Resources for 2009
Broadsheet of Koheles Shlomo: Beney Israel rahmanim vegomley hasadim (1738)
No description available.
From Apologetics to Polemics: Isaac Orobio de Castro’s Defences of Judaism and their Use in the French Enlightenment
This presentation explores the use by non-Jews in eighteenth-century France of controversialist works written primarily for manuscript circulation within the seventeenth-century Sephardic communities of the Netherlands. In response to sustained theological doubts regarding Judaism posed by Sephardim deeply conditioned by having lived as outward Catholics in the Iberian peninsula, several community leaders in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, such as the doctor and controversialist Isaac Orobio de Castro (c.1617-1687), authored trenchant attacks on Christian doctrine, in particular emphasizing the enduring validity of Jewish law and the superiority of Jewish biblical exegesis. French translations of some of these texts - which circulated in Paris and beyond in the early eighteenth century, and were first published in the 1770s – were read by non-Jewish philosophical radicals as novel and piquant critiques of Christian orthodoxy. However, it is misleadingly simple to regard these texts, as some historians have done, as ‘Jewish sources’ for the Enlightenment. Through a close examination of the inflections of translation, editing and presentation in one key text, I will seek to explore the complex transformations in the reading practices that were invited or made possible in these two very different cultural contexts. This presentation is for the following text(s): * Divine Warnings against the Vain Idolatry of the Gentiles * Israel Avenged
Early Modern Yiddish Readers: Immoderately Addicted to Rhyme?
No description available.
The Hebrew Library of a Renaissance Humanist: The Bibliography to Andreas Masius' Edition of the Book of Joshua (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin 1574)
No description available.
Jews Under Surveillance: Censorship and Reading in Early Modern Italy
This talk explores how Counter-Reformation’s dynamics affected the readings of Italian Jews, after the political changes of the 1550s and the promulgation of the Index by Clement VIII in 1596 (with the ban of the Talmud). Dealing with censorship, expurgation and banning of books, in fact, Italian Jews found themselves caught up between the intricate and often conflicting positions between the Congregation of the Index and the Office of the Inquisition. Based on the analysis of both Inquisitorial sources (proceedings, guidelines and censors’ reports) and biographical accounts, I will explore how rabbis and converts, who worked as appointed censors for the Holy Office of Modena, negotiated different means of reading and interpretation of religious texts. Another issue that I will explore regards the composition of the Modenese Jewish libraries and the means by which books circulated. The ultimate goal is to contribute to our understanding of how Italian Jews were able to keep their own autonomous culture, facing Catholic Church’s policy of both segregation of Jews and general control over the entire society. **This presentation is for the following text(s):** 1. Rules for the expurgation of the Hebrew Books 2. Report regarding Hebrew Books sent by the Reverend Father Inquisitor 3. Commentary by R. Salomon \[Rashi\] on the laws 4. Testimony by Aaron Berechia da Modena
The Paratexts of Jacob Marcaria: Addressing the (Imagined) Reader in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Italy
No description available.
Leon Modena's Ari Nohem Between Print and Manuscript
No description available.
The Power of Texts in the Conversion of an Old Christian Hebraist
Lope de Vera y Alarcón was an Old Christian Hebraist at the University of Salamanca in the late 1630s. In his professional training, he had access to texts that few people in Spain were permitted to see. His subversive reading of Erasmus and the Hebrew diary of David Reuveni, among other works, were not the only factors in his becoming a "judaizer," but by his own account they were of great importance. The texts I will present are excerpts from his Inquisition trial (1639-1644). This presentation is for the following text(s): Inquisition file of Lope de Vera y Alarcón
A Publisher in Service of His Readers: Prefaces to Amsterdam 1711 Edition of the Tsene Rene
No description available.
Sefer Or le-Et Erev: a history of a misunderstanding
No description available.
Putting Hebrew Books in Order: The First Printed Hebrew Bibliography
No description available.
Shlomo Lutzker's Introduction to Magid Devarav Le-Ya'akov
No description available.
Technology, Preservation, and Freedom of Expression: Isaac de Latters as Printer in Sixteenth-Century Italy
No description available.