Resources for 2006
A Challenge to Sexual and Marital Propriety and Communal Reaction
The selection of sources from the early 1550's Rome deal with the question of honor of young women and their fathers. The Jewish Community of Rome was unimpressed. It wanted it made clear that one did not make accusations that could harm the well-being, in fact, mostly financial, but also the honor, of young women. Indeed, the bride Ricca was herself awarded what amounted to a hefty fine; we know that among Christians, it was the father’s honor that was considered impugned, and any monetary sanctions would go to him. Not here. Finally, we learn something about sacred and profane. Shem Tov approached a Christian for the rather crude cure. Christians in similar situations normally went to priests, considering the curse and the surrounding issues matters of holiness. We also learn that on everyday levels, there was considerable interchange between Jews and Christians. The events take place just five years before Rome’s ghetto was instituted by Pope Paul IV, but even in the ghetto period—which endured for three hundred years—such interactions would have been highly probable.
Family Ties & Political Structure in Pisa and Livorno
In his presentation of two documents pertaining to Jews in Pisa and Livorno, Bernard Cooperman discusses the link between family connections and the construction of a new formal Jewish community and explores the connection between family and business networks. Cooperman argues here that new communities in early modern Italy were often structured as merchant companies, and it was a family that was a base of trade networks. Family also became a method of joining the community, while at the same time families and individuals used membership in a community to legitimize a family. The presentation further explores interracial marriages and offspring of Sephardic Jews, role of women in the community and in wealth distribution. A larger overarching argument is that it was in the early modern period that the Jewish community was able to create formal structures. ### This presentation is for the following text(s): * Communal Decision of June 8, 1606 in Pisa * Petition of Jewish Merchants of Pisa to Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo II
“The First Duty of Nature is to Preserve Life”: A Jewish Woman’s Plea for Divorce in Late 18th-Century Trieste
The presentation discusses a letter from Relle \[Rachele\] Morschene (1770-1844) of Trieste to Chief Rabbi Raffael Natan Tedesco, written in the throes of her three-year long effort to extricate herself from her marriage to husband Lucio Luzzatto (1755-1801). From 1793 to 1796, Morschene pursued separation and civil divorce through the Habsburg courts at the same time as a Jewish religious divorce. Indeed, she was one of the first European Jewish women to seek and obtain a civil divorce. Her legal situation was novel because Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy were among the first to be subjected to civil marriage regulation by a modern state. In medieval and early modern Europe, Jews had generally followed their own religious law (Halakhah) for matters of marriage and divorce. With the Marriage Patent of 1783, the Habsburg Monarchy was the first European Catholic state to define marriage as civil and to apply civil law and state jurisdiction to the marriages of all its subjects. However, it did not thereby create purely civil marriage procedures: marriage ceremonies were still only religious, and civil divorce was permitted only to those who were allowed to divorce by their own religion. Thus, Morschene could not get divorced civilly until Rabbi Tedesco assured the civil court that she was permitted a Jewish religious divorce.
How Family Wealth and Power Are Organized
No description available.
Jewish Marriage in Christian Eyes
This presentation deals with a Christian description of early modern Jewish marriage rituals. The text is a translation of a chapter on Jewish marriage from Johannes Buxtorf's "Synagoga Judaica" or "Jewish Synagogue" (1603).
Juveniles in Early Modern Jewish-Italian Communities Between Family Control and Kabbalistic Piety
No description available.
Jewish Women and Economic Encounters with Christians
No description available.
An Early 17th Century Ketubah from Sefer Tikun Sofrim by Rabbi Itzhak Zabakh
No description available.
Marriage and Networkbuilding
In eastern France Jewish marriages are well documented in the eighteenth century. Following a decree by Louis XIV in 1701 that Jewish marriage contracts had to be deposited with notaries within 15 days of marriage, these documents were registered with increasing frequency in the entire French-German region. Registration became generally obligatory in that time, so that we have large amounts of documents both for Christian as for Jews. Historians have never fully analyzed these files. Jean Fleury, who was prompted by genealogical interests, surveyed the 8500 items in the Metz archive, and compiled 2021 marriage contracts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were signed before the rabbinical authorities and deposited with a royal notary. Sometimes we have the Hebrew original, more often a translation or a shortened version of the whole text either in French or in German. The same applies to Alsace: More than 5000 Jewish marriage contracts and last wills have been deposited with royal notaries.
Pinkas Shamash Altona (1766-1767)
No description available.
Ordering Early Modern Marriage
No description available.
The Role of Marriage and Marital Sexuality in Lurianic Kabbalah
No description available.
Two Cases of Apostasy in Dubno in 1716: Jews, Christians, and Family Life
This text relates a trial of two Christian women who accepted to Judaism that took place in the city of Dubno in eastern Poland in 1716. The text presented here comes from a collection of primary sources published in Kiev \[now Kyiv\] in 1869, as part of effort by scholars at the time to collect and publish primary source materials about Ukraine. The collection is called Arkhiv Iugo-zapadnoi Rossii, or The Archive of SouthWestern Russia, and contains documents from the South-Western part of Ukraine. This presentation is for the following text(s): Two Cases of Apostasy in Dubno in 1716
Unequal Opportunities: The Economic Possibilities Open to Jewish Women in 18th Century Poland-Lithuania
No description available.
The Woodstruck Deed: The Documentation of Accidental Defloration among the Jews of Early Modern Italy
No description available.