We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.

Download

Dlaczego Żydzi się nie zasymilowali?

Author(s): Emanuel Ringelblum / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

In this treatise, Ringelblum looks at the factors that determine the preservation by the Jews of cultural distinctness from the Christian societies. In his opinion, the thesis about the religious sources of such distinctness only answers a part of the question. Referring to Marxist ideals and the latest works from the field of economic history, he observes that it is the specific nature of economic functions performed by the Jews that is the most important factor. Where this specific nature is weakened and the occupational pattern of the Jews become similar to the general occupational pattern, the tendency among Jews to accept assimilation becomes quite pronounced. This factor explains the fundamental differences between the development of Jewish culture and nationalist tendencies in eastern and western Europe. Ringelblum also suggests that Jewish historians should become interested in problems of economic history, an area that has until them been neglected despite being central to the understanding of the history and the current situation of European Jews

More...

4.50 €

Preview

Abecadlniki karaimskie

Author(s): Małgorzata Machcińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 04/2015

The article contains introductory information about the printing of Karaite primers to teach children to read Hebrew, which first appeared in the early 19th century. These primers are an important source of information about the teaching of Hebrew among the Karaite community in Eastern Europe and also about the specific pronunciation of Karaite Hebrew.

More...

Download

Sikertelen térítési történet a 18. században

Author(s): Erzsébet Mislovics,Michael K. Silber / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2016

This study is the methodological analysis of a literary presentation and its historical sources of an account of an unsuccessful conversion in Hungary in the 18th century. During the second half of the 18th century, Hungarian Jews lodged several complaints to the monarch, providing accounts of their children’s christening in their infancy. An unknown author, presumably a contemporary, depicted the christening of a young Jewish girl in a literary work, and the struggle between the Jewish and the Christian communities over the girl’s education sometime later. The story reveals that the young girl persevered and was determined to keep her Jewish faith. Although the manuscript of the account came into the possession of Joseph (Juspa) Flesch, (1788–1854) rabbi of Veszprém, sometime during the first half of the 19th century, it was published only in 1925 by his great-grandson, and then only in an English translation. The authenticity of the literary piece of the unsuccessful conversion is verified by archival sources. Fictitious events enrich the work in several cases, presenting her exemplary deeds to the public by spiritualizing the girl’s attachment to her Jewish religion and to traditional values. The archival sources testifying to the events, reflect the voices of representatives of the church and secular society and illustrate the procedure of official bodies in certain christening ceremonies as well as the options of individuals in these processes. Nevertheless, the literary piece conceals some questions: did its author live when these events took place as the manuscript states, or as the linguistic evidence of the account seems to suggest, much later, at the beginning of the 19th century? Why was the manuscript not published at this time? The analysis is followed by a transcription of the manuscript from the original Jüdisch- Deutsch, that is Judeo-German in Hebrew characters

More...

Download

Malchos – imię wskazaniem kontekstu historycznego redakcji opisu męki?

Author(s): Michał Szczepaniak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The following article based on harmonized description of Jesus’s seizure pictures the network of hypothetical allusions to historical events and persons contemporary for scripture’s editors. Presented analysis tries to extract innuendos to the I Jewish war and destruction of Jerusalem Temple from this fragment of Passion. Both the dark night at Gethsemane and the catastrophe of the year 70 had their heroes, whose characteristics are surprisingly similar. The sayings and collocations when perceived metaphorically can hide allusions to the ancient history.

More...

Download

Szamgar, syn Anata, w „Dawnych Dziejach Izraela” Józefa Flawiusza

Author(s): Lukasz Tobola / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2014

Although Shamgar is described as deliverer of Israel in Judg 3:31, all the regular elements in the description of the work of Israel’s judges seems to be lacking there (for example, the official titles שפט or מושיע ). In this context the tradition of Josephus (Antiquities 5:197) is instructive here: Σανάγαρος ὁ Ἀνάθου παῖς αἱρεθεὶς ἄρχειν ἐν τῷ πρώτῳ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἔτει κατέστρεψε τὸν βίον (“Sanagaros, the Anath’s son, having been chosen to rule, in the first year of his rule lost his life”). If Josephus’ biblical source was basically the same as the Masoretic Text, he seems to understood the lexeme הבקר of Judg 3:31 as a passive verbal form from the root בקר , in the sense attested in the Qumran scrolls, where the term מבקר means “supervisor, inspector.” Therefore, although the standard formula of assuming the rule is missing there, the consonantal Hebrew text permits one to recognize Shamgar as chief and deliverer of Israelites. He “has been appointed” ( הבֻקְַר ) to be a “supervisor, chief ” (compare αἱρεθεὶς ἄρχειν in Josephus) of Israel.

More...

Download

„Zbudziwszy się ze snu, Józef uczynił tak, jak mu polecił anioł Pański” (Mt 1, 24). Dyskretna, skuteczna służba

Author(s): Tomasz Maria Dąbek OSB / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Saint Joseph was a righteous man. He respected the Law of Israel. The decision to divorce Mary after she was found with child was not an easy one, although he knew he was not the child’s father. Instructed by the angel of the Lord, he took her to his home, gave a name to her child as his legal guardian (Mt 1 : 18–25), took care of his wife and her child, organised their trip to Egypt (Mt 2 : 13–15), then their return to Palestine and life in Nazareth (Mt 2 : 19–23; cf. Lk 2 : 39–52). His active obedience to God is the fulfilment of all the things Saint James will later describe as faith shown by the works of the faithful (Jas 2 : 14–17. 20–26). Joseph is put among those who bear witness to the faith of the Old Testament. The Gospels give no account of his exact words, although he fulfilled everything that he had been commanded. Saint Joseph can be a patron of everyone who tries to fulfil God’s will in a discreet and effective manner, with perseverance produced by faith (cf. Jas 1 : 3f.). With his works and life he shows how to bridle your tongue (cf. Jas 1 : 26f.; 3 : 1–13) and take care of the ones that need it the most (cf. Jas 1 : 27; 3 : 13), discreetly fulfilling your duties.

More...

Download

Implikacje dialogu – studium na temat spotkania Jetro i Mojżesza

Author(s): Katarzyna Walkowiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2012

The pericope concerning the meeting of Moses and Jethro (Ex 18, 1–27) provides a number of interesting conclusions about the nature of the interreligious dialogue. Using biblical exegesis, literary analysis, as well as with the comments of Jewish rabbis, the article takes on the task to further examine the nature and consequences of the dialogue. While recognizing the meeting of the Midianite priest and Moses as a “moment of dialog”, the importance of the exchange of gifts in the process of dialogue has been particularly stressed. To make this dialogue possible, Jethro first heard and traveled to the desert, and in turn, Moses stood out in front of his father-in-law and told what God made with Israel.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Zu den Umständen der Erteilung des Privilegiums für die mährischen Juden im Jahr 1629

Author(s): Pavel Kocman / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2018

The charter granted by Emperor Ferdinand II for Moravian Jews on 15 October 1629 was the first legal document of its kind after two centuries, redefining the legal status of Jews in Moravia. An important role in the preparation of this document was played by Cardinal Franz von Dietrichstein, the Governor of Moravia in the period after the Battle of White Mountain, who effectively opposed the ruler’s disproportionate tax demands on Jews. Having pre-negotiated all the main aspects of the charter in correspondence with the emperor, Dietrichstein’s position as the main proponent of Moravian Jews strongly came to the fore. Although the original charter has not been preserved, it exists in draft form and in a number of copies. An analysis of its content has enabled a comparison with similar charters in Bohemia and Lower Austria. In addition to redefining the legal status of Moravian Jews, the charter had several other major consequences: an accelerated process of institutionalizing the provincial representation of the Moravian Jewry, the relocation of the seat of the Chief Rabbi of Moravia to Mikulov (Nikolsburg), and a long-term dispute between Jews and Moravian royal towns concerning the possibility of entering these towns for their markets – a right that had been denied Jews prior to the granting of the charter.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Moses ben Aaron Morawczyk and his Treatise ‘On the System of Education’ (1634/1635)

Author(s): Pavel Sládek / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

Moses ben Aaron Morawczyk was a Jewish educator, active in the first half of the seventeenth century. This study collects the available information about his life, from the Moravian town of Bzenec (Bisenz) to Lublin. His two published books, namely, Ketzad seder mishnah (Lublin 1634/1635) and Ketzad seder avodah (1638/1639?) are shown to form one entity. The former represents the unique autonomous educational treatise in Hebrew from the period, during which East-Central European Jewish scholars manifested heightened interest in curricular issues. Morawczyk cited Judah Leva ben Bezalel, ‘the Maharal’, and Salomon Ephraim Luntschitz, and was influenced by their own criticism of Jewish education. A close analysis of the text of the Ketzad seder mishnah enables to identify the parts of the text which Morawczyk borrowed from other works. Nevertheless, Morawczyk’s tract Ketzad seder mishnah shows the originality of its author. Morawczyk systematically described the problems of Jewish education and formulated a proposal for an educational reform. Two little booklets about the special fasts and liturgy for the leap years, edited by Morawczyk, document the actual hatching out of a religious confraternity, and implementation of a religious practice in a specific time and locale.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Trade Contacts between Prague Jews and Northern Italy and their Engagement in the Italian Commodity Trade in the 16th and Early 17th Centuries

Author(s): Marie Buňatová / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

This paper is focused on the topic of contacts between Prague Jews and trade centres in Northern Italy and on the involvement of Jewish merchants in the trade of Italian grocery goods in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The topic is examined on the basis of broader economic factors that were important for long-distance trade between Northern Italy and Central Europe at that time. In addition, the historical roots of the contacts between Prague Jews and the Italian milieu are explained in the context of several waves of expulsion suffered by European Jews during the 15th century, and also against the backdrop of the political situation in Northern Italy through the 16th century. The study provides information on the various forms of mutual trade. The latter was conducted in Italian centres, such as Venice and Verona and at the annual markets in Bolzano, where Prague Jewish merchants travelled directly. Mediterranean goods, however, were also made available to people in Prague through the mediation of Italian and Upper German firms, which sold them in Nuremberg and Linz or sent them directly to Prague. The study also maps the activities of several prominent Jewish entrepreneurs in Prague who participated in this commercial exchange.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Holy Curiosity: Circumcision as a Rhetorical Concept in a Bohemian Catholic Sermon from the 18th Century

Author(s): Daniel Soukup / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The paper examines the topic of Jewish circumcision and other birth rituals in a narrow segment of three Christian literary treatments from the early modern period that are intertextually connected. Analyzing three literary genres, the paper focuses on a festive sermon by the Czech Catholic priest Štìpán František Náchodský from the beginning of the 18th century, an ethnographic description by the Christian Hebraist and Calvinist scholar Johann Buxtorf, and a polemical text by the Jewish convert to Catholicism Ernst Ferdinand Hess from the end of the 16th century. The connecting material on the basis of which the topic of circumcision is presented as a rhetorical concept, however, is primarily Náchodský’s sermon. Direct quotes from individual passages describing the circumcision celebration have completely different senses in various contexts and show how an early modern preacher could change their meaning through ellipses, alterations, and the overall framework. The paper shows how the description of circumcision was recast into homiletic works that had a much greater range of reception, and what role it may have played in the formulation of Baroque piety and in the depiction of the contemporary Jewish community in the Bohemian lands.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Jüdische Siegel und Stempel aus Dambořitz (Dambořice)

Author(s): Tereza Dlesková / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2019

The focus of this sigillographical study is on seals that are related to the Jewish community in the small town of Dambořice (Ger. Dambořitz) in southern Moravia. First and foremost, it looks at the seals of the Jewish community and later the seals and stamps of the Jewish religious community from the mid-18th century to the 1940s. In addition, it examines the seals and stamps of rabbis, Jewish registry offices and Jewish schools – areas that existing literature has left largely unexplored. From this point of view, this study should be regarded as a first step in the right direction. It is divided into two parts, namely a theoretical introduction and a catalogue of hitherto known stamps and seals from Dambořice. The catalogue also includes several private seals of Jews who had settled in Dambořice from the mid-18th century.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Avigdor Kara’s Appeal Reconsidered: A Transcription and English Translation of a Begging Letter Written by a Late Medieval Scholar from Prague

Author(s): Milan Žonca / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This paper presents a commented edition and English translation of a unique document preserved in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS héb. 242 – a letter written by Prague scholar Avigdor Kara (d. 1432). The brief letter (one manuscript folio) represents a poetic request for financial assistance addressed to members of an unspecified community and describes Kara’s living conditions as a teacher of schoolchildren in the wake of an attack on the Jewish community in his place of residence. The article analyses Kara’s literary description of his occupation in the context of his intellectual interests, as attested in other texts. Furthermore, it suggests that the letter was written in the aftermath of the 1389 Easter attack against the Jews in Prague. The presented edition of this document aims to correct the shortcomings of previous published versions and it supplements them by providing an English translation of the letter.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

The Prague Jewish Museum and Its Role in Jewish History Research between 1945 and 2019

Author(s): Iveta Cermanová,Alexandr Putík / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The Prague Jewish Museum, which now oversees one of the largest collections of Judaica in the world, has undergone a turbulent history since its foundation in 19062 and has played a significant role in the development of research into the history and culture of the Jews in the Bohemian lands. The primary goal of this paper is to highlight the development of historical research and other disciplines in this institution from the end of the SecondWorldWar until the present time; the development of research in the previous period will also be briefly touched upon. Emphasis will be placed on the topics that have been studied here, as well as expert profiles of the most prominent researchers. The scholarly research will be described in the context of the development of an institution that often had to fight for its existence and for a meaningful character.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Grosse Politik in einer kleinen Gemeinde. Der Skandal um den Rabbiner Karl Blan aus Neu-Oderberg

Author(s): Janusz Spyra / Language(s): German Issue: 2/2020

The enormous politicization of public life in the interwar period did not spare Czechoslovakia or the Jewish religious communities in that country, as evidenced by, among other things, the involvement of many rabbis in political activities. Zionists were gaining more and more importance within the communities – including the religious community in Nový Bohumín on the border with Germany and Poland, despite the fact that the majority of its members were Orthodox Jewish families who had come from Galicia before 1914. Between 1936 and 1938, an intense conflict arose there between the community board, which was dominated by the General Zionists, and Karl Blan, a supporter of Revisionist Zionism who had been appointed Rabbi of Bohumín a year earlier. The board unsuccessfully tried several times to dismiss the rabbi, citing the fact that he lacked the full rabbinical qualifications. Blan’s supporters, however, succeeded in bringing about the dissolution of the board in 1937. Ultimately, the rabbi was accused, without proof, of collaborating with the Gestapo and the Third Reich to the detriment of the Czechoslovak Republic. The dispute was covered in the domestic and foreign press and served to foster a negative image of the Jewish community in the tense period before the outbreak of World War II.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Copies of Inscriptions on Medieval Jewish Tombstones from Znojmo (Znaim) Made by the Moravian Historian Joseph Edmund Horky in 1819

Author(s): Václav Nečada,Daniel Polakovič / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

The focus of this paper is on copies of inscriptions on Medieval Jewish tombstones from Znojmo (Znaim) that were made by Joseph Edmund Horky in 1819. In this year, Horky undertook a research trip through south-western Moravia, during which time he made copies of documents, extracts from various records, and copies of epigraphic material. He also paid attention to material relating to Jewish communities, including historical references to them. In Znojmo, he arranged to have copied inscriptions from five medieval Jewish tombstones that had been found there in 1804. Of these five tombstones, only a fragment of one, dating from 1413, has been preserved; the Hebrew inscriptions on the other tombstones are known today only thanks to the notes made by Horky. In addition to the inscription from 1413, Horky also preserved copies of inscriptions on tombstones dating from 1334, 1390, 1405/1406 and 1406.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

The Publishing Practice and Reading Culture of Moravian Jews in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

Author(s): Andrea Jelínková / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2022

To date, the output of the only Hebrew printing press in Moravia has been only partially investigated. The Neumann family workshop, which was later purchased by Josef Rossmann, operated in Brno and briefly in Mikulov between 1753 and 1803. Gradually, the profile of its production changed significantly. In the 1750s and 1760s, it published mainly liturgical works and religious-legal literature in Hebrew. From the 1780s onwards, however, it increased the proportion of other genres, which were published in Yiddish or Jüdischdeutsch, in addition to Hebrew. These genres are the focus of this paper. This type of literature consisted of ethical, philosophical, educational and historiographical writings, biographies, practical manuals, and folklore. They were mostly original works, to a lesser extent translations from German. By taking a comparative approach, this paper also seeks to find out the extent to which the printed works for the Jewish minority in Moravia were similar to or different from those for the Christian majority. It also describes the publishing strategy of the Brno Hebrew printing press.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Bohemian Jews in Poznań after 1541: Merchants, Rabbis and Exiles

Author(s): Kajetán Holeček / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

The expulsion of Jews from Bohemia in 1541 represented an unprecedented disruption to the continuity of their settlement. A significant portion of the exiles chose Polish cities as places of refuge. This was due, among other reasons, to the existence of business, professional and family contacts there. Kraków is rightly described as the key destination for Jewish migrants from Bohemia, but one cannot overlook other Polish cities, such as Poznań, which was one of the major commercial centres of the Polish kingdom. Using the push-pull factor and network theory approaches, and drawing primarily on the municipal books of Prague and Poznań, this study tries to provide insights into the migration and mobility of Jews between Bohemia and the Polish city of Poznań in the period immediately after 1541.

More...

5.90 €

Preview

Under the Pressure of the Enlightened State: Changes in the Burial Customs of Prague Jews during the Reign of Joseph II

Author(s): Iveta Cermanová / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2022

By focusing on the example of Prague and the broader context of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Bohemian lands, this study seeks to explain the changes in Jewish burial practices that took place at the end of the 18th century as a result of the state’s policy aimed at rationalizing and modernizing everything related to death and burial. Drawing on newly discovered archival documents in the Czech National Archives and in the Archives of the Jewish Museum in Prague, and based on the recently published results of research on this issue in the context of the majority society in Bohemia, it illustrates the implementation and specific impacts of the burial reforms introduced by Maria Theresa and Joseph II in the Bohemian Jewish community. The main focus is on the most populous Jewish community in the Bohemian lands – Prague. It explores in detail the circumstances surrounding the transfer of burials from the Old Jewish Cemetery in the centre of the city to the newly expanded Old Jewish Cemetery in Olšany (now the Žižkov district of Prague) and the far-reaching effects this had. It illuminates the difficulty of enforcing a 48-hour waiting period between death and burial, as well as other hygiene regulations associated with death and burial in the Jewish milieu.

More...