cultures of Dutch Jewry an international group of scholars examines aspects of religious belief and practice of pre-emancipation Sephardim and Ashkenazim in Amsterdam, Curaçao and Surinam, ceremonial dimensions, artistic representations of religious life, and religious life after the Shoa. The origins of Dutch Jewry trace back to diverse locations and ancestries: Marranos from Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi refugees from Germany, Poland and Lithuania. In the new setting and with the passing of time and developments in Dutch society at large, the religious life of Dutch Jews took on new forms. Dutch Jewish society was thus a microcosm of essential changes in Jewish history.

Josephus in Modern Jewish Culture

Josephus in Modern Jewish Culture PDF Author: Andrea Schatz
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004393099
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
The contributions to this volume trace for the first time how the modern Jewish reception of Josephus, the ancient historian who witnessed and described the destruction of the Second Temple, took shape within different scholarly, religious, literary and political contexts across the Jewish world, from Amsterdam to Berlin, Vilna, Breslau, New York and Tel Aviv. The chapters show how the vagaries of his tumultuous life, spent between a small rebellious nation and the ruling circles of a vast empire, between Jewish and non-Jewish cultures, and between political action and historical reflection have been re-imagined by Jewish readers over the past three centuries in their attempts to make sense of their own times. "The project and this volume can encourage greater awareness of the complex origins of Josephus’ controversial reputation as a Jewish priest, diplomat in Rome, military leader of the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, as an advocate for surrender to imperial forces, as a witness to the Hurban, as a citizen of Rome, and as a historian....Recommended highly for all Jewish and academic libraries." - David B Levy, Touro College, NYC, in: Association of Jewish Libraries News and Review 1.2 (2019)

Prémices Philosophiques

Prémices Philosophiques PDF Author: Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004081178
Category : Philosophy
Languages : es
Pages : 264

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Book Description


A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel, Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat

A Life of Menasseh Ben Israel, Rabbi, Printer, and Diplomat PDF Author: Cecil Roth
Publisher: Ayer Company Pub
ISBN: 9780405067433
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description


Martin Buber

Martin Buber PDF Author: Paul Mendes-Flohr
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245238
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber An authority on the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965), Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. The book is organized around several key moments, such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three, a foundational trauma that, Mendes-Flohr shows, left an enduring mark on Buber’s inner life, attuning him to the fragility of human relations and the need to nurture them with what he would call a “dialogical attentiveness.” Buber’s philosophical and theological writings, most famously I and Thou, made significant contributions to religious and Jewish thought, philosophical anthropology, biblical studies, political theory, and Zionism. In this accessible new biography, Mendes-Flohr situates Buber’s life and legacy in the intellectual and cultural life of German Jewry as well as in the broader European intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century.

The Accommodated Jew

The Accommodated Jew PDF Author: Kathy Lavezzo
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
England during the Middle Ages was at the forefront of European antisemitism. It was in medieval Norwich that the notorious "blood libel" was first introduced when a resident accused the city's Jewish leaders of abducting and ritually murdering a local boy. England also enforced legislation demanding that Jews wear a badge of infamy, and in 1290, it became the first European nation to expel forcibly all of its Jewish residents. In The Accommodated Jew, Kathy Lavezzo rethinks the complex and contradictory relation between England’s rejection of "the Jew" and the centrality of Jews to classic English literature. Drawing on literary, historical, and cartographic texts, she charts an entangled Jewish imaginative presence in English culture. In a sweeping view that extends from the Anglo-Saxon period to the late seventeenth century, Lavezzo tracks how English writers from Bede to Milton imagine Jews via buildings—tombs, latrines and especially houses—that support fantasies of exile. Epitomizing this trope is the blood libel and its implication that Jews cannot be accommodated in England because of the anti-Christian violence they allegedly perform in their homes. In the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish house not only serves as a lethal trap but also as the site of an emerging bourgeoisie incompatible with Christian pieties. Lavezzo reveals the central place of "the Jew" in the slow process by which a Christian "nation of shopkeepers" negotiated their relationship to the urban capitalist sensibility they came to embrace and embody. In the book’s epilogue, she advances her inquiry into Victorian England and the relationship between Charles Dickens (whose Fagin is the second most infamous Jew in English literature after Shylock) and the Jewish couple that purchased his London home, Tavistock House, showing how far relations between gentiles and Jews in England had (and had not) evolved.